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   XPost: sac.politics   
   From: start@killing-socialists.org   
      
   In article    
   governor.swill@gmail.com wrote:   
   >   
   > Socialists are the Democrat fed termites of every decent society.   
   >   
      
   Another week, another study confirming what everyone already   
   knows: New York City is a playground for the rich, and a   
   hellscape for the poor. It's a stubborn fact, so self-evident   
   that it seems almost beyond the scope of basic questioning:   
   Where did this inequality come from, who stands to benefit from   
   maintaining it, and what, if anything, can be done to change   
   this citywide predicament?   
      
   A new book from historian Kim Phillips-Fein argues that the key   
   to understanding our increasingly stratified metropolis can be   
   found in the backroom dealings of 1975, as the city was on the   
   brink of bankruptcy. In Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis And   
   The Rise Of Austerity Politics, Phillips-Fein offers a vivid—and   
   often exasperating—account of how New York's investment bankers   
   and political opportunists used the crisis to shape the city in   
   their own image, gutting necessary social services along the   
   way, and permanently shrinking the fortunes of the working class.   
      
   We spoke with Phillips-Fein about the resurgence of austerity   
   politics, the challenges of expanding the city's political   
   imagination, and the Donald Trump-initiated real estate deal   
   that forever altered New York's relationship to private   
   development.   
      
      
   042117ford.jpg   
   via Wikipedia   
   When most people think about New York in the 1970s, it's the   
   famous Daily News headline and maybe the images of burnt out   
   buildings in the South Bronx. As someone who's studied this   
   period extensively, what pops into your head when you think of   
   New York in 1975?   
      
   What I was struck by working on the period was the really   
   intense political struggle that is taking place over the future   
   of the city, which I think both shapes the way that people   
   understand the disinvestment and abandonment and also serves as   
   a backdrop for the cultural resurgence. I think there was a   
   really strong sense in New York in this moment of old ways of   
   thinking about the city, old expectations and the order of how   
   things had operated, that that was under attack and collapsing,   
   and something new was going to come into existence.   
      
   There's a sharp struggle amid different groups in the city about   
   what that would be. And that kind of comes to a head in the   
   fiscal crisis, but it's happening even before. When people think   
   of the rubble-strewn lots of the South Bronx, they don't think   
   about the takeover of Lincoln Hospital by the Young Lords. They   
   don't think about the protest at Welfare Offices. They don't   
   think about the protests at City College that expanded access to   
   CUNY for non-white New Yorkers. And then they also don't think   
   about the response among elite groups in the city who were, I   
   think, frightened and upset about the demands that were being   
   made on the city government.   
      
   How would you describe the people who were in charge of laying   
   this foundational change in the city?   
      
   Well, there's a kind of generational conflict that takes places   
   during the fiscal crisis, and a lot of the people who are   
   empowered during the crisis are much younger. They are kind of a   
   generation of professional and well-educated people, many of   
   whom come from the city's financial and business circles. Felix   
   Rohatyn [the Lazard investment banker who helped broker deals to   
   keep the city out of bankruptcy] is probably the most famous of   
   this group, but it's really a whole contingent of people.   
      
   One of the dynamics of the fiscal crisis is that the city's   
   elected government lost a lot of power that was kind of placed   
   in these small agencies, which were staffed with people who were   
   appointed by the governor and included representatives of the   
   private sector. And more deeply, there's a growing sense in the   
   city that the city government should be oriented toward finding   
   ways to subsidize and support economic development as much as it   
   can. And that it should improve basic urban services and turn it   
   toward the private sector.   
      
   This position comes to be associated with people around the   
   Manhattan Institute, and people who you might describe as   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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