It’s Not Working Out

These last few weeks I’ve been thinking about Governor Cuomo opening up the heart of New York’s economy. Sure, there have been some exemptions for what are called “essential businesses,” but otherwise this particular part of New York City has been locked down longer than anyone could imagine. I yearn for “’The speed with which this complex is being restored is a tribute to the determination, skills and resiliency of residents of the region,’" Actually, I have heard it before. The Governor was Mario Cuomo and the year was 1993. 18 days before uttering those words, terrorists had exploded a truck bomb that closed the World Trade Center. In the intervening time, a brigade of workers had sufficiently scrubbed, cleaned, and repaired the buildings to reopen parts of the complex. And while security was stepped up, there was no “new normal” or other major changes. The message was loud and clear: it’s back to work.

Some eight years later, the World Trade Center again taught us how to focus our efforts on working to get back to what we are supposed to be doing. Prior to 9/11, the state’s Republican establishment, led by Governor Pataki, saw Mayor Giuliani as heretic for his endorsement of, yes, Mario Cuomo, over Pataki. During his nascent senatorial bid, Giuliani literally had to beg upstate leaders for an invitation to speak. Yet on that fateful day, both men put aside differences for the common good. Staffs talked to each other. Plans to return displaced business and residents focused on getting it done as soon as possible.

By the Monday after the attacks, the area south of Canal Street had been reopened to the public, and walking to my Worth Street offices I was confronted with hastily constructed chain-link fencing at Broadway and Chambers. Every few days the fences moved back as electricity and other utilities returned. Sometimes it was just a block at a time, but each movement, like a football team grinding out yards, represented more territory returning to normal. After a month or so the fences became permanent demarcation points around the WTC site, now a place no longer seen for rescue but debris and bodily remains recovery. Around that time Broadway and Chambers returned not to a “new normal” but truly business as it had always been, with traffic honking furiously and immigrants looking bewildered trying to find the local INS offices. And as I made my trek to the office, a familiar face was working as he  had every day before the attacks: the guy from the local “gentleman’s club” was furiously handing out flyers to any passerby who would take them. Everybody, and now we really meant everyone, had a job to do, and nothing was stopping them.

Because it’s May Day there could not be a better time to think about labor. Some Nordic countries celebrate this day with festive dancing around a pole in olde timey costumes. Much of the world takes the day off, ironically, to celebrate the labor movement. The great communist countries would normally have parades to show off their military and industrial might, but these days even Lenin’s descendants need to keep social distancing. Closer to home, and in true communist fashion, tenants in New York City are organizing rent strikes. These aren’t your protests against slumlord conditions but a movement to have the government pay for rent because…well just because. Certainly the combination of New York and Federal supplementary unemployment insurance will cover most people’s rent, unless you can’t make the required call to certify your benefits. Unlike 1993, New York’s Department of Labor is not working with speed, determination, or skill to get the phone lines open and the money flowing.

Inaction and ineptitude flows right up the leadership pole. The only hard work Governor (Andrew) Cuomo and Mayor De Blasio have shown is fighting each other. For the past two months there have been daily clashes over closing schools, closing the subways overnight, and closing businesses. One would make a suggestion and the other immediately taking the opposite position, with the bickering ending a few weeks later with the inevitable closing of whatever they were arguing about.

With May Day we are now at a crossroads. States across the nation are starting to open up businesses and lift restrictions. Sure they may not meet recommended Federal guidelines, but when the national government issues a plan that involves multiple phases outlined in endless PowerPoint slides, is anyone really going to follow directions? There are risks involved, but also significant rewards for those who show aggression and guts. That used to be the New York mantra, but not so anymore. The Governor talks in terms of “reimagining” an open New York. The New York City schools chancellor talks of online learning (such as it is) for over a million students continuing through the start of the school year in September, parents be damned. New Jersey will have its stay at home order in place “until further notice” which is government-speak for “we have no idea and aren’t even trying.” There was an old joke in the Soviet Union along the lines that “the people pretended to work and the state pretended to pay them.” Unfortunately the joke is now on us, as we don’t even have a place to go to pretend to work.

The emptiness of New York's streets is breathtaking. Tumbleweeds and swamps are not Texas and Florida, but avenue after avenue of closed shop doors. Survivors of terrorist attacks, super storms, and crushing taxes, I’ve always believed in the hard work and possibilities that business in New York offers. But this is different and very disturbing. I can’t “shop local” and support small businesses when they are all closed. We’ve quarantined, and will continue for the foreseeable future, millions of healthy and hard-working people for increasingly marginal returns. We’ve thrown around relief money like an NBA superstar raining down dollar bills at a strip club while celebrating his first big contract. Subway cars have been cleaned for the first time since the Nixon administration. And yet nobody can see or talk about a new, much less a normal. Lacking any ability to work, the mighty New York private sector is now a hostage to the state, begging for any kind of job. On this May Day, Lenin’s mouth must be smiling just a little bit.

© 2020 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.