The New Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument in New York

The limits of monuments in public remembrance

The tensions between public monuments and history frequently orbit the question of “historical faithfulness” or “accuracy.” The controversy surrounding the new women’s rights monument in Central Park is an example of these tensions. Sculpted by Meredith Bergmann, the monument represents suffragettes Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth. ...
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The New Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument in New York

Why the Howling That New York’s Private Schools Have Been Taken Over By Critical Race Theory?

Claims that children are being harmed are a thin cover for returning to a world where white people don’t have to feel bad about racism

Late last week, Paul Rossi, a member of the mathematics faculty at Grace Church School in lower Manhattan, denounced the social justice and anti-racism program instituted by the school in 2020. Before writing this essay, published on Bari Weiss’s contrarian Substack, Common Sense, Rossi was already in hot water. By ...
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Why the Howling That New York’s Private Schools Have Been Taken Over By Critical Race Theory?

Broom Swept

Failure tells a tale about capitalism too

_____ What closes and then darkness, what opens and then bright?Before the horn has risen,where hides the lord of light? —Tian Wen, A Chinese Book of Origins  How you frame something is a moral decision. —Babette Mangolte On Mercer Street, on the island of Manhattan, and just before the city paused, walking in a southerly direction ...
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Broom Swept

Confessions of a Poll Worker

When I volunteered to work on Election Day, my melting pot neighborhood taught me about the complexity of Trump’s America

It’s not the least of the paradoxes of the Trump era that this wannabe authoritarian did more than any decent man to lead Americans to assume their civic duties. Trump’s attacks on the electoral process led 52,000 New Yorkers to sign up for work at the polls, 18,000 more than in ...
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Confessions of a Poll Worker

As New York City Rebuilds, Business Can Be Part of the Solution

Higher taxes are necessary, but who will have the political courage to make it happen?

Early in September, more than 160 executives from companies like Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, the white-shoe corporate law firm Skadden Arps, and a host of real estate developers and financial firms sent a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio. They expressed their fear that “deteriorating conditions” in the city might slow ...
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As New York City Rebuilds, Business Can Be Part of the Solution

For Safer Streets, Invest in Community Anti-Violence Groups

Community Based Organizations underappreciated role in urban policy

Recent months have seen unprecedentedly widespread protests of police violence against Black people. Unthinkable just a short time ago, calls to defund or even abolish police have become louder and are gaining traction in mainstream policy discussions. Unfortunately, a number of cities around the country are also experiencing spikes in ...
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For Safer Streets, Invest in Community Anti-Violence Groups

Bernie’s Brooklyn

How growing up in a New Deal city shaped Bernie Sanders’s vision for America

One of the remarkable features of New York City in the middle three decades of the twentieth century was the plethora of political parties that wielded influence. There were the Democrats, still controlled by Tammany Hall in Manhattan along with similarly Irish-led machines in the Bronx and Brooklyn. The Republicans ...
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Bernie’s Brooklyn

Photo Essay: The Side Streets

A walk through Manhattan in June, 2020

Fifth Avenue, June 3, 2020, 3:45 p.m. Shuttered. Sixth Avenue, June 3, 2020. Empty. Sixth Avenue, June 2, 2020, 6:20 p.m. Bare, boarded. June 2, 2020, 6:20 p.m. Side streets. June 2, 2020 6 p.m. Sheltering-in-place. Sixth Avenue, June 2, 6: 25 p.m. Bankrupt. June 3, 2020, 4:50 p.m. A shadow of myself. Janet Roitman is a professor ...
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For the Love of Strangers

Meditations from the epicenter

My own favorite anecdote is in the same mode. A friend was wearing beloved red, clown-like shoes on the subway one day and she soon realized that someone sitting across from her was eyeing them. The person then looked up at her and said: “I could be friends with you.”  Strangers ...
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For the Love of Strangers

The Corner Store in the Digital World

Bodega Culture’s Local Appeal and Global Reach

Products of the great post-World War II Puerto Rican migration to New York and the Northeast (“bodega” is a repurposing of the Spanish word for wine cellar), bodegas today reflect shifting demographic trends. Lamb over rice is on offer at my local Yemeni-owned bodega; two blocks away, I can buy ...
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The Corner Store in the Digital World

Jerome Robbins, Montgomery Clift, and the Origins of “West Side Story”

How a hit Broadway musical was born in New York’s post-war bohemia

We print this excerpt from Julia L. Foulkes, A Place for Us: “West Side Story” and New York (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016) in celebration of the new Broadway production of West Side Story that opened at The Broadway Theater on February 20, 2020. The choreographer Jerome Robbins and the actor Montgomery ...
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Jerome Robbins, Montgomery Clift, and the Origins of “West Side Story”