Disruption Time; Clean-Up Time

I spent the years from 2004 to 2019 living and working in the Arabian Gulf (a/k/a "the Persian Gulf"). They were colorful years, often adventurous, sometimes "misadventurous."

At one point between 2015 and 2017, a misjudgment of character on my part caused a nearly two-year interruption in my life, years which I call my "Marco Polo Years" because I was a stranger in Eastern lands and could not leave Qatar to save my life. This character-building exercise prepared me for the current Covid-19 quarantine, exercising in me the major characteristic required to endure these very trying times: grit. I also had plenty of time to think of the errors I had made that landed me in that conundrum, so many "what ifs" and "if onlys." What if I had listened to my intuition? If only I had done this or that differently. As my father, Hashim, who died in May 2001 (God rest his beautiful soul) used to say, "If my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle." As my mother Mary likes to remind me, "If you didn't have that experience, you wouldn't be the woman you are today." And indeed, it is life's many knocks that make us stronger, tougher, smarter, wiser. I learned that my voice has value.

My mother also is a great advocate of deep thinking. I have found that it is in that quiet time that we can come up with ideas, solve problems, get perspective, and find peace and calm. It's what my mother calls your "Power Hour." That, coupled with my legal training, has made me a person who questions many things and looks for what makes sense. So, when I heard Governor Andrew Cuomo say that he and his peers in the Tri-State area were now talking about opening up major North Eastern cities again, I immediately tweeted to the Governor that I hoped he would consider bleaching "the heck out of all public facilities/infrastructure." I meant public transit in particular. I did not hear back from Governor Cuomo and I considered whether it was worth my while to start a "Clean NYC Fund" to engage specialist sanitation companies to do what the City wasn't doing (yet). I'm still considering this idea (please reach out to me if you would like to help me).

When I returned to NYC from the Arabian Gulf in February 2019, it felt like I had gone back in time to the NYC of the mid-1980s, a period when homelessness and panhandling were rife. We moved back into the City from Southampton, Long Island, where we had lived for two years, and it was a shock to the system to see so many homeless people living on the streets. I was a 1970s baby so I was no stranger to the griminess of NYC. Of course, I had come to NYC intermittently over the course of the nearly 30 years I spent abroad, but being face-to-face with the filth and the rising levels of homelessness on public transit in 2019 was something I had never seen before in all my life. I even sent Mayor De Blasio tweets including pictures alerting to him of the homeless problem on the subways in NYC but to no avail.

What I mean by the "homeless problem on the subways in NYC" is homeless people stretched out on seats, sometimes head-to-toe as they have most recently been depicted on the cover of the New York Daily News. Or else, homeless people with umpteen bags commandeering whole corners of subway cars and/or platforms, urinating and spitting on the platforms and in the subway cars. The buses are not as hospitable to homeless people as subways are so the issue of homelessness is less palpable on bus lines, but buses are almost as dirty as the subways. When I tweeted to the Mayor last year, I asked him, "Is this fair to New Yorkers?" He didn't respond and I think I deleted the tweet in disgust at his apathy. In the current crisis, in New York State, many New Yorkers - indeed, many Americans, are looking to Governor Andrew Cuomo for moral and actual guidance in these trying times. He's a beacon of common sense and tough love and it's a boon that he is the governor at this point in history - he is the governor who was destined to rise to the challenges of New York under the current Covid-19 crisis.

So this morning (Thursday, April 30th, 2020), when Governor Cuomo spoke during his daily briefing about disinfecting the public transport system, he had on Mayor Bill De Blasio (by video call), who said the words, "disrupt" and "disruption" a million times as though he had come up with the idea of cleaning the NYC transit system, etc. On the one hand, it was a relief to see that Major De Blasio had been galvanized by the Governor's "can-do, will-do" credo, on the other hand, it was galling to hear him speak about it as though he was brand new to the mayoral office when, in fact, De Blasio has been in office since 2014 and had the opportunity to clean the transit system in this manner way before but failed to do so. The same way as De Blasio has failed to ameliorate the homeless situation, in fact, it has worsened since he took office. Until recently, I didn't know much about De Blasio - but Wikipedia tells me that he was born in NYC in 1961 and moved to Massachusetts when he was 5 years old and didn't come back until he went to college at NYU (Wikipedia on Mayor De Blasio). So while he may be a New Yorker by birth, he's not a New Yorker by upbringing and rarely rides the subway himself (De Blasio's Rare Subway Ride) because if he did (instead of swanning around the City in his private car), he would know just how foul the public transit system had become on his watch and he would have been inspired to "disrupt the system" a whole lot earlier. And for that sole reason alone (there are other reasons), De Blasio is disappointing.

The total sanitization of the transit system is a huge relief. That the entire transit system will be sanitized every 24 hours is a miracle. EVERY 24 HOURS! I wish it were on a continual basis, round the clock, that there were cleaning teams on every train and in every station - but this is a good start. And that has been instituted (from Wednesday May 6th, 2020) so that every essential worker will know that he or she (or they) is/are sitting in a sanitized car or bus. It is not only a relief, but it also makes sense. Governor Cuomo said it has never been done before in this nation. It probably hasn't. But Cuomo doesn't care - he's motivated by challenges and won't let the beast that is Covid-19 knock us down. "Get up!" he roared during one of his recent briefings. New York is not allowed to crumble, not on his watch. And sanitizing the public transit system is indeed a herculean effort. But that is not to say that it has never been done before by anybody anywhere.

As I said, I lived in the Arabian Gulf for 15 years from 2004 to 2019. And while some of those years were challenging, I watched, awe-inspired, while the small oil/gas-rich nations literally grew up entire magical city-states in a matter of a few years - I remember driving around Bahrain and later Qatar - from one day to the next, a new building, road, monument, stadium, metro line would have sprouted up as if from nowhere. Dubai started it off back in the early 2000s, followed by Bahrain and Qatar...now, Qatar is getting ready to receive millions of football fans from around the world to watch the World Cup Games in 2022 and, not only is it on track, but the small nation of several million people (most of whom are foreign nationals, as numbers of Qataris are estimated to be not more than half a million) has achieved in a very short time what other countries have achieved in a century. No joke. And while many scoff and ask, "Why will people come to Qatar after the World Cup?", there is a reason - and that reason is to see what they have achieved in a short space of time. Small miracles that should be seen - and not only that, the country is pristine - you could eat off the roads in most parts. And rather than model themselves after America, they seem to have modeled themselves after Switzerland in terms of the levels of public cleanliness in most places. All public toilets in shopping malls and office buildings are manned and cleaned continuously. New York City could learn a thing or two from the Gulf countries, frankly, and some other parts of the Middle East, but I'll get to that shortly.

Of course, the Gulf countries are loaded with gas and/or oil money and they have money to make these projects happen quickly while those of us who are listening know that New York State has a deficit of $13 billion. But aside from being filthy rich, the Gulf countries have a vision - they are true visionaries, they would have to be to conjure up cites like Doha and Dubai from the sand. And the Gulf countries are all working towards 2030 visions, something that New York State, New York City - even America could think about doing. And while the Gulf countries are struggling with graft and corruption (who isn't?), they are working towards an ideal.

When I lived in Alexandria, Egypt (1997-98) while I was learning Arabic as part of my BA in Arabic and Law at SOAS, London (1996-2000), I watched Alexandria transform from a ramshackle Mediterranean City that had seen better days to a beautiful, homogenous city under the practical leadership of its then governor, who engaged local businesses to enter into public-private partnerships to improve roads and the entire length of the Corniche, plant palm trees, replace fixtures, etc. At the end of the day, the private companies partnered with the local government to improve the state of Alexandria because everyone stood to gain from such improvements. Alexandria is a huge tourist destination so it behooved its business people to co-invest in it.

Likewise, New York City especially is a huge tourist destination yet, more and more, I wonder, why do people come to New York City now? To ride the subways teeming with homeless? To be spat on by people who spit into the air and don't care where it lands? To catch God-knows-what from Goodness-knows-whom? The City has always been filthy - I remember in the 1990s reading an article in The New York Times reporting a swab test a Columbia University biologist had done of public fixtures and he had found traces of many scary bacteria, including the Ebola virus. Sanitizing the transit system is an initiative that should have been undertaken years ago, but better late than never. Yet, it is now considered "disruptive" by Mayor De Blasio to sanitize the transit system during and in the aftermath of a ruthless and deadly global health pandemic. Frankly, to me it seems like common sense and I'm surprised that it had not been done before, especially during the Ebola scare several years ago - but also, because NYC is a world tourist destination/hub and people come in from all over the world unwittingly bringing foreign bugs with them. It makes sense to bleach the heck out of the City, now and going forward - not just the transit system, but everything. But how can New York State and New York City do this if they are broke?

So this is where the public-private partnership comes in. Make deals with the makers of the sanitization products, give them tax breaks, let them do what they need to do to kill Covid-19 (and whatever else is living in the transit system). Get citizens to invest in the City - ask how we can improve the City and listen. Then implement.

What if there aren't enough people to do this kind of work? Then, hire the homeless and anyone else who is ready, willing, and able to work to clean not just the transit system but the entire City. Pay them well. Give the homeless clean rooms and a starter kit for a new start in life including basic toiletries, a capsule wardrobe, some linens, and daily cleaning services. When someone has hit rock bottom to the extent that he or she is homeless, isn't it important to restore their dignity? Cleaning services are a step in that direction; when the environment is clean, we feel free, free from fear - fear from possible infection, and we feel safe. That might just be my personal opinion, but I'm sure it's shared by many others.

When the Syrian refugee crisis emerged, Ikea stepped in and made award-winning flat-pack shelter kits (Ikea's Solar-Powered Flat-Pack Refugee Shelters) to cover refugees' basic needs. Why can't we make a comparable effort for the homeless in NYC? Find some vacant buildings, clean them up, turn them into 3-star hostels where each homeless person gets their own pristine room and get them on their way. These homeless shelters should include health centers, life skills classes, yoga classes, canteens, job centers, and coffee shops. But most of all, they should clean, and by clean, I mean pristine. Enable the homeless to feel vested in where they are living - don't just create halfway houses, create communities. And give the landlords, if the buildings are not owned by the City, tax breaks.

Going back to my question a few paragraphs above - why do people visit NYC now? The other glaring fact that had always slapped me in the face on previous visits to NYC before I moved back permanently was the number of vacant storefronts, from Broadway to Fifth Avenue, whole swaths of retail sections of the City gone just like that. Yes, I know, Internet shopping killed local "Mom & Pops" but it seems to me that the only commercial retailers that can survive in the City are national chains and even they cannot withstand the rigors of Corona-19. Where is the old glamour of NYC? Why are the interests of the indigenous retailers second to the profit margins of commercial landlords? And why is there still no rent stabilization law for commercial leases?

The homeless who are mentally and physically able could be employed to assist with the sanitization of NYC and its environs and the continuation thereof. The sanitization of the transport system should not stop after Covid-19, it should become part of our "New Normal."

When I still lived in Qatar, there were billboards in Arabic and in English everywhere in Doha and its environs reading, "Qatar Deserves the Best." I loved the fact that this tiny nation, that had once been so poor (like, dirt poor) before the discovery of natural gas in 1971, had so much pride and self-respect (some would say arrogance, but that might be jealousy) that they would demand the best. And don't we New Yorkers and our future guests deserve the best, also? That means we need to demand more from our mayor, whether it is De Blasio in the next term or someone new who gives a damn and we need to raise our standards of living and hygiene, now and always.

#covid19 #quarantine2020 #governorcuomo #mayordeblasio #savenewyorkcity