Laws are specific to location, in the country or the city. There’s a million of them. What’s legal in one spot may get you hard time in another. Because I hunt and use firearms during certain seasons, I’m well aware of the laws governing guns in both country and city. These laws vary from state to state or even between municipalities. I can legally holster my 9 mm. handgun and walk around anywhere I want in New York State, except in New York City and Buffalo. In general I feel no need to be armed, except in the woods. There was one exception.
I lived on E. 7th St. and Ave. C from 1990-1995. It was an especially tough time to be living in downtown NYC. The bombed out, free wheeling days of the 1980’s Artsy East Village had given birth to proposed mass gentrification and the streets being flooded with guns, heroin and crack. These two social manifestations in the same neighborhood were not unrelated. City government and its police departments either specifically enabled the flow of drugs or turned a blind eye. Acquisition of real estate was, as usual, the goal. Empty lots and crumbling ruins were picked up for a song during these turbulent times. It was the wild east and I kept a loaded double barrel 12 ga. at my door. Eventually I moved north, to the mountains. But, the gentrifiers hung tight. They knew the chaos would not last.
The state was willing to look the other way for a certain amount of time as these inner city neighborhoods generationally imploded under the weight of poverty, drug addiction, homelessness and gun violence; as monied interests lined up for a piece when the smoke cleared. Then, when the time was right, the “rule of law” rolled in with the ultimate power of the state, easily arresting and incarcerating an entire generation of young men of color. My shotgun at the door was of little interest to anyone, other than the twin, crackhead sisters, climbing though the window. One was sweet as the pie, the other would just as soon slit your throat. You never knew which was going to show up.
Cycles of boom and blight have been common in NYC for hundreds of years. Neighborhoods like the Lower East Side and East Village have a rich cyclic socioeconomic history going back all the way to Corlears Hook— the area between 14th St. and the wall (Wall Street) west of the East River to Broadway. This was the site of Corlears Massacre, where Dutch East India Director Willam Kieft brutally attacked the peaceful Canarsee Indians in 1643. This massacre spread to Jersey City and developed into Kieft’s War. The Dutch depredations continued, reverberating up the Hudson into the Catskills, mobilizing the Lenape, Esopus and surrounding Iroquois and Algonquin tribes. These traditional enemies found common ground in their hatred of the well armed New Amsterdam Dutch. The good relations with both the coastal and mountain Indians that the Dutch had developed before Kieft’s reign would never return. One egotistical man ruined everything. Once again, you can’t write about any neighborhood in New York State without considering the plight of the Indians.
After the rule of law moved back into the East Village in the 1990’s I can’t foresee how this area will ever experience a cycle of blight, or for that matter the small village vibe, ever again. The money that has transformed Houston St. and below into a downtown Times Square was so great it will never be allowed to be lost if the state has anything to say about it. Taxes baby! But, that’s probably what Willam Kieft thought. New York City (New Amsterdam) was a “corpocracy” run by the Dutch East India Company in 1643. They packed the rule of law along with their blunder-busts as they crossed the Atlantic in company ships. Little has changed. International corporate interests decide when and where the rule of law will be applied in Manhattan. It has to suit the bottom line. The NY urban frontier is disappearing. It started a long time ago. Ask the Canarsee.
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