The "Malignant Crime": Urban Arson in the 1970s

(picture from FilthyMess.com)

By 1970, almost every major US city was suffering from severe economic turmoil. Poor and working-class neighborhoods were hit especially hard, with the biggest weight of the burden coming down on people of color.

I was spurred to write this post by the following bit of information from a Chicago Reader article on the history of the Ukrainian Village neighborhood.

[The 60s and 70s] was a tumultuous time for the villages. Real estate values plummeted as landlords neglected their buildings and speculators sat on vacant land and abandoned property. Mom-and-pop businesses along Chicago Avenue fell like dominoes. The arson rate in the area was so high that in 1976 Mayor Richard J. Daley convened a task force to address the crisis.

It was no surprise to read that Ukie-V suffered what was called "the urban crisis" in the 1970s, of course. But the bit on arson struck me. I recalled seeing pictures like the following, and reading something a while back about a massive arson epidemic in the South Bronx in the early 1970s. I also recalled some scenes from Downtown81 shot on the Lower East Side in 1981 in which every other building was a pile of rubble (also see Alphabet City (1984), whose "plot" is structured around a hired arson). I started asking questions like: Was this a widespread problem in cities all over the US? Why was it a problem at this time? What would motivate someone to, apparently, destroy properties in city? Who was involved, and with what interests?

The poster of the picture above gives the following caption:

It was pretty bad in those days as buildings burned down weekly. All arsons commissioned by landlords. These arsons occurred in all of the areas of the city inhabited by lower income minorities. Neighborhoods in Brooklyn like Brownsville, Bed Stuy and East New York. In Manhattan there was the Lower East Side and Harlem and of course the South Bronx.

I'll get to the "commissioned by landlords" bit in a moment. For now, just think about the scale of the arson crisis: all over Lower East Side, Brooklyn, Bronx, Harlem, etc. As it turns out, the problem of arson in the South Bronx, in particular, was particularly acute. From wikipedia:

In the 1970s, the Bronx was plagued by a wave of arson. The burning of buildings was mostly in the South Bronx, concentrated especially along Westchester Avenue and in West Farms. The most common explanation of what occurred was that landlords decided to burn their buildings and take the insurance money as profit.^[39] Competing explanations blamed the insurance companies —since their non-renewals of policies might have encouraged the landlords— or the residents themselves. After the destruction of many buildings in the South Bronx, the arsons slowed significantly in the later part of the decade, but the after-effects were still felt into the early 1990s.

The problem wasn't confined to New York. As a 1977 Time article noted:

"Arson is a barometer of urban decay," says New York City Deputy Chief Fire Marshal John Barracato, "and most city fathers are ashamed to admit they have this problem." But the ruinous dimensions cannot be hidden. In New York City's South Bronx, where Jimmy Carter took an impromptu walking tour earlier this month, there have been more than 7,000 fires in the past two years. "The destruction is reminiscent of the bombed-out cities in Europe," says Bronx District Attorney Mario Merola, who was a navigator in World War II. Chicago's Humboldt Park area has some 400 charred, abandoned buildings. In Detroit, 10,000 houses stand vacant, victims of fire. "The city is burning down," said an anguished Lieut. Robert McClary, head of Detroit's fire-fraud squad.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,945795-2,00.html#ixzz0e8X3PnKc

This is shocking stuff. Chicago, Boston, New York, Detroit and the list goes on. Over 400 buildings burned down in Humboldt Park. Views of flagship US cities reminiscent of bombed-out post-WWII European cities? Why was this allowed to happen?


As the Time article explains, and as most people seem to agree, there were strong economic motivations for landlords:

In ghetto areas like the South Bronx and Humboldt Park, landlords often see arson as a way of profitably liquidating otherwise unprofitable assets. The usual strategy: drive out tenants by cutting off the heat or water; make sure the fire insurance is paid up; call in a torch.

Of course, the Time article seems to want to attribute the majority of arson in impoverished neighborhoods to deviant youth and "hate". There can be no doubt that there were at least some cases of arson in, say, Humboldt Park committed by nihilistic youth destroying buildings for the fun of it. But it seems pretty implausible to claim that anything like the majority of cases were committed on this basis. Moreover, even if they were, it would be a mistake to attribute the causes solely to the pathologies of "drug pushers" and "deviant youth". After all, the arson epidemics were concentrated in neighborhoods ravaged by disinvestment, high unemployment, slumlording, economic devastation, redlining, racism and massive drops in population.

Sociologist James Brady, who was the director of the City of Boston Arson Strike Force in the early 80s, has done a lot of work on this topic, and skewers the classic conservative thinking characteristic of the "deviance" explanation motivating the 1977 Time article. According to Brady:

Traditional methods of dealing with the problem are based on a view of arsonists as pyromaniacs or vandals. [But, there is a] clear link between the policies of banks and insurance companies, on the one hand, and the arson-for-profit schemes of organized crime, professional arsonists, shady landlords, and corrupt public officials... The dramatic upsurge of arson fires in the United States since 1960 has made a shambles of these assurances. Arson now outstrips all other "index" crimes in terms of injuries, deaths, and property losses, forcing us to rethink both our current control measures and our notions about the causes of this menace.

Brady continues:

I argue that the routine profit-making practices of banks, realtors, and insurance companies lead to the processes of abandonment, gentrification, and neighborhood decline which destabilize urban communities and provide the context and motivation for several varieties of arson. Organized crime syndicates, professional firesetters, and corrupt officials all figure prominently in arson-for-profit schemes, but the urban economic context also lies behind the fires of vandals and small property owners desperate to escape losing investments by means of convenient fires.This seems to me to be basically right on. Other studies have also constructed models whereby the best profit-maximizing strategy for certain banks, insurance companies, and landlords is basically a combination of abandonment and professionally-commissioned arson by hired "torches".

I find this heartbreaking. We don't need to talk about arson in order to grasp the inhuman, cold, calculated cruelty of slum-lording, blockbusting, redlining, etc. But this pushes things to another level entirely. Good ol' capitalism, indeed.

The role of public officials in this cruel process would be worth looking into more. Brady discusses it some, but it seems like all levels of government can be indicted for the prevalence of this phenomenon. They (public officials) literally stood and watched as powerful organizations set fire to poor (largely black and latino) neighborhoods. There's something very Katrina-esque about this whole thing.

Examples of this phenomenon abound. For instance, as David Harvey points out:

Something ominous began to happen in 2006. The rate of foreclosures in low-income areas of older US cities began to increase. Officialdom and the media took very little notice because, as had happened many years before in the early stages of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the communities affected were low-income, mainly African-American or immigrant (Hispanics), in cities like Cleveland and Detroit that were in any case already blighted and deteriorated. It was only in mid-2007, when the foreclosure wave had spread to white middle class areas as well as to the US South (Florida in particular) and Southwest (California), where new housing tract developments, often in peripheral areas, were becoming vulnerable, that officialdom started to take notice and the mainstream press began to comment.

One moral of the story, as the crisis in Haiti is reminding us everyday, that we should never underestimate the propensity of capitalism to extract profits from the most heinous human crises and disasters. As if anyone (except Obama and the Democrats) has forgotten, its worth recalling here as well that our for-profit health insurance industry cashes in everyday on human suffering. It's not for nothing that those on the Left call capitalism an exploitative system.

The other moral seems to be that the powers-that-be don't value black and latino life in the same way that they care about white life. Kayne's claim that "George Bush doesn't care about black people" is to the point, only we might substitute any number of politicians or organizations for Bush in that sentence. People can say what they want about Barack Obama, the person... but Barack Obama the president is the same company as Bush on this score.

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Racism, "Uptown Update" and Policing Comments

As a resident of Chicago's Uptown neighborhood, I regularly read the neighborhood blog, "Uptown Update", because it has unparalleled coverage of what's going on in the hood. As a source of updates, facts and news in the neighborhood, there really isn't a better source. From what I've seen since I've lived here, UU has done a lot of good and is in many ways a great neighborhood forum and conduit for community.

But they run a tight ship over at Uptown Update. They have a strict political line and they always see to it that current events are massaged to bolster their political aims.

On the issue of gentrification, they are unequivocally, undeniably, openly very much in favor of it. And by 'they', I don't mean just the authors of the blog, but especially some of their readership.

Given my experience posting comments on their blog, I know that they very strictly police what gets put up and what does not. First of all, nothing is posted until a site administrator publishes it. They don't go and police after the fact, but they screen every single comment on their website.

Now I know that doesn't necessarily mean that the blog's authors therefore agree wholeheartedly with everything that gets posted. But I've noticed some trends.

When I attempted to post a critical comment about a post on gentrification a couple of months ago, the folks at Uptown Update decided not to allow my comment to go up. It wasn't shrill or beligerent; it was a short, tightly-argued paragraph attempting to complicate the facile choice that UU was pushing on the issue (i.e. "either we can have a violent slum or we can have Lincoln Park North: there is no alternative"). I've had similar experiences when it comes to posting comments that have a critical angle that complicates the line UU is pushing: they just don't want to hear this stuff and they don't want anyone else to either.

But for all that policing and scouring of comments that they do, they sure let a lot of racist bullshit fly on their comment boards. Here's a recent gem:

" jimo says: August 13, 2009 4:54 PM Let me guess, if we had more programs out there to help these troubled youths, we wouldn't have these problems, right? LOL

What a pack of animals...can't wait for new members to move into WY...

How sad....

JJO"

The context of the comment is a recent gang scuffle (i.e. a shouting match with some bottle throwing and shoving) in Uptown that was captured on video by a resident and made it on the evening news. The first 'prefatory' comment suggests that if these teenagers had grown up in different social circumstances, it wouldn't have made much difference (i.e. they're 'essentially bad'). The next comment, "What a pack of animals", refers to the black teenagers involved in the scuffle in the video. When "Jimo" says "can't wait until new members move into" Wilson Yard, a new development in the area that will include social housing for low income residents, "Jimo's" basically saying that any (black) people who might move into the social housing are animals and criminals (and, presumably, shouldn't be allowed to move in at all). Combine that with "Jimo's" preface and you have yourself a pretty fucked up conservative tirade complete with dehumanizing claims about poor black residents in Uptown.

So stuff like that gets airtime all the time over at UU, but if you dare say anything critical they silence you.

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David Harvey on 1970s New York

I'm currently reading David Harvey's excellent, clear, and politically sharp A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005: Oxford University Press). I couldn't help but share a little bit of what I'm getting out of the book.

While I might post later on more holistic considerations raised by the text, I'd like to just focus this post on some of the facts and analysis he offers regarding 1970s New York city and the trajectory the city (and many others) have taken since.

To put some background in place, I should mention that (as Harvey notes) the early 1970s were marked by a global economic crisis of capitalist accumulation (i.e. profits were down across the board). Unemployment reached levels not seen since the onset of the Great Depression, and it was clear by the mid 70s that the "long boom" of the post-War era was over. The OPEC oil embargo, and the spike in oil prices, put an exclamation point on all of this.

Now to New York. We must recall that New York had a severe fiscal crisis which arose from "capitalist restructuring and deindustrializaion" which had for several years steadily eroded the economic base of the cit. Moreover, the rapid suburbanization and "white flight" of the 60s had "left a good deal of the city impoverished". The result, unsurprisingly, was social revolt and unrest among marginalized populations in the city in the late 60s.

This is what Washington called the "urban crisis" at the time, which afflicted nearly all major US cities in the late 60s/early 70s. As Harvey points out, "the expansion of public employment and public provision -facilitated through generous federal spending- was seen as the solution". But when the crisis of the early 70s hit, tax revenues dropped sharply and with it Federal aid.

Now this is where the deep fiscal crisis in New York emerged from. Due to the above, "the gap between reveunes and outlays in the NYC budget (already large because of profligate borrowing over many years) increased". The city was tanking.

But in the midst of this crisis there emerged a cabal of NY investment bankers and leaders of major financial institutions (led by Walter Wriston of Citibank) who refused to roll over the city's rising debt. This, as intended by the leaders of finance, forced the city into technical bankruptcy.

In the wake of the crisis and the subsequent bailout that was required to upright the capsized city budget, entirely new institutions were set up that attempted to blot out the sediments of social struggles that had shaped the old.

The financial elites now in control of city finances "had first claim on city tax revenues in order to first pay off bondholders: whatever was left over went to essential services". The effect, Harvey argues, "was to curb the aspriations of the city's powerful municipal unions, to implement wage freezes and cutbacks in public employment and social provision (education, public health, transportation), and to impose user fees (tuition was introduced into the CUNY system for the first time). "

Now I dont think Harvey is out of line when he suggests that this development represented a "coup by the financial institutions against the democratically elected government of New York City, and it was every bit as effective as the military coup that had occured earlier in Chile".

Meanwhile, Gerald Ford's Tresury Secretary, William Simon (a supporter of the military coup against Allende in Chile, and later a head of the super-conservative "Olin Foundation") strongly advised the president to withhold federal support to the deep fiscal crisis in New York City. ("Ford to City: Drop Dead, was the headline in the New York Daily News"). The idea here was that if any bailout of the city should occur, it should be seized upon as a political opportunity to restructure it in ways amenable to those who were appalled by the gains made by social movements in the city throughout the 20th century. Thus, any bailout must be made "so punitive, the overall experience so painful, that no city, no political subdivision would ever be tempted to go down the same road".

The result was that "within a few years, many of the historic acheivements of the New York working class were undone" and much of the city infrastructure (e.g. the subway system) "deteriorated markedly for lack of investment or even maintenance". Thus life in New York became "gruelling and the civic atmosphere turned mean". "Working-class and immigrant New York was thrust into the shadows, to be ravaged by racism and a crack cocaine epidemic of epic proportions in the 1980s that left many young people either dead, incarcerated, or homeless, only to be bludgeoned by the AIDS epidemic that carried over into the 1990s."

Thus, "redistribution through criminal violence became one of the few serious options for the poor, and the authorities responded by criminalizing whole communities of impoverished and marginalized populations".

"The victims were blamed, and Giuliani was to claim fame by taking revenge on behalf of an incresingly affluent Manhattan bourgeoisie tired of having to confront the effects of such devastation on their own doorsteps".

Of course, conventional wisdom has it that "(non-white) criminals took over New York in the 1970s" and the righteous Mayor Giuliani came in and "cleaned the city up". Of course, no one will dispute that the economic climate changed drasitically in New York from 1979 to 1999, but this is not tantamount to 'progress' in some holistic sense. The change from 1979 to 2009 perfectly exemplifies the contradictions internal to the logic of gentrification. Certain concrete features of the city improved (infrastructure, tax revenues, saftey, investment, etc.), this cannot be denied. But the condition of this resuscitation of the city was that poor and marginalized populations would be displaced and forced elsewhere, that city political and economic institutions would be restructured to the liking of capitalists (i.e. "to make a good business climate in the city"), that much of the city was evacuated of 'undesirables' to make room for a new set of professionals, fianncial technocrats, capitalists, and others able to afford preposterous rents and costs of living.

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Samhita on the culture of police brutality

Read this. (and comments)

And then read this.

Here's her finest moment, I think:

Last Tuesday's post on the man in Oakland that killed 4 police officers yielded heated responses and I wanted to follow up after everyone (especially me) had some time to mull things over. I want to draw from some of the themes that came up and to update the news that broke last Tuesday night that Lovelle Mixon was also linked to the rape of a 12 year old girl. This act, along with the murders of John Hege, Mark Dunakin, Ervin Romans and Daniel Sakai, are reprehensible acts. I am stating this upfront so that it is not lost that this is a tragedy and there is no excuse for this kind of tragedy.

There seemed to be some concern that the way I approached my discussion of this topic made me sound like an apologist. Perhaps a matter of semantics but despite some folks understanding it was not my intention, there still seemed to be a need to accuse me of it. To clarify, there is a big difference between understanding what creates a condition/thought/action and then justifying that said action.

Thea Lim at Racialicious gave a very thorough breakdown of the fall-out around my post last week and the idea of trying to hold two thoughts at once. She writes,

Now, Mixon actually was guilty. But Mixon's guilt doesn't neutralise the rottenness of the system. In other words, just because Mixon was actually a dangerous felon doesn't mean that we are absolved from the duty to question how justice and innocence is defined and meted out in our culture.

It is not only possible for us to hold these two facts at once, but it is imperative in understanding the consequences of Mixon's actions for the greater community in Oakland and also for understanding how the youth in Oakland are dealing with this atrocity. Perhaps the huge backlash against my piece was due to a desire to use Mixon as an excuse to voice their own racism, whether conscious or subconscious. As lefties it is our job to point out these subtle nuances, as the implications are deadly.

Feminist blogosphere ftw!

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