The Staten Island Problem - Part 1: The Mayor vs. the Borough President

A riot, a voyage at sea, and a movement to break up the greatest city in the country. The first Black mayor of New York City faces off with the borough president of Staten Island and tries to hold his city together. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is Jacob Goldstein. When you're a business owner interested in expanding to new markets, there's a lot to consider and countless questions to answer before making the call. The most important one being, are you ready? That's where ChatGPT comes in. Give it a goal, add your files, and ask chat to help you map out different scenarios for the future of your business. So when growth is on the table, you've got an expansion plan ready to implement. Get started today at chatgpt.com.

• 0:28Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 1:07Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 1:52Speaker 02

  Ben Nattif Hafer here. Before we get into this episode, I wanted to let you know that you can hear all episodes of Revisionist History: The Staten Island Problem ad-free right now by signing up for Pushkin Plus. You'll also get bonus episodes, full audiobooks, and other binges from your favorite Pushkin hosts and authors. Plus, your support helps independent shows like us continue making the stories you love. Sign up and save on the Revisionist History show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm/plus. Use the code RH25 for 25% off an annual subscription.

• 2:26Speaker 02

  All right, let's get into the series.

• 2:31Malcolm Gladwell?

  A while back, my colleague Benedict Hafrey came to me with a story about a strange little island that no outsider ever visits. Forgotten, overlooked, reached by boat across an expanse of turbulent water, where the locals practice their own unique customs, engage in their own strange variety of politics, and where incredibly, everything that is happening currently in America already happened long ago: Staten Island.

• 3:06Malcolm Gladwell?

  And so today, we bring you a new series, The Staten Island Problem. In it, Ben is going to take us back in time to the 1990s, when a young real estate scion named Donald Trump was chasing models in downtown nightclubs, when the subways were covered in graffiti, and when the homicide epidemic was at its peak. And Staten Island decided, enough already.

• 3:28Malcolm Gladwell?

  Ben will share what he's discovered deep in the distant corners of New York's archives, and tell the story of a civil war within the five boroughs. A secessionist movement, the rise of Rudy Giuliani, the Wu-Tang Clan, and ultimately, a parable for what we're all living through right now: how a country that thought it was united comes apart. What was it Ernest Hemingway once said of bankruptcy? It happens two ways: gradually, and then suddenly. I promise you that at every turn in this bizarre story, you will say to yourself, "I didn't know that." And then, oh, that's how we got to where we are today.

• 4:11Malcolm Gladwell?

  This is the first of what will be five episodes. You can expect new ones in your feed every week, or you can subscribe to Pushkin Plus and binge the whole series right now.

• 4:23Malcolm Gladwell?

  Over to Ben.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Let me say up top that I am not from Staten Island, though many people I spoke to for this series seem to think I am. I'm from Boston, but when I was a kid, I used to dream about moving to New York. I used to watch Fantasia 2000 all the time. Well, actually, just this one sequence about New York City, set to George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. It opens as the clarinet plays that iconic

• 4:51Speaker 02

  and a pencil draws in the skyline of New York City. And the whole thing is just romantic and idealized and hyperkinetic. I fell in love with the idea of this place. I used to draw that skyline. I used to ride my bike around with a tape player bungied to the rack, listening to Gershwin, thinking about my first apartment, where I'd live, what I'd do. Who cares that the cartoon was set in the Great Depression? I was a total doofus. But in all my reveries, I never thought about the most remote part of New York City: Staten Island. New York is made up of five boroughs, each of which is like its own little city:

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Queens, the Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn, where I live now, and then the farthest away and smallest, at least by population, Staten Island. And as I've come to learn, Staten Island is a kind of uncomfortable fact of New York City. It's the butt of the joke, always. I mean, listen to this recent mayor debate.

• 5:53Speaker 03

  I'll start with you, Ms. Adams. Which borough have you spent the least amount of time in?

• 5:57Speaker 04

  Staten Island.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  Mr. Cuomo.

• 6:00Speaker 05

  I would say Staten Island.

• 6:02Speaker 03

  Mr. Lander?

• 6:03Speaker 06

  Staten Island.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  Mr. Mamdani? Uh-oh. The beacon of free transit: Staten Island. Mr. Myrie? I'd say Staten Island. Mr. Stringer?

• 6:11Speaker 06

  I've been doing this. I've been everywhere.

• 6:13Speaker 03

  Mr. Tilson? It was almost a sweep.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  I learned about Staten Island after I first moved to New York City. That summer, some friends invited me to a Staten Island Yankees game, their old minor league baseball team. When I looked up how to get there, I learned that I would have to take a subway to a ferry, a literal ship. I got on board. There was a bar, huge windows, a 25, 30 minute ride, where you see the Statue of Liberty out the right side. And then you just keep going. The New York City skyline recedes into the distance. And then you land in a place that just is not New York City. New York City is all shoebox apartments.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  Staten Island is single-family homes. New York City is liberal. Staten Island is conservative. New York City at large is mostly people of color. Staten Island is mostly white. New York City is defined by its subway. Staten Island has a single dinky railway and everyone drives a car anyways. New York are words that convey prestige and power the world over, the center of finance, the center of media, the largest city in the country, the kind of place George Gershwin rhapsodizes. Meanwhile, a member of the College of Staten Island Board of Trustees told me he once suggested they drop Staten Island from the name of the college because it made people take it less seriously.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  Once Staten Island was supposed to get the world's largest Ferris wheel, it did not. It was supposed to get connected to New York's subway once. They broke ground on a tunnel and that was the end of it. For all these reasons and more, Staten Island calls itself "the forgotten borough," the least beloved, the most ignored. It was once the place where New York City put most of its trash, literally the largest landfill on the planet. But starting in the late 1980s, Staten Island had decided it didn't want to be dumped on anymore. It didn't want to be forgotten anymore. So it began a movement to secede from New York City, leave, do its own thing, become

• 8:29Speaker 02

  an entirely different place, something that, if it happened, threatened to destroy New York.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  So why am I telling you this? Because it all seems so familiar to me. Every political arrangement includes some disgruntled minority, some one or some place that feels left out, forgotten, like they don't matter. I think that problem is at the very heart of what's going on in our country today. So I began to investigate the Staten Island problem. You're listening to Revisionist History. I'm Ben Nataf Haferi, and this is our series about an overlooked and misunderstood movement in the 1990s to break up the largest and greatest city in the country. This summer, the United States is celebrating the anniversary of its founding by an act

• 9:23Speaker 02

  of secession, a quibble over taxes and representation that defied an empire and created a country which has altered the course of human history. All of which is to say, I think it's the right time to ask, what do you do when that democracy looks like it's about to fall apart? This is the Staten Island Problem. Episode one, The Mayor Versus The Borough President. To start, I've got to take you back in time to the New York City of long ago.

• 10:03Malcolm Gladwell?

  When I moved here for The Washington Post, I got hardship pay.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Really?

• 10:09Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  Compared to Washington DC?

• 10:12Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yes. I got a special cost of living allowance, which was essentially like

• 10:18Speaker 02

  Take a cab.

• 10:18Malcolm Gladwell?

  ...compensation for the fact I was going to a hellhole.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Local reporter Malcolm Gladwell was on the scene in that era.

• 10:25Malcolm Gladwell?

  I was at The Washington Post, and I'd been there since 86, 87. And the New York bureau...

• 10:35Malcolm Gladwell?

  I had an opening. The bureau chief was leaving. And I applied. As it turns out, I was the only person who applied.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  How many people worked at the Washington Post?

• 10:44Malcolm Gladwell?

  Probably a thousand reporters. Nobody wanted the job.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  The only person who wanted to be the bureau chief of New York City?

• 10:50Malcolm Gladwell?

  Nobody but me wanted the job. It was the sweetest setup in the world. You had like, you know, a credit card. You could put anything you wanted on it. You had like an assistant. You had a lovely office in the Newsweek building. I don't know why, but I was like.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  I want that job.

• 11:07Malcolm Gladwell?

  Such a good job. So much fun. But no, the perception was, why would anyone want to go to New York? New York is a place that you left. You didn't voluntarily go there.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  This was the version of New York that a man named David Dinkins was going to run as mayor.

• 11:27Speaker 04

  He was, by temperament, a conciliator, a pleaser, a guy who wanted to make peace among different constituencies and kind of represented in his body and his posture and his affect, a kind of, he really did appeal to people's bitter angels. He really was that.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  Marcia Smith was a high ranking official in the Dinkins administration. She'd first started working with him back when he was campaigning for Manhattan Borough President. The Borough President is like the mayor of each borough.

• 12:08Speaker 04

  As it happened, the whole policy unit in the Borough President's office was all women. He used to call us cupcakes.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  She'd watched his rise to become the first black mayor of the city in 1989.

• 12:21Speaker 04

  The election of David Dinkins, remember, this was on the heels of black mayors being elected in other major cities. But this was like, New York was like last. But it was a very optimistic moment. This was a big moment. I felt it was very hopeful. I could also feel, of course, the skepticism that felt like there was a lot at stake.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  A lot of eyes on you guys.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  A lot of eyes.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  But contrary to most people who become mayor, Dinkins hadn't really wanted the job.

• 12:55Speaker 04

  And.

• 12:58Speaker 07

  He shied away from the idea of running for mayor, and he was convinced to run for mayor.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Ruth Messenger became Manhattan Borough President after Dinkins. Around the same time, the city became majority-minority, more people of color than white people. Those demographics were why people thought Dinkins should run.

• 13:16Speaker 07

  But here's a black borough president with some knowledge of state government and city government for sure, perfect candidate for mayor. And I promise you that he was pushed to make that decision.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Dinkins was a lifelong New Yorker. He grew up shuttling between his mom's place in the city and his dad's in New Jersey. His parents had split when he was young. His father was a barber, his mom was a maid. When he grew up, he went to college at Howard University and met his wife. Her father was Harlem political royalty. And that set the course of Dinkins's life. Dinkins died in 2020, so I spent a lot of time talking to people about him. And everybody had a Dinkins story, most of them about how fastidious he was. He would shower multiple times a day. He was often in tennis whites. A lawyer named Richard Emery remembered going to his office to ask him questions for an affidavit in a case once.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  They were in the bowels of the municipal building.

• 14:20Speaker 05

  And all of a sudden, David Dinkins gets up from behind the desk, and he takes his pants off. I think his jacket was still on, and he had garters and boxer trousers. And I wanted to ask him, "What are you doing?" And he puts them up like this, holds them with one hand, and takes a steamer and starts to steam the pants so that the crease is really nice. And he stands there, and he's answering my questions, and he's steaming his pants.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  Dinkins didn't like a crease out of order. I have to imagine that's part of why being the mayor of Chaos City was not necessarily his dream job. When Dinkins was elected, his dad told the press, "I wouldn't want the job for a billion dollars." But Dinkins knew this was his chance to make history. And he did.

• 15:15Speaker 06

  I stand here before you today as the elected leader of the greatest city of a great nation, to which my ancestors were brought chained and whipped in the hold of a slave ship.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  In January of 1990, David Dinkins took the oath of office on the steps of City Hall.

• 15:36Speaker 06

  And this year, this city has given powerful proof of the proposition that all of us are created equal.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Dinkins had a vision of what the city could be.

• 15:47Speaker 06

  I see New York as a gorgeous mosaic of race and religious faith, of national origin and sexual orientation, of individuals whose families arrived yesterday and generations ago, coming through Ellis Island or Kennedy Airport, or on buses bound for the Port Authority. In that spirit, I offer this fundamental pledge: I intend to be the mayor of all the people of New York. From City Island to Staten Island.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  New York City has always been deeply segregated into ethnic enclaves: the Dominicans of Washington Heights, Black people in Central Harlem, Italians and Jews in Canarsie. The mosaic was Dinkins's way of reconciling those facts. It was his way of saying that diversity is not a problem, it's an asset.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  But if you cleared away the buildings he faced as he spoke, he would have been looking straight at the piece of the mosaic that had recently decided it no longer fit: Staten Island.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  After Dinkins was elected, Staten Island had pushed forward its bill to secede from New York City. It had been in the works for years at that point, but it's hard to imagine Dinkins didn't take it personally. His colleague, Marcia Smith, thought that for Staten Island, this was all about Dinkins.

• 17:18Speaker 04

  Oh my god, what are they thinking? And well, of course, they're thinking that because they don't want to be governed by a black mayor.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  So it immediately seemed racially tinged to you?

• 17:27Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  Dinkins knew Staten Island was threatening to secede, but he didn't know how seriously to take it. Then, one day, his finance commissioner began looking into the matter and determined this was a bigger deal than anyone realized. The administration looked into it. If Staten Island seceded, New York could be in a financial crisis. The city would lose almost 20% of its land, including, crucially, its last operational dump. With a smaller population, it would get way less in federal and state aid. It would lose possibly the thousands of government workers who lived on Staten Island, including thousands of police officers in the middle of a crime wave. And it could leave the first black mayor with the legacy

• 18:13Speaker 02

  of presiding over the city's destruction.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  Could Dinkins keep the biggest, most fractious city in the country from breaking apart?

• 18:25Speaker 02

  He had to scare Staten Island out of doing it. So the city launched a task force, and Dinkins decided that he personally would set sail for the island to argue the case himself.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  We'll be right back.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  This is Jacob Goldstein. With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. When you're running a business and looking to expand, you need a clear view of the landscape before making any decisions. ChatGPT can help you prepare. Connect your Google Drive, point to relevant files and reports, and ask it to research competitors, industry forecasts, and market signals. It can turn the findings into a strategic deck in your team's template that you can review before presenting to your leadership team. Growing a business is ambitious, and ChatGPT can help you do it with confidence. Get started today at chatgpt.com.

• 19:26Speaker 04

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• 20:08Speaker 02

  One night, a few weeks before David Dinkins went to Staten Island, a police officer named Michael O'Keefe was patrolling the Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights in an unmarked car. He saw a young man tugging a jacket around his waist. It was July, not jacket weather. He thought he was probably hiding a weapon. O'Keefe pulled over. The kid was a suspected drug dealer named Kiko Garcia. O'Keefe got out and tried to arrest him. Garcia resisted. What happened next was fast and unclear, but it was a warm evening, and there were witnesses on the street. They said they saw the cop beat Garcia with a walkie-talkie,

• 20:51Speaker 02

  take out his knees, and shove him into the lobby of an apartment building. They said they heard him screaming, "Mama, mama, they are killing me," in Spanish. Then, two shots. When more police arrived, they found O'Keefe standing over Garcia dead. A bullet in the stomach, one in the back.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  That night, the riots began.

• 21:15Speaker 03

  M80s, bottles and bricks are being thrown. Several cars have been set on fire. Some of their occupants have been thrown from the cars.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  The building across from the shooting burned. There was fire everywhere.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  A police helicopter hovered overhead. Someone shot at it. In the lobby of the apartment building where Garcia was killed, someone used his blood to write "Kiko, we love you" on the wall. One man threw a bottle at some cops, then ran away across the rooftops. When they chased him, he fell five stories to his death. Protesters burned pictures of the police.

• 21:56Speaker 03

  Police officers, watching their image burn, didn't want to talk on camera, but told me later they thought it was disgusting and were frustrated by orders not to interfere with the demonstration.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  People listening in on police radio said they heard cops joking that if they saw Al Sharpton protesting, they should shoot him. Phil Caruso, head of the police union, took to the news.

• 22:18Speaker 06

  Of course, we don't approve of it. We don't condone it. But it's something that is sort of a reaction on the part of police officers under a lot of stress. I think what we should do is start focusing on the so-called victim in this case. It was a known drug dealer, who was wanted under a warrant because he violated his parole.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  So yes, the cops were annoyed with the protesters, but they seemed even more annoyed with the mayor.

• 22:48Speaker 06

  I came to pay my respects and offer my condolences to the family and to assure them that everything that can be done will be done, thoroughly investigate the circumstances of this death.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  From the start, Dinkins seemed suspicious about what had happened. He met with Garcia's family and consoled them. He invited them to Gracie Mansion. He paid for Garcia's body to be shipped back to the Dominican Republic for a funeral. He walked the streets of Washington Heights and met with people. He told them, "I promise you justice. I beg you for peace."

• 23:27Speaker 06

  I used to live up here. I loved to come to this neighborhood.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  The cops felt Dinkins had sold them out, that he'd sided with the family of a drug dealer.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  And someone important agreed.

• 23:40Speaker 06

  And my god, if you're gonna pay for that funeral, there's thousands and thousands of funerals not paid for in our city today that would be more justification for than that one.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  Borough president of Staten Island, Guy Molinari.

• 23:52Speaker 06

  The mayor is not busted with the responsibility of giving religious comfort to the family of somebody who killed who's a drug dealer. I think that that was very badly played. And I think.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  Molinari had got his start as a real estate lawyer on Staten Island. Then he got into politics and realized he was really good at it. He used to just open up the phone book and call random people on Staten Island to talk. He was beloved, polarizing, and extremely old school. This is him talking to a WNYC reporter, defending himself the time he said a lesbian shouldn't be Attorney General of New York.

• 24:29Speaker 06

  Not one editorial ever took her to task for her going out and asking for votes because she was a lesbian. Not a single one.

• 24:39Speaker 03

  Do you think there's a difference between that and say you're having a fundraiser with groups of Italian Americans?

• 24:46Speaker 06

  Sure. Sure. What's the Italian-American agenda? She had a gay and lesbian agenda.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  Molinari's philosophy was that the only rules in politics are what the voters think. And his borough was full of people who did not think much of New York City. Staten Island was essentially the last outpost for people who would like to leave the city but couldn't because they worked for the city and therefore had to live within its boundaries. There were a lot of police officers on the island, to the point where, when I bought a used copy of Molinari's memoir on eBay, it showed up with the inscription, "Blue Lives Always Matter." To put it mildly, this was not Mayor Dinkins's crowd. In the weeks after Garcia was killed, it was Molinari who took a stand against Dinkins and how

• 25:37Speaker 02

  he handled everything. He wrote the police precinct in Washington Heights that, quote, "I know that your morale has taken quite a beating in recent weeks, and the actions of Mayor Dinkins have undoubtedly contributed to your present feelings. However, I did want you to know that there are some of us in government who hold you in the highest esteem."

• 25:59Speaker 02

  Dinkins learned about the letter just before his trip to Staten Island. He was furious. Molinari said that Dinkins leaked it to the press.

• 26:08Speaker 06

  And my letter never would have been made public, except that he chose to make it public. So if you made it public, then how can you make the accusation that I'm trying to stir things up and make it illicit in our city or not? I didn't want to be standing before all of you talking about this issue. It was just a private letter I sent to the men and women at the precinct who needed a lift from somebody in government. Nobody else was doing it.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  But at that point, Dinkins couldn't call the trip off. So one hot summer morning, David Dinkins finally got on a ship and set sail for Staten Island.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  We'll be right back.

• 26:54Speaker 00

  This is Jacob Goldstein. With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. When you're running a business and looking to expand, you need a clear view of the landscape before making any decisions. ChatGPT can help you prepare. Connect your Google Drive, point to relevant files and reports, and ask it to research competitors, industry forecasts, and market signals. It can turn the findings into a strategic deck in your team's template that you can review before presenting to your leadership team. Growing a business is ambitious, and ChatGPT can help you do it with confidence. Get started today at chatgpt.com.

• 27:31Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 28:06Speaker 02

  The mayor boarded a ferry in Lower Manhattan and charted a course a half hour out to sea until it reached Staten Island. Dinkins got off the boat and made his way to Borough Hall. A small crowd awaited him.

• 28:20Speaker 03

  I would like to greet you all this morning to mark Mayor Dinkins' week-long visit here on Staten Island.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  A camera crew followed Dinkins on his week out on the island. The tapes are in the city archive, and they are kind of amazing. You see Dinkins in a baby blue suit on the steps of Staten Island Borough Hall. Then, a short man with big glasses and white hair steps in front of him. Staten Island's Borough President, Guy Molinari.

• 28:49Speaker 06

  Mayor Dinkins, distinguished guests, and fellow Staten Islanders, good morning. Today, I'd like to speak to you all about the borough I have represented in elective office for 17 years. Whatever the problems have been the last few days, I'm going to forget them and hope they didn't exist. And I think the mayor and I, whatever our differences are, we've differed before, just as I have with the mayor before him and the mayor before him. But, yeah. Well, when you represent Staten Island, it goes with the terrifying thing to a certain extent. But we'll try to put those differences aside, at least I will, and I'll speak only for myself.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  It was a hot day. The mayor stood in full sun behind the Borough President, looking deeply displeased as he wiped sweat from his brow. Then Molinari's daughter Susan, Congresswoman for Staten Island, took the mic.

• 29:41Speaker 03

  While I know it's customary during most trips when you have special guests coming to either the city or the island, I'm sure you've done it, you give them a special key to the city. Well, today, it's my great pleasure, in Staten Island's own way, to present you with an unofficial lock to the garbage dump.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  She and her dad held up a gigantic sign that said Molinari Landfill Lock. Dinkins did not look happy. Minutes in, it was clear that this would be a very trying week for David Dinkins. He took the lectern. Let me, let me just say a word about Guy Molinari.

• 30:40Speaker 06

  He knew. He knew I was gonna be here today, just like I knew that he would be here to greet me. About, there was no doubt about that.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  Both Dinkins and Molinari were ex-Marines, but only Molinari had seen combat. What Dinkins got from the Marines was a love of rules and decorum. He was proper and patrician. What Molinari got from the Marines was a killer instinct. He was a street fighter. The very public feud between the two of them was making it hard for Dinkins to focus on the task at hand. The letter kept coming up.

• 31:15Speaker 06

  I hope that that's the last time I will address this subject for now, because what I want to do is get about the business of government here on Staten Island.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  Dinkins tries to reset to his real purpose: stop secession.

• 31:29Speaker 06

  And I was asked, "Well, what do you hope to accomplish here on Staten Island?" I said, "If nothing else, if nothing else, I hope that I can convey to the people of Staten Island that I deeply care about them and about all of them. If this were a political visit, why in blazes would I come?" I mean, I know the number of votes that were cast for me in 1989, so I'm not here for political reason. If, if, if I were to come for political reason, might I not then reason, "I'll come to Staten Island for two days"? Because you have less than, than 500,000 people, and they got 2.5 million people in Brooklyn, why not go to Brooklyn for eight or nine days and come here for two days? But I'm here for seven days.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  At this, one imagines his knees buckle. Seven days.

• 32:20Speaker 06

  Not just Monday to Friday, not simply Monday to Friday, Monday through Sunday. So I don't care whether you agree with me on all issues or not. If you are reasonable people, you have to say to yourselves, "Well, by God, he does care."

• 32:40Speaker 02

  Seeming more than a little pissed off, he began his pitch for the city of the mosaic.

• 32:45Speaker 06

  But you know, the glory of Staten Island does not in any way confine itself to the past. In fact, the island of the Seven Hills may well have been the first part of New York that European explorers sighted.

• 32:59Speaker 02

  Dinkins has clearly had his speechwriters dig deep for some nice things to say about Staten Island.

• 33:05Speaker 06

  The Staten Island Ferry, oldest surviving free black settlement in the United States. The only zoo in America, incidentally, to exhibit all 32 species of rattlesnakes.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  Pouring sweat from his brow, David Dinkins limped to his finish. A line about how Staten Island maybe was the first place his favorite sport, tennis, was played in America.

• 33:27Speaker 06

  So, thank you Staten Island. You have given me that.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  Finally, he addresses the elephant in the room.

• 33:38Speaker 06

  And I hope that I will be able to persuade the people of Staten Island that this government, and I am the representative of this government, that this government does care about Staten Island. I'll be speaking to this question of secession. But just so to give you some advance notice, you all ain't going nowhere.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  He was right and he was wrong, all at the same time.

• 34:07Speaker 06

  God bless you. Keep the faith.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  And with that, the mayor's seven-day visit to the forgotten borough began.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  Borough President Guy Molinari had Mayor Dinkins trapped on Staten Island for an entire week. He could control the narrative about many things in that time. The dump with that lock gambit, but even more urgently, the increasingly tense relationship between Dinkins and the cops after Washington Heights. Here's a reporter asking Molinari about all that.

• 34:45Speaker 06

  No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. I mean, that I think is totally disagree with that. And I think as the weeks go by and the days go by, you'll see the reaction to the police community. And I think they'll find out that I was right.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  In case you're wondering why the borough president of Staten Island was even talking about Washington Heights, according to Molinari.

• 35:05Speaker 06

  A lot of the drugs that are sold in Washington Heights wind up in this borough.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  Dinkins toured the island all week. He kept trying to reach higher, only to be dragged down by reality. He gave speeches invoking the Civil War. He quoted Lincoln, comparing Staten Island to the South seceding. He made his pitch. Secession undermined the very principle of democracy. We're supposed to be able to argue about things and come to a compromise. You can't just leave when you don't like something. The Staten Islanders were having none of it.

• 35:38Speaker 03

  My question is, why you allow one deputy mayor to direct you down a path of destruction?

• 35:45Speaker 06

  Who's that deputy mayor?

• 35:47Speaker 02

  Here he is at the local newspaper's editorial luncheon, staring down at his plate, trying to eat. I have to say, he looks totally miserable. The path of destruction this woman's asking him about is a reference to the dump, and how his administration had no real plans to close it.

• 36:04Speaker 06

  Let me interrupt you a second. You can continue in a minute. Let's just interrupt the flow. Just to sit here and listen to you give some conclusions that are really not accurate is a little painful. I'm here because I care and I represent all of the people. We have a very difficult and knotty problem with respect to the disposal of solid waste, and experts do not all agree about it.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  Dinkins was in an unwinnable situation, being accosted while he ate his lunch, standing in the sun all around the island, being blasted with unpleasant questions as he sweat like crazy.

• 36:37Speaker 06

  The main thing is getting out of the sun. Boy, I cannot understand. You know there's space inside? There just could have been right in the... In the car.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  His week there was building to a climax when Dinkins would finally visit the infamous dump, Fresh Kills, the largest landfill in the world, which, yes, smelled terrible, but also seemed possibly to be highly toxic. This was the kind of place the fastidious David Dinkins really did not want to be. So when he took his tour by car and then gave a press conference, it did not go over well.

• 37:14Speaker 06

  You looked like you were going to get out and take a walk around some of the landfill area before. I looked like it? What was that, body language? How did you determine it? It was our understanding when the motorcade stopped. Well, that's a different statement. You were going to get out and take a walking tour.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  Molinari roasted Dinkins about it all in the press. Quote, "After 40 years of Staten Islanders living near an ever increasingly large dump, David Dinkins spends 40 minutes reviewing his own data and declares it's safe." The message was clear. Too clean to walk around Trash Island, huh, Mr. Mayor?

• 37:50Speaker 06

  I was wondering what it was that it made you shake your head. What I'm doing is taking me to be briefed by Commissioners Lloyd and Jorling, which we have been able to do. And throughout the ride, I was getting briefed as we were riding.

• 38:10Speaker 02

  The week soon ended and Dinkins went back to Manhattan, seeming to have made matters worse. And what would soon become clear is that Molinari had much bigger plans. Not for Staten Island to leave the city, but for Staten Island to take it over entirely.

• 38:32Speaker 02

  When I started reporting this series, a historian told me, "America happens first in New York City." And now that I've spent way too long learning about a borough that did its best to leave that city, I have to say, I agree.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  This is a story about what happens when neighbors feel like they have nothing in common anymore, when they have these irreconcilable differences and they just don't think they can be part of the same place anymore. Back in the 1990s, a chess game was being played for, yes, the fate of the largest city in America, but I think the stakes of it are much higher. Because the more I looked into the story of Staten Island's secession and where that split came from, the more I understood how we got to where we are today. Coming up on The Staten Island Problem.

• 39:24Speaker 06

  Who will you trust? Your friends and neighbors and the people in Staten Island? Or will you trust the people five miles overseas?

• 39:30Speaker 05

  There's a lot of Donald Trump in the Guy Martin era style of politics. They're very dominating and they're intolerant of people who disagree with them. Absolutely intolerant.

• 39:43Speaker 06

  For Rudy Giuliani to urge them on, as it were, demonstrates an irresponsibility on his behalf.

• 39:51Speaker 05

  Can't you just deal with the secession thing? When you're at these debates, you gotta turn a wedding into a secession debate?

• 39:57Speaker 02

  Did you think of it when January 6th happened?

• 40:01Speaker 04

  Absolutely. There was much chatter among the Dinkins alumni about the parallel.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  We've seen this before.

• 40:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  The Staten Island Problem is written and reported by me, Ben Madoff Afry. It was produced by Lucy Sullivan with Nina Bird Lawrence. Our editor is Karen Shakurji. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Fact checking by Sam Rusick. Sound design and mastering by Jake Gorski. Original music by Stellwagen Symphonette, Luis Gara and Jake Gorski. Special thanks to Todd Reynolds for his track, "The Solution," from the album Outer Borough, and to the College of Staten Island and the New York City Municipal Archives for all of the amazing tape. And thanks, of course, to Malcolm Gladwell. I'm Ben Madoff Afry.

• 41:23Speaker 00

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