The History of Socialism in New York City

Title: The History of Socialism in New York City

Janae Pierre: This is NYC NOW from WNYC. I'm Janae Pierre. It's Friday, November 28th. Here's your news headlines from Michael Hill.

Michael Hill: Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman says he's installing surveillance along the Long Island Queens border in response to Zohran Mamdani's election as New York City mayor. The Republican who is considering a run for governor spoke about his plan during a Fox News interview.

Bruce Blakeman: We are installing technology along the border of New York City that will read license plates, that will have facial recognition, that will have video cameras.

Michael Hill: Blakeman did not elaborate on how the edit surveillance would prevent crime. The Nassau Republican says he's a strong supporter of President Trump's immigration crackdown. He has criticized Governor Kathy Hochul for supporting sanctuary policies and painted Mamdani as too soft on crime. The governor's office and Mamdani's spokesperson did not immediately respond to our request for comment. A Thanksgiving Day fire in New Jersey killed two sisters. The Essex County prosecutor and Orange Township Fire Department say the fire killed 49-year-old Frantzia Fleury and her sister, 42-year-old Pojanee Fleury. They say the sisters were trying to help their father with disabilities out of the home. The father and six others did escape, but the sisters later died. Authorities want anyone with information to call the Essex County Prosecutor's office.

New York City is looking for history buffs to help document the area's slavery past. The Department of Records says it needs volunteers to help sort information from 1660 to 1838 on people released from slavery, as well as the children of enslaved women. To sign up, visit archives.nyc. Low 40s now with clouds and windy, mostly sunny today, and 42. That's going to feel colder than that, as cold as 25 with winds gusting to nearly 40 miles an hour.

Janae Pierre: Stick around. There's more after the break.

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Michael Hill: Free buses, city-owned grocery stores, and free universal childcare. Those are just some of the policy proposals that attracted a majority of New Yorkers to vote Mayor Elect Zohran Mamdani into office. Those same proposals also turned off many voters who worried about the impact they could have on the city's finances. The policies have been labeled socialist policies by both supporters and opponents, but New York City has been here before.

With us now to put this moment into historical context is Kim Phillips-Fein. She's a history professor at Columbia University and the author of Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics. Professor Phillips-Fein, thank you for joining us on Morning Edition.

Kim Phillips-Fein: Thank you so much for having me on.

Michael Hill: Let's start with a quick look back at the near bankruptcy in the 1970s. Would you describe just how much in trouble the city was?

Kim Phillips-Fein: The city was in a tremendous amount of short-term debt, in particular, and was hardly able to pay its bills or cover its costs. In particular, once it was no longer able to float new debt, it really had trouble making good on its commitments. This was a time of recession, unemployment, jobs and people were leaving New York over the decade of the 1970s. It's really the only decade in which New York loses significant population in its history.

At the same time, the city had a quite extensive public sector at that point, which it had inherited from earlier in the 20th century. Then, finally, this is also the moment when Nixon has come into office in Washington, when the commitments of the Great Society and War on Poverty era are being cut back. It's also a time when the city can rely on less federal funding.

Michael Hill: Professor, what were the socialist influences and policies in the city at this time?

Kim Phillips-Fein: I guess I would start out by saying that I don't think people really thought of these as socialist at that point, but much of what the Mamdani agenda is reflects things that were actually the norm in post-war New York. Starting at the end of World War II, there's a very strong support for labor unions. There is a deep commitment to keeping public transit affordable and not increasing the fare regularly, as it has been the case in more recent years. The city university system is free throughout the post-war years.

Housing is also an important part of the post-war agenda. This is the era of the construction of public housing in the city. It's also the time when rent control and rent stabilization become part of the city's economic landscape. This is the norm of politics in the city.

Michael Hill: What happened to these social safety nets as the city started to emerge out of the financial crisis?

Kim Phillips-Fein: The first thing I would say is that, actually, this public sector remains a vital part of the city. It is the city's transit system, its public housing, the fact that we do still have rent stabilization, and I think beyond that, a certain philosophical commitment to the public sector of the city. A sense that investing in libraries, parks, public art, public culture, that this is part of what creates the distinctive democratic space of New York City. I think that has never fully gone away.

On the other hand, as the city emerged out of the fiscal crisis, the way that the fiscal crisis was resolved was to sharply cut back on the public sector. We saw the impact of that in the late '70s and early 1980s, and this is a set of cutbacks at a time of rising crime, of a fire wave, of the emergence of mass homelessness, of family homelessness that we see today, and the reality of the city becoming less and less affordable for working-class and middle-class people.

Michael Hill: You said the financial Crisis of the '70s permanently changed New York City politics. How so?

Kim Phillips-Fein: I think it sharply curtailed public imagination, and it provided a sense that you couldn't do too much, the city government couldn't do too much to help ordinary New Yorkers, and that if it did, you would wind up in these serious fiscal straits. It managed to shrink the political imagination, I think. Also, more structurally, it led to the professionalization of the city's budget office. It led, not right away, but sometime later, to the creation of the Independent Budget Office, which has the power to request reports and gain greater transparency over the city's finances.

It really curtailed the short-term borrowing that was the immediate cause of the fiscal crisis. I actually think it would be very difficult for the fiscal crisis to repeat itself in the way that it did then, because of these types of controls and because of this sensibility, but the cost of it was that it made it really hard to imagine what the city government could do. I think one of the things that this election marks is the end of that way of thinking and a strong desire to find a way to use the city government as it has been used before, to support working-class New Yorkers and to make the city more equal, more democratic, and more available for the enjoyment of all.

Michael Hill: That's Columbia history professor Kim Phillips-Fein. She's the author of Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics. Thank you very much. This has been fascinating.

Kim Phillips-Fein: Thanks for having me on.

Janae Pierre: Thanks for listening. I'm Janae Pierre. Enjoy the holiday weekend. Maybe shop till you drop and support small businesses. We'll be back on Monday.

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