Sunday, August 17, 2003
Why no looting during the Blackout of 2003?
Comparisons between the blackout this past week and the ones in 1965 and 1977 are inevitable, especially in the New York City area which was an anarchic mess in 1977. This article in Slate by David Greenberg tackles the question of why there was relative calm this time around:
Greenberg speculates that the differences lie in both the context of the recent blackout and the city and population changes as a whole. The context differences include the timing of this week's outage - late afternoon, so more people had time to get home, and the city had more daylight hours to prepare for nightfall - and the availability of police, who in 1977 were involved in a dispute with the city and did not turn out in force as they did this time. On a larger scale, Greenberg says, the city and its people are generally more prosperous now, and the racial tensions and class differences are not as sharp edged now as then. It's an interesting speculation, and the topic is one that will get a lot of attention in the next while. For a look at the type of analysis that will be done, take a look at this excellent piece by scholar Kathleen Tierney, about the reaction of NYC city, both officially and unofficially, to the 9/11 attack. Also, for a comprehensive history of the blackouts in 1965 and 1977, check out this website - which is also collecting stories from this week's outage.
[Tierney link via Instapundit. Blackout history link via Josh Marshall's Talking Points.]
Categories: Rioting. Looting. Crime causation.
Even if news reports prove to have been overly rosy—this morning Mayor Michael Bloomberg reported just one blackout-related death in New York City overnight—neither Gotham nor Detroit nor Cleveland suffered anything remotely like the anarchy of 1977. "New Yorkers showed that the city that burned in the 1970s when facing similar circumstances," Bloomberg said, "is now a very different place."
...It seems probable, though, that even if this latest blackout had happened before the 2001 attacks, we still wouldn't have seen a replay of 1977. A post-9/11 civic responsibility may have augmented the exemplary behavior, but it didn't create it. The real difference between 1977 and 2003 is the change in the condition of New York and America's Northeastern cities, including in their poorer enclaves.
Greenberg speculates that the differences lie in both the context of the recent blackout and the city and population changes as a whole. The context differences include the timing of this week's outage - late afternoon, so more people had time to get home, and the city had more daylight hours to prepare for nightfall - and the availability of police, who in 1977 were involved in a dispute with the city and did not turn out in force as they did this time. On a larger scale, Greenberg says, the city and its people are generally more prosperous now, and the racial tensions and class differences are not as sharp edged now as then. It's an interesting speculation, and the topic is one that will get a lot of attention in the next while. For a look at the type of analysis that will be done, take a look at this excellent piece by scholar Kathleen Tierney, about the reaction of NYC city, both officially and unofficially, to the 9/11 attack. Also, for a comprehensive history of the blackouts in 1965 and 1977, check out this website - which is also collecting stories from this week's outage.
[Tierney link via Instapundit. Blackout history link via Josh Marshall's Talking Points.]
Categories: Rioting. Looting. Crime causation.
