The Beginning of the End?

The Beginning of the End?

Yesterday June 28 a minute fraction of Sunset Park voted. Nothing will change for at least the next two years except that things in our neighborhood will likely get worse. The total turnout of Democratic voters for the entire AD 51 was a little over 5,000 voters. About one in ten of the registered voters of the district with early voting showed up at the polls and exercised their civic responsibility. Voting isn’t just a right we can chose to put into practice, but a responsibility, a duty and obligation in a democratically elected republic in which  we are called with our fellow citizens to act not only in our own self interest but that of the community at large and for our progeny of future generations to whom we bequeath our legacy and transfer to them the world we leave them by electing representatives who will enact responsibly their duties to preserve and protect that which we have accomplished and they will inherit.

 Yesterday we failed on all counts.   
Our failure wasn’t just as Democrats and republicans but as the custodians of the legacy of prior generations who passed that responsibility to us. I wish I could blame my neighbors in the nabe alone, but this was a city and state wide failure of civic responsibility. But alas the damage has already been done. We have effectively returned to office the same corrupt politicians responsible for the policies which created  Morass in which this neighborhood finds itself. We will continue to see the private interests of the corrupt corporate oligarchy which is literally turning our neighborhood and our city into a shithole. Without rezoning of the waterfront we will see  more industrialized ghetto with cheap hotels which will be subsidized by the city to bring in homeless other neighborhoods refuse to take in. Fourth avenue will see more condos and expensive apartments marketed as ”affordable housing” which only higher end income earners will afford. 

Stealth gentrification will occur while our politicians will have the audacity while they wear their expensive suits and dresses to tell us how much they love the poor in our community. It will reek with the stench of hypocrisy for which they have mastered the art. Equinor will build its propeller factory on 72 acres of OUR land while the corporate rapists laugh in our faces as they collude to raise our electric rates to “save our planet”. They will continue to push for “social workers” instead of law enforcement to handle the rising crime rates in our neighborhood. They will claim that habitual criminals who prey in our streets deserve our compassion while they are released into our streets so as not to keep them incarcerated. They will release these individuals without bail into our streets while they raise the rates on the parking meters being installed on all the main thoroughfares to make up for the lost revenue every time a family is being driven out of the city because they can no longer stand to live here.

All of this will drive down the value of homes so their corporate masters can get better prices as you desperately seek a buyer for your houses you can get the hell out of the nabe. For some of us our houses will become our jails as we will avoid to venture out of them due to the increasing crime rates in our streets. Our schools will increasingly become centers not of academic achievement or learning but of social indoctrination while our politicians oppose funding alternative venues so our parents can choose where to educate their children.

If I am painting a bleak picture it is because I see the storm clouds on the horizon headed our way. As most immigrants we have seen this movie before and we know the script. I hope my neighbors take some time to do some simple research and Google “Curley effect” and “Cloward-Piven”. The battle is far from over, it’s just beginning. We must wake up our neighbors and fight back or the “good old days” of Gunset Park will come roaring back with a vengeance. It’s time to organize, protest and influence. Resistance is not futile, we don’t live in the land of the Borg yet.