2002 · by Dave Pell
The Heights
August was always the tense month. This was
true when I was a high school student, and
it was infinity more true when I was a high
school teacher in the Crown Heights section
of Brooklyn. New kids, new classes. The first
few days are always nerve wracking because the
students aren't quite ready to calm down and
the teachers aren't quite prepared to take control -
of course, when it came to one particular sixth
period class, things pretty much stayed that way
all year long.
But the fall of 1991 was tense for a reason other
than the usual first-week jitters. A few weeks before
school started, a car in the entourage driving
a well-known Lubavitcher (Hassidic) rabbi swerved
off the road and killed a seven year-old Black
child named Gavin Cato. The moment proved to be
the extra heat that would blow the lid off of
a steaming conflict that had been building
for several years.
The neighborhood was an unusual one. As you walked
down almost every street in Crown Heights, the faces
you saw were those of recent Caribbean immigrants.
Crown Heights is the home of one of the largest
Carnival parades in the world. The high school where
I taught had a steel drum band. The neighborhood was
fairly uniform in terms of demographics, except for a
few blocks that were almost entirely inhabited by the
several thousand members of the Hassidic sect called
the Lubavitchers. These blocks were like a separate world
in the middle of this Brooklyn neighborhood. There was
little, if any, dialogue between the Hassidim and the
rest of the neighborhood.
Almost all of the political and social issues that
affected the area were brought to the surface in the
days that followed the car accident. The entourage itself
(driving Menachem Schneerson, a mystical religious figure
among the Lubavitchers) was always a source of tension.
African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans in the neighborhood
were frustrated by the police escorts the Rabbi
demanded in contrast to the difficulty they had getting a
cop or an ambulance when they needed one. This perception
was certainly based in reality. It had little to do
with race or economics. The Lubavitchers were extremely
well-organized and provided a powerful Brooklyn voting
block. So when they asked, they usually got.
When the car hit Gavin Cato, observers complained that
a Jewish-owned ambulance came immediately and took away
the car's driver while Gavin Cato and his sister (also
struck by the car) were left to wait more than
twenty minutes - I saw some of this myself when a small
child was hit by a car near the high school. I called
911 and it took more than 15 minutes for an ambulance
to arrive.
So things exploded. For several days there were riots in
the streets. The most notable moment was when a mob caught
and murdered Yankel Rosenbaum, a Hassidic scholar visiting
from Australia. Over the next few nights, this neighborhood
in Brooklyn was the focus of the national and international news
and the events (the riots, the hands-off strategy by police)
probably cost then Mayor David Dinkins any chance of re-election
thus beginning the Rudy era.
When we all returned to school, the first weeks were marked
more by their normalcy than by any increased tension. Like
the rest of the country, most of the students had simply
seen the riots on television. Over the next few months,
efforts were made by community leaders on both sides to
begin to ease the tension. It took years before any real
progress was made. If nothing else, at least the
neighbors have now established some level of communication.
In the end, the Crown Heights riots (like other similar events)
were probably not about a specific moment. It was a build up of
frustration and a feeling of powerlessness felt by a part of
the community. Sometimes I wonder what is really different
about neighborhoods like Crown Heights or South Central
today as opposed to to the moments when violence erupted.
I worry that the answer is 'not very much'. While the NY Times
article marking the tenth year since the Crown Heights riots
tells of many areas where significant progress has been made,
it also features the following quote from Richard Green, head of
the Crown Heights Youth Collective: "Their [the teens] anger is an
outgrowth of idleness, a lack of feeling accomplished as human beings.
When it's compounded, it goes into rage. We have to be able to go after
what caused these youths to do what they did."
He is undoubtedly right in his analysis of the situation. What
troubles me is that Richard Green was saying the exact same
thing when he used to hang out at the high school where I taught
nearly a decade ago.
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