The Staten Island Problem - Part 1: The Mayor vs. the Borough President
In this opening episode of a five-part series about 1990s Staten Island, host Ben Natta-Faffrey introduces the Forgotten Borough's secessionist movement and its escalating conflict with Mayor David Dinkins, particularly through Borough President Guy Molinari's political opposition following the police shooting of Kiko Garcia in Washington Heights.
Summary
The episode begins with Ben Natta-Faffrey explaining his childhood fascination with New York City through Fantasia 2000's Rhapsody in Blue sequence, then pivots to exploring Staten Island—the smallest and most isolated borough, historically overlooked and used as the city's primary landfill. He establishes that Staten Island had launched a secession movement in the late 1980s, fundamentally threatening New York City's stability. The narrative then shifts to the arrival of David Dinkins as New York's first Black mayor in 1989, who had been reluctant to run but was encouraged due to the city becoming majority-minority. Dinkins espoused a vision of New York as a "gorgeous mosaic" of different peoples and communities. However, his administration faced immediate crisis when police officer Michael O'Keefe killed suspected drug dealer Kiko Garcia in Washington Heights during a contentious arrest. Dinkins responded compassionately to Garcia's family—meeting with them, consoling them, and paying for funeral expenses—but this decision alienated the police force, who felt he had sided with a drug dealer over law enforcement. Borough President Guy Molinari, a former Marine and skilled politician who had built power through direct constituent engagement, seized on this tension. He wrote a letter to the Washington Heights precinct praising officers and criticizing Dinkins's handling of the situation. When Dinkins allegedly leaked the letter to the press, Molinari denied responsibility, creating a public feud. Facing both the Washington Heights crisis and the existential threat of Staten Island secession, Dinkins embarked on a week-long visit to Staten Island in summer 1990. Molinari and his daughter Susan (a congresswoman) greeted him with hostility, presenting him with a giant lock to symbolize keeping the garbage dump on Staten Island. Throughout the week, Dinkins attempted to persuade residents that the city cared about them by citing historical facts about Staten Island and invoking Lincoln's arguments against secession. However, he stumbled when he refused to take a walking tour of Fresh Kills landfill, appearing squeamish about the very issue most important to Staten Islanders. Molinari attacked him in the press for spending only 40 minutes reviewing data before declaring the dump safe. The episode concludes by suggesting this conflict between Dinkins and Molinari represents a larger national pattern about communities feeling disconnected from city governance, with parallels to contemporary political divisions and January 6th.
About this episode
<p>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.</p><p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p>
Key Insights
- David Dinkins was reluctant to run for mayor and had to be convinced by party leaders who saw him as the ideal candidate because of the city's demographic shift to majority-minority, suggesting his historic election was more about political strategy than his personal ambition.
- When Dinkins paid for Kiko Garcia's funeral and consoled his family after police killed him, the NYPD felt betrayed and blamed the mayor for siding with a drug dealer rather than supporting law enforcement, demonstrating how compassion for victims could be politically weaponized against a mayor.
- Guy Molinari understood that in politics, the only rules are what voters think, and he weaponized police officers' grievances and Staten Islanders' dumping complaints to build political power against Dinkins despite their shared Marine Corps background.
- Dinkins spent seven days on Staten Island trying to argue that secession was undemocratic and that the city cared about the borough, yet his refusal to walk through Fresh Kills landfill undercut his entire message and gave Molinari ammunition to portray him as disconnected from the real problems.
- The conflict between Dinkins and Molinari was racialized from the start, with Staten Island's secession movement partly driven by resistance to being governed by a Black mayor, though this racial dimension was typically expressed through complaints about the garbage dump and police morale.
- New York City faced a genuine financial crisis if Staten Island seceded, as the city would lose almost 20% of its land, the last operational dump, federal and state aid, and thousands of government workers including police officers during an active crime wave.
- Malcolm Gladwell's account reveals that in the early 1990s, New York City was so undesirable that when the Washington Post needed a New York bureau chief from 1,000 reporters, only one person volunteered, indicating the severity of the urban crisis that created conditions for secession.
- The episode frames the Staten Island secession movement as a historical precedent for contemporary American political fragmentation, suggesting that when communities feel forgotten or governed by people unlike themselves, they will attempt to break away despite potential economic catastrophe.
Topics
Transcript
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