The Staten Island Problem - Part 3: The Tuvalu Effect

A group on Staten Island tries to stop secession, squaring off against the secessionists in a heated set of debates and meetings recorded on never-before-seen archival tapes. A set of debates best understood via a detour into the history of a remote Polynesian island. 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.

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• 1:01Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 2:16Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 2:36Speaker 00

  Pushkin.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  Ben, Matt, and Haffer 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. All right, let's get into the series.

• 3:18Speaker 00

  Every morning, a Staten Island attorney named David Goldfarb used to walk by Borough Hall on his way to the ferry. Some days, he'd see a short, white-haired man with big glasses waving him down, Borough President Guy Molinari. Molinari, you might remember from Episode 1, was Staten Island's rabble-rouser-in-chief. He was constantly feuding with the Dinkins administration.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  He would stop and see me and ask me to come into his office. He liked to talk to anybody and everybody. He would just call you in the office and would sit down and just have this. And I would say, you know, I have to go to work to get a ferry. But he loved to talk about it.

• 4:04Speaker 00

  The "it" here is secession. Molinari loved to talk about it because everyone was talking about it. And David Goldfarb was worried.

• 4:15Speaker 00

  He liked being part of New York City. He and his wife lived on the North Shore, the most diverse part of the island, closest to Manhattan, in a house with a pool and, depending on the season, two pink lawn flamingos. He worked in a law firm in Manhattan. He did not want to secede from New York. And from their conversations, it seemed like Mulinari was maybe on his side. He had not yet endorsed secession.

• 4:39Speaker 03

  He told me in the beginning, point blank, that this is never going to be allowed by the Assembly. He said, you know, it's a, "Don't worry about it. It's not gonna happen."

• 4:55Speaker 00

  That may have been what Mulinari was saying, but something was clearly brewing. The movement was everywhere.

• 5:02Speaker 04

  Welcome to our special Cable in the Classroom feature on the history of secession, produced exclusively by Staten Island Cable.

• 5:09Speaker 00

  The local cable station had even made tapes for classrooms to teach kids about secession.

• 5:14Speaker 04

  The people know why they feel the way they do because they know the facts through learning and education.

• 5:19Speaker 00

  They were not exactly unbiased.

• 5:22Speaker 04

  The future of Staten Island is being decided now. History is being made. Be a part of it.

• 5:29Speaker 00

  David Goldfarb did not want to be part of it.

• 5:35Speaker 00

  What was your nightmare situation here?

• 5:38Speaker 03

  I mean, would the North Shore end up like Northern Ireland? Would some of the communities on the North Shore that voted against it would not be included? It would be the same situation you have now. Staten Island felt alienated from the city of New York. Parts of the North Shore would felt alienated from the rest of Staten Island.

• 5:59Speaker 00

  The secessionists had to be stopped.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  You're listening to Revisionist History. I'm Ben Nattif Haferi, and this is The Staten Island Problem, our series about the Staten Island Secession Movement of the 1990s, and more broadly, about what we do when a democracy fractures. Last episode was about the psychology of secession: who wants to leave and why? This episode is about the people who don't want to leave, and the fight that ensued between them in the battle for Staten Island.

• 6:39Speaker 00

  This is episode three, The Tuvalu Effect. As the secessionists marauded around the island, and the cable news station went to work brainwashing the children, the people on Staten Island who actually liked being part of New York City realized they had to get organized. So Goldfarb joined a group of like-minded individuals: Staten Islanders for Unified New York, SIFUNI, the message of which was, "What are you doing? This is going to ruin Staten Island."

• 7:16Speaker 05

  It'll be fairly-- it'll be a free-floating debate. The debaters will feel free to interrupt each other.

• 7:25Speaker 00

  One spring evening in 1993, SIFUNI and the pro-secessionists gathered at the College of Staten Island for a debate. The space looks like a lecture hall: four men in suits at a table with mics, Heroes & Cokes on a table in the back. A handful of students and concerned citizens sit in the audience. And Goldfarb was front and center.

• 7:45Speaker 05

  Speaking against secession will be Mr. David Goldfarb, an attorney active in many local civic groups. In fact, all these people--

• 7:55Speaker 00

  SIFUNI went toe-to-toe with the secessionists all around the island again and again. The big secessionist organization was called Vote Yes, Inc.

• 8:03Speaker 05

  Speaking in favor of secession will be Mr. Dan Sigletary, a local artist.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  Dan Singletary, the artist slash cowboy from last episode, represented them.

• 8:16Speaker 05

  If we start and rebuild a new city of Staten Island, a city for the first, for the 21st century, the first city of the 21st century we could be.

• 8:26Speaker 00

  Singletary was promoting a glorious vision of what the island could be. Goldfarb was bringing them back down to earth. If Staten Island became an independent city, they were gonna have to take care of a whole lot of things for themselves, like a police department or a public school system. They'd finally have to build a jail. David Goldfarb had a lot to say about that.

• 8:50Speaker 06

  These are the things that you're just gonna have to lose because there's absolutely no way that Staten Island's gonna be able to add this to their capital budget because you're not going to be, when the police officer arrests somebody on Staten Island, they're not gonna be able to send that person to Rikers Island, they're not gonna be able to send them to the, to the lockup overnight in Brooklyn, they're gonna have to have a jail on Staten Island. The city of New York is just not gonna take our prisoners. These are costs you're gonna have to pay. I think it's gonna be a major step backwards financially.

• 9:16Speaker 00

  Goldfarb, it's worth noting, has argued in front of the Supreme Court. Singletary fired back.

• 9:22Speaker 05

  You have just seen a perfect example, a classic example of what's being played out in what's called the politics of fear. He never said one good thing. Isn't there any hope? I have no idea. They don't have any hope.

• 9:40Speaker 00

  As I watched the tapes, I felt like Saifuni was pointing out the obvious. Being part of New York City was financially a great deal for a small island. Goldfarb was saying the future is unknown and probably worse. Singletary was arguing that the present was known and bad, and the future might be a lot better.

• 9:59Speaker 05

  Do either of you guys, I've asked this question before, know how many agencies and commissions there are in New York City?

• 10:04Speaker 06

  Why don't you tell us, Dan? Don't either.

• 10:05Speaker 05

  I have no idea. And the mayor won't tell us either, but this is what's being funded. This is what's being funded. We have the last five.

• 10:12Speaker 00

  Singletary holds up an ominous-looking stack of papers.

• 10:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, okay. Anyway, this is a list of agencies and things that you've never heard of, never used. Why don't we start cutting this instead of these guys all the same essential services? Okay, let me just follow up on his question. We may or may not, obviously, the definition of essential services.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  Singletary was joined by Vote Yes Inc.'s champion debater, Robert Scamrodella. You met him last episode, too. He's the attorney who grew up on Staten Island and remembers it, pre-Bridge, as an entirely different and better place. At the debate, he sat back in his chair, arms folded, looking a little grumpy.

• 10:51Speaker 05

  What I do know is this, that since the end of World War II, the city of New York has been in economic decline. I believe that that economic decline will continue because the city of New York doesn't have the people or the willingness to embark upon those policies that are necessary to turn that decline around. The other thing I know is that Staten Island has the highest per capita income of any borough in the city of New York. From that, I can do Staten Island will have the economic resources to survive and to be in a position to make their own decisions about firemen and policemen and college professors and every other decision that affects me and everyone else who lives on Staten Island.

• 11:30Speaker 00

  Like the Great American Revolution, this secession debate was really all about taxes. Vote Yes was saying, "We'll figure it out, and who needs all those services anyways?" Goldfarb was saying, "You need more than you think, and it's going to cost you."

• 11:44Speaker 06

  And that's fair, because if it's a political decision and you're willing to pay those extra taxes, that's something that has to be considered. But let's talk about-- Or maybe save on the lower taxes. Well, maybe if you want to speculate, I'll speculate the taxes will be low.

• 11:57Speaker 04

  Let me finish.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  This spilled out way beyond the debate stage. It was in the paper all the time. It was the hot topic of conversation all over the island. When I sat down with Scamrodella, he remembered this one time he and his wife went to a wedding at the Staten, the island's grand catering hall.

• 12:15Speaker 07

  Go out to a social event, a wedding, you're sitting at a table with people you don't know, and the bride cuts the cake, was irrelevant. Here we are talking about the secession movement.

• 12:26Speaker 00

  How did your wife feel about this?

• 12:28Speaker 07

  Well, she was very upset. We're on the way home, and she was like, "You know, can't you just-- Deal with the secession thing when you're at these debates? You gotta turn a wedding into a secession debate? I didn't start it. They're the guy asked me the question and here we went. So it was a bit of an embarrassing moment for me, I guess. I regret that I did what I did. But the point is, it was a hot button issue.

• 12:58Speaker 00

  An interesting fact I learned about city secession movements at large is most of the time it's about taxes. A rich area thinks, why should we pay for all of those services the poor people are getting? If we just hoarded our resources, we could have it so much better here. What's weird about Staten Island secession is that multiple studies by New York City and the secessionists agreed that Staten Island got more in tax revenue than it paid. The secession movement you'd expect from New York City is that Manhattan, with all that Wall Street money, leaves the other four boroughs, not Staten Island. Goldfarb was raising kind of a good point. What was the long game here? What was the tax base?

• 13:40Speaker 00

  How are they going to close the dump if that was Staten Island's most valuable asset? Also, what about the fact that New York City controlled their water supply? So Goldfarb, I think, was right, but the momentum was not at all on his side. Because something else was going on here. Something hiding in plain sight, having to do with a remote Polynesian island called Tuvalu. We'll be right back.

• 14:19Speaker 06

  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

• 14:52Malcolm Gladwell?

  can help you do it with confidence. Get started today at chatgpt.com. These days, there are more people than ever telling you how to manage your health. And we've all gone down an internet rabbit hole, exploring the latest health trends. Your social media feed is packed with wellness advice, telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to health influencers, real

• 15:37Malcolm Gladwell?

  people, and most importantly, doctors, to separate fact from fiction. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a paid message from Apple Card. It's easy, I think, in the hubbub of our lives to lose track of our spending. We pay the bills and move on and don't understand the deeper patterns in our spending, the many different decisions we're making knowingly or unknowingly. You have to understand where your money is going in order to make better decisions about it. That's one reason Apple Card stands out to me.

• 16:19Malcolm Gladwell?

  You can earn unlimited daily cash back on every purchase you make. I also appreciate the simplicity. Apple Card doesn't have annual, late, or over the limit fees. No fees ever. There's even an option to open a high-yield savings account through Apple Card. And while I haven't done it yet, if I do, my daily cash can grow automatically over time without any extra effort. When you better understand your spending habits, it's easier to make your money work harder for you. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval, variable APRs for Apple Card range from 17.74% to 27.99% based on credit worthiness. Rates as of October 1, 2026.

• 17:03Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 17:24Speaker 00

  I have this feeling that nothing holds anymore. Like, I work in media, and where a career used to mean you go work at a big newspaper or a magazine, these days it's starting your own newsletter or podcast. One person, maybe two in a mic. Or take international affairs, the United Nations, NATO, the European Union, Brexit. There's this mass loss of faith in the ability of people or nations to form groups that work for the benefit of everyone. Put another way, we seem to be living in an era defined by the principle that every man is an island. So I started thinking, maybe the best way to understand the world and the Staten Island problem bedeviling it is to speak to an authority on islands.

• 18:09Speaker 00

  What do you mean as island studies?

• 18:11Malcolm Gladwell?

  OK, so, I mean, I'm in Malta. So Malta is itself an archipelago, right? It's actually the 10th smallest country in the world by land area.

• 18:20Speaker 00

  Godfrey Baldacino, professor of island studies, which maybe should be called archipelago studies, and which took me down a deep but very necessary rabbit hole. Join me.

• 18:33Malcolm Gladwell?

  Most islands are islands, plural. It is very rare that you find a single island. In fact, of the world's 48 island countries, only five are single islands.

• 18:48Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 18:49Malcolm Gladwell?

  So we're talking in the plural. And therefore, in some of these configurations, there is a very interesting dynamic going on within the archipelago, right?

• 19:01Speaker 00

  Most archipelago states have a strict hierarchy, beginning with the mainland that dominates the other islands. New York City is an archipelago. And it turns out that the weird thing happening in New York in the 90s is actually entirely in line with weird things that happen on other archipelagos all the time. For instance, the Trash Island.

• 19:25Malcolm Gladwell?

  Where you have archipelagos, the tendency has been to export the waste from the mainland, where the bulk of the population lives, where the bulk of the waste is produced. And you export it to another island in the archipelago. Sometimes you dedicate an island to waste. The classic example is in the Maldives. The Maldives is a fantastic tourism destination in the Indian Ocean, but it also has a waste island.

• 19:50Speaker 00

  Really, just an entire island that's just trash?

• 19:51Malcolm Gladwell?

  An entire island, yeah. Tilafusi is the name.

• 19:54Speaker 00

  But so what about when the waste island is inhabited but by a political minority and a population minority?

• 20:01Malcolm Gladwell?

  The temptation to use it to dump is massive. It's not necessarily municipal waste. It could be human waste, convicts, for example, prisons. Islands have tended to be associated with prisons, with quarantine stations, with leper stations, right?

• 20:18Speaker 00

  Staten Island had all those things.

• 20:20Malcolm Gladwell?

  Okay.

• 20:23Malcolm Gladwell?

  There you are.

• 20:25Speaker 00

  Australia was Britain's prison island. Tasmania was Australia's prison island. And then off of Tasmania, there were even smaller islands that were their prison island. It's all islands all the way down. Islands putting things they don't want on other islands, escaping to yet further islands. One of the ways to stop that island cascade is theoretically a bridge, like what Staten Island got.

• 20:49Malcolm Gladwell?

  Bridges create what is called distance decay, right? So the islands have become closer.

• 20:57Speaker 00

  The bridge was finally supposed to tie the islands of New York together. But this bridge became yet another problem for Staten Island, not least of all because of its toll.

• 21:07Malcolm Gladwell?

  Wherever there are tolls, the argument goes, especially from the islanders' point of view, they're not crossing over to go on a holiday. They're not tourists. You know, sometimes they have to cross over for work, for school, visiting relatives. So this is not an adventure. This is a way of life.

• 21:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:25Malcolm Gladwell?

  So the toll becomes a mobility tax.

• 21:34Speaker 00

  Island theorists have a name for this. It's called the Tuvalu Effect. Named after a small Polynesian island, it's meant to describe the "centrifugal tendency" of islands in archipelago states to secede from each other.

• 21:50Malcolm Gladwell?

  There is nothing worse than having two islands next to each other. We can't stand them. This psychology has also a habit of spilling over into politics. So the Tuvalu Effect is a way of trying to explain all this.

• 22:10Speaker 00

  Islands and archipelagos are almost always pulling apart from each other. Baldaquino's list went on and on. Aruba from the Dutch Antilles, Anguilla from St. Kitts Nevis, Nevis from St. Kitts Nevis, or at least they're trying to, Jamaica, then Trinidad and Tobago, then Barbados from the West Indies Federation, the island of Chuk from the Federated States of Micronesia. And why is Chuk trying to secede?

• 22:37Malcolm Gladwell?

  Because it claims to find itself discriminated. I mean, again, much of this is psychology. So the Tuvalu Effect has been both preceded and followed by similar examples. And there is no end in sight.

• 22:58Speaker 00

  When we talk about reactionary politics, the word insular comes up a lot. Insular comes from the Latin insula, which literally means island. The world is full of insular islands that are centrifugally spinning away from each other. And in the pantheon of reactionary communities, Staten Island is the definition. The place that feels at threat, that has lost something. The trash island in the archipelago.

• 23:29Speaker 06

  New York Staten Island, they never even thought about us.

• 23:32Speaker 00

  Brian Leyline has been editing the newspaper, The Staten Island Advance, since the 1990s. And for any Staten Islanders out there who think it's pronounced "advance," he told me it's "advance." Leyline grew up on the island. He's maybe the world expert on its version of the island psyche.

• 23:49Speaker 06

  Our house was right at the beach, so we used to go to the, you could see it from the street, the bridge, you know, the bridge being built. Robert Moses saw Staten Island as a gateway, either if you were coming north from New Jersey and south to Long Island or Manhattan, and the other way around.

• 24:08Speaker 00

  It's like the New York City equivalent of flyover country.

• 24:10Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 24:12Speaker 00

  This is what caught my ear about Godfrey Baldacino's Island Theory. It describes Staten Island, but it also describes places that are resentful because they feel remote, even if they're landlocked. It's the psychology of distance plus misunderstanding, which leads to resentment.

• 24:30Speaker 06

  I've always said that we have this dirty little secret on Staten Island. We pat ourselves on the back that we're this mom and pop community, no crime, great schools. Call it what you will. There's an intolerance here. You can say there's racism here. There's no doubt about that. And there is today the way it was then, and it has been my whole life.

• 24:51Speaker 00

  Leyline's deep understanding of Staten Island had given him an almost prophetic understanding of American politics today.

• 24:58Speaker 06

  I knew that Donald Trump was gonna win the election in 16. I knew it.

• 25:04Speaker 00

  How'd you know it?

• 25:05Speaker 06

  Because I, because I live on Staten Island, and Staten Island is, is, is much like Middle America. It's not, this is not New York City here. We may be called part of New York City, but we, we are, the mood here is what the mood was in Middle America. You know, this whole Make America Great thing. For who?

• 25:30Speaker 00

  And some of the same dynamics were in play with the election of Trump as they were for people voting for secession.

• 25:38Speaker 06

  I think the motives behind secession were good. I think that John Mockie, state senator, think he did it for the purest reasons of self-governance. I think the community of Staten Island looked at it another way. I've always felt that when the bridge was built, it gave people access to a community that was, it was like virgin territory. And they could come here and make a new life for themselves and escape whatever they wanted to escape. And they brought that attitude here with them.

• 26:21Speaker 00

  What they wanted to escape was often people of color and poor people. If New York City had always represented the dream of liberalism, this was the final chance to leave that dream behind, to be Staten Islanders, not New Yorkers. That identity ran deeper and stronger than David Dinkins's idea that the city was a mosaic. It was much more emotionally resonant than David Goldfarb's reasoning about the facts and figures, or even everyone's complaints about the dump and the voting structure of New York City.

• 26:56Speaker 00

  And the word that expressed it best was secession.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  We'll be back.

• 27:15Speaker 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.

• 27:52Speaker 05

  These days, there are more people than ever telling you how to manage your health.

• 27:56Malcolm Gladwell?

  And we've all gone down an internet rabbit hole exploring the latest health trends. Your social media feed is packed with wellness advice telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez has racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to health influencers, real people, and most importantly, doctors, to separate fact from fiction. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters.

• 28:41Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 29:59Speaker 00

  On October 5th, 1993, the vote yes and the vote no people gathered at the Staten, the island's catering hall, for climactic debate. It was just weeks before the vote that would decide the fate of Staten Island and New York City.

• 30:15Speaker 03

  Welcome back to our forum on secession. It's an evening in which we're trying to get answers to the question whether or not Staten Island should secede from the city of New York.

• 30:32Speaker 00

  It was the big showdown, broadcast live on Staten Island cable. And the city had sent one of its officials, a Staten Islander named Bob Fadera, who argued that Staten Island should not secede.

• 30:45Speaker 05

  While some people may believe that secession represents a panacea that will cure all of Staten Island's problems, I do not believe it is the answer.

• 30:55Speaker 00

  There were questions from the audience.

• 30:57Speaker 03

  I'd like to, all right, yeah.

• 31:00Speaker 00

  A guy in tinted shades with slicked-back hair stands up.

• 31:03Speaker 03

  Whether it be true or not, secession can be viewed as racist by minorities, for those who live here and for those who don't. It will certainly add to, or look like, white flight. Can somebody respond to that?

• 31:19Speaker 00

  Fadera tries to respond.

• 31:21Speaker 05

  What I have heard within those groups is that they attach on to groups in the other boroughs because some of the island representatives will not even open the door to them. In many ways, the minority communities will lose that connection with the rest of the city, the connection in which they really see the source of their power. And secession ultimately would cut that power.

• 31:49Speaker 00

  This question seems like it should be a grand slam for Fadera, but actually, he's in a very tight spot as a representative of the first black mayor of New York City. On the one hand, a lot of the Dinkins administration seemed to think that, yes, secession was racist. But on the other hand, they couldn't be seen to be playing the race card all the time. They were caught between a rock and a hard place.

• 32:13Speaker 00

  Meanwhile, Dan Singletary and the "Vote Yes" crew kept bringing the discussion back to how much better Staten Island would be without the big city looming over it.

• 32:21Speaker 05

  What will happen is that these regulations that fine small businesses when somebody drops a stick of gum or a gum wrapper, and five minutes later, an inspector comes by and gives them a very large ticket, that will not happen in the new city of Staten Island.

• 32:36Speaker 00

  It didn't help that the anti-secessionists had tremendous narc energy.

• 32:40Speaker 05

  Frankly, if you drop a stick of gum wrapper on the sidewalk, I hope to give you a ticket worth about $1,000.

• 32:47Speaker 00

  The audience was starting to get frustrated with the "Vote No" people.

• 32:50Speaker 05

  The things that we have to say are not necessarily popular things. Now, if castor oil is something that's unpleasant to take, sometimes it's necessary. And this was supposed to not be a popularity contest. This was supposed to be a frank and open exchange. So I'm asking you to, let's just get back to what this forum was supposed to originally be about.

• 33:15Speaker 00

  It was down to closing statements. From "Vote No."

• 33:19Malcolm Gladwell?

  Are we going to believe that after we leave the city of New York, there's going to be a paradise here on Staten Island?

• 33:27Speaker 00

  And "Vote Yes."

• 33:28Speaker 05

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

• 33:35Speaker 00

  The people overseas. It was facts and figures versus the Tuvalu effect. There was no chance.

• 33:44Speaker 05

  And now, I would ask you to raise your hands.

• 33:48Speaker 00

  The moderator from Staten Island cable took a straw poll, just to get a sneak peek of what was going to happen on the day of the vote, less than a month away.

• 33:57Speaker 05

  All of you who are in favor of seceding from the city of New York, would you please raise your hands?

• 34:06Speaker 00

  All of the hands you can see on the screen go up.

• 34:09Speaker 05

  Thank you. All those opposed to seceding from the city of New York, please raise your hands.

• 34:18Speaker 00

  The "Vote No" guys raised their hands, and no one else.

• 34:24Speaker 05

  No, Mark.

• 34:27Speaker 05

  I hope that was definitive enough for you.

• 34:34Speaker 00

  It was definitive enough for someone else, too. Staten Island Borough President Guy Molinari. He was a very canny politician, and yet he had not come out in favor of secession, which I think mattered. How real could all this have been if the Borough President for Staten Island wasn't even behind it?

• 34:52Speaker 06

  The only one who was lukewarm was Guy Molinari.

• 34:56Speaker 00

  This is Bob Stranieri. If you're keeping count, that's the third Bob in this episode. He was a Staten Island Assemblyman at the time.

• 35:04Speaker 06

  For some reason, you know why it wasn't his issue? I mean, I'm telling you, it wasn't his issue. So he never really got behind it.

• 35:15Speaker 00

  Stranieri and Molinari were not friends. At one point, Stranieri left the island and started a hot dog business in Manhattan. When he tried to come back to run for office again, Molinari wasn't having it, as The New York Times reported.

• 35:28Speaker 06

  He never explained what it was that I ever did that made him so against me, personally and politically.

• 35:40Speaker 00

  The quote is, "We threw him out of office and got him off of Staten Island, and we don't want him back."

• 35:45Speaker 06

  Yeah, nice. You know, there's a lot of Donald Trump in the Guy Molinari style of politics.

• 35:49Speaker 00

  How so?

• 35:50Speaker 06

  They're very dominating, and they're intolerant of people who disagree with them. Absolutely intolerant.

• 35:59Speaker 00

  Molinari saw where things were headed with secession, and I think he saw it as an opportunity to get something else he wanted even more. Eight days after that forum, he finally issued a statement on his position. Quote, "After 100 years of marriage to Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, the Borough of Staten Island is seeking a divorce. We neither love, honor, nor care to obey the dictates of a city administration, which treats us unfairly and remains unresponsive to our needs. I support secession wholeheartedly." End quote.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  It was a huge boost, and the spirit of secession was spreading. It was getting national media attention. Queens had been inspired by Staten Island to start their own secession movement. I found a letter in the municipal archives from a Dinkins person who said a close associate of New York's governor told him that if secession got a strong yes vote on Staten Island, they would have to, quote, "take a broad look at the governance of all five boroughs, not just the issue of Staten Island." In the chess match between Staten Island and New York City, Molinari had just played a crucial move, one that was going to get Staten Island everything it wanted, but not the way anyone expected.

• 37:28Speaker 00

  The fate of the New York City archipelago hung in the balance. On November 2nd, 1993, the voters would decide it. But before the election, we have to make a brief detour to a place called Shaolin.

• 37:57Speaker 06

  I hear a knock on the studio door. I open it, and there's five dudes out there, and they're not smiling. People are like, "Where are you from?" So I used to say, "If I tell you, I have to kill you."

• 38:11Malcolm Gladwell?

  And they're like, "Why?" And then I'm like, "Staten Island."

• 38:14Speaker 07

  He took the whole mythology that was in the movies, and he appropriated it to his current conditions of a black man living in Staten Island, doing battle in this game called rap against the music industry.

• 38:36Speaker 00

  That's coming up in our next episode.

• 38:50Speaker 00

  The Staten Island Problem is written and reported by me, Ben Natafafri, 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 Scara 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 to David Schleicher for sharing his expertise on municipal secessions with me. And thanks, of course, to Malcolm Gladwell. I'm Ben Natafafri.

• 39:44Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 40:28Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 41:13Malcolm Gladwell?

  That's whoop.com for your free month of Whoop.

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