The Irish can’t win on race - Sanitation workers case on favoritism to the Irish post Superstorm Sandy

NYC Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, New York City Sanitation workers have gotten much-deserved credit for swiftly cleaning up storm-ravaged sections of the five boroughs, from Staten Island to the Rockaways.

But last week, the Sanitation Department -- and its Irish American fraternal organization -- were in the news for a more controversial reason. A number of sanitation workers filed a lawsuit claiming widespread racial bias in the department -- and blamed the Irish.

“The plaintiffs say they have been repeatedly overlooked...while white candidates, many of them Irish like Commissioner John J. Doherty and First Deputy Commissioner Bernard J. Sullivan, got promoted every two years,” is how the February 22 edition of the civil service newspaper The Chief put it. “Everything is Emerald Society,” the president of the Sanitation’s Hispanic Society added.  “They can’t do anything wrong...They just continue to promote Irish people.”

This comes as Irish Americans have been dragged into several other racial controversies in recent weeks. As our sister website Irish Central already noted, The New York Times ran a report recently about Irish sports stars who came to New York to assist in the post-Sandy clean-up of the heavily-Irish enclave Breezy Point.

Then the Times felt the need to point out the following: "Breezy Point is the whitest neighborhood in the city, a demographic makeup that critics say illustrates the enclave’s entrenched xenophobia, a dark flip side, perhaps, to all that ethnic pride."

And that’s not all, The latest issue of Esquire magazine also has a long look at Breezy and the locals’ stalwart efforts to put their lives back together. But guess what topic comes up?

Reporter John H. Richardson writes, “The funny thing is, the Breezy people are a little standoffish [and] the Breezy standoffishness goes deeper than mere suspicion of outsiders.”

He later quotes a local priest: “To live in this co-op, you have to get letters from three people who live in the co-op supporting your effort to buy. So there are no blacks here. There are no Hispanics here. This is a white Irish Catholic  community, 90 percent.”

The priest even brings up the Sanitation Department, says Esquire. “The way the priest sees it, the storm has raised a great moral opportunity. ‘Look at the guys from the Department of Sanitation breaking their backs to clear out the wreckage. That union's 75 percent black,’ he says. “‘Look around.  Look at who saved your sorry little rear ends — people you wouldn't let live next door to you.’”

Now, there’s no point ignoring the fact that the Irish have had their fair share of problems when it comes to race in America.  From the New York City Draft Riots of the 1860s to the Boston bussing riots of the 1970s, Irish Americans have been involved in some of the more ugly racial incidents in American  history.

It should be added that nearly as many Irish Americans fought against racism during those troubled times.

Nevertheless, the racist Irish American is sometimes not only a familiar figure.  It can also be a convenient stereotype for people looking to make some larger point.

You know, like, what else do you expect from those racist Irish?  It’s all an ugly reminder of the days when Thomas Nast cartoons depicted the Irish as backward-thinking apes.

Keep in mind this all comes just a year or so after another astounding, completely unnoticed racial incident.  As part of a lawsuit alleging racism in the FDNY, a witness said the following on the public record: “You’re dealing with a lot of Irishmen who are drunks and they get into bar fights and they get arrested and they get arrested again.  They fight, they sock their girlfriends…they get arrested because they fought with the police when they got  arrested.

“This is boys being boys.  That type of thing.”

Imagine the justifiable outcry if the worst stereotypes of any other racial/ethnic group were uttered in a court of law. Obviously, the wrongs of the past should be made right.  And America does have a messy past.

The Irish have shouldered plenty of burdens in the past.  Right now, however, it appears as if they are shouldering a disproportionately heavy burden when it comes to racism in America. 

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com)

And the award for stupidity goes to....Quentin Tarantino for his comments about John Ford

Quentin Tarantino

It's that time of year again.  The Academy Awards will be held this Sunday.  All the pretty people in show business will get together and congratulate each other, patting themselves on the back -- even though half of them actually want to stab each other in the back.

But it’s all in good fun, and many of the movies are quite good.  (Though not Silver Linings Playbook.  Saw it this week. Completely overrated.)

It must be added that showbiz folk are not the brightest people in the world. 

Yes, I know, this is a little like pointing out that the sun is kind of hot and that snow is usually white.  Nevertheless, there is dumb, and then there is what Academy Award-nominated director Quentin Tarantino said recently about an Irish American legend.

What makes this particularly odd is that Tarantino is typically depicted as one of the smartest movie guys on the planet.  Without question his movies -- from Reservoir Dogs to Inglorious Basterds -- range from interesting to unquestionably brilliant. 

This year, Tarantino’s slave revenge fantasy flick Django Unchained is up for Best Picture and Best Screenplay.  Like all of his films, Django is filled with references to the history of cinema. 
Tarantino’s love and knowledge of cinematic history are vast.

Or so I thought.

Back when Django Unchained was first released Tarantino gave an interview, and the topic turned to the great director John Ford.  Ford was born into an Irish immigrant family and often played up his roots by declaring that his birth name was actually Sean Aloysious O’Feeney.  He also made many films about the Irish, including, of course, The Quiet Man.

But Ford also directed dozens of Westerns including classics such as The Searchers, also starring John Wayne.  In the film, Wayne plays an Indian-hating Civil War veteran out for revenge. 

Ford’s mix of shootouts and ethnic tension, and Wayne’s simmering rage, made The Searchers one of the best American movies of all time.  (In fact, there is a new book about the film out entitled The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend by Glenn Frankel.)

Tarantino, however, seems to believe Ford is a fraud.

“One of my American Western heroes is not John Ford, obviously. To say the least, I hate him,” Tarantino said.

“Forget about faceless Indians he killed like zombies. It really is people like that that kept alive this idea of Anglo-Saxon humanity compared to everybody else's humanity -- and the idea that that's hogwash is a very new idea in relative terms. And you can see it in the cinema in the '30s
and '40s — it's still there. And even in the '50s.”

Where does one begin with Tarantino’s own hogwash?

First of all, let’s begin with Wayne’s character in The Searchers. Yes, he’s a bigot. That’s the point Ford is trying to make!

The Wayne character is so blinded by his rage that he nearly kills his own niece and, in the end, must separate himself from his own family.

Of course, by today’s standards, the Native American characters in 1950s Westerns look a tad insensitive.  But in The Searchers and other Ford flicks, at least the Indian characters speak and are depicted generally as individuals.

Tarantino was also angered by the fact that Ford, in his early Hollywood days, played a hooded member of the Ku Klux Klan in the infamously racist film Birth of a Nation. 

Which is a little like calling Daniel Day-Lewis a racist because his character despised Irish Catholics in Gangs of New York.

But here’s where Tarantino is really wrong.

Ford’s films in general expose the corrupt nature of the powerful and demand justice for the weak.

As movie critic Stephen Whitty notes, “John Ford never forgot his parents had arrived here when help-wanted notices still read No Irish Need Apply...Ford knew injustice, and he hated it.”

That’s why some even see echoes of the Irish Famine in Ford’s adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath.
Ford changed American cinema for the better in countless ways.

So, Quentin Tarantino, next time, just say “Thank you.”

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com or tomdeignan@earthlink.net)

9/11 first responder FDNY’s Martin Fullam’s death and the health damage the World Trade attacks cause

First responders carry the lifeless body of Father Michael Judge from the wreckage of the
World Trade Center on 9/11

It is one of the enduring images of 9/11, the lifeless body of Father Mychal Judge carried from the dusty chaos by five men layered in debris.  This was just  before the North Tower collapsed.

Irish American NYPD Lieutenant Bill Cosgrove was among the men carrying Judge.  Cosgrove later credited Judge with posthumously saving his own life because all five of the men carrying Judge in that photo were alive on the morning of September 12, 2001.

That does not, however, mean they survived 9/11. The iconic photo by Reuters shutterbug Shannon Stapleton -- which some have said echoes great Renaissance religious painting -- features a hard-working firefighter on the far left.  His head is bowed, resigned to the grim work of carrying the FDNY’s beloved chaplain. 

He is FDNY Lieutenant Martin Fullam. Late last month, quietly, Fullam died at the age of 56, mourned by his Irish American wife, the former Patricia Kelly, and three daughters, Kelly, Emma and Caroline.

Father Judge was the first official victim of the 9/11 attacks.  Fullam is the latest.

Read more US crime news here

Fullam spent weeks at the pile looking for survivors and then remains.  Several years later he was diagnosed with polymyositis, an autoimmune disease that targets the body's muscle tissues. He was also diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis in his lungs. 

“Over the course of several years, the disease weakened his muscles and ravaged his lungs to the point that he could barely perform ordinary tasks,” The Staten Island Advance newspaper reported. 

“He became tired when he walked upstairs or tried to tie his shoes. By 2006, Mr. Fullam was tethered to an oxygen tank 24 hours a day.”

To Fullam’s great credit, despite his ailments, he fought hard for the passage of the Zadroga Act which helps compensate first responders exposed to deadly toxins at Ground Zero.

The years following the 9/11 attacks have seen a slow but steady stream of deadly diagnoses -- cancers, respiratory problems and other ailments linked to service after the attacks.

Osama bin Laden is dead and the Freedom Tower is nearing completion.  And yet, families such as the Fullams and so many others across the five boroughs of New York City still watch as loved ones weaken and die much too young because of diseases contracted following the 9/11 attacks. It is like a nightmare that simply will not end.

Read more: Michael Lynch: Irish American Firefighter, 9/11 victim remembered

Similarly, just when it seems the abuse revelations emanating from the Catholic Church could not get any worse, we are presented with the files released earlier this month by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, once under the leadership of Irish American Roger Mahony.

The 12,000 documents present stark new evidence that church leadership knew about shocking levels of abuse, yet did little to ensure that abusive priests were kept away from children or put in jail.

LA’s current Archbishop Jose Gomez said, "The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children."

The next pope should take those words to heart.

Gomez later stripped Mahony of his official duties, a rare public spat between high church officials. Mahony responded, "Not once over these past years did you ever raise any questions about our policies, practices or procedures. I handed over to you an archdiocese that was second to none in protecting children and youth."

Perhaps by the time Mahony handed the reins off to Gomez in 2011 things had improved. But as the release of these latest files show, terrible things were covered up, ignored or both in Catholic parishes across Los Angeles.

As The New York Times noted, “Over four decades, particularly under Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, parishioners in the nation’s largest Roman Catholic archdiocese repeatedly tried to alert church authorities about abusive priests in their midst, trusting that the church would respond appropriately.”

That didn’t happen. The church sex scandals as well as the attacks of 9/11 have scarred a generation and hit Irish Americans particularly hard. 

There is only thing worse than having to endure them in the first place -- the fact that there also seems to be no end in sight to the damage these traumatic events can inflict. 

(Contact Sidewalks at tdeignan.blogspot.com or tomdeignan@earthlink.net)

The Ed Koch years in the Bronx - 'Cut and Run in the Bronx' by John Liam Shea

Former NYC Mayor Ed Koch

John Liam Shea remembers visiting his Irish-born grandparents’ house in the  heavily-Irish Kingsbridge section of the Bronx.

“It was like entering Ireland,” recalls Shea.  “All the delis and the butcher shops were all Irish.”

But the times they were a’changing.  This was 1970s New York City, and even the stalwart Hibernian residents of Kingsbridge could not ignore the crime and chaos that were becoming a brutal fact of life in New York City.

Shea has plowed memories and stories of New York’s good old/bad old days into a vibrant, darkly comic novel called Cut and Run in the Bronx.  The book is a very interesting (not to mention very funny) read, particularly this past week, with the passing of three-time New York City Mayor Ed Koch. 

Without question, Koch was a dominant figure in 20th century New York City history.  Not only that, he had a strong link to New York’s Irish community, always on the March up Fifth Avenue on March 17, and forging a particularly close bond with Archbishop John Cardinal O’Connor.

However, it can’t be ignored that crime spun wildly out of control during the Koch years.  Which is not to say Koch, who ran as a law-and-order candidate, could have snapped his fingers and solved this vexing, tragic problem.

Nevertheless, people like Shea’s grandparents were witnesses to not only a chaotic time but also a dramatic demographic shift.  This was the era of New York’s much-discussed “white flight,” and the New York Irish -- from Kingsbridge in the Bronx to Bay Ridge in Brooklyn -- were a big part of that.

Shea’s own grandmother had thoughts of leaving Kingsbridge for the leafier environs of Riverdale.  But his grandfather would have none of it.

Earlier in the 20th century, it was easy to see the appeal of Irish enclaves such as Kingsbridge. “When they came to this country, it wasn’t that big of a change,” notes Shea, whose novel was put out by the Dublin-based publisher Seven Towers.

“They could get the Irish foods and still have an Irish priest.”

But for many Irish New Yorkers who lived through the Koch years, it was hard to ignore the changes.

Crime was up.  Old friends were moving out to the suburbs.  Many Irish American city employees may have been laid off -- temporarily or permanently -- during the  fiscal crisis of 1975, two years before Koch took office.

Not for nothing does a character in Cut and Run in the Bronx, a veteran cop named Dunphy, view himself as the last of a dying breed, and feel that an era is ending. For many Irish New Yorkers in the 1970s and 1980s, the changes were simply too much.

In the end, especially with the passing of Koch, there is a temptation to look back with fondness and nostalgia. 

This is a little surprising, given that we spent quite a few years looking back at pre-Giuliani New York as something akin to Thunderdome without even Mad Max to maintain control.

The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between.

“There’s mixed feelings,” notes Shea, who will be doing a reading at the Irish Arts Center in New York on March 9.  “You wouldn’t want to go back to the anarchy of that time.”

But he adds, “There’s always that question -- what did you lose?  You look at 42nd Street and it’s just become...a big strip mall, like the rest of America.”

And though many Irish Americans did flee New York in the 1970s and 1980s, many stayed. Some were even charged with the increasingly difficult task of maintaining order. 

Shea, who spent nearly two decades teaching at Rice High School in Harlem before it closed in 2011, talked to many retired police officers who also worked at the school. A lot of their stories, as well as his own affinity for the Big Apple, compelled him to set his book in the Bronx.

“Anytime you write about New York, New York becomes a character in the story,” said Shea, whose father’s family came to New York from Kerry.  His maternal grandparents are from Cork and Clare.

“And, to me, there’s always been something magical about the Bronx.”

Magical?  The Bronx?  Yes.

And also a place offering -- shall we say -- a unique perspective on the Koch years in New York. 

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com or tomdeignan@earthlink.net)

A long journey into “night” - the Irish American author Jennings Michael Burch that still strikes a chord today

Jennings Michael Burch

Sometimes, the students are the ones who teach the teachers.

High school students all across New York City spent last week taking their all-important Regents exams is subjects like algebra, global history and English language arts.

As readers of this column may know, I’m a high school teacher in Brooklyn.  And  so my job last week was to grade literally hundreds of those English language  arts Regents exams.

One part of the exam asks students to read a quotation by a famous person and write an essay about two works of literature related to that quote. And so, not surprisingly, I read essay after essay in which students discussed The Catcher in the Rye, The Scarlet Letter, The Crucible and many other staples of American literature.

But, this year, one title came up on numerous student essays that I’d never heard of.  The book was called They Cage the Animals at Night and, as the students were describing it, the book was about a boy with a series of family problems who ended up in numerous foster homes, some of which were run by the Catholic Church. 

Some of the nuns the boy came across were nice.  Others were not.

A little bit of research introduced me Jennings Michael Burch, the author of They Cage the Animals at Night.  Burch’s childhood, in many ways, was very typical for Irish Americans at the time. 

He was born in New York City in the late 1940s.  His father was named Francis and his mother was named Rita (nee Hogan).  The family moved around, from Queens to Manhattan to the Bronx. 

Burch himself would go on to become a police officer and raise four daughters of his own. But there were things about his youth that were far from typical.  Overall there were five Burch children, and at some point Rita simply became overwhelmed. Jennings entered the foster care system, eventually staying in over 30 different foster homes. 

Thus began an odyssey that very few children could endure.  Burch faced mental and physical abuse. He was temporarily placed with families that were, at best, uncaring and, at worst, criminal. 

Burch’s book manages to vividly convey not only the ordinary traumas of childhood, but the extraordinary challenges he had to overcome to survive. 

They Cage the Animals at Night has drawn comparisons to the trilogy of books (which students devour) about abuse by Dave Pelzer, as well as Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes.

It was satisfying to learn about Burch, his life and his book. There is something to be said here that is possibly corny, but still noble about the power of reading. 

Jennings Michael Burch created a harrowing story about a time and place that many high school students in the year 2013 might not otherwise care about.  And for all of the difficulties he faced, it was another Irish American family, the Dailys, who were finally able to show Jennings the love and guidance he needed.

Then I learned -- you can’t make this stuff up -- Michael Jackson, of all people, had been planning to make a movie based on They Cage the Animals at Night when the famed singer died in 2009. Jackson said he related to Burch’s story. "Michael told me often he felt like he grew up as an orphan, like a foster kid, because he never was in one home," producer, writer and director Bryan Michael Stoller told Reuters a few years back.

"To him every hotel was like a different foster home. He said he used to sit in the window and see kids playing outside and cry because he couldn't be part of that."

Not many 70-somethings can say they managed to emotionally move Brooklyn 17 year-olds as well as the King of Pop. Then I learned one more important thing.

Jennings Michael Burch died earlier this month at the age of 71. He had been battling cancer for some time. 

There was no obituary in The New York Times.  Just a notice in the Putnam County Courier, published in upstate New York, where Burch called home for the final 20 years of his life.

They Cage the Animals at Night may never come out as a movie.  Burch had been working on a sequel, but it’s not clear if he ever finished it.

One thing is clear.  Many of us worry if we leave a legacy on this planet.  Jennings Michael Burch had no such worries. 

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com or tomdeignan@earthlink.net.)