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| Sutapa Chattopadhyay |
Sutapa Chattopadhyay
My article for Gothamist
was due last night but there it was – staring at me from my laptop, a sorry
example of dull and uninspired writing. My effort was frozen in mid-sentence
with writer’s block tearing through my insides, leaving me empty, cold, and
frustrated. I sighed and went to check my Twitter feed. Perhaps,
my inspiration was right there, in 140 characters.
And…
there it was – my feed was exploding!
“Occupy
Wall Street is on! Come to Zuccotti Park or Chase Manhattan Plaza,” it said
without fanfare.
I had packed already. A backpack
with two changes of clothes, toothbrush, towels, razor, and a small tent I had
bought at a drug store. I stuffed my laptop into the bag, closed my apartment door,
and went out onto the street. I felt alive, exhilarated, like I was walking on
air. Weeks of attending planning meetings, and nothing had been decided.
Finally, I had gone back to my little apartment I shared with two friends in
Greenwich Village and tried to write.
I stopped by my sister’s place
to tell her where I would be. Julia was my twin, and we were both close. And
closer since we didn’t have any family after my dad
remarried for the third time and my mom disappeared into a villa in Capri with
her art. We kept tabs on each other and were our
own guardians.
Julia sounded a bit worried.
“Andy, just be careful. I’ve heard that the protest
will be broken up quickly.”
I
said, “Don’t worry sis,” kissed her, pointed to my phone, “I’ll send you photos,”
I said.
Zuccotti
Park was already crowded with hundreds of protesters when I reached there.
Audio equipment was being set up at a dais at the center of the park. All of us
were keeping an eye on the police who had set up a perimeter outside the park
and were closely watching us.
Soon the speeches started,
protesting the wealthy one-percenters, the bailout of big banks but no student
loan relief or mortgage relief for homeowners, no accountability for the
wrongdoings committed during the Financial Crisis of 2007-2008 and a multitude
of issues. I had planted myself next to the Suvero sculpture ‘Joie De Vivre,’ mostly
to be able to see better. I met many of my friends there. We spent the day
listening to the speeches, talking to people, and taking photos. There were
singers, artists who gave their presentations. There were people in masks who
walked around with pride, taking photos of each other!
There was a carnival like
atmosphere, but the anger was palpable. After the financial
crisis, only the Big Banks and Wall Street had come out of the crisis
unscathed and richer than ever. Not a single CEO or a bank had been indicted
for financial misconduct. In the meantime, people had been cruelly evicted from
their homes when they could not pay their mortgages for a few months, with very little consideration for their well-being.
Detroit had
been devastated because of the mortgage crisis, with the city just hollowed
out. I met many people who had been squatting on abandoned property but often
were beaten and thrown out by the police. A couple told me about their lives as
squatters and as people who hitchhiked across the country to reach Manhattan.
Their life as squatters was more dangerous than the hitchhiking, they felt. On
many occasions, they were arrested and spent a few days in jail. But the arrest
itself was traumatic, with violence inflicted on them if they resisted.
Night descended on the
skyscrapers of Manhattan and a pale moon peeped out from the lacy veil of
clouds. It was late, and I found a tiny bit of asphalt for myself, unfurled my
tent, and went inside. With the space I had, I could barely squeeze my body into
the tent. I saw faint, flickering lights emanating from the surrounding tall
buildings where people were still working in a realm we wished to ‘occupy’ in
our imagination and our collective soul. A poster at the end of our tent city
said, “This space occupied.”
My
friend Bill was in the tent next to mine. Food had arrived earlier at the park,
donated by charities and restaurants. Bill and I shared a footlong sub, soft
drinks and were full. We chatted into the night, till we dozed off around 1 AM,
tired and not really knowing what to expect, but happy.
The
next day, we woke up to the sound of commuters who were going to the offices
surrounding Zuccotti Park. I wondered if my dad was among them. His business
was a hedge fund, and his office was nearby. He was a billionaire and ranked among
the wealthiest in America. During the divorce, he had given up joint custody,
so Julia and I did not really know him well. This was the first time I had
thought of him after years and mostly because of what the Occupy movement meant
to him and to me on opposite sides of the struggle. If I knew him at all, he
was thinking this was a nuisance and a place for bums to hang out, protesting
when they should have been working.
Julia
came that day and every day from then on with breakfast or lunch for me and
some of my friends. She wanted to make sure I was not starving and was healthy.
A few days later, she told me our mom would call and begged me not to hang up
on her. I agreed but reluctantly.
“Andy,
this is mom.”
“Hello
mom, how are you?”
“I am
fine. Concerned about you and your well-being at Zuccotti Park,” she said.
“Mom,
there is nothing to worry about. Besides, I am covering this as a story for Gothamist.”
“Yes,
I understand. But there are other ways of covering it. I see reporters outside
on the periphery interviewing the protesters. You are embedded with them.”
“Mom, I am not going to argue
with you. And if you are in touch with dad, please don’t share this with him.
Although I doubt, he cares.”
“Andy,
I haven’t talked to him in ages.”
“All right, mom. Julia and I are
fine. Don’t worry.”
She hung up and I breathed a
sigh of relief. Both Julia and I were in our mid-twenties, and we did not get
any handouts from our parents. My dad had not left us with trust funds. That
was all for the good. We had learned to fend for ourselves for a long time,
while our mother lived in Italy from the proceeds of her divorce settlement.
On the fifth day, a library was
set up with books that were donated by authors, readers, and students. I walked
over to the library and helped carry the crates of books and set them up on
shelves. It was a good collection of books, and I chose a few books and brought
them back. I had a reading lamp and batteries, and the nights passed
pleasantly, chatting with my close neighbors, reading, staring up at the night
sky or simply losing myself in the oblivion of sleep.
After a few days, I noticed an
older man, perhaps in his eighties standing at a particular section of the
library, which had now become a tent with shelves. He was hovering around a
stack of books, and I noticed that the books he chose were on economics and the
historical origins of inequality.
We
stuck up a conversation since we kept meeting every day.
“Hi, my name is Michael
Benedetti. What’s yours?”
“I am
Andrew Isikoff.”
We
shook hands. Michael said, “I am a Professor Emeritus of Economics at Columbia
University, and I found a surprising book here, something I was looking for in
all the libraries of New York City.”
“Really?
What book were you looking for?” I asked.
“Oh,
it is a book by someone called Boris Isikoff,” he said.
The
book he showed me was “On the Origins of Inequality in America” and the author
Dr. Boris Isikoff of the New School, New York.
“Oh, you know, my grandfather’s
name was Boris Isikoff. But he died a vagrant on the streets of New York. He
was mentally ill but wasn’t committed to an institution,” I said.
Michael
stared at me for a long time.
“You
are Boris’s grandson?”
“If it is the same Boris we are
talking about. My grandfather couldn’t have taught at the New School. He was
depressed and it caused him to lose everything.”
“I was
the last person to see Boris alive at a homeless shelter in New York. He was my
friend. He died of a broken heart. Did you know that?”
I
looked at him in utter astonishment.
“You
saw him alive at a homeless shelter?”
“And
watched him die that night.”
Michael
was in tears, and he breathed heavily. I consoled him, put my arm around him
while we slowly walked towards his tent. We sat on two plastic cartons outside
and talked.
My
grandfather’s story came out in bits and pieces amongst the din and bustle of
the protest and the passersby and Michael’s start and stop style of talking. He
would say something, then go deep into thought and introspection. Then, as if
waking himself up, he would continue. Michael was also a bit out of breath, I
thought. Probably lung problems or allergies made worse by living at Zuccotti
Park.
“Boris Isikoff was a Professor
of Economics in Berlin when in 1938, The New School in New York City invited
him to emigrate. Along with many prominent German intellectuals, like Hannah
Arendt, Eric Fromm, Theodore Adorno, and Leo Strauss, he moved with his family
and settled happily in the city. The New School was a hub of innovative ideas
and intellectual ferment in the country, ideas that found resonance in the
White House of Franklin Roosevelt.
Teaching
at the New School was very pleasant, and Boris began his scholar’s life in
America by writing several learned treatises on inequality and the origins of
inequality unique to America and its history.
Boris was first my graduate
advisor and later we became close friends. I visited his house on Sundays for
lunch or dinner. His family was very warm and welcoming. One of the first gifts
I got from Boris was a beautifully bound copy of ‘Das Capital.’
Boris was brilliant. Ideas such
as inequality, who benefited from the fruits of
someone else’s labor were always on his mind. Being at the New School of New
York, he had started to study political economy but from a more
multidisciplinary angle When he first came to America, he was a generalist,
well versed in economics, but decided that to make a difference, he needed to
‘know’ America, its local and regional politics and economy. To that effect, he
and his graduate students would travel all over the country, especially the
farm belt, to see firsthand how people lived. It was a revelation to all of us.
We
were once invited by the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt to the White House to
discuss America’s agricultural workers and small farmer’s problems. No one knew
better about the farmers’ woes than Eleanor. She had travelled widely in the
1930s during the Great Depression and reported what she saw back to her
husband. This was a roundtable discussion of many prominent economists. I was
in the room, too, sitting at the back of the room, wide-eyed, listening to the
conversation, wondering if I could ever reach that stage of intellectual
maturity.
In 1944, Boris was called to
Washington, D.C., to serve in FDR’s government as an economic advisor providing
counsel on various programs that were part of the New Deal. He moved his family
to Washington and very enthusiastically joined the White House staff. He worked
at the West Wing offices and wrote influential papers that often reached the
President’s desk.
After FDR’s death, he continued
his advisory role with the Truman administration. But it wasn’t the same as
before. Boris moved in and out of the Truman Administration, moving his family
back and forth from D.C. to New York City and back.
I was
in touch with him through letters we wrote each other, but I started my own
career at Columbia University and my research diverged from his in many
important ways,” said Michael of those years.
“I
missed him and was invited often to visit his family for Thanksgiving and other
holidays. They lived in a lovely townhouse in D.C., close to the White House
and close to everything the city had to offer.
But,
while moving between New York City and temporary stints with the Truman
administration, Boris and his wife became estranged. It was too much for her to
move her whole family with him at the drop of a hat. Boris had found his
calling under the FDR administration, but under Truman, he was beginning to be
ignored. That was a source of extreme irritation for him. He would write policy
papers that never made it to the President’s desk,” said Michael.
I
asked him why and he said, “Domestic economic development was not as much of a
priority for Truman as recovery in Europe and Japan, the threat of Communism,
nuclear proliferation, and other global issues.
To start anew, Boris moved to
the State Department as senior economic advisor to the Secretary of State in President
Truman’s cabinet. He felt his career would thrive here - he was an
internationalist, and his experience was truly relevant when the Marshall Plan
was being implemented. In fact, Boris did do well in the State Department.
But
a couple of years later, Senator Joseph McCarthy's Anti-Communist campaign began
in earnest and left many individuals suspected of collaboration with Communists
terrified in its wake. A
man of extraordinarily little understanding of political economy or
international ideas, or any learning whatsoever, presided over the scare and
paranoia in America that had no equal until then.
Boris’s
name was among the fifty-seven State Department employees who were tagged by
McCarthy’s staff as being Communist sympathizers. He started receiving visits
from the FBI.”
Michael
continued, “Boris was under tremendous stress. His wife left with the children
for New York. She moved in with her parents and they got divorced. She had full
custody of the children, your dad, and his siblings. Boris, it seems, could not
be trusted with his children’s care or his own, and that became a
self-fulfilling prophesy and his doom.
The
FBI interrogations were a joke. They asked him questions about his background,
why he wrote what he wrote without really understanding the subject matter. Hegel,
Marx, Engels, and Freud and even his contemporary thinkers like Adorno, were
beyond the FBI agents’ understanding. They quoted his books and research papers,
where he wrote scholarly treatises based on these thinkers’ works and extended
them in novel ways. They read them as if they were indecent and treasonous
material. It drove him crazy – each interrogation, each insult drove a stake
through his heart. Communism was a dirty word after World War II, and America
turned on those whom they thought were Communists, Socialists, and anything in
between. Many of these people were emigres from Europe, escaping fascism.
The
FBI inquiry and the accusations were too much for him. He quit the State
Department. But back in New York, he had not been in academia for many years,
and the New School did not have a permanent position for him. They, however,
gave him an adjunct teaching position, and the contract was renewed every year.
The New School is always protective of their own, so he had a job and a decent salary,
enough for him to survive. They had done the same for other political emigres
from Europe.
However,
Boris was forced to live under much more humble conditions than he was
accustomed to. He gave up possession of his large apartment in downtown
Manhattan. He wrote on inequality, which was the primary motivation and passion
of his life, but now his work was not read or cited as much. Many publishers
who were once honored to publish his work in the 1940s, started rejecting him.
He needed graduate students to help him with the research, but he had none.
He
started descending into depression and insanity. Heartbreak was the main
reason. He could not believe this turn in fortune. And without his family, he
just broke down.
Boris
could no longer teach at the New School. They continued paying him, but after a
while, he simply stopped going to his bank, doing anything normal. He lost his
apartment, his only refuge, because he forgot to pay rent. In the meantime, he
also dropped out of sight of his friends. I had moved to England for a
sabbatical year to teach at University College,” said Michael choking back
tears.
“When
I came back in 1965, I contacted Boris’s colleagues, and no one had seen him. A
couple of years passed. Then suddenly, when I was standing at a newsstand, I
saw an old man, pushing a cart with dirty clothes and looking around, trying to
find a place to sit. Something about the turn of his head made me look again,
and there he was! Boris!
I
dropped whatever I was doing and called out his name. He looked back with a
look of non-recognition. I had to introduce myself, but he did not seem to
understand. I did not let that deter me. But Boris looked sick, pale, and
tired. He had splotches of blood on his hands, neck, and feet, not yet dry. I
called 911 and asked for help. An ambulance came and picked him up and I
followed the ambulance to Bellevue Hospital.
The
large, cavernous hospital with its ‘city within a city’ vibe and commitment to
help everyone was a welcome respite for Boris’s travails. He may have been past
any recollection of what was safe, but I was relieved. Boris stayed there for 3
weeks. At the end of three weeks, he was evaluated and told to come to the
hospital for psychological counseling. They also found a shelter for him, a
humble one-room apartment in the city, which was part of a hotel. I was
relieved that he had a place to stay. I told the other occupant of the
apartment to keep an eye out for him and to call me if he was in trouble.
Boris
did not stay out of trouble. One night, I got a frantic call from his roommate.
Boris had gone outside in the blinding rain and been run over by a car. It was
a hit and run. He was admitted to Bellevue again.
This
time he was injured more seriously. The hospital asked for next of kin. I tried
to find his ex-wife, but I had no idea where she was. I said I was the closest
thing to the next of kin for him. In two days, Boris was at the end of his
tragic life. I sat with him that last night, holding his hand and listening to
his belabored breathing.
However,
he had no lucid moments - those moments of clarity that many people who are
about to die often experience. I was asked if a rabbi could come for spiritual
support, but knowing him, I said that Boris was an atheist and would not have
approved. I was told to leave, visiting hours were over. Next morning, I had
the phone call that he was gone.
I held a
funeral for him, and he was buried at a downtown cemetery. I invited his old
colleagues and graduate students. Many people whom he had taught, mentored or
who knew him in D.C. attended. They gave heartwarming speeches on his legacy.
But then I thought, where were these people when he desperately needed them?
And why is there a lack of genuine diversity of opinion in mainstream economics
and policy making?
So
that, Andy, is the story of your grandfather. He was an honorable man, who
wanted nothing but the best for his country and knew how to give great advice
to Presidents. Our nation, with its extreme paranoia and fear let him down.
Does that sound familiar?”
I
looked at the statue of the Wall Street Bull nearby.
I said,
“Sadly, yes, it
sounds remarkably familiar Michael. I am so glad I met you!”
“Looking at what is happening to
our country, this protest, the banks and bailout, the searing dissatisfaction
among us, the 99%, I know he could have helped us at this inflection point in
America. He could have helped other economists if he had led a full life. But
who is listening today? The politicians on the left of the spectrum are already
trying to co-opt our message. And politicians to the right are leveraging this
to their advantage. There is hypocrisy on every side, a desire to keep the
status quo at any cost, and I don’t know who is more out of touch!”
A few wet and chilly days and nights later,
after dinner, I decided that it would be my last night at Zuccotti Park. I had
attended enough demonstrations, enough media spectacle, but the attention to
our movement was waning. I would need to find other ways to protest. This protest
did not have a specific purpose, had no leader, and seemed to be nothing more
than a media spectacle. It is true, it showed the immense dissatisfaction among
the people. But what of it? What exactly could we do? And I was sure
politicians of every stripe would use our arguments but then forget about us. I
decided, I would go home and write about it at Gothamist and at any
paper that would accept my writing. I did a lot of soul-searching to come to
this conclusion that night. I am sure that the Occupy Movement would spawn
other movements in the future and supply a language for other protests, I just
needed to find my place in it.
I also decided to tell Michael
the next morning. After Julia brought us breakfast, I went over to where I
thought Michael’s tent was, but he was gone! Someone handed me a letter he had
written to me. It said:
Dear Andy,
I am glad to have met you and happy I was able
to tell you the story of your grandfather. I have lived with the guilt of not
doing anything for him these many decades. And worse, not doing anything about
what Boris believed in passionately - and I did too - as his graduate student.
I thought economics was a noble profession. Instead, I was seduced by the
elegance of the mathematics behind economics. But that approach was unmoored
from reality. It is our collective blind belief in markets without regulation that
has let us down. Can you believe it, I even worked at a Hedge Fund, trying to
find quantitative strategies to make money while everything was going up in
flames? We were leveraging one currency against
another, one asset against another. Money-making was where my mind was, until
‘Occupy Wall Street’ happened.
It is up to you now to carry your
grandfather’s legacy forward. You did not know him, but now you do. Do not take
anything for granted. Question everything like Boris did. I have faith in you.
You are well-read and you ask the right questions. You can help now more than I
can in my last feeble attempt at redemption.
I must leave Zuccotti Park because I am
not feeling well. Sleeping on the pavement is not for an 80-year-old man. I
will either see you on the other side or I will not. But we will have those
moments we shared with each other, and I am happy about that.
My love to you and Julia,
Michael
