"What do we owe to all our fellow beings?"
The mayor on migrants and Jordan Neely, and one of my favorite documentaries
This week really started for me Monday night at Russo’s on the Bay, where the mayor had his only public appearance of the day. He hadn’t taken questions since Thursday and there was lots to ask him about, so I spent part of the evening in the lobby of the catering hall where more than 20 years ago I watched a friend come out of the floor for her Sweet 16. It was a bizarre contrast, considering everything else going on.
The mayor did talk about Jordan Neely, and about the night’s protests where the police arrested a credentialed news photographer. You can read all about that here.
This week I also wrote about Mets owner Steve Cohen and his team of lobbyists pushing for the City Council to vote on a “home rule” – even though that still requires state action which hasn’t happened yet. Cohen really needs the park alienation on his continued push for a casino, and he’s spending lots of money on lobbyists to do so. But when I asked the council members who were lobbied, there wasn’t much guaranteed support for it so far.
I also wrote about the asylum seeker crisis with some colleagues, and how the city is trying to find places for people to stay.
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Other interesting stories this week
Top City Hall aide worked quietly with super PAC [POLITICO]
NYPD oversight board could halt biased police probes due to budget cuts [THE CITY]
A reminder that I have to visit Ai Mart [GRUBSTREET]
And please take your time with this one, about Generation Connie:
”These moms were architects, editors and medical professionals, who’d often had to abandon their careers and reinvent themselves upon moving to a new country, who looked at the television and saw how things might be different for their daughters. I obviously understood none of this when I inked the name Connie onto the paper Social Security card I got when my family became permanent residents. But today, when I look at my own name, I see every footnote.” [NYT]
🎧LISTEN🎧
My friend Jimmy Vielkind spoke on The Journal podcast about the charges against George Santos [WSJ]
And this is a great introduction to the WGA strike, from Errol Louis’s podcast [NY1]
WATCH
This week I saw a viral thread on Twitter about the misconceptions surrounding Kitty Genovese’s murder in 1964. So I thought I would do the thing I often do, which is wholeheartedly recommend “The Witness,” the documentary about her younger brother Bill and his quest to find the truth of his sister’s very famous killing. Most of the story surrounding it was based on lies.
Kitty’s killer Winston Moseley died in 2016, and the New York Times published a letter sent in response by Bill a few days later. It stayed with me so much I kept a screenshot of it on my phone.
“May the Spirit, in whom I believe that Kitty, and now Winston, reside, help resolve the eternal question: What do we owe to all our fellow beings? This is a question that each human being must strive to answer, one moment at a time. Let us join with the hope of shared egalitarian equanimity.”
Thanks for reading!