Season 1 Episode 1 - Violence

Violence, the experience of it, the threat of it, the rumor of it has a tendency to make even the most familiar places foreign to us. It complicates our relationship with the city and allows fear to lurk in the back of our minds. In the episode below we’ll hear stories of New Yorkers confronting and anticipating the violence they've experienced in their city. 

Originally posted on CoLab Radio

Script

[INTRO]

Jess 0:13
From CoLab MIT, hello and welcome to the first episode of Here There Be Dragons. I’m Jess Myers. For this show, I spoke with seven New York natives from all over the city about safety and identity. The episode that followed are their stories and their experiences. This episode’s theme is violence in the city. In this episode we’ll hear from:

“I’m Fernando Montejo.”

“My name is Shawn.”

“My name is Justin Steil.”

“My name is Karmen Cheng.”

Each of the stories that follow, talks about the violence in the city. Violence, the experience of it, the threats of it, the rumor of it has a tendency to make even the most familiar places foreign to us. And the stories that follow, we’ll hear the experiences of New Yorkers confronting and anticipating violence, and moving beyond it. The next voice you’ll hear is Fernando. 

Fernando 0:59
I am Fernando Montejo. I’m 27 years old. I’m currently a student at MIT, doing a city planning, master’s program. I’m also a partner, and a brother and a son, and a friend, many friends. I was born in Corona Queens in New York City. We actually got robbed there. That was my first, I think, my first actual memory, as a kid of that has scarred me for life. Two young kids came in masked, I don’t know what they had in their hands, there are times I think there were guns I think they were also like hanging curtains. Whatever it was, it was scary like they beat up my uncle, they threw me and my sister down to the couch. My mom was on the other side like, I remember my uncle’s head was bleeding. They stole a few things and then they left. So, thankfully, like nothing drastic happened but we were all scarred for life. Especially my sister and I, so that was like my early childhood probably under five, and then you know like growing up early teenager years that was in Junction Boulevard which is a much more like mixed commercial area. We never left our door closed like it was always open. And even till these days like our friends’ porch, like the main gate of the house is open which is interesting because we haven’t gotten robbed even since that first time. 

Jess 2:31
For Fernando, the impact of the break-in was not stronger than his cultural and family ties to Corona. But what about when violence is not an event, but a commonplace fixture in your life? When Shawn’s stepbrother joined the gang in the Bronx, he and his siblings became targets in their neighborhood. Dealing with gang tension meant understanding impassable boundaries. 

Shawn 2:52
My name is Shawn. I’m 23 years old. I am partially raised in the uptown part of the Bronx Gun Hill Road area. I’m a business rotational associate at Google. 

One day, I remember, I was riding a bicycle which is five blocks at where we stayed. And my dad found out we got a big trouble. Our bikes got stolen. It was a big thing. I never pictured it as a violent space until that wake-up call that he gave us. And then also getting older and becoming less naive around the other things that were happening around me and then watching my stepbrother go through a lot of things that he went through kind of opened my eyes to what is actually happening in the danger of it. So my oldest stepbrother, at the time, he was about 12 years older than I was and he was starting to get involved in gangs. And there was a turf war happening around the time that I was caught at the pool. And my dad felt like he didn’t want us being around that. So you know, it made it really dangerous, you know. I felt that gangs made it difficult for us to just be out and about because we were targets. And I didn’t really think of that at the time but now looking back at it, it makes sense as you…you know, why I wouldn’t go more north, or take the T train down the next three stops. Because you know, my stepbrother was a Blood and you know, there were Latin Kings around, there were Crips around. They were a bunch of other neighborhood groups which made it tricky to get around. 

Jess 4:43
In Shawn’s neighborhood, gangs drew the impassable boundaries. But the boundaries in Justin’s were drawn by rumors and anxieties around Harlem. He was told the upper eastern and west sides were safe, while other neighborhoods around it were not. But an act of violence in his neighborhood led him to question those messages. 

Justin 5:02
My name is Justin Steil. I am 37 years old. I am from the Upper West Side, W. 89th Street. And I am a professor. I think one of the things that struck me early on was the error of the messages I was getting about where I was safe and where I wasn’t safe. And where I should be and where I shouldn’t be. And because I think people generally felt: “Oh, upper east side, very safe.” I think the impression was Harlem, less safe. But, in fact, some of my experiences of violence as a child, there were primarily in some of the wealthiest, whitest neighborhoods. The most direct experience in violence that I had as a child was coming home from school one day with a friend of mine. And we were at the bus stop at 86th Street and Madison Avenue, which is just as the name suggests, is a very wealthy residential commercial district, full of people. And we were waiting for the bus and all of a sudden, I was hit very very hard in the back by a very hard object. And I turned around and someone had hit me with a stick, almost like a 2 x 4, but it wasn’t that thick. It was very solid but it wasn’t really quite that thick. And then this person who was with a couple of other people said, “Give me your bus pass.” And I wasn’t really thinking just out of impulse just held it tighter and this person tried to reach it out of my hand and I unthinkably just grabbed it tighter. And then this person punched me. This guy punched me in the face, and then I continued to holding it, and then the bus arrived, and I quickly ran onto the bus with my friend following behind. And then discovered that I was…my face, my nose was bleeding and bleeding down onto my… I went to this private school, so I was wearing a uniform above the shirt and tie, so then there was blood all over my tie and my shirt. The whole point of that story is that, you know, it’s in the site where stereotypically, I think most New Yorkers would think you’ll be most safe where I was most vulnerable. And I think sometimes in New York in that time period, there was this almost… I think especially among white mono-upper class New Yorkers that was… you know in the 70s I was just an infant but in the 80s and into the 90s of…just defused anxiety, defused fear of violence without much conception. When I was going to the church on the Riverside, for other reasons, we were going to the studio museum in Harlem and walking around Harlem. It could just be changed, but I was always safe and generally felt quite safe. So anyway, that just gave me the sense of that message I was getting about the places that were safe and the places that were not, might not be very accurate. 

Jess 8:13
On the Upper West side, defused anxiety made the boundaries clear. But for others, boundaries are drawn by necessity. When Karmen’s parents moved from China to New York in the 60s, the language barrier, meant Chinatown was the only place they could go. But gangs coming to the neighborhood forced them to make different decisions for their children. 

Karmen 8:33
My name is Karmen Cheng. I am 24 years old. And I grew up in the Lower East Side of New York, about five minutes outside of Chinatown. Currently, I am a first-year master’s student at MIT, studying urban planning. I think when my parents first moved to the area, safety is a concern but as immigrants, you go to where you can survive. And with limited English speaking skills, Chinatown was really the only place they could be at. And I would say… I don’t know specifically how safe or unsafe it was when my dad first moved there cause he moved there in the 60s. And I would say that the gangs were probably much worse. We were at their peak in the 80s. In Chinatown where I think they felt like it was a safe neighborhood. When I was growing up. When my brother was growing up, he is about 15 years older than me. My dad actually sent my brother to Connecticut where my uncle lived because he felt like there were a lot of gangs in Chinatown and that if he stayed in the neighborhood that he would get involved with them. So my dad actually sent him away when he was in high school. I wouldn’t say my brother is like a rebellious kid or a kid who seemed like he would get into gangs. But he’s someone that- peer pressure’s something that’s hard when you are young and I think my dad saw him as susceptible to peer pressure. And there were just so many people who were involved with gangs that it seemed…like it would be a likelihood. It wasn’t… I don’t know. I don’t know if they felt… my brother felt that he would be threatened if he didn’t join one. But I think he was just so common that my dad didn’t even want that possibility. 

Jess 10:35
In these uncertain moments of fear and anxiety, whose safety is considered the most important?

Karmen 10:40
During the 90s was when Giuliani became mayor and he was very much someone who transformed the city as a whole, not just Chinatown but all areas in the city to crack down on violence and… He had that broken-window sort of policy or approach to crime in the city. I think because of his era as mayor, a lot of city became safer, so I think there was a shift in safety in the city in general that Chinatown benefited from. 

Jess 11:25
For some, Giuliani’s policies benefitted their neighborhoods, but others saw how those policies privilege the safety of a few, and permanently label others as perpetrators. Leaving them vulnerable to violent policing. 

Justin 11:40

I definitely think that as I grew up I had this strong sense that New York City was changing and becoming… in the words that come to mind is safer and safer but I think it depends on safe for whom, exactly? and safe from what, exactly? And I think for my daily travels around the city I think in the 2000s, late 2000s It felt very safe and I think even in the late 1990s. I think there was this sense of this city was safer and safer, but not necessary for everyone. So I think there was through this time period I sense that for me, this city seemed much safer but still, it was often a very violent place for young black men. And there was also increasing sense of police impunity. And I remember very clearly that beating of Abner Louima which was just so horrific and sadistic and very much highlighted the vulnerability of especially young black men, to police violence. So I think that my sense of my own vulnerability decreased, as there is a sense of others’ vulnerability increased. 

Shawn 13:12
In the Bronx, with gangs, it just was what it was. That’s what I knew. That’s what I was born into. The cops was a new thing to me, And then, especially with the context of Trayvon Martin. And you know, that at my sophomore year for college and the build from there. It’s really colored my perspective on like, what is logical and what is not. And I guess I should probably check myself there in terms of trying to deconstruct why it’s natural and normal for there to be gang tension. And that for cops to agitate civilians. And my older stepbrother, I wouldn’t consider him a bad guy, even though he was involved in gangs. But I would consider the cop that stop me for not having a bike light a bad guy. Cause I wasn’t doing anything. So that I felt that that has colored my perspectives on police and people. 

Jess 14:31
Violence complicates our relationship with the city. It allows fear to look at the back of our minds. It creates a moment of hesitation before opening our front doors. Each person I spoke with had to contend with violence. Where that moment of hesitation could’ve become a lifetime of fear. But in considering that hesitation, and knowing that fear. They chose to walk forward into their city anyway. 

[OUTRO]

Thank you for listening. This is been Here There Be Dragons. I’m Jess Myers, a grad student at MIT’s Department of Urban Planning. Each person I interviewed for this podcast also drew a map of their childhood and adulthood in the city. You can find the link to those in the show notes. If you visited or lived in New York and want to share your experiences with me, download the base map use the map and gallery as your guide, and draw your own experiences of safety, and danger in the city. I’ll post them in the gallery. You can send those to us at colabradio@mit.edu Or you can record a question or comment about the episode by calling into 1-888-821-7563#58258. Some of those might be a part of the final episode of this series. Music for Here There Be Dragons is written by New York-based trio Octopus 2000, check out more of their music on Facebook. And join us next episode when we talk about fear and gentrification.v