Len as a community activist? The guy who hates virtually all politicians. Today's blog must have been hijacked by Barack Obama.
Nah, it's me. And, yes, I was. For a while.
The picture above is Yonkers City Hall and I hung out there a bit when things got really hot in town. No, I don't mean the temperature. I had totally forgotten about all this until HBO last weekend began to run a mini-series that revolves around those very years where I might have been found at a city council meeting. I watched the first two hours of the production and was amazed by its attention to detail. Much of the footage was shot in Yonkers itself.
And the memories flooded out of my TV and onto these virtual pages today.
The miniseries depicts all the governmental unrest that arose as a result of the NAACP's lawsuit against the city of Yonkers for allegedly practicing segregation in new housing. A Federal judge got involved and started to impose major fines and potential jail sentences against dissenting City Council members. In the middle of this fracas was a 30 year-old and virtually inept Mayor Doogie Howser. He eventually blew his brains out while standing over his father's grave. You couldn't write this stuff.
Of course, somebody did and now HBO has filmed it in exact and precise detail. Naturally, when it comes to subjects like the construction of low income housing, you have a lightning rod for middle class home owners who see the value of their well-earned properties plummeting. I had just moved into Yonkers myself and suddenly I found myself in a city that was ripe for tar and feathering. Since all this nonsense was regularly in the news, I couldn't resist the temptation to watch the weekly fighting that went on at City Council meetings. It was fun to watch as an innocent bystander.
But then I had my first set of income tax done as a Yonkers resident. All those fines stemming from the lawsuit were flipped over into city tax that all of us common schlubs were being asked to pay. For the first time ever, I wasn't getting a tax refund. And it was all because of the Yonkers city tax.
Now I was mad.
I started to watch the cable telecasts of the City Council meetings with more fervor. And then, one week, I somehow found myself propelled to go and see them in person. What I found there horrified me.
Homeowners showed up and screamed at the council members and the Mayor. The council members screamed at the Mayor. The Mayor screamed back at them. It seemed like there was always somebody rapping a gavel trying to bring some order into somewhere. This was our government in action. And it was nothing more than an episode of World Wide Wrestling.
But, deep down, I was intrigued by the process of running a city and how ordinary citizens might play into the mix. Somehow and somewhere, things could get done.
Then I was moved to act myself. Because ugliness hit home to me not once, but twice.
I was working in Manhattan those days and taking the Metro North train from the Greystone station to Grand Central. I was parking my new Camry at the adjacent parking lot and paying over fifty bucks a month to do so. I got off the train one night to find the hubcaps removed. And gone.
WTF.
Of course, I went through the whole police report business and questioned why my car wouldn't be safe at a public parking lot. Apparently, my vehicle wasn't the only one to have hubcaps stripped. Great. I went through the expense of getting four new hubcaps from Toyota.
Which were promptly stolen two weeks later at the same train station parking lot.
WTF!!!!!!!
The police took my crime reports which I was now getting good at filling out. But I needed something more to appease my wounded self. For the first time ever, I wrote a letter to my City Council representative. I had a new guy just elected and he had said that if any of us had a problem, we should reach out.
I reached out. Three nights later, my phone rang and it was him. Two days later, there was a noticeable police presence at our train station parking lot. Just like my council representative had pledged there would be.
I had raised an issue to a politician and it made a difference. Hmmmm. Maybe there was something to this local government business. Maybe I should be more active.
When my City Council guy became Mayor, he started some sort of community activist group. I asked if I could be on it and was welcomed in.
And then I had the misfortune of attending their first meeting. The Mayor himself was not there. But a lot of the usual Yonkers residents were. The same ones who were always screaming at people. The cacophony was endless. I realized that, while I had gotten something done, it was a rare incident. For the most part, issues get lost in the weeds of personal agendas that are dying to be addressed.
I was done. I skulked back to a world of political indifference. And I still reside there today.
The HBO miniseries, however, was a good reminder of how things are...and shouldn't be. In Yonkers. In Los Angeles. In your town.
Dinner last night: Reuben sandwich at the Hollywood Bowl.
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