In the 2018 State of the Borough, I wrote about how 2017 was a tough year ‘to be a person’. Little did we know.
(OK some of us knew….)
There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Are getting so much resistance from behind
- "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield
My fellow Americans (and to anyone else who’s out there),
the 2026 State of the Borough is going to leave you with some homework
assignments, so get ready (plus most of us are snowed in, so what else are you
really doing????)
Let’s not focus on America for a minute.
Eva Geiringer Schloss was born in Vienna, Austria in 1929. In 1938, after Austria was annexed to
Germany, her family relocated to the Netherlands to escape persecution from,
you guessed it (some people do not deserve to be named). Settling in Amsterdam, Eva’s family befriended
Anne Frank and her family, as Eva and Anne were the same age. As you can guess where this is headed, on her
15th birthday, Eva’s family was captured and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau,
though unlike Anne, she will survive. Eva’s mother later marries the survivor/widower
Otto Frank, and she becomes Anne’s stepsister posthumously. In the 1950s Eva moves to London, where she
will later marry and raise three daughters.
We are all familiar with The Diary of Anne Frank, who genuinely
and earnestly captured teenage life as a prisoner in her own city, hanging on
to survival by a well-placed bookcase.
She bore witness to her situation pre-Auschwitz. Eva picks up Anne’s torch and dedicates her
life to Holocaust education, writing books, establishing a trust in Anne’s name,
giving speeches and recording oral history recountments of her lived
experience. Schloss is quoted in 2024
saying, “We must never forget the terrible consequences of treating people as ‘other’”.
Never forget.
Eva Schloss died on January 3, 2026 in London at the age of
96. (1)
The ranks of those who bore witness to the atrocities and violence
of the World War II era are thinning.
In mid-September 2021, my then-fourth grader came home from
school with a 9/11 ‘craft’. It was a
heart made from construction paper, designed to look like the American flag,
and where the white stars would be, two vertical white rectangles on a blue
background took their place.
I looked at this ‘craft’ in horror, yet I hung it on our refrigerator
in full view, not because I think it imparts a better understanding of that
fateful day to my littles, but as a reminder to myself that I will need to
impart a better understanding of that time to my littles.
Fourth grade social studies curriculum is New York State
history. Unlike my experience of
building the classroom plumbing disaster, which was supposed to recreate the
Erie Canal, kids now have a page dedicated to September 11th, 2001,
in their textbooks. One page.
I was disturbed to realize that a day I witnessed is now in
a history textbook, tangible and verifiable, unlike the ‘stories’ of decades
and centuries past. I, like many of you,
have first-person lived experiences of that time.
This September will be the 25th anniversary of
9/11. Though many have passed since
then, many of us are still here.
Never forget.
We joke about the ‘before times’ when it came to Covid and
the pandemic lockdowns of 2020, but we all bore witness to those early,
confusing and trying times.
Or did we?
I can clearly remember listening to two life-long friends argue
about the severity of the virus in New York City. One friend lived near Elmhurst hospital, one area
of Queens that was severely impacted by the onset of the virus. He spoke of falling asleep to the constant
wail of ambulance sirens, and the snarling traffic jams backing on to his
street, still a few city blocks from the hospital itself. The other friend had since moved a few states
away from their childhood Brooklyn home and told the other that the virus was a
hoax, an exaggeration, a scare tactic.
He believed none of the news coming out of New York.
These two friends are still friends, but what happens when
our experiences diverge and our understanding of the ‘truth’ bifurcates? How can you nullify someone else’s lived
experience, when their story doesn’t seem to match your truth?
There are volumes upon volumes of claims, quotes, articles,
internet posts and news broadcasts regarding the integrity and security of the
American election process over the past few years. They are not all telling the same story. There are three sides to every story, yours, mine
and the truth. Which one do we believe?
I’ve seen posts made by friends on social media promoting
something I do not believe to be true, but they do. They may not see the same data that I see, either. What is the true narrative in these fractured
times?
So here’s your homework: America, we must bear witness to our
lived experience. Right now. Not hearsay on the socials, not AI generated
clips, not ramblings of the unhinged, but what our five senses tell us to be
true.
In 2020, with the presidential election in full force and
pandemic workarounds in place, I volunteered to be an election worker in
Westchester County (NY). PPE’ed to the
hilt, we helped execute a busy but orderly election day. I’ve worked almost every primary and general
election day since November 2020. It is
my lived experience that voting in New York is safe and secure. We have procedures and controls for safety in
the polling place. We have procedures and
controls for issuing ballots. We have
procedures and controls for handling the machines and back-up plans for broken
machines. We have procedures and
controls for handling absentee ballots and an affidavit process for questionable
voters. Scenarios are planned for and documented. Board of Elections staff make the rounds and
are always on call. NYS election law has
changed over these five years. Those
changes worked their way into our training and then into practice on election
day. I have seen this all first-hand and
I believe our elections to be secure and professionally managed. How have you
formed your opinion regarding the safety of our elections?
In the summer of 1999, I interned with the Office of the
United States Trade Representative (USTR) in Washington, DC. The Trade Representative is an ambassador level
position in the Executive branch who negotiates global trade deals and legally defends
the US when other countries violate said agreements. Ten weeks spent researching NGO positions on
trade policy as a college junior does not qualify one as a tariff expert, but
when I read the news about arbitrary tariff rates slapped on countries and not
products, a part of me remembers this is not how it works.
Never forget.
Some have denied the Holocaust ever even happened. Some have said 9/11 was an ‘inside job’. Some don’t believe election results are valid
and should be certified. The antidote
lies in the witness born by those who’ve been there first-hand.
The State of The Union is going to broadcast about an hour
after this is published. I don’t think
it’s going to sound anything like this blog post. (I’ll take that as a win for the Seventh Borough
News). Bear witness to this spectacle. Does it gel with your lived experience? Or
does it resonate with hearsay on the socials, AI generated nonsense or
ramblings of the unhinged? America, you
don’t need to be fired up by vitriol and rhetoric. Let your muscle memory kick in. It’s still there perhaps buried a little, but
still there. We’ve been on a bit of a bender lately, but I believe in you. I believe
in us.
Never Forget.
And
(1 (1) Nationalww2museum.org
