Friends In Need

The city and federal government are teaming up to work on Jamaica Bay together. Note especially this graf: “The new partnership also calls for the creation of a conservancy or friends group dedicated to the bay, to encourage philanthropy. Similar conservancies have helped other large parks in New York City, including Central Park in Manhattan and Prospect Park in Brooklyn, find new streams of revenue, but they tend to be in affluent neighborhoods. Given that the bay is ringed by largely working- and middle-class communities, however, it is uncertain how successful that effort will be.”

Now there’s a rare moment of ideological clarity in the Times. Our class-based “public” park system means the rich favor their own, and poorer sorts get the leftovers. Neoliberalism’s brute redistribution of power has left us begging at the feet of the plutocrats for those “other streams of revenue.” We must pray it continues to trickle down.

“Please sir, may I have some more park?”