Pushkin. Five miles off the shore of Manhattan, there is a place called Staten Island. We don't live in the glitter of Broadways. We don't live in Yankee Stadium.
Where we live is in every day Staten Island. Who weren't soophisticated. We were not you know, East side of Manhattan or West side of Manhattan liberals.
We were country people. And thirty years ago Staten Island decided it didn't want to be part of New York City anymore.
Who will you trust your friends and neighbors and the people in Staten Island?
Who are you trust the people five miles overseas, Staten Island was trying to secede from New York City, but not without a fight.
See, if nothing else, I hope that I can convey to the people of Staten Island that I deeply care them and about all of them. If this were a political visit, whine blazes, would I come. It's a pipe dream. It's just not going to happen. People are not facing the reality. My god, what are they thinking?
What unfolded over the span of the next four years was a battle for the soul of the city, which I as a person living in the city had never heard about. And the more I researched, the more I realized, this is exactly what's happening in the country right now. This is what happens when a group who feels like they've been ignored and forgotten for decades decides that they've had enough. All of you who are in favor of seceding from the City of New York, would you please
raise your hands. This is a story about a democracy falling apart. It's about neighbors turning on each other in a very specific strain of resentment that started in the outer boroughs of New York City and then went national with people like Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani.
We reached for a feeling that exists in this city, but we're not stopping. Harley and the Paul's generally speaking national Enquiry did a Paul that's unbelievable. This is a win that you beat everybody right right into the White House.
I'm been thatt of Haffrey and I have done a deep, deep dive into this overlooked and misunderstood moment from thirty years ago when New York City almost tore itself apart, because I think it anticipated everything about how our country is tearing itself apart. Right now this summer, we're celebrating our two hundred and fiftieth birthday as a country. It's the anniversary of an act of secession. This is who we are, this is what we do. So it's time to ask a big question, how do you solve the
Staten Island problem? The Forgotten Borough? I don't know. I think we just might get rid of that nickname.
My position was to ask yourself what close freedom.
The Staten Island problem is? Coming July ninth from Pushkin Industries. Listen on the Revisionist History Feed wherever you get your podcasts.