Who Gets to be a Constituent?
I woke up on Wednesday morning filled with dread, having seen the news late Tuesday night. I checked my phone and found that congestion pricing was officially delayed, filling me with that kind of gnawing emptiness that the sudden absence of hope leaves. Over the day that hole got filled with questions and amorphous panic, like these things go. Today, I’ve been stuck on one big question — who gets to be a constituent?
I’m a resident of New York City, and I love it. It’s a place that’s so popular to live in that the rent goes up and up for everyone all the time, a place that’s widely known as a global capital of finance, culture, and basically any other category you can think of, and yet nobody in power seems to have any interest in actually representing the interests of the city. Conservatives spread fear about the place where I am able to live comfortably and conveniently, and with NYC’s reputation you’d think that the Democrats would be eager to uphold the city as an example of what a liberal, multi-cultural society is capable of, and to foster it, but both the Mayor or the Governor proved that they don’t have any interest in that. Instead, the things that would improve the city are pushed away for the suburban lifestyle that both parties seem to agree represents their actual constituency.
Congestion pricing was supposed to be a lifeline for the city, a way to bring in money for the transit that keeps the city going while providing a novel solution for the grip that cars have held on Manhattan since the time of Robert Moses. Almost 9 out of 10 people entering the congestion zone don’t use a car to get there, that’s millions of people who would benefit from cleaner air and better transit. Instead, the governor offered a payroll tax on NYC to fill the gap, claiming economic relief was needed for regular people. That’s the kind of statement you make when you don’t believe you represent the millions of people who take the train or a bus to work.
People have always loved to shit on New York as a performative act to say that they’re real Americans, it’s a trope that has been in politics and salsa ads for as long as I’ve been alive, but having both your Mayor and Governor, the people who were elected to represent you, do it stings way more than Ted Cruz trying to get a bunch of used car dealers in Dallas to open their wallets. It stings more because this has been in the works for two decades, and became law when the Kathy Hochul Governorship was just a twinkle in the eye of Andrew Cuomo as he harassed someone new. It makes me think about the fight for progress, and how any real progress in the moment seems impossible. Politically-conscious Americans tend to associate progress being knocked down in an instant with the Supreme Court, but the lesson from this is the people who claim to speak for you will happily do it because they don’t really think you matter. You aren’t a constituent.
I took a bike ride through the city and thought about this, passing the $500 million cameras installed on the Williamsburg and Manhattan Bridges that will go unused, and thought about the upcoming election. The question of who gets to be a constituent, of who gets to be listened to, looms large there as well. The malaise of the youth vote looms large in everyone’s mind, and the dissatisfaction there seems to be the byproduct of two election cycles with candidates like Sanders and Warren who seemed to actually be listening, who wanted you as their constituent. The Biden campaign hasn’t found that connection, and that seems to be the root of the dissatisfaction.
The key to politics is to make a connection with the people who you’re supposed to be representing. Hochul has managed to do the opposite of that, and this feels like it’s going to be a disaster for her career. Worse, it’s a disaster for this city. Maybe the sense of alienation I’m feeling from my elected officials is a kind of mourning for the loss of what could have been a transformative program, but I think it’s something more. It’s a realization that I don’t have representation on the things that matter to me, and I can feel how that can can quickly lead to disenchantment with the concept of progress being achievable. I don’t think I need to elaborate on how dangerous that is.
