{"id":295002,"date":"2021-07-09T01:59:35","date_gmt":"2021-07-08T22:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/welcome-to-washington-square-park\/"},"modified":"2021-07-09T01:59:35","modified_gmt":"2021-07-08T22:59:35","slug":"welcome-to-washington-square-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/welcome-to-washington-square-park\/","title":{"rendered":"#Welcome to Washington Square Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Welcome to Washington Square Park<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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#DefundPolice is on the back foot. With a former NYPD officer poised to capture Gotham\u2019s City Hall and Team Biden preposterously claiming that defund was ack-shually<\/em> a GOP scheme all along, it\u2019s clear mainstream Dems have resolved to ditch the slogan, if not the entire agenda. So what now for true believers of a movement that last year swept up much of the liberal gentry?<\/p>\n

You could witness the defunders\u2019 plea for attention in the wee hours of the morning Thursday at Washington Square Park. For more than a month now, the park has been the site of a battle of wills between the NYPD enforcing an on-again-off-again midnight curfew and revelers determined to \u201creclaim public space,\u201d as an ACLU volunteer monitoring the action told me. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet with their ranks diminished, the gathering of mostly white, heavily female and extremely young anti-police militants looked not a little like high school goths protesting the principal\u2019s strict new bathroom pass policy.<\/p>\n

The effect was to foreground the misery of the numerous addicts who call the park and nearby streets home: a world bathed in crack smoke, drenched in urine, murmuring with the fragmentary, delusional self-talk of lost souls.<\/p>\n

My guide to this other Washington Square world \u2014 the world of the addicts \u2014 was Damon (not his real name). \u201cExcuse me! Ex-cuse me!<\/em>\u201d He stopped my aimless wandering in the park, asked for a cigarette (my last) and guessed that I was a reporter; that last was quite a remarkable bit of intuition, as I wasn\u2019t doing anything particularly journalistic.<\/p>\n

Damon promised to introduce me to everyone who really mattered, on condition that we first head to a 7-Eleven to buy some beers and a pack of Newports. He would also hit me up for a total of $40 \u2014 a tenner every 30 minutes or so \u2014 on pain of \u201cnot letting you leave.\u201d I felt like less of a sap when I thought of it as the equivalent of a fixer\u2019s fee.<\/p>\n

\u201cWelcome to Hell\u2019s Kitchen!\u201d he began.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t Hell\u2019s Kitchen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, it\u2019s a metaphor anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of Damon\u2019s introductions proved fruitless. \u201cNando\u201d told us the confrontation between the park people and the surrounding community traces back to rumors of mass \u201cd\u2013k-sucking,\u201d though before he could finish his report, Damon chimed in to insist that \u201cThere\u2019s been no d\u2013k-sucking, motherf\u2013ka!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Washington
People defiantly occupy Washington Square Park after its midnight curfew on July 8, 2021.<\/figcaption>
Christopher Sadowski<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Not long after, Damon accosted a trio of white teenagers for wearing Jordans (\u201ccultural misapp<\/a>ropriation\u201d). After brief pleasantries, a Q-tip-thin young woman in platform Doc Martens was asked to kiss Damon\u2019s hand; she obliged instantly, affectionately smooching his fingers (\u201cYou\u2019re welcome!\u201d). And so on.<\/p>\n

After we grabbed the beers and cigarettes \u2014 this involved a minor altercation, entirely instigated by Damon, with the South Asian 7-Eleven clerks \u2014 my guide was on the hunt for crack and a pipe. By this point, we had passed dozens of crackheads either in various states of catatonia or otherwise disinclined to share the magic crystals with Damon. Eventually, however, we reached a larger group of men and women smoking crack around a squalid table on a well-lit stretch of Sixth Avenue. They were prepared to sell.<\/p>\n

Among the group was a woman ministering with such care to one of the catatonics that I figured she was a social<\/a> worker \u2014 before noticing she was hitting the pipe furiously herself. Then she used a broom to sweep her corner of the sidewalk and lay down a blanket for sleep. After Damon smoked his second little crystal, we started back for the park.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s it like when it first hits?\u201d I asked Damon.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like one is too many, and a thousand is never enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

The whole scene was made all the more repulsive by the practiced indifference of the affluent neighbors in their salmon shorts and boat shoes. I suppose it\u2019s understandable. But a part of me wanted to grab some by the Polo collars and shout: How can you take this abjection? Can\u2019t you see there are people dying in slow motion at your doorsteps?<\/em><\/p>\n

In the most generous telling, I think, that\u2019s the moral fire that animates the militant kids in the park. Something is profoundly wrong with urban America. It\u2019s sick. No one cares. This should<\/em> prick the young conscience<\/a>, any<\/em> conscience.<\/p>\n

Yet the defunders\u2019 obsession with police violence, and the warmed-over critical theory that warps their thinking, serve to further obscure the source of the problem, a much deeper crisis of solidarity. Cops deal with the tail end of the social crisis, and that means more police interactions with people like Damon and, therefore, a higher likelihood of police-civilian violence.<\/p>\n

As former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton has written in these pages, scenes like the one in the Village take place because at some point, the United States lost the will or desire to care for the most vulnerable. The Reaganite right abandoned the poorest in the name of budget-cutting, the progressive left to vindicate the \u201cautonomy\u201d of the addicted and unwell.<\/p>\n

In this sense, the defunders aren\u2019t radical enough<\/em> (in the sense of going to the root of something). The long-term solution is a recovery of a sane and genuine politics of solidarity, a recognition that some of our fellow citizens need more help, help they may not always accept or appreciate without a degree of humane coercion and, yes, sufficient and smart<\/em> funding. But in the meanwhile, Bratton rightly asks, who but the cops are there to pick up the pieces?<\/p>\n

Not that there is any reasoning with the militants. The night ended, predictably, with their accusations that I was racist for working for this news<\/a>paper and for supporting \u201cthe terrorists\u201d (the men and women of the NYPD). I was also chided for \u201cdrinking on the job\u201d (the woke can suddenly become the most prudish Victorians when the friend-enemy dynamic calls for it). <\/p>\n

Damon grabbed the last of my $10 bills. I took a cab home.<\/p>\n

Sohrab Ahmari is The Post\u2019s op-ed editor.<\/em><\/p>\n

Twitter: @SohrabAhmari<\/em>\n <\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Welcome to Washington Square Park” #DefundPolice is on the back foot. With a former NYPD officer poised to capture Gotham\u2019s City Hall and Team Biden preposterously claiming that defund was ack-shually a GOP scheme all along, it\u2019s clear mainstream Dems have resolved to ditch the slogan, if not the entire agenda. So what now for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":295003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/06\/wsp-vendor-assault-328.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[111394,71059,82428,4947],"class_list":["post-295002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-7-8-21","tag-addiction","tag-crack-cocaine","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}