While reading under the heading Come East! in chapter 6, “The NeoLiberal Turn” of Jeremiah Moss’s Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul, I was drawn to a quote by former mayor Ed Koch: ‘The days before Gilded Age New York gave way to a city of immigrants, laborers, bohemians, and queers. It is time to go back to return to the city governance that existed before the heart took over.’
What followed in his time as mayor was policy after policy that pushed out anyone that didn’t fit the picture of a rich, white Manhattan. The idea that the city needed to be repopulated with what Koch thought were better people was something that had many negative impacts on city dwellers. One example of this is the way in which Koch used the AIDs epidemic as a mode for gentrification. People would become sick with AIDs and eventually would die. In part, they died because “Koch’s financial response to the AIDs crisis, like President Ronald Reagan’s, was murderously slow.” After they died, their apartments were up for grabs. Monthly rents skyrocketed in these apartments: “In one example, after a young dancer died, the rent on his apartment jumped from $305 to $1,200 a month. The higher rents then attracted people who could afford them, and these new residents were not ‘immigrants, lesbians, noninstitutionalized artists, gay men, and other sexually adventurous and socially marginalized refugees.’” Koch was literally benefiting from the deaths of the people he wanted out.
The heart and soul of New York City which for so long had been a melting pot, and the perfect fit for the “undesirables” and misfits, was under attack. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, but in a very significant way.
Both the reference to Ronald Reagan and Ed Koch’s desire to turn back time and restore the city to its supposed former glory reminds me of Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again”, (which bears striking similarity to both Reagan’s campaign slogan “Let’s make America great again”). This way of thinking, as we have already seen in the past and are currently bearing witness to, leads to blatant hatred and division. Trump’s Muslim ban, his desire to build a wall, and his referral to white supremacists as “very fine people” all go hand in hand with his slogan to “Make America Great Again.” Under his presidency there has been an increase in hate crimes, most notably in connection to religious affiliation and sexual orientation (https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/FBI-Hate-crimes-in-U-S-CA-surge-in-first-year-13389522.php). Furthermore, racist people have become emboldened to call the cops on black people for existing, and to harass Spanish speakers. These things all go back to the idea that the America Trump is trying to create is only welcome to white people, just like Koch’s Manhattan.
Just as Koch wanted to make way for the rich, white people— who already have the upper hand—so too does Trump. They both identified an “other” and rallied for their removal, while clinging to the idea that things needed to be restored to how they were in the past. This romanticization of the past plays on the nostalgia and patriotism of people who wouldn’t dare question the former state of affairs. The loss of empathy, compassion, and genuine human kindness under the guise of “Making America Great Again” is the same as Ed Koch’s policies under which gentrification flourished.
- How is society shaped by the views of those in power?
- Why does the idea of restoring a state/country to its former glory seem to work so well?
- In what ways did Ed Koch and Robert Moses share a similar vision?
