The Staten Island Problem - Part 5: Revenge of the Forgotten Borough

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Election Night 1993

1:46Pushkin.

Election Night 1993

1:47Election night, New York City, 1993. Staten Island Cable. First time, and that is hooking up all the headquarters live via television. That is Staten Island Cable's host, Frank Cipolla. Remember Frank? Former assistant press secretary for the Staten Island Borough president. The one who got yelled at in those sham meetings late into the night. He got a new job, which gave him a front-row seat to the big vote.

2:18John Markey live here on Channel 77 from Secession headquarters at the Island Chateau. Channel 77 bringing you that live.

2:27The end of the campaign had been crazy. Staten Island Borough president Guy Molinari drove around the island in something called the Freedom Bus, talking Secession. Staten Island politicians worked the rush hour ferries to try and gin up more votes to secede. And on election night, it looked like it had all paid off. We go to Monica DiClerico at the Island Chateau with the latest results, Monica. There's a new total coming in.

2:56Well, there you have it, Frank. That 66% is the total now. The atmosphere here is, it's like a party. The numbers were huge.

Secession Vote

3:07You know, it's funny, 10 years ago when Senator Markey first introduced the word secession, people thought of it as a joke. Absolutely. We know very well that this is no joke. It was a landslide. People were celebrating all over the island. State Senator John Markey gave a victory speech. He was the chief sponsor on the bill to secede in the first place. You realize, as a city that can plan for its own and doesn't have to say, may I, may I do this, and may I do that, we will be going to...

3:38People on the island voted almost two to one in favor of secession. The Gunnboro, I don't know. I think we just might get rid of that nickname. Dan Singletary was there, that artist who I'd found on those old tapes passionately arguing for secession. Dan, obviously your efforts have not been in vain. Did you ever expect to see such political fervor as you've seen tonight?

Giuliani's Role

4:06This is one of the most wonderful nights, I think, for Staten Island, for the New York City, and for New York State.

4:13It was decisive.

4:16Or, so they thought.

4:20As many of you listening already know, Staten Island wasn't going anywhere. It would remain part of New York City. And somewhere in the back of his mind, Singletary knew that, too.

4:34When did you realize that? Oh, I was getting down pretty close to the end. So towards the end of this process, you're like, this might actually not happen. I said, but it had to do something. And I said, you know, if we got something out of this, it was better than what we were. The vote was a referendum. It was Staten Island saying, we want to leave. But the New York State government was going to have the final say. And the next year, when the referendum came before the State Assembly, the Speaker just killed it.

5:07It was dead in the water. I hoped that it might be possible. But I knew the probability of all that is so difficult.

5:22Someone else had to have known where all this was going, too. Guy Molinari. This was supposed to be the biggest night in his borough's history. And yet, he was nowhere to be found on the island.

5:37Instead, he was in Manhattan with his good friend, Rudolph Giuliani, who was at that moment being elected mayor of New York City.

Historical Context

5:49When I started this series, I told you that this story would amount to a big argument about where our country finds itself today. There's an old way of thinking about time that I love, from the Middle Ages. The idea is that time doesn't just go horizontally, where today is closest to tomorrow, but also vertically.

6:20That certain days are closer to all their earlier incarnations. Christmas this year is nearer to Christmas last year than it is to December 26th. It's like a wormhole. And what I'm proposing is that when voters went to the polls on November 2nd, 1993, to elect a mayor and decide whether or not to break New York City up and send Staten Island off on its own, that day was very close to Election Day 2016.

6:51That the era we are living in now has everything to do with that moment then. That as a historian told me when I began all this, America really does happen first, in New York City. And the America happening now is something you could see first in the Staten Island secession movement. And even more critically, in the man that movement gave us. New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

7:22I'm Ben Nadeff-Haffrey. This is the Staten Island Problem. Our final episode, Revenge of the Forgotten Burrow.

7:40Okay, so let's rewind.

Rudy Giuliani's Past

7:42I want to focus in on the time leading up to that 1993 election. Because I realized that Rudy Giuliani and Staten Island secession were being driven by the same engine. And I wanted to understand what that engine was. The practice of politics in this city stinks. I mean, it is an old-fashioned way of practicing politics. America first met Rudy Giuliani as a crusader who took on the mob. As U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, he went after corruption everywhere, on Wall Street, and especially in New York City government.

8:15Crooked politicians and crooked bosses of political organizations that are running counties that are in dire need of honest, decent people running those counties who are raping those counties for their own advantage. And one of the very first people encouraging Giuliani to consider running for a higher office was Staten Island's borough president, Guy Molinari. I think that they had a special kind of relationship or friendship. It went beyond friendship. It was like extended family.

8:46Randy Mastro worked with Giuliani in the U.S. attorney's office and later as his first deputy mayor. And he witnessed Molinari's relationship with Giuliani firsthand. A lot of similarities in backgrounds, Italian-Americans, working-class family backgrounds shared a lot of the same values. Giuliani was born in Brooklyn. He was a very serious child. He would sit on his front stoop and read while the other kids played stickball.

9:16He started the opera club in high school. He wanted to be a priest. His college girlfriend remembered, quote, He liked to say, Rudolf William Louis Giuliani III, the first Italian Catholic president of the United States. Molinari was with Giuliani from the very beginning. The day Giuliani announced his first mayoral run in 1989, it was Molinari who went to all five boroughs with him making introductions. Part of what they shared was an outer borough view of the city.

9:49Both were familiar with the politics of white people living on the periphery. And while some Staten Islanders were trying to leave the city entirely, Molinari was looking for someone who could remake it in Staten Island's image. I think there was definitely a sense in both their parts about being fair to every borough and that Manhattan had probably been favored by many prior mayors. David Dinkins beat Giuliani during the mayoral election of 1989

10:19and became the city's first black mayor. But that election had been a warning sign to liberals in New York. Giuliani had lost by the slimmest margin of any mayoral race since 1905. His supporters were angry. They demanded a recount.

10:40Please relax and just listen. He will be... Wait, there's plenty of time... The first political campaign I covered in New York City was Rudy Giuliani's second run for mayor, a successful run. And I went with him to Staten Island. What? Oh, yeah. Malcolm Gladwell, reporter covering New York for The Washington Post back then, who somehow waited until our final episode to reveal to me

11:13that he had met Giuliani and gone to Staten Island with him in 1993. He wrote about it in an article called Rudy Giuliani's Whispered Revolt. I spent the day on a... We started in the morning. We took the... You know, got in the cavalcade. We went over the bridge. And I ended up... Came back late at night. He did... You know, he did events all throughout the day. And it was very clear that, like, these were his people. Even though he's a... For me, he's Flatbush. He's not... You know, he's an Italian... But they were... It's the Italian-ness, and it's a sense of grievance.

11:45It's the people who resent Manhattan. Resent Manhattan. And the kind of... And also his close affiliation with the police. Such a kind of cop guy. And that is... Staten Island is cop central. Yeah. Giuliani spoke to exactly the kind of person who might want to secede from New York. He promised to do whatever it took to put New York City to order again. He would be Bruce Wayne to New York's Gotham. As U.S. attorney, he seemed to love to publicly shame his victims with these dramatic perp walks.

12:15His message was that all the other mayors had been too tolerant. He promised a kind of illiberalism. Zero tolerance. The thing about Rudy is that Rudy's not fun. Right? He's not genteel. He's not sophisticated in the way that some of these other characters are. There's something angry and kind of mean and kind of coarse about him. And coming in to the New York City political scene for the first time,

12:46he realizes he has to... He realizes it's not going to... If he's himself at that point, it's not going to fly. It's too much of a departure. So he has to kind of play it down. Play down his true essential rootiness. For a few years now, I've had a question about that true essential rootiness. Is he the same guy now as he was then? People used to think of him as America's mayor. The guy we depended on during 9-11. Or the guy who cleaned up New York City. They don't recognize that guy in Rudy today.

13:18Standing in the parking lot of four seasons total landscaping, spreading lies about stolen elections. That's why I'm so interested in understanding the Giuliani of long ago. Because I think that actually, he's always been the same Rudy. And there's a specific moment back in the 90s when you could see it clearly.

13:41One morning a year before the 93 election, Rudy Giuliani and Guy Molinari met up for a very fateful day.

Police Union Protest

13:49The police union had organized a protest. They were angry about a series of riots where they felt Mayor Dinkins had betrayed them. Washington Heights and Crown Heights. They were angry that he had a big plan to put more civilian oversight on the police. So they gathered outside a place where they knew they'd get some attention. It was a show of force on the steps of New York City Hall. 10,000 off-duty cops banded together in protest. Fed up and angry with a city they claim doesn't back them up.

14:21There were 10,000 off-duty cops. Many were drunk and things started getting out of hand. They began to climb on cars, chanting, Dinkins must go.

14:33Dinkins must go! Dinkins must go! Dinkins must go! They held signs with racist caricatures of Dinkins with huge lips and a gigantic afro, calling him a washroom attendant. They intimidated a black councilwoman as she tried to cross the street. People hurled racial epithets. Then they charged up the steps of City Hall. A reporter told CBS what he'd seen. They climbed the very steps of government and felt comfortable to call the mayor of this city a nigger.

15:04It's outrageous. If David Duke had a police department, it would look and sound like this group of people who assaulted our senses. I was in City Hall at the time. The mayor wasn't. First deputy mayor at the time, Norman Stiesel. Dinkins was actually uptown at a funeral. And so you were the highest-ranking person at City Hall. Yes, I was. They decided to basically, they were thinking about storming City Hall.

15:34Police inside told Stiesel they had an evacuation plan through an unused stable in the back. At some point in all this, Rudy Giuliani arrived at City Hall. The head of the police union asked him to try to calm things down. He said he led a small group out of the main area and over to a protest outside the plaza, where there was a stage on a truck bed. Guy Molinari had already spoken there. Giuliani got up.

16:04He'd seen the out-of-control rage and hate at Dinkins and had a choice. Calm things down. Or feed the fire. He chose the latter. The reason the morale of the police department of the city of New York is so low is one reason and one reason alone. David Dinkins! He said the move to increase oversight on the cops was just, quote, to protect David Dinkins' political ass.

16:34He said Dinkins' policies were, quote, bullshit.

16:39Stiesel, still inside City Hall, heard everything. And there's no question in my mind that that's what he talked about when he got up on the stage. You could hear him. It was, you know, right outside our, where we were. So I don't know. And so you felt he was inciting. There's no question about it, yeah. The rioters veered away from City Hall and blocked traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge instead.

17:10They threatened drivers. One rioter kicked a New York Times reporter in the stomach. Another group of cops found a car with older Black people inside and began to shove it back and forth. Dinkins was outraged. For Rudy Giuliani to urge them on, as it were, demonstrates an irresponsibility on his behalf.

17:36I've started having this weird feeling as I work on this series that I think of as the flicker. Like, when I'm riding the subway listening to Wu-Tang, the cars have less graffiti, but they're basically the same tin cans. And sometimes something shifts, and I feel like I'm looking at the world 30 years ago. The same thing happened when I watched what little tape remains of the riot. Something flickers, and suddenly I feel like I'm looking at the 2020s.

18:05After the break, I want to take you to a rural part of Wisconsin that helped me understand why.

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20:37Some time in the year 2007, a political scientist living in Wisconsin decided to leave the city of Madison and start driving around the state.

Rural Wisconsin

20:48I knew that if I wanted to understand how people make sense of politics, the best way to do that is to listen to them. Katherine Kramer, professor at the University of Wisconsin. There's something going on in these rural communities that's very similar all across the state.

21:10She started hanging out at gas stations, athletic clubs, diners, any place she could find a civic association outside one of the big cities. She realized that she kept hearing the same conversation in all of them.

21:27Like a simmering emotion, right? It's different from anger in that it's just kind of this, you might say, like, a chip on your shoulder. A sense of, like, these people piss me off. I'm trying to think of a nicer way of saying it, but like, those people piss me off. And they just don't understand me. Those people don't respect me. This sense of, I'm not getting my fair share in, like, three important respects. Those three respects, Kramer says, are money, the feeling that all the jobs and resources are somewhere else, namely the cities, power, the idea that all the decisions are also made in the cities, and finally, respect.

22:10Also something cities get more of than rural places. Together, this all adds up to a feeling. Resentment.

22:21It's not that they just don't understand us. They don't care. And they don't like us. Like, they think we're not worth listening to. Because they think we're uneducated and backward and sexist and homophobic and what have you. This feeling has always existed. Country folk hating, city folk, city folk thinking country folk are backwards. But what Kramer found is you could put numbers to it. And it had gotten a whole lot more intense starting in the 1970s. And it wasn't just rural urban.

22:53It was about anything on the periphery of the big cities, which were only getting bigger. These sentiments show up in so many places and parts of our population. Right? That sense of low-boiling resentment towards the people in charge. Like, who doesn't feel that right now? Secession was the manifestation of that same feeling. And it expressed itself in two ways.

23:25A vote for secession and a vote for Giuliani. On election night after they'd lost, that had been very clear to the Dinkins campaign. What defeated us was the secession issue on the ballot in Staten Island, which stimulated turnout there, way out of proportion with its normal turnout. So many people had come out to vote for secession on Staten Island, way more than had voted in 1989. And 82% of the people on Staten Island voted for Giuliani.

23:57The vote from the forgotten borough is a big part of how we got Mayor Giuliani, the first Republican mayor of New York City in decades, taking the stage at the New York Hilton. I'm standing before you as the next mayor of New York City.

24:19The next day, Dinkins' chief political officer said, quote, The only surprise, as far as I am concerned, was the size of the Staten Island numbers. You can show what I consider minor increases for Rudy across the board, but not major ones. If you fit Staten Island into the mix, there is the difference. Staten Island was part of a movement, of people saying, We don't believe the sum is greater than the parts, and we'd like to go our own way, actually.

24:50It was the most outer borough of the outer boroughs saying they wanted to be the center, not the periphery. For some, it was absolutely about race, but it was also about respect, about geography. It was about not wanting to be the dump anymore, and they started a movement that changed their reality. By electing a leader who was outer borough himself, who understood what it meant to be on the periphery, and both hate and need the center.

25:18Giuliani made the ferry free. He invested almost half a billion dollars in the Staten Island waterfront. He got them that baseball park I used to go to in the summers when I'd just moved to New York City. But the biggest thing he gave them is that he and Guy Molinari managed to close the dump. On March 22, 2001, the last barge of trash sailed out for fresh kills. Giuliani stood on his porch and saluted as it passed. The dump was, at that point, the largest man-made object on Earth.

25:51The process of Staten Island bearing the burden of the rest of the city's garbage was inequitable, and now it's over for good. For the rest of the city, particularly its black and brown residents, the results were more mixed. There was a viciousness to his efforts to clean up the city. Homeless people were denied shelter or forced to pay. Giuliani often refused to meet with black leaders. Cops were sent out to, quote, empty the streets. Executives at the local public radio station said that at some point they heard Giuliani say that his goal was to get poor people to leave New York.

26:28Today, we call that self-deporting. Frank Cipolla, the cable news guy, remembers you couldn't challenge him on any of it. I had screaming arguments with him at press conferences because I would ask the question and he would say, ah, that's a stupid question. I said, according to who? I'm asking the question. And I wasn't the only one. He would just look at reporters and say, you're an idiot. That's a stupid, I'm not going to answer that stupid question.

26:54And there was another New Yorker I'm guessing you're familiar with, who grew up in the outer boroughs, too, and thought, this is what a great leader looks like. Donald Trump announcing tonight the formation tomorrow of a committee to look into the possibility of his running for the presidency of the United States. This is a clip from Larry King Live in 1999, one of the first times Trump flirts with running for president. That year, Hillary Clinton was gearing up for her race against Giuliani for New York senator.

27:29What do you make of the Hillary Giuliani? I know you're a big fan of Giuliani. I am. And I like her very much. But I think Rudy, and as I said before, he's been the greatest mayor in the history of the city of New York. And people, maybe some people don't like him and some people love him totally. I happen to be in love because the guy, not because I love Rudy, because he's done an incredible job. He's the best. I mean, he's just done a great job. Trump grew up in Queens in an environment a lot like Giuliani, wanting, like Giuliani, to put his mark on Manhattan, to build the biggest towers and put his name on them, to be respected, even though it would always elude him.

28:08Giuliani was the model. I mean, the polls, generally speaking, National Enquirer did a poll that's unbelievable, that says I win, that you beat everybody. They win. We'll ride it right into the White House.

28:29When Rudy Giuliani took the stage at the New York Hilton to celebrate his election, it was the same stage Donald Trump would take 33 years later, celebrating his presidency. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.

28:47There's a history to that term, forgotten. The forgotten borough. The forgotten men and women. Around the time in the middle of the 20th century that the civil rights movement had really picked up, there'd been a shift. And white, middle class, and working class people started thinking of themselves as forgotten, that they'd been left behind in the name of progress. Those are the threads that political scientist Catherine Kramer was teasing apart in Wisconsin. And she wrote it up in a book about all this called The Politics of Resentment.

29:18That book came out in March 2016, eight months before Trump got elected, riding a wave that looked exactly like what she described. An economic geographer, picking up on some of what Kramer had discovered, wrote what is, to my mind, one of the most satisfying explanations for Trump's election. It's an essay called The Rise of Populism and the Revenge of the Places that Don't Matter. And it points out that you might expect a populism of resentment to come from the disenfranchised, the very poor, or ethnic and racial minorities, to put it in his terms, among the people that don't matter.

29:56But that's not what happened. It was the places that don't matter. Even the wealthy people there who voted for populism. And that same pattern held all around the world. The forgotten places, forgotten no longer. The forgotten borough, I don't know. I think we just might get rid of that nickname.

30:22A vote for Giuliani in 1993 is not the same as a vote for Trump in 2016. But they share that engine. There is some kind of deep, cosmic tie between these men, these movements, these places, and these times. Because 29 years after Giuliani riled up a group of drunk, angry cops at City Hall, he did the same thing. But this time, as someone in Trump's corner. But if we're right, a lot of them will go to jail.

30:57So, let's have trial by combat. To some who'd been in New York in 1992, what unfolded at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, all seemed very familiar. Absolutely.

31:16There was much chatter among the Dinkins alumni. Of? About the parallel. We've seen this before. Yeah. Marsha Smith, who worked with David Dinkins. It's so parallel. You know, you're talking about the first Black mayor and the reaction to that. The first Black president and the reaction to that. You know, and it's a real reaction. You know, and it's, it is emotional. You know, it literally is psychological. Emotional. Who gets to be in this position?

31:48What's fair and what's not? Who gets to wield power? Who doesn't? It's all here in seed form in the 1990s in New York City. It's the story of the past decade, 30 years ago.

32:04So how does it end? Whether you're planning a big event, launching a new campaign, or just stocking up on team gear, finding the right promotional products makes all the difference. That's why so many brands turn to 4imprint. They offer thousands of options, from on-trend apparel and premium drinkware to tech, totes, and giveaways.

32:38So you'll find the right fit for any audience, purpose, or budget. You can customize it all. Your logo, your message, your look. And many items come with no setup charge to help you save. And if you're really watching the bottom line, you'll find standout choices at every price point so you can make a real impact while staying on budget. Plus, you'll get expert help, fast turnaround times, and their 360-degree guarantee so you can be 4imprint certain your order will arrive on time and look exactly right.

33:12Whatever your goal, 4imprint makes it easy to find your perfect promo match. Explore the possibilities today at 4imprint.com. 4imprint. For certain. Quick one before you jump back in. You're listening for ways to help teams move faster, make sharper decisions, and turn scattered context into work they can use. ChatGPT for Business can help. ChatGPT for Business gives teams a shared workspace with admin controls, permissions, and access to work and codecs in ChatGPT.

33:43This means your business can move from question to answer and code to rollout quicker. Join over 10 million business and enterprise users worldwide already using ChatGPT for Work. Download the ChatGPT desktop app or contact sales to learn more.

34:00Some people say it's wrong to be this into sports, but the new shape of my Galaxy Z Fold 8 from Samsung is just right for scrolling my socials for memes about the GOAT. And when I want to watch games on the go, I just unfold it for double the screen size. I can rage-bait Dave about his team and track my fantasy squad's wins all at the same time, too. Oh, and now it's time for a victory lap. Woo! Whatever you're into, the all-new Galaxy Z Fold 8 is the right size to get really into it. Save up to $1,200 with eligible trade-in when you pre-order. NC6 while supplies last. See trade-in terms and conditions at a flight samsung.com.

Fresh Kills Landfill

34:30This whole series has been about where we put our trash, literally and metaphorically. So as we reached the end of it, my producer Lucy Sullivan and I decided we had to make a pilgrimage. So I wish it were a little warmer, but I'm happy that it's going to be like sunny. Yeah, it's crisp. We were going to Fresh Kills. Once the biggest landfill in the world, now it's on its way to becoming one of the largest parks in the city. We brought its biggest fan with us.

35:02The anthropologist in residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation, Robin Nagel. Of the many reasons I love this city, the fact that this position exists has got to be top five. A real treat to go. That's it. You all are my, you're like giving me a gift here. Yay. We met with two administrators for the park, Chris Ricker and Mark Murphy. We all drove out to one part of the park called the North Mound. Chris and Mark are native Staten Islanders, and they care a lot about the transformation of this place.

35:35Do you remember what you thought about it when you were growing up? Like, how did you feel about the dump? Well, we don't call it the dump. We call it the landfill. But we have our dump jar downstairs that you put a dollar in it every time somebody says the dump. I know you. Thank you. This was like the dark side of the moon. And your parents, my dad would say to me, look, go, you know, we had garbage out in the garage. I'd clean the garbage out, take it out to the landfill. And he'd say, take it out to the dump. And you'd throw it in the back of the station wagon, and you'd drive out, and it was just this fast place with telephone poles in the ground and ropes on them.

36:10And you'd tie it around the stuff in your car, and you would drive away, and it would all fly out. Wow. And you'd close the doors, and you wouldn't look back. Because, number one, you wanted to get out of that place. But it was like where everything you didn't want went.

36:24It's clear that this is going to be a beautiful park. It's not fully open to the public yet. Rolling hills are dotted with little pipes pumping methane out of the trash underneath to make it safe for the public. Benches and paths. Wide open spaces. Green grass, but not many trees. Turns out you can't plant things with deep roots on garbage. I turned to my left, on top of the mountain of buried trash. And in the clear distance, I saw the buildings of Manhattan gleaming.

36:55Someday, people are going to go out of their way to come to this place. Can you, what are we standing on top of right now? So, as an anthropologist, we're standing on the story of New York City. If you lived here between 1948 and 2001, you're here somewhere. Maybe not in this exact mount, but some piece of you, even if you just pass through, some piece of you is underneath us. And this is an archaeologist's dream in 500 years, let's say.

37:25Like, long in the future. Just the daily lives of normal folks. People whose, they don't become famous. They don't make headlines. But their material record is under our feet.

37:41Osprey circled overhead. And then Robin said something that I've been thinking about ever since. Someday, to my regret, people won't even know that they're standing on mounds of garbage. It's just this extraordinary green space, which I think is its future. Because we don't remember that Orchard Beach and the 79th Street Boat Basin and all of lower Manhattan from Pearl Street to the water is built on Phil. We don't remember that. We walk on our garbage history all the time.

38:17This whole series, I've been thinking about an unresolved tension at the heart of this country. The idea that every person is equal and deserves an equal vote is at odds with the way our government's actually built. That every state is equal and deserves equal representation regardless of how many people live there. Are we a country of places or of people? This is a question that New York City resolved in 1989. Remember? Shutting down the board of estimate was like killing the electoral college

38:48and the Senate in one fell swoop. New York City became a democracy of people and not of place. But when they did, they missed a crucial fact. Place does actually matter. The politics of resentment are a politics of place and remoteness. And if you don't attend to that, people elect a strong man who favors them over others. You get Giuliani. You get Trump. The revenge of the places that don't matter.

39:21The reality is we're stuck together. And if we don't want to keep getting periodically rocked by the forgotten places, we're left with one option. Figure out a new story we can tell that makes this whole place make sense again. That remembers all of it and everyone. And so now, in closing, let me share with you just one last excellent Staten Island fact.

39:54One day, decades after Woody Guthrie died, his daughter Nora got a call. It was her father's manager. And he said, you know, I'm going to retire soon, so I need someone to come in and kind of learn there's stuff here of your father's boxes of stuff. So I went in and then I pulled out a three-hole notebook and it's filled with lyrics, just like 150 page after page after page, just turning the page. And then there's this land.

40:26And I took it out of the book and I said, have you ever seen it? And he said, no, no one had opened these boxes for 40 years.

40:38This land is your land is basically the unofficial national anthem. Nora discovered that her dad had written it soon after he first arrived in New York in 1940. He's basically describing his trip from California to the New York Island.

40:55That is the crucial lyric, the very first couplet. But looking at that page of his notebook, Nora realized that's not the line he originally wrote. The original lyric had from California to Staten Island. The most crucial part of the first draft of probably the most famous song in American history

41:34goes from California to the Staten Island. And then he crossed it out and wrote another version, the one we all know. Word of this got out in the 1990s, around the time of secession. I did have a group of people come many years ago from Staten Island and petitioned me to go back to the original lyric. They wanted Staten Island, you know. Are you serious? I'm serious. And they were like,

42:06so why did he cross out this Staten Island with her? I don't know. And do you think we could get it back? I said, I don't think so. By that point, it had already been published and was widely known.

42:25Staten Islanders, they love a petition and hate being forgotten. And honestly, who doesn't? So since the New York State Legislature decided they weren't going to let Staten Island go its own way, I think it's the least we can do to put them back in the song.

42:42I asked my friend Sam Lewis in Nashville to record it for us. This land is your land This land is my land From California To the Staten Island From the Redwood Forest To the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for you and me As I was walking

43:15That ribbon of highway I saw above me That endless skyway I saw below me That golden valley This land was made for you and me The Staten Island Problem is written and reported by me, Ben Nadeff-Haffrey. It was produced by Lucy Sullivan with Nina Byrd-Lawrence.

43:45Our editor is Karen Shikurji. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Fact-checking by Sam Russick. Sound design and mastering by Jake Gorski. Original music by Stellwagen Symphonette, Luis Guerra, and Jake Gorski. Special thanks to Todd Reynolds for his track, The Solution, from the album Outer Burrow. And thanks, of course, to Malcolm Gladwell. So many people shared their time and expertise with me as I made this series. You don't hear all their voices, but it wouldn't have been possible without them.

44:16Thanks, in particular, to Derek Alves, Chris Bauer, Chris Beecham, Ed Burke, Jerry Camerata, Gretchen Dykstra, Art Eisenberg, Richard Emery, Ray Fasano, Fernando Ferrer, Ken Gold, Eric Lane, Jill Lepore, Thomas Main, Thomas Mateo, Chris McNichol, Marty Melosi, Susan Molinari, Patrick Nugent, Carol O'Clerican, Philip Pappas, Jose Ramirez-Garofalo, David Schleicher,

44:46Eric Vitaliano, Joseph Vitteretti, and Kevin Wade. Several archivists were, as always, the backbone of this story. Huge, huge thanks to James Kayser and Rebecca Lambert at the College of Staten Island Archives, to Danny Spardella at WNYC, and to the whole staff of the New York City Department of Records and Information Services. At Pushkin, thanks to Staten Island's own Morgan Ratner, and to Greta Cohn, Jake Flanagan, Eric Sandler, Kira Posey, Jordan McMillan,

45:16and Grace Ross. And thanks also to Julia Conrad, for teaching me to love this city and its history as much as she does. I'm Ben Madafaffrey. This land is your land, This land is my land, From California to the Staten Island, From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters,

45:50This land was made with me. This land was made with me. This, This is J.R. Martinez for Medal of Honor Stories of Courage. This episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union.

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