Selfish, Greedy People

By Mickey Friedman
November 9, 2014

The debate about the Monument Mountain HS renovation has sent me back in time. Dreaming my five block walk from Webb Avenue to P.S. 86. A small army of kids streaming from our apartment buildings in rain, snow or shine to our home for the day. Built in 1926, it still stands, serving 1,700. I can’t help but imagine my mother’s reaction if I told her I didn’t like the lighting there. Frivolous complaints weren’t welcome when there was laundry, shopping, dishes, homework to be done. Both parents working, and money always tight.

My imaginary Congressman, Bill Shein, likes to remind me of the great failing of our civilization: conspicuous consumption. The constant waste of precious resources to make and sell things of dubious purpose. How many varieties of breakfast flakes? Cars? Phones? A demand fueled by a constant drone, and the occasionally artful commercial: LeBron James, the Jesus of Cleveland, returns to lead his basketball-loving black/white army of sad city-dwellers to a new glory. So buy Nike sneakers.

Those with money know their children deserve an indoor greenhouse. Those without tremble to see the fuel-oil truck arrive; rejoice when the gas pump reads less than $3.50 a gallon; scour the shelves for Buy One, Get One Free.

“No” was a word I heard often. In my three-and-a-half room world, “need” trumped “want.” Did I want new sneakers? A new toy? A bigger television? Who in America didn’t want a million things a day?

Well, all these years later, those who live each day ignoring wants in favor of needs aren’t really understood by those with more money than they need. If there was one thing the recent debate about Monument revealed is the growing gap between these two peoples. How many times have I read the word “selfish?” And what’s most extraordinary, it’s been spoken about the poor. As if not having enough money, as if caring about how that money is spent is a failing.

A member of the Finance Committee wrote “We can either vote ‘yes’ and be a town that invests in itself and its future … or we can vote ‘no’ and resign ourselves to becoming simply a place where we try to minimize our taxes and make ends meet.” As if making ends meet was a bad thing, and not how many of us have to live. As if it was not the very job of the Finance Committee to ensure that we make ends meet.

A man who has relentlessly exploited the memory of Pete Seeger, whose life and work was wounded by Joe McCarthy and the holier-than-thou House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), so easily and ironically betrayed that legacy by calling us “un-American” for opposing a renovation we can’t afford. Having watched my father hauled before HUAC in 1961, having written of Junius Scales, the only American jailed for being a member of the Communist Party, having been red-baited by the president of City College, I know a bit about this nonsense.

Still, Dr. Chartock rails against “a coalition of the greedy” mixing Long Islanders who have moved here, just a few years after his own move, with folks who send their kids to private school or maybe the Steiner School – he is always short with facts – then tying them to social liberals and leftists “who don’t walk the walk.” Of course, Mr. Chartock walks taller than we. Because he is always the hero of every story he tells.

The horror is that real life has been turned upside down. How is it that those who are earnestly concerned with wise spending have become the enemy? How can it be that those who question whether high school kids really need an indoor greenhouse are, within this world of tortured logic, told they care nothing for education? That those who question whether we ought to make a list of what we “need” versus what we “want” are said to have surrendered to selfishness?

Worst of all, to admit you’re having problems paying your bills is to open yourself up to contempt, not compassion. Because there’s been a singular lack of empathy here. Not a whit of understanding.

A quick “we know the taxpayers are hurting” followed by an avalanche of suck it up and do what we say. Because we know best.

Twenty-seven percent of the families whose kids attend district schools earn $40,000 a year and less. 380 families earn less $25,000. Per capita income in the district is $25,761. Median male income: $29,418. Median female income: $18,926. Median income of a renter: $28,300. Median income of a home owner: $58,191.

Imagine reallocating the four million dollar architect’s fee to the 870 families of the district who earn less than forty thousand. That’s $4,597 a family. Or four million shared by the 134 teachers of the district: $29, 850 each. A $1,200 a year raise for 25 years. Is that selfish? Greedy?