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“We are not evacuating Rikers Island,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a news conference this afternoon. Bloomberg annouced a host of extreme measures being taken by New York City in preparation for the arrival of Hurricane Irene, including a shutdown of the public transit system and the unprecedented mandatory evacuation of some 250,000 people from low-lying areas. But in response to a reporter’s question, the mayor stated in no uncertain terms (and with more than a hint of annoyance) that one group of New Yorkers on vulnerable ground will be staying put.
New York City is surrounded by small islands and barrier beaches, and a glance at the city’s evacuation map reveals all of them to be in Zone A (already under a mandatory evacuation order) or Zone B–all, that is, save one. Rikers Island, which lies in the waters between Queens and the Bronx, is not highlighted at all, meaning it is not to be evacuated under any circumstances.
According to the New York City Department of Corrections’ own website, more than three-quarters of Rikers Island’s 400 acres are built on landfill–which is generally thought to be more vulnerable to natural disasters. Its ten jails have a capacity of close to 17,000 inmates, and normally house at least 12,000, including juveniles and large numbers of prisoners with mental illness–not to mention pre-trial detainees who have yet to be convicted of any crime.
#ugh i’m sure they and the homeless folks will be fine #worked so well in katrina
Comment on the Guardian “Comment is Free” blog:
CrabNebula
8 August 2011 5:26PM
There’s always a ‘context’ for any riot or act of dissent. The media/political elite celebrate such acts in Egypt or Syria as the ‘collective voice of the people’ demanding change etc but condemn it as ‘mindless thuggery and criminality’ when it’s on ‘our’ streets. There’s a ‘30 years since the Toxteth Riots’ photo exhibition on at the Liverpool Slavery Museum and this bland nostalgia trip is reduced to news reports showing ‘how good things came from the 81 riots’ - well, take a stroll along Granby or any other inner city area for that matter and see how things have changed - the context is simple ‘capitalism’ exploits people, some it exploits more than others, black people in the ‘west’ as descendants of slaves never had the political, economic or social capital to pass on from one generation to another which is why they remain poor and will always remain poor in a system that is rigged against their advancement. Funny how when the ‘rule of law’ breaks down for a few hours and power becomes the preserve of those who never experience it, looting isn’t so much an act of theft but redress.
“The camera sees but doesn’t think. Whether animal, vegetable, or mineral, the object of its affection doesn’t matter; what matters is the surge and volume of emotion that it engenders and evokes, the floods of consciousness drawn as willingly to a blood bath in Afghanistan as to a bubble bath in Paris. As the habits of mind beholden to the rule of images come to replace the structures of thought derived from the meaning of words, the constant viewer eliminates the association of cause with effect, learns that nothing necessarily follows from anything else.”
— Lewis H. Lapham, “Dancing with the Stars,” the preamble to Lapham’s Quarterly, Vol. IV, No. 1.
