This Week's Stories
GG's quick takes on recent NYC news


Week of 10 September 2001:

Recovering
People throughout the United States are buying and displaying American flags, giving blood in record numbers, even signing up for military service, and there is a nationwide candle-lighting vigil at 7 p.m. tonight. People throughout the world continue to follow the aftermath of Tuesday's attack on the World Trade Center (which made virtually every front page, such as the 146 front pages compiled by the Poynter Institute).

New Yorkers, meanwhile, are focusing on the details of rescue and recovery.

In lower Manhattan, the emphasis is still on rescuing survivors. By late yesterday morning, Mayor Rudy Giuliani said that only 184 bodies or body parts had been found, and that only 35 of them had been identified. There are, he said, 4,763 on the official list of the missing (among them 300 firefighters and 60 police officers), and their friends and family members have posted photocopies of their snapshots on telephone polls and bulletin boards and storefront windows. Below 14th Street, security is tight, all but emergency vehicles are still banned, schools and many businesses remain closed and even the most basic of deliveries, such as newspapers and the mail, have been halted. Some residential buildings remain without electricity, telephone service or water.

The rest of the city is attempting a semblance of normalcy, not always with complete success. Most subways and schools, bridges and tunnels (except below 14th Street) have been reopened, as have Broadway theaters. The New York Stock Exchange is scheduled to reopen on Monday. But many of Wall Street's largest firms, in scrambling to find new office space, are already signing new leases, some of them lasting for years, in places like Jersey City.

All three major New York-area airports were reopened, but then abruptly closed down again after ten people were taken into custody at Kennedy International and La Guardia airports for questioning to determine whether they were part of a plot to attack American targets. Law enforcement officials said one of those held was carrying a false pilot's identification. Authorities reportedly believe they have thwarted two new attempts to hijack planes.

The primary election that was called off after five hours on Tuesday has been rescheduled for September 25, with a runoff election if necessary scheduled for Thursday, October 11th. The Board of Elections faces even more problems than usual because of the attack, among them that the board's headquarters is not far from the World Trade Center. (See Campaign Trail)

Bomb threats at dozens of buildings, including the Empire State Building and Grand Central Terminal, led to their being evacuated.

There was also a start in efforts for rebuilding over the long term. President George W. Bush, who is scheduled to visit New York today, agreed with Congressional leaders early this morning on a $40 billion emergency aid package, with $20 billion of that going to New York. The New York Legislature passed a bill, which Governor George Pataki signed into law shortly afterward, authorizing the state to spend up to $5 billion in federal aid, and committed up to $500 million in state money to the effort. The New York City Council, unable to meet in City Hall, held a special session in an ornate room in the New York Public Library on 42nd Street, to pass a measure intended to help rebuild downtown. The 46 members present (out of 51) voted unanimously to call on the State Legislature to permit the city to borrow an additional $2.5 billion in bonds backed by the federal government. Council Speaker Peter Vallone and Public Advocate Mark Green praised the efforts of Mayor Rudy Giuliani, city workers and agencies, and emergency personnel. "In acts of great heroism and in gestures of common affection, we have seen the strength and spirit of New York," Vallone said. "This council will do everything in its power to provide the resources to return life to lower Manhattan."

Aftermath
As rescue teams searched through piles of debris, the toll of the Tuesday attack on the World Trade Center began to become clearer to the shocked city. Some survivors were found in the rubble, and rescue workers expressed sad doubt that there would be many more. Names of victims were released. It is almost certain there will be thousands more. Three companies in the trade center said they were missing a total of 1,500 employees, and some estimated that deaths from the New York attack could reach 10,000. Relatives visited hospitals and city centers hoping to find loved ones they had not seen or heard from.

Investigators began to assemble a picture of how the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field were hijacked and who might have been behind the attacks, pursuing clues in Boston and Florida. The federal government still did not blame anyone explicitly for the attacks.

Yet, despite this, some regular activities will resume in New York today. Schools others than those south of 14th Street are set to reopen two hours late, Broadway shows will go on, and Governor George Pataki will announce a new date for New York£s primary election, which was canceled on Tuesday. Stock exchange officials spoke of reopening Friday or Monday.

The city and country started to consider how to move on. "We're going to rebuild," Mayor Giuliani vowed at his morning briefing yesterday. "We're going to come out of this stronger than we were before. Emotionally stronger, politically stronger, economically stronger."

Attack
In what is being called the worst terrorist attack in United States history, two hijacked commercial airplanes crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center yesterday morning, causing the buildings to collapse. A few hours later, a third building in the complex collapsed, probably from the heat of the fire. A third hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon outside Washington D.C. Some 1,100 who were injured were treated in hospitals last night and 41 were declared dead, but Mayor Rudy Giuliani said that it was too early to estimate the number of deaths. Some 50,000 people worked in the two buildings.

As rescue workers continue to search for survivors beneath the mountains of rubble - two men were rescued from under 30 feet of rubble -- the mayor urged people to stay out of Manhattan if they can. Lower Manhattan has been evacuated beneath Canal Street, and only emergency vehicles will be allowed beneath 14th Street. Both public schools and Catholic schools are closed. Postal service will not resume until Thursday.

Virtually every article in all the newspapers is about one or another aspect of the attack. The most useful site to keep up on the emergency may be the city's Web site, which lists the latest from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the Board of Education and so forth. For a list of emergency phone numbers, where you can give blood, an account of the first hours, and a look at New York City's experience with terrorism and anti-terrorist policies and practices, please go to Gotham Gazette,

"We all have suffered a terrible trauma," said a spokesman for St.Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village, the closest trauma center to the scene, and by "we," he meant all New Yorkers. "We need to understand it, and to talk about it."

Primary Today
The polls are open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. The doors will shut promptly at 9. Every voter should have gotten a card telling you where your poll site is. If you did not receive one, or cannot find it underneath the pile of campaign literature, you can call the Board of Elections at (212)VOTE-NYC (212-868-3692). You can also call the Immigration Hotline, run by Catholic Charities, at 800-566-7636, where counselors speak 13 languages including Spanish and Mandarin. Online, you can try the Web site "Registered to Vote or Not"

If something goes wrong, and the Board of Elections does not adequately address your complaint, here are some voters' hotlines:

  • The New York Public Interest Research Group: 212-822-0282
  • The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund: 212-966-5932
  • The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund: 1-800-328-2322 or 212-739-7579
  • The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund: 1-800-221-7822
  • The NY State Attorney General's Office (for disability-access problems): 212-416-8250

All of these groups are interested in trying to get the specific problem resolved, and also in getting an overview of the troubles. The first is also conducting an extensive election monitoring project, and the second, an exit survey.

For more information on voting (learning your election district; differentiating among paper ballots; the phone numbers of the Board of Elections' borough offices.), and to tell us about your experience voting today (and learn about other New Yorkers'), please go to New York Votes: An Interactive Diary.

It is not too late to figure out who to vote for. Remember, some races will be decided by literally a handful of votes. Turn to our Guide For The Last-Minute Voter

And for election results, when they become available, check out our Primary Election Results Page

Primary Tomorrow
1.Differences
Articles in various newspapers have focused on the differences in the six major mayoral candidates' positions. See Campaign Trail for 9/8 and 9/10 for a summary of their positions on education, housing, police, parks, health care, taxes and transportation.

2. Debates, Democratic
In the last two debates before tomorrow's primary, the Democratic mayoral candidates tried to distinguish themselves and their positions. Alan Hevesi, Mark Green and Fernando Ferrer all said they were prepared, if necessary, to raise taxes to finance the public school system. Peter Vallone said he would "absolutely not" support a tax increase. Fernando Ferrer called for legislation barring racial profiling by police officers, and Hevesi said at the debate that he considered that a good idea. But both Green and Vallone described such legislation as unnecessary and impractical.

The harshest exchange of the debate, and perhaps of the campaign, came when Vallone attacked Ferrer for running an "us against them" campaign for mayor, and specifically pointed to Ferrer's endorsement by Sonny Carson, an African-American political organizer who has called himself anti-white. "When you're talking about two cities, that's what happens: you encourage these kind of divisive lunatics to come out."

Ferrer replied that he did not ask for Carson's endorsement, and said "When too many New Yorkers find the pursuit of decent housing at a price that they can afford a crisis in their lives, they live in the other New York..To confront those questions and those crises in people's lives is a unifying issue."

3. Debate, Republican
In the only televised debate of the Republican primary, Herman Badillo attacked his opponent Michael Bloomberg as unfit to be mayor because of a 32-page booklet, compiled by Bloomberg's employees a decade ago as a gift, that is a collection of jokes that denigrate women, Jews and gay people. Bloomberg replied that the book "doesn't reflect me. I apologize if anybody' s offended by it. But I didn't say those things. I didn't write the book." In their closing remarks, Bloomberg said "I can bring jobs and I can bring housing and I can help the school system," and Badillo criticized Bloomberg because his lawyers have contacted one of the authors of the booklet to remind her that she had signed a confidentiality agreement. "Let the woman who wrote the book tell the public who you really are. And if that happens, people are not going to vote for a $30 million commercial. They're going to vote for a real person with experience."

4. Getting Out The Vote
The candidates are holding "Get Out The Vote" rallies today, and no wonder. The results of tomorrow's primary hinge on which mayoral candidate is most effective in getting his supporters to the polls for an election that usually draws only about a fifth of the city's registered voters. Some are predicting that the competitive races for City Council will bring more people than usual to the polls. Others say that many New Yorkers perceive the four leading Democratic candidates for mayor as barely distinguishable from one another - or equally competent - and will thus have little incentive to vote.

The candidates in competitive races for City Council are especially concerned with getting their supporters to the polls, for two basic reasons: 1. Because Democrats dominate this town, the winners of the Democratic primary with very few exceptions go on to become the elected officials, meaning that the primary in effect determines the outcome in November; those New Yorkers waiting to vote until November will have little opportunity to make any real choices. 2. As little as a single vote could literally make the difference between victory and defeat in some close races.

5. New York Votes
For information on the primary races, see our special election coverage on Gotham Gazette's Searchlight On Campaign 2001, especially our Guide For The Last-Minute Voter, and New York Votes: An Interactive Diary: Will New York be another Florida? Does the electoral process discriminate against minorities? Have term limits and the campaign finance program created the election that you hoped for? How important are endorsements? What should a voter do before going to the polls? All six major candidates for mayor, as well as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and New York State Comptroller Carl McCall and others, answered some of these questions on our interactive diary. Now it is your turn to answer them and, starting tomorrow, one more - how did voting go?

Last week's stories...


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