Originally published for Uptown.
I am a New York City resident. With the exception of a brief stint living in the suburbs from 1997-2000, I have always lived in NYC. The cracked concrete of these streets are like the veins running across my skin. Wailing sirens and the chit-chatter of late night stoop conversations are my lullaby. This is home.
Michael Bloomberg was first elected mayor in 2001, shortly after my homecoming at the age of 12. Since he has been the mayor ever since, it’s safe to say that I grew up in the era of Bloomberg.
I used to like Bloomberg. He was a progressive thinker and brought much needed stability to New York City after that unspeakable horror of ’01. As the years have past however, his progression has been mired by his arrogance. He placed himself in direct control of public education and brought us the most laughable candidate for school chancellor in the history of education (in my humble opinion). He finagled his way into a third-term election, even after the city voted that they did not want him to. The list can go on and on, but it all seems to boil down to Bloomberg having a problem with hearing the word “no.” Now, on the issue of stop and frisk, Baby Bloomberg is upset that someone has reprimanded him for his faulty policies, and he’s vowing to appeal the ruling that says the practice violates civil rights.
A little over a month ago, when the City Council passed two bills aimed at relieving some of the damage done by his stop and frisk policies, Bloomberg said, “I think, we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little. It’s actually the reverse of what they’re [media outlets who stated that there was a disproportionate percentage of particular ethnic groups who were stopped] saying. I don’t know where they went to school, but they certainly didn’t take a math course, or a logic course.”
Is that so, sir?
