I walked out on my balcony last night, with my camera in hand and lens cap typically misplaced. I was expecting to see the fireworks, given that I live on 8th Street, directly in the bend of the East River, a Yankee pitcher’s arm from the FDR.
The explosions began in earnest, sonic booms cascading as I pushed out of the air-conditioning, my feet moving across the warm Astro-Turf of my small balcony to the railing. Yet, it wasn’t to be. I hadn’t planned properly. I could only see the illuminated smoke, first a haze of pink, then a cartoon-sinister puff of green.
A sign of the times, perhaps, that the city approved a 10-story new apartment build directly across from ours. There are no more views of the fireworks now.
A 2-bedroom will sucker-punch you with an $899,000 price tag, for less than 1,000 square feet. You don’t even get a balcony for that.
Immediately I was hit with another sign of the times––much more impressionable than Macys’ pyrotechnics.
The windows in the Penthouse of the building across from me are now draped in two Confederate flags and one German Iron Cross. While the German Iron Cross has many meanings, when you flank it with controversial remnants of the Confederacy, the Neo-Nazi sentiment rings pretty clear.
However, then, in the corners, you’ll also spot smaller flags of Israel.
Cut to today, and I’m investigating the entire meaning with the building’s management team. They requested all of these be removed, but they have no legal right to enforce it.
In an email, the renter expressed his views to the owners, claiming his nationalist feelings in a long rant. He’s installed the Israeli flags, he says, as a protest to a bombing in Israel in recent times.
When I lay down in my bed last night and gazed out, amid the soundtrack of cheap Black Cats and Roman Candles set off by drunken revelers in the road, there they were, these gleaming, 8-foot-high, scarlet reminders that the times have changed.
Below the flags and 400 feet across the street from my apartment window, you hit The Jacob Riis Houses––one of Manhattan’s large projects that serves as home to nearly 9,000 people. The majority of my neighbors living in the livid glow of these flags are black.
The Jacob Riis Houses were constructed in 1949, and they extend from 6th street to 13th, a last vestige of an affordable rent option for struggling families––an anchor for those without expendable income on a seesaw that begs to tip towards the hipster other-half of the current East Village.
A block of 19 identical, shabby buildings with windows like dark teeth, named for a famed photographer, who showed the world How the Other Half Lives more than a century ago.
The children of these conditions now fall asleep under the rouge illumination of hate, just as I do.
This backwards olive branch, this dead dove, this perpetual, screaming, political rant that goes on with the light switch every night, is spoken loudly through the massive, silent windows.
It’s tough for me to write lately. I’ve been dulled. Desensitized. Demoralized. I’ve struggled to find the ire lately.
My fury in February was warm in my gut. Those seemingly centuries-ago days, when President Trump declared a travel ban on Muslims––and I felt a hot, scared rage in learning a woman had swallowed a handful of pills in the terminal in JFK, seeking death before returning to the horror she’d only just managed to escape.
The stories of injustice, of us sliding backwards as a collective community, of hate being handed a microphone, of being able to shove the Prime Minister of Montenegro out of the way after you fire the FBI director, of lying about armadas approaching North Korea and of women bleeding from facelifts … they just land on me like last-round punches in a prizefight I’m not fit enough to endure.
I stood on my balcony on July 4th to watch the fireworks, feeling heavy and tired, too frustrated to really go out with sparklers and excitement for a country I now view like a wayward juvenile delinquent.
And while I couldn’t see the fireworks because of the brand-new, million-dollar-per-unit luxury condo in my way, I could see the vestiges of past hate alive and finding purchase once more.
It hurts my heart most tonight that last year, those flags were not there.
Last year, the people who hung these inflammatory curtains felt marginalized.
Last year, these symbols were something I most connected with through old stories recounted by my Mississippi grandmother, of the Klan in the cotton. Stories of my grandfather, who was among the first battalion in to liberate the concentration camps at Dachau.
If you don’t think President Trump’s refusal to denounce David Duke’s support, matters … if you feel the hate groups who marched to his rallies were fringe … I’d like to have you over for a drink.
We can sit out on my balcony in the warm night air, under the glow of these symbols that flutter in this new America.
Please bring whiskey.
Because these days … this particular Fourth of July … I feel I need it most.
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Jenny, thank you for writing this sad essay. With a hard-hitting style, you provide the historical context we need to reflect upon while trying to understand the immediate story–the brazen display of flags with the hateful, though confused, message which unfortunately mirrors the leadership we now have.
Do not get demoralized. With your talent, insight, and intelligence, you must PERSIST.
Love you so much, Nan. Thank you for being so supportive of my blog.
Great article Jenny ! I saw the flags the other day when I left Lower Eastside park . To be honest I thought I was hallucinating! I’m glad you wrote this and are educating people ! Love you muffin !
Thank you Jilly! Love you.
You just so much want NYC to be better than this! 🙁
I know, Bonnie. It’s weird, for such a massive place, we all seem to genuinely not put up with this kind of behavior. Stay tuned. I’m going to hopefully write an article and put some pressure on the guy. I know one other journalist is doing the same.
I’m sorry you feel the way you do. May I suggest that you move to another country? If you dislike it here so much and have such disregard for the POTUS, the country, free speech, and protecting the country from illegal aliens, I strongly suggest you leave and never return. Progress is painful, you either get on board or you get left behind. Instead of whining and complaining so much, try changing your attitude. If you feel we should allow illegal aliens to continue to live here illegally, invite people into your home. Provide for them at your personal expenses. If you aren’t willing to open your home and leave your doors unlocked whenever you leave home, please do not ask the nation to accept or allow illegals or refugees. Fake concern is no concern at all. P.S. I personally will help you move to any other country of your choice. If you 1)leave within 30 days and 2)never return to America for any reason at all.
Courtney,
first off, this blog post wasn’t about illegal aliens or immigration in any way. It was about Nazi and anti-black iconography.
I appreciate that you would like to pay my expenses to relocate to Greenland or Tibet or somewhere else very far from your own personage, but I think I’ll stay.
I also don’t agree that posting up flags from the Civil War has anything to do with progress. But yeah, i’m with you on progress being painful. I guess we can agree on that.
Have an excellent day.
Wow. Courtney’s got some anger issues.
Somethin’ tells me, Courtney is also lying about paying for me to live for the rest of my life in another country. I mean, that’s kinda pricey and we don’t even know each other, Courtney.
Free speech is what you are against. Someone hanging a flag of any kind is never cause for you or anyone else to be upset. Oh did I mention I’m black? It’s not offensive at all, it’s just a flag. If that person isn’t hurting anyone or putting their hands on anyone, they haven’t done anything wrong. You are being extremely judge mental and very narrow-minded. It’s ok for you to say you dislike that and you are uncomfortable with that person expressing their artistic style, but it’s no ok for them to express what you deem racist? Do you know them? Have you even tried to get to know them? Don’t pass judgement like that without collecting facts about the person first. I have more right than you to be outraged by racism, yet, I don’t see it in those pictures. I see someone expressing themselves. To each their own. Also, if you read my reply correctly, I said I would pay for you to relocate, I never said I would pay for you to live their. You would be responsible for your own life. I’d just pay for transportation out! The only hate in this article is your own, not the person with the flags.
*not *judgemental *there I really hate auto correct.
Courtney,
you don’t see hanging a Confederate Flag next to a Nazi flag as racist against groups of people? What do you think he means for his message to be? Inclusive of the people who live around him?
And I have looked into it. I’ve learned a lot about the situation, actually.
And many of my neighbors – of a variety of races and backgrounds – have been talking about how much they don’t like these flags. Just yesterday, my friend – who is also black – was saying that to him and his family, the Confederate Flag represents America in a time when black people were slaves. That deeply troubles him as a symbol. I’m glad it’s not the same emotionally for you, but for many, it is.
There’s a second blog post coming once I dig out from under this pile of paid work, but it’s not merely one Confederate Flag down south, either. Its 2 set beside a flag that, in conjunction with Confederate Flags, is very commonly used by the White Supremacy, skin-head movement. I’m all for freedom of speech. Which is why i cannot force this guy – nor would i try – to take them down.
But they make me sad looking out on them, too. It’s not symbols that the majority of us associate with kindness, love, tolerance and all-inclusive community.
I have to ask, are you so angry and so adamant that I should move for expressing my own opinions on my own blog because you are a Trump supporter? Is that what’s at the root of this hostility?
Or is it something else? Not picking a fight. Genuinely just want to have a conversation. That’s why I started the blog after all.
But it is sort of coming across a bit vicious to me that you keep offering to fund banishing me from America, when like you said, Freedom of Speech allows us all to share our opinions – flag or otherwise.
Thank you for your comments. They are something I want to hear. I don’t write for lip-service from people just like me, but for constructive conversation from anyone who reads my stuff.
Have a good afternoon and feel free to respond, but please keep it civil and constructive.
What part of what’s happening in the country now does Courtney feel qualifies as “progress?”