Last Friday morning, in front of City Hall and in the middle of the pouring rain, more than 70 of our fellow countrymen gathered – former victims of the ghettoes and concentration camps, war veterans, businessmen, public figures, and members of the press. Among them were Oleg Gutnik, Mark Davidovich, Valery Weinberg, Fira Stukelman, Isya Katsal and Vladimir Epstein. Thirty residents of Starrett City (President: Malka Budilovskaya)—perhaps the most active in our community— also came. The event was a protest against the potential redistricting of City Council electoral districts.
The New York Charter Commission has proposed splitting off a part of Brighton from the 47th district and adding the Italian area, Bensonhurst. This would result in more than 5,000 of our voters being divided from other Russian-speaking Brighton residents. The community would no longer be able to vote in one voice, and many believe that Russian-language politicians would lose the chance to impact city power structures. Participants in Friday’s action held signs and posters (made by the unstoppable activist Alexander Kozodoy) which proclaimed in bright red lettering, “Don’t divide Russian-language Americans,” “Russian-speaking Americans have rights,” and “47th District – the Jewish District,” among others.
A rumor is spreading through Brighton that the reason for the proposed redistricting is a conspiracy theory: someone in New York really doesn’t want to allow Jews from the former Soviet Union and Newly Independent States access to power. The best way to accomplish this is what the Charter Commission proposed: remove from the 47th District a substantial piece of Brighton—the area populated principally by Russian-speakers, and a symbol of the community—and move it to a different district. Current 47th District City Councilmember Domenic M. Recchia would certainly be positively affected by such a reshuffling—he would escape his current constituency of Russian-speaking Jews who are not terribly sympathetic to him. Instead, he would acquire an Italian-Catholic constituency, of which he himself is a member. We will be deprived of electing our own candidates to City Council, and our interests will be set aside.
The reaction to the conspiracy theory has produced various outcries and calls to action. Some cry that “we’re under attack,” or more specifically, “they’re trying to divide us,” some people are bursting to take action, and some are most unexpected. For example, an acquaintance of mine, a successful doctor who considers himself 100 percent American, takes a completely indifferent attitude to the prospect of the division of Brighton. He says that the “primitive reaction” of our immigrants thoroughly irritates him. “It’s a completely Soviet attitude,” he says. “A black and white map of the world, and of America; dividing people into ‘ours’ and ‘not ours,’ into villains and heroes.
“They view this as a plot by the city against our immigrants, Italians against Russians. You just need to think a little! And what is it with this provincial striving to keep stewing in your own juices, to vote exclusively on behalf of your own mishpucha?! That logic leads directly to the conclusion that former residents of Moscow should vote only for former Muscovites, former residents of Kiev only for Kievans, former Odessans only for Odessans. It’s time for us to understand that we are all Americans already, and that we need to support candidates not because they’re from our same country, or share the same blood, but because they are genuinely capable of actually doing something for voters, and for their regions. I don’t care who represents me in the City Council—whether they’re Chinese, Italian, African-American, or Polish—as long as they actuallydo something. The isolation of our community, the transformation of it into an insular Russian-speaking ghetto, is advantageous for Russian-speaking public figures who want to become politicians—they can get “mass support” from “their own”– and it’s the only way of getting any power. If they really stand for something, than let them act like American politicians—investing time and energy in all communities, and taking into consideration the variety of interests. Let them put on a kippuh, pay a visit to Orthodox Jews, eat pizza with Italians, and rap with African-Americans.”
There’s certainly much of the angry young doctor’s opinion to agree with, but his point of view also suffers from being a little too radical. In the desire “not to stew in one’s own juices,” and to become more American than the most American, he also moves to an extreme. It’s true, Americans don’t divide the world into good and evil. But they also don’t believe in an ideal world between all the different levels of society, or in an idealized friendship of all peoples. I remember an article examining President Kennedy, which emphasized that he viewed the world with the eyes of a historian, not a moralist. That is, he looked at the events of the past and present not as an eternal struggle between good and evil, but as the clash between competing interests of different groups of people. Among these groups were communities bound together along ethnic lines.
The popular view in U.S. history of the moral foundation of the country doesn’t bear out in practice; it’s forced out by the more realistic theory of the country as something of a patchwork quilt, and now in any American community patriotism is a vibrant combination of local colors. There are no abstract Americans—there are instead Americans of Irish, Chinese, Jewish, or African descent. Their interests often overlap, but the table often splits into pieces, sometimes over the finest nuances. And it’s usually the representatives of one ethnic group or another who turn up in the structures of power by cleverly taking stock of these nuances and defending the interests of their community —it goes without saying—to the detriment of others.
Our immigrants, of course, won’t get very far by lending much credence to this conspiracy theory, and seeing evil designs in it. But our rights and interests need to be defended, albeit rationally and methodically. We should take the lead from our activists —they took into account all the weaknesses in the proposal for redistricting and developed a plan of action. In fact, the Charter Commission’s plan actually violates existing rules. Paragraph 52 (point C) of the City Charter states that the boundaries of districts must take care to preserve the integrity of communities with established connections, and communities with common historical, racial, economic, religious, or other demographic interests. In relation to this point in the charter, racial and ethnic groups, living within the boundaries of a particular region, have the right to be represented in the City Council by one deputy.
The task for our immigrants will be to “remind” the charter commission and the city authorities of this point, and of their responsibility to preserve the boundaries of the 47th District in their current form. The protest at City Hall was the first step in this direction. Another will be the proposal of an alternative plan for re-drawing the districts by supportive political actors and leaders of Jewish organizations, working in coalition with other ethnic groups and communities, who also stand to lose under the Charter Commission’s plan. They should organize a protest, and lodge complaints in federal court.
