WEBVTT - The Staten Island Problem - Part 2: A New Map 0:00:15.920 --> 0:00:21.919 Pushkin Ben Mata Haffer Here before we get into this episode, 0:00:22.040 --> 0:00:23.639 I wanted to let you know that you can hear 0:00:23.759 --> 0:00:27.360 all episodes of Revisionist History the Staten Island Problem ad 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:31.040 free right now. By signing up for Pushkin Plus. You'll 0:00:31.040 --> 0:00:34.360 also get bonus episodes, full audiobooks, and other binges from 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:37.920 your favorite Pushkin hosts and authors. Plus, your support helps 0:00:37.920 --> 0:00:40.800 independent shows like us continue making the stories you love. 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:44.360 Sign up and save on the Revisionist History Show page 0:00:44.400 --> 0:00:48.080 on Apple Podcasts, where at Pushkin dot fm, Slash plus 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:51.560 use the code R twenty five for twenty five percent 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:55.840 off an annual subscription. All right, let's get into the series. 0:00:57.200 --> 0:00:59.320 One day I came across a box of tapes in 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:02.560 the College of Staten Island Archives. They were these mostly 0:01:02.680 --> 0:01:05.800 unmarked VHS tapes jammed in no particular order into a 0:01:05.800 --> 0:01:09.200 cardboard box. The extremely helpful archivist set me up with 0:01:09.240 --> 0:01:12.839 an old v I popped in the tape and I 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:16.160 met Dan Singletary. 0:01:16.560 --> 0:01:18.840 Do you realize? Nineteen eighty six, a federal law was 0:01:18.880 --> 0:01:23.120 passed mandating every school system in the country provide safe 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:26.520 schoolrooms free of asbestos. The only school district in the 0:01:26.639 --> 0:01:28.119 entire country that did not comply. 0:01:28.680 --> 0:01:30.000 You know it New York City. 0:01:31.440 --> 0:01:36.760 This guy, Dan Singletary. He looked like a cowboy, big mustache, lanky. 0:01:37.560 --> 0:01:40.439 I remembered seeing his name all over newspapers from the time, 0:01:40.960 --> 0:01:44.359 usually described vaguely as an artist who wanted Staten Island 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:47.119 to secede, but no one ever said what exactly his 0:01:47.280 --> 0:01:51.840 art was. This intrigued me. And here he was at 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:54.920 a debate on secession, going off about the shoddy schools. 0:01:56.360 --> 0:02:00.680 Why because of mismanagement, because of ineptitude. There is no 0:02:00.800 --> 0:02:02.800 way in the world that staff Mound would be able 0:02:02.840 --> 0:02:04.760 to allow that, none whatsoever. 0:02:05.760 --> 0:02:08.400 And as I watched those tapes, it became clear to 0:02:08.440 --> 0:02:10.680 me that Dan Singletary it was really the voice of 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:11.280 this movement. 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:14.360 Well, if there's a son of secession, it's got to 0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:15.359 be Dan Singletary. 0:02:15.800 --> 0:02:16.000 Dance. 0:02:16.040 --> 0:02:20.000 Singletary said, if you're against secession, you're in favor of 0:02:20.120 --> 0:02:21.520 keeping things the way they are. 0:02:23.960 --> 0:02:26.480 There were many problems with keeping things the way they were, 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:30.160 at least as Staten Islanders saw it, and nothing was 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:35.000 talked about more than the dump fresh kills. It was 0:02:35.040 --> 0:02:38.320 so remarkable that Ripley's Believe It or Not featured it 0:02:39.080 --> 0:02:41.440 the scale of it could not be believed. 0:02:41.920 --> 0:02:46.160 Eleven thousand tons a day, six days a week, and 0:02:46.240 --> 0:02:50.120 that's expected to more than double soon to over twenty 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:52.079 two thousand tons a day. 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:57.600 Dan Singletary would parade national reporters out to see the dump. 0:02:57.840 --> 0:03:00.560 Everyone wanted to see the dump. It was the symbol 0:03:00.600 --> 0:03:04.440 of Staten Island secession. Over seven million people lived in 0:03:04.480 --> 0:03:07.680 New York City in the nineteen eighties. Every day they 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:10.520 threw stuff out. Most of that stuff wound up at 0:03:10.560 --> 0:03:13.560 the Fresh Kills landfill. The sight of it alone was 0:03:13.680 --> 0:03:15.840 enough to stop visitors in their tracks. 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:21.360 Now the garbage here is piled pretty deep or pretty high, 0:03:21.400 --> 0:03:23.799 depending on how you look at it. By the year 0:03:23.840 --> 0:03:27.760 two thousands, some of the piles could be over five 0:03:28.000 --> 0:03:32.200 hundred feet above sea level, which will make them believe. 0:03:31.880 --> 0:03:32.440 It or not. 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:36.560 The tallest mountains on the entire eastern shore. 0:03:38.840 --> 0:03:41.160 People said you could see the dump from outer space. 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:44.720 Ornithologists wanted to study it because supposedly it was the 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:49.520 East Coast's largest collection of seagulls. Stann Islanders meanwhile, rolled 0:03:49.600 --> 0:03:52.200 up their windows when they passed it. It was next 0:03:52.200 --> 0:03:53.880 to the mall, and when you went to the mall, 0:03:54.000 --> 0:03:56.320 you'd cover your mouth and nose and sprint from the 0:03:56.360 --> 0:03:59.280 car to the front door. It was unclear then if 0:03:59.320 --> 0:04:01.640 garbage juice was leaking out of the trash mountains and 0:04:01.680 --> 0:04:05.560 into the groundwater. The people were looking into it. Spoiler 0:04:05.600 --> 0:04:09.680 alert it was, and rather than coming up with alternatives, 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:13.160 all the ingenuity in Manhattan seemed to go towards dumping 0:04:13.320 --> 0:04:17.999 more faster on Staten Island, and Dan Singletary was paying 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:19.520 very close attention to this. 0:04:20.400 --> 0:04:23.080 We have a environmental disaster sitting on our shores. 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:24.440 We all recognize that. 0:04:24.560 --> 0:04:26.800 We recognize the fact that it outside of a great 0:04:26.840 --> 0:04:28.560 wall in China's the only thing you can see from 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:29.920 outer space. It's a disaster. 0:04:32.400 --> 0:04:34.279 A weird thing happens to me when I work on 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:37.920 stories like this, People who aren't famous at all become 0:04:38.000 --> 0:04:41.080 like celebrities. In my mind. Here was a man on 0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:43.960 a misfit island ranting about a mountain of trash thirty 0:04:44.040 --> 0:04:47.560 years ago, and because I've turned my bizarre fixations into 0:04:47.640 --> 0:04:50.120 a career, over the course of a year, I had 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:53.120 read so many articles about Dan Singletary and watched so 0:04:53.240 --> 0:04:56.839 many videos of him arguing about Staten Island secession that 0:04:56.920 --> 0:04:59.880 he became a kind of folk hero to me, wandering 0:04:59.880 --> 0:05:03.039 around the island doing art looking like a cowboy with 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:06.839 his huge mustache. I wanted to track him down to 0:05:07.000 --> 0:05:10.720 understand the mind of a secessionist. I kept striking out 0:05:12.960 --> 0:05:17.640 until one day, in an article in Rural Heritage magazine 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:22.120 about American milking Devin Cows, I came across a reference 0:05:22.440 --> 0:05:24.680 to a farmer named Dan Singletary. 0:05:25.600 --> 0:05:28.720 I found a number, and I called we were the 0:05:28.800 --> 0:05:31.880 smallest borough. Like on the face of it, it was 0:05:31.920 --> 0:05:35.160 a disaster. You know, they could walk all over us. 0:05:36.040 --> 0:05:42.880 Singletary lives. You're listening to revisionist history. This is our 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:46.880 mini series, The Staten Island Problem. I'm Ben Matt of Haffrey. 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:52.159 Everyone has a problem with the place they live. This year, 0:05:52.200 --> 0:05:54.400 I paid a lot of taxes to a government waging 0:05:54.400 --> 0:05:57.480 a war I have no interest in supporting. Maybe you 0:05:57.520 --> 0:06:00.640 think the schools in your neighborhood suck. Maybe you hate 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:03.680 the police. Maybe there's a methadone clinic down the block 0:06:03.720 --> 0:06:06.719 and you can't stand it. Maybe you think the things 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:09.560 your neighbor believes are fundamentally evil and he thinks the 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:14.599 about you. Those feelings have reached a real boiling point 0:06:14.600 --> 0:06:17.480 in this country on all sides. And this is a 0:06:17.560 --> 0:06:19.920 story about a place with a lot of those kinds 0:06:19.920 --> 0:06:24.200 of problems, saying you know what, screw it, we're out. 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:27.839 What does that look like? Who chooses to do that? 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:33.200 And why this episode the things that are meant to 0:06:33.280 --> 0:06:37.680 keep our politics together and why some people want out? 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:52.440 Episode two, A New Map. When I finally did meet 0:06:52.520 --> 0:06:54.839 Dan Singletary, he was living on a farm with his 0:06:54.880 --> 0:06:58.400 wife Alice, way out in rural upstate New York. I 0:06:58.400 --> 0:07:00.120 had brought the old videos i'd found with me. 0:07:01.080 --> 0:07:02.719 I don't know if I ever even want to see. 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:06.320 It's a must see the videos there. 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:10.000 They're sort of fantastic. I don't look like I do. 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:13.560 You're recognizable. He still looked like a cowboy to me. 0:07:14.760 --> 0:07:17.440 So far working on the project, I'd only heard the 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:20.120 New York City view of secession. I wanted to hear 0:07:20.160 --> 0:07:22.680 the Staten Island one. We sat down at the kitchen 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:24.400 table and started to talk. 0:07:25.240 --> 0:07:28.240 Well, we had to do something one way or another, 0:07:28.440 --> 0:07:30.760 because we were the losers. 0:07:31.760 --> 0:07:34.280 The Singletaries had moved to Staten Island because they had 0:07:34.280 --> 0:07:37.080 two kids and wanted a pleasant place to live, and 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:39.920 they liked what they found there. Alice worked in the schools, 0:07:40.000 --> 0:07:43.840 eventually as a principal. He was a nice community, except 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:45.240 of course, for the dump. 0:07:46.080 --> 0:07:48.560 And I had a friend that lived around the corner 0:07:48.600 --> 0:07:50.640 that worked out there, and he said, hey, Danny, come 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:53.680 on out here and have lunch with us. So I 0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:56.080 came out, went out one day and the fresh skills 0:07:56.520 --> 0:07:59.160 and met the guys in the bar that you know. 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:01.560 We came in and there we started making They were 0:08:01.600 --> 0:08:04.800 all Italian. They all made you know, sausages and stuff. 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:05.960 And I thought this was great. 0:08:06.960 --> 0:08:09.520 All of a sudden a barge full of trash showed 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:12.640 up and the rats are jumping off or kicked in 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:13.880 the rats in the water. 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:16.960 You've never seen anything more disgusting on all your life. 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:19.840 And it had, you know, mostly done. And I said, 0:08:19.880 --> 0:08:22.200 where are you going? I said, I'm sick to my stomach. 0:08:22.200 --> 0:08:23.760 I'm going to go to all home. I said, I 0:08:23.800 --> 0:08:26.840 can't eat any lunch now. Oh come on, daddy, you know, 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:31.320 I said no. But it was pretty pretty incredible. 0:08:32.160 --> 0:08:34.800 Of course, it wasn't just the dump that got under 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:38.440 Staten Islander's skin. There were developers cramming the island with 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:43.800 crummy houses or sewers the constant disrespect and also the 0:08:43.839 --> 0:08:46.760 reality of living in the city with a lot of homelessness. 0:08:47.280 --> 0:08:53.040 People decided that the ferry terminal was a great place 0:08:53.319 --> 0:08:57.520 to feed the people that needed food with the almost people, 0:08:58.000 --> 0:09:02.120 and it impacted with the people from Staten Island. 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:05.880 Staten Islanders would walk essentially through a soup kitchen to 0:09:05.920 --> 0:09:07.800 catch the ferry home from Lower Manhattan. 0:09:08.559 --> 0:09:10.719 They worked all the law. They wanted to come home 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:12.920 and you know, wait for their kids or do whatever, 0:09:13.520 --> 0:09:16.719 and they got all these you know, all these bums 0:09:16.719 --> 0:09:19.399 are all around, and it smells like urn, and you know, 0:09:19.479 --> 0:09:23.079 it's just absolutely terrible. So I went in twice to 0:09:24.000 --> 0:09:26.519 meetings of the community board and I said, guys, what 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:28.879 can we do? I said, can you find some other place? 0:09:29.160 --> 0:09:31.160 I said, I'm not against any of that stuff, but 0:09:31.199 --> 0:09:32.800 this is not the right place. 0:09:34.239 --> 0:09:36.640 The singletary is kept using this word for what it 0:09:36.679 --> 0:09:39.880 felt like in New York City at the time, sand papering. 0:09:40.920 --> 0:09:45.559 It was that constant sandpapering. You know, of sensitivities. 0:09:46.079 --> 0:09:48.319 What do you mean sandpapering with sensitivities. 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:53.080 Well, it's it's always being rubbed by something. Ah, you know, 0:09:53.800 --> 0:09:58.640 it's just around you saying back off or you know it's. 0:09:57.599 --> 0:10:01.119 Yeah, you feel like the environment is real express somewhere. 0:10:01.239 --> 0:10:03.079 Yeah. 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:07.080 And around that time Singletary learned that there might be 0:10:07.160 --> 0:10:10.880 a way to fix all this. A beloved lawmaker on 0:10:10.920 --> 0:10:13.880 the island named John Marky had come up with a plan, 0:10:14.319 --> 0:10:19.839 a pathway to secede. It had two parts. First, Staten 0:10:19.880 --> 0:10:22.199 Islanders would be allowed to vote on whether or not 0:10:22.239 --> 0:10:26.800 to study secession and make a charter for a new city. Then, 0:10:27.079 --> 0:10:31.839 in nineteen ninety three they'd vote on that plan. Against 0:10:31.839 --> 0:10:35.880 all the odds, the state approved this proposal. Now it 0:10:35.959 --> 0:10:38.160 was on the secessionists to whip the votes. 0:10:39.239 --> 0:10:45.200 Our dining table became the war room, Am I correct? Yeah? 0:10:45.719 --> 0:10:49.920 Singletary began to organize an official secession party. If they 0:10:49.920 --> 0:10:52.800 got enough signatures, they could get politicians on their party 0:10:52.839 --> 0:10:55.440 line on the ballot and raise the profile of the issue. 0:10:57.079 --> 0:10:59.840 I was out almost every night for months, and we 0:10:59.920 --> 0:11:02.280 had other people and other people, and we collected them 0:11:02.280 --> 0:11:04.959 all and brought them back. And Alice's job was set 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:07.199 with these other ladies to go through and make sure 0:11:07.239 --> 0:11:10.679 everything was signed correctly and dotted all the press of 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:13.800 that stuff. And they were drinking, you know, had a 0:11:13.839 --> 0:11:16.439 beer and coffee and chatting it up. And you had 0:11:16.479 --> 0:11:18.559 a great time, and you got the short end of 0:11:18.559 --> 0:11:18.920 the stick. 0:11:20.559 --> 0:11:22.999 You had a great time checking the signatures. 0:11:24.400 --> 0:11:26.559 Go to work next day, keep doing the same thing. 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:31.920 They would have to collect several thousand signatures to make 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:35.280 the secession party in electoral reality, and they did. 0:11:36.640 --> 0:11:40.199 When we took all those boxes into the Board of Elections, 0:11:40.559 --> 0:11:42.720 they said, you got to be kidding. They put them 0:11:42.719 --> 0:11:44.960 in that corner. I'm sure they just sat there. 0:11:45.280 --> 0:11:48.519 We didn't think it could be done, so the table 0:11:48.679 --> 0:11:51.800 didn't think what could be done to get any signatures. 0:11:55.359 --> 0:11:58.679 I once read about this political science concept called the 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:01.880 logo map. The idea is that when we make a 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:04.959 map of a place, we show a simplified picture that 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:07.879 leaves out a lot of the actual territory. Think of 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:10.960 a map of the United States. What's on it? The 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:15.519 continental contiguous United States, not American Samoa, not the US 0:12:15.599 --> 0:12:19.280 Virgin Islands, not Puerto Rico. Alaska gets put in a 0:12:19.280 --> 0:12:23.160 little box. So does Hawaii, and Guam is nowhere to 0:12:23.199 --> 0:12:24.039 be found. 0:12:24.880 --> 0:12:25.040 Now. 0:12:25.079 --> 0:12:29.479 Picture New York City. You're probably imagining the long, tall 0:12:29.520 --> 0:12:33.240 island of Manhattan. Maybe you're seeing Brooklyn and Queens and 0:12:33.319 --> 0:12:36.479 part of the Bronx. But you're almost certainly not seeing 0:12:36.520 --> 0:12:39.240 Staten Island on the logo map of New York unless 0:12:39.239 --> 0:12:41.559 it's been included in a tiny box in the bottom 0:12:41.640 --> 0:12:44.559 left corner like on the old subway maps, and even 0:12:44.599 --> 0:12:49.399 then never at scale. The logo map reflects the psychological 0:12:49.479 --> 0:12:52.400 reality for most New Yorkers when it comes to Staten Island. 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:55.999 It's that place miles out to sea, reachable only by 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:58.800 ship in what was in its day the longest suspension 0:12:58.800 --> 0:13:03.959 bridge ever built. It's off screen by design, because the 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:07.080 whole point of throwing things out is you don't want 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:10.839 to see them anymore. The dump the metaphor for New 0:13:10.880 --> 0:13:14.200 York City's relationship to Staten Island, the place they put 0:13:14.199 --> 0:13:17.920 the things they don't want. Secession was about making a 0:13:17.959 --> 0:13:24.199 whole new map. After the break the Supreme Court case 0:13:24.439 --> 0:13:38.920 that set all this in motion in the eighteen nineties, 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:41.599 New York City did not exist, at least not like 0:13:41.599 --> 0:13:45.760 it does today. Brooklyn and Manhattan were separate cities. Queen's 0:13:45.880 --> 0:13:48.400 Staten Island and the Bronx had little to do with 0:13:48.479 --> 0:13:52.840 each other. Everyone competed for the same resources, nobody really 0:13:52.839 --> 0:13:57.040 coordinated how and this was a big problem. The harbor 0:13:57.120 --> 0:14:00.399 was polluted, epidemics and crime. Waves didn't care that these 0:14:00.439 --> 0:14:04.120 were different cities. They spread wherever they pleased. The competing 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:07.920 areas would bicker about water supply, which when it ran short, 0:14:08.199 --> 0:14:13.240 let huge fires blaze up. So in the eighteen nineties 0:14:13.319 --> 0:14:16.079 a wealthy group of Manhattanites came up with a plan. 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:20.879 They would convince these five disparate places to join into 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:27.280 one gigantic city. This was called consolidation. In eighteen ninety eight, 0:14:27.800 --> 0:14:32.360 the greater New York City was born. But just like 0:14:32.440 --> 0:14:35.479 when the United States came together, there was a concern, 0:14:36.359 --> 0:14:38.720 how could the new boroughs be sure that they wouldn't 0:14:38.760 --> 0:14:43.280 just be dominated by Manhattan. The answer was an obscure 0:14:43.359 --> 0:14:46.680 legislative body known as the Board of Estimate. 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:52.879 Well, the Board of Estimate, for all intents and purposes, 0:14:53.320 --> 0:14:55.960 was sort of designed like the US Senate. 0:14:56.600 --> 0:14:59.880 Frank Sippola, who was the assistant press secretary for the 0:14:59.920 --> 0:15:02.680 Staten Island Borough President about forty years ago. 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:07.160 Regardless of what the population of each borough was, the 0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:10.800 borough president voted for the entire borough. He was the 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:12.519 mayor of that particular bar. 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:15.600 The deal that was struck at the dawn of the 0:15:15.600 --> 0:15:18.600 city was that each borough president would have an equal 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:22.040 vote on the board, right alongside the mayor, the comptroller, 0:15:22.200 --> 0:15:25.880 and the city council president. And to be clear, these 0:15:25.880 --> 0:15:29.800 weren't just some perfunctory meetings. The compromise was that the 0:15:29.840 --> 0:15:33.080 Board of Estimate held all the real power in the city, 0:15:33.479 --> 0:15:38.400 the city's budget, the city's land, the city's operations. And 0:15:38.479 --> 0:15:41.280 Sapola found himself attending meetings of the Board of Estimate 0:15:41.400 --> 0:15:42.080 for his boss. 0:15:43.200 --> 0:15:46.160 And you'd sit there as bus loads of New Yorkers 0:15:46.160 --> 0:15:54.080 would show up and spend hours trashing you, hours just 0:15:54.239 --> 0:15:57.880 talking about how your decisions are so shortsighted. 0:15:58.880 --> 0:16:01.239 Citizens could weigh in on the important issues of the 0:16:01.320 --> 0:16:05.240 day as the borough presidents deliberated in real time. It 0:16:05.359 --> 0:16:13.000 was the pinnacle of democracy. What was it like in there? 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:15.479 It was brutal. 0:16:15.560 --> 0:16:18.600 Then Sometimes the meetings went till two or three o'clock 0:16:18.640 --> 0:16:21.920 in the morning. I remember once there was a guy 0:16:22.040 --> 0:16:24.680 just had fallen asleep on one of the chairs, just 0:16:24.720 --> 0:16:25.320 fell asleep. 0:16:26.600 --> 0:16:29.080 The whole thing was kind of a sham. Frank wasn't 0:16:29.080 --> 0:16:31.800 the borough president, he was just the assistant press guy. 0:16:32.359 --> 0:16:35.320 And yet he was sitting up there because early in 0:16:35.359 --> 0:16:38.919 the meeting, the borough presidents would all just disappear. 0:16:40.000 --> 0:16:43.280 He'd show up, he'd sit there for about twenty fifty 0:16:43.280 --> 0:16:46.560 to twenty or thirty minutes, and then somebody from his 0:16:46.720 --> 0:16:51.280 cabinet in several places me would have to sit there 0:16:51.400 --> 0:16:54.840 for the rest of the meeting, and he'd say, you're 0:16:54.840 --> 0:16:56.680 going to vote know on this, yes on this, no 0:16:56.840 --> 0:16:59.000 on that, yes on this, no on that. Okay. 0:17:00.239 --> 0:17:03.160 Meanwhile, even if the borough presidents were doing what they 0:17:03.160 --> 0:17:05.040 were supposed to be doing, they were still a big 0:17:05.080 --> 0:17:08.840 problem because the burrows they represented were not at all 0:17:08.960 --> 0:17:12.480 the same side. At the time, Brooklyn had two point 0:17:12.520 --> 0:17:16.320 two million people, Staten Island had three hundred and fifty 0:17:16.320 --> 0:17:19.920 two thousand, and yet the borough presidents each had the 0:17:20.000 --> 0:17:23.040 same one vote on the Board of Estimate, which seemed 0:17:23.040 --> 0:17:26.639 pretty unfair because Staten Island had way more power than 0:17:26.640 --> 0:17:29.600 it should have given its size. They'd weigh in on 0:17:29.640 --> 0:17:32.680 city wide issues and managed to use their power to 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:35.320 say no to a lot of things. They were the 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:37.920 only county in New York City that didn't have a jail, 0:17:38.000 --> 0:17:42.520 for instance, and don't ask them about homeless shelters. All 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:47.119 this worked fine enough until this particular arrangement came to 0:17:47.160 --> 0:17:50.960 the attention of the Supreme Court, and all hell broke loose. 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:57.440 Well here argument now in number eighty seven ten twenty two. 0:17:57.560 --> 0:17:59.800 Board of Estimate of the City of New York versus 0:17:59.840 --> 0:18:04.560 Beverly Morris, Number eighty seven eleven twelve Frank Ontario versus 0:18:04.600 --> 0:18:05.760 Beverly Moras. 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:08.960 In the early nineteen eighties, the New York Civil Liberties 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:11.920 Union brought a lawsuit against the Board that said that 0:18:12.040 --> 0:18:14.560 the fact that Staten Island got the same vote as 0:18:14.600 --> 0:18:18.600 Brooklyn violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, 0:18:18.880 --> 0:18:21.840 One person, one vote. The case wound its way up 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:24.560 to the Supreme Court. The lawyer for New York City 0:18:24.680 --> 0:18:27.680 begged the court to leave it alone. He said, if 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:30.119 you strike this down, the city's going to fall apart. 0:18:31.320 --> 0:18:35.440 Every One has said that this structure is the glue 0:18:35.480 --> 0:18:37.600 that has kept the City of New York together, and 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:40.240 don't change it. And oh, I'm in New. 0:18:40.200 --> 0:18:42.600 York is going to disintegrative, that you lose this loss 0:18:42.600 --> 0:18:45.200 of the U integrate Dadon Island's units, the seed. 0:18:46.240 --> 0:18:50.080 This thing was really all about Staten Island. The lawyer 0:18:50.120 --> 0:18:52.840 from the Civil Liberties Union encountered every time a big 0:18:52.920 --> 0:18:55.320 citywide initiative comes up for debate. We got to get 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:57.120 those guys from Staten Island to agree to it. 0:18:58.320 --> 0:19:01.400 Why not have total at large elections and give every 0:19:01.480 --> 0:19:05.960 Staten Islander six votes, every brooklyn Er won, every Queen's two, 0:19:06.120 --> 0:19:10.560 every Bronx three, of Manhattan three and Bronx or could 0:19:10.600 --> 0:19:11.200 we do that? 0:19:11.840 --> 0:19:14.760 The city's lawyer was arguing that Staten Island was holding 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:15.880 the rest of New York back. 0:19:17.000 --> 0:19:19.880 There were three six to five votes recently where we're 0:19:19.880 --> 0:19:23.960 a Staten Island, weighted by virtue of population. Those votes 0:19:24.040 --> 0:19:28.880 on a incineration plant, on homeless shelters, and on middle 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:31.480 income housing in the Bronx all would have gone the 0:19:31.480 --> 0:19:35.080 other way. They all would have been the opposite result. 0:19:38.760 --> 0:19:41.440 In the end, the court agreed. They ruled that the 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:45.520 structure of New York City government was unconstitutional because ultimately, 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:49.000 the population of a place should determine the representation it gets. 0:19:50.000 --> 0:19:53.240 The entire system of government in New York City was 0:19:53.280 --> 0:19:58.080 being redrawn, and one thing was certain, Staten Island was 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:01.840 going to lose a whole lot of power. That's when 0:20:01.840 --> 0:20:05.720 secession kicked into gear. But the reason this movement took 0:20:05.760 --> 0:20:10.639 off wasn't because everyone was intricately following this new voting system. 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:13.600 It had to do with something a whole lot deeper, 0:20:14.240 --> 0:20:16.640 with people who didn't just want to get their old 0:20:16.720 --> 0:20:20.760 votes back, but who wanted to get their old island back. 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:39.639 That's after the break. One day on the island, in 0:20:39.680 --> 0:20:42.600 my attempt to understand the secessionist's mind, I sat down 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:46.520 with a local attorney named Bobby Scamerondella. I'd seen Scamerondella 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:49.000 in those videotapes alongside Dan Singletary. 0:20:50.120 --> 0:20:54.680 My primary involvement with it was as a debate. There 0:20:54.720 --> 0:20:59.440 were a series of debates conducted by all sorts of 0:20:59.560 --> 0:21:04.040 civic organizations on Staten Island where they would invite a 0:21:04.080 --> 0:21:07.920 pro secessionist and an anti successionist to come before these 0:21:08.840 --> 0:21:09.600 civic groups. 0:21:10.760 --> 0:21:13.080 He was an absolute bruiser on the debate stage, arguing 0:21:13.200 --> 0:21:16.640 for secession. I met him in his law office, which 0:21:16.680 --> 0:21:19.240 had these led lights on the ceiling that changed color 0:21:19.280 --> 0:21:23.520 as we spoke. Unlike the Singletaries, Scameronella grew up on 0:21:23.560 --> 0:21:26.560 Staten Island. He remembered it from way back when. 0:21:27.400 --> 0:21:29.760 I mean it was like Dyllick. I grew up in 0:21:29.760 --> 0:21:34.200 an area was wooded right after nineteen sixty four. When 0:21:34.200 --> 0:21:37.240 the bridge was built, it was culture shock, even for 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:39.360 I guess at the time of fourteen year old boy. 0:21:40.240 --> 0:21:41.400 I lived in an area. 0:21:41.200 --> 0:21:45.600 Called Sunnyside, and the Staten Island Expressway which was built 0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:50.639 along with the bridge. It it just went through this huge 0:21:50.720 --> 0:21:53.640 wooded area that I used to play in. I'll remember 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:57.040 to the day I died waking up in this huge 0:21:57.040 --> 0:22:00.720 wooded area where I used to play was gone. 0:22:03.360 --> 0:22:06.280 The great irony of Staten Island secession is that back 0:22:06.320 --> 0:22:09.680 when the city consolidated, No Burrow had been more enthusiast 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:13.600 stick about joining. But they regretted that decision almost immediately. 0:22:14.520 --> 0:22:16.960 There were a series of attempts to fix that problem, 0:22:17.280 --> 0:22:19.840 to make this distant place feel like it was part 0:22:19.880 --> 0:22:22.879 of the city, but they all failed. There was the 0:22:22.920 --> 0:22:25.600 train tunnel to Staten Island, which the city even broke 0:22:25.640 --> 0:22:29.000 ground on and then never finished. The bridge was the 0:22:29.080 --> 0:22:32.760 last gambit. The writer Gates Alise wrote his first book 0:22:32.800 --> 0:22:36.200 about the building of that bridge. He wrote, the bridge 0:22:36.200 --> 0:22:38.160 had become the symbol of hope. 0:22:40.800 --> 0:22:43.760 For a sparsely populated Staten Island. This is an hour 0:22:43.920 --> 0:22:47.360 almost a rediscovery from the island through the toll gate 0:22:47.600 --> 0:22:51.000 rides the first vehicle and estimated twelve million vehicles will 0:22:51.040 --> 0:22:52.040 follow in the first year. 0:22:53.560 --> 0:22:56.040 This bridge was a big deal and for the rest 0:22:56.040 --> 0:22:57.680 of New York it was like it had opened up 0:22:57.680 --> 0:23:00.480 a portal to a whole new world. Here's a newsreel 0:23:00.520 --> 0:23:03.520 from nineteen sixty four when the bridge first opened. 0:23:04.240 --> 0:23:07.080 Across the Narrows the entrance to New York Harbor, the 0:23:07.160 --> 0:23:10.800 longest suspension bridge in the world. Town On Narrows Bridge 0:23:10.840 --> 0:23:13.200 is the first fixed link between Staten Island and the 0:23:13.200 --> 0:23:14.240 City's for other. 0:23:14.080 --> 0:23:18.840 Boroughs, everything on the island is pre or post bridge, 0:23:19.760 --> 0:23:23.680 pre bridge. It was a kind of paradise. You collic farmland, 0:23:23.880 --> 0:23:28.000 rolling hills, shoals of oysters rimming the island. Post bridge, 0:23:28.400 --> 0:23:32.000 it was all tiki, tax suburban houses, white people fleeing 0:23:32.040 --> 0:23:35.760 the increasingly black and brown Brooklyn and of course the 0:23:35.880 --> 0:23:42.159 ever expanding mountains of trash. To be from Staten Island 0:23:42.440 --> 0:23:45.760 is to have this sense that something grand has been 0:23:45.800 --> 0:23:48.040 buried under garbage and forgotten. 0:23:48.920 --> 0:23:50.920 But it wasn't the Board of Estimate that changed that. 0:23:50.960 --> 0:23:52.960