Making Diversity Work
Three simple rules for Queens’ newest arrival
Yes, we heard the news about Long Island City. And the yelling, anger, and outrage at the incentives. We read about the promises. And also, about the impending demise of the cultural identity of Queens — the New York City borough where I was born, raised, and still live. Like many others, I wholeheartedly disagree with the decision of our state and city’s leadership to offer massive financial incentives to a corporate behemoth that clearly doesn’t need them, especially while so many people and pressing issues go unnoticed or ignored. I’m also worried that so much of what I love about my corner of the world will be drastically altered as a result of this decision.
But I also know that one of Queen’s defining values is tolerance. Growing up in a place where nearly 140 different languages are spoken by people representing 120 different countries, you learn to take people for who they are. Frankly, you really have no other choice if you want to get through each day. More to the point, though, our differences are what make Queens unlike any other place in the world. By no means is it a perfect utopia of empathy and cooperation, but if you let someone go about their lives without blatant judgement or harm, odds are they’ll reciprocate. Queens is a place where people from different ethnic groups–who might literally be killing each other if they still lived back home–can co-exist. It’s the land of “do your thing.”
This identity has built a strong sense of pride for me and for most people I know who grew up or have lived in Queens for some time. That pride isn’t going anywhere. Our new corporate neighbor is just the latest and loudest in a long local history of arrivals. Knowing all I know about the people, organizations and places that make Queens so exceptional, it’s a bit hard for me to believe that a company, no matter how large, can drastically alter the culture that has been building and growing for more than a century. At least not without a full-fledged, no-holds-barred fight.
This isn’t the first time we’ve faced threats to our way of life, and it won’t be the last. As a result, Queens has a built up a remarkable network of organizations focused primarily or entirely on maintaining the borough’s diversity and culture of tolerance. Let’s hear it for the people who are leading the charge.
Located in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, site of two historic World’s Fairs, the Queens Museum has been transformed over the past few decades into one of the most dynamic cultural institutions in the city. This is a result, in large part, of its staff’s dedication to representing the diversity of the surrounding borough. The museum puts tremendous effort into its education efforts and public programming and is one of the only museums to have a full-time bilingual community organizer on-staff. Many of its programs involve bringing the community together with artists to engage in projects that create real impact.
For instance, in partnership with artist Tania Bruguera and with support from Creative Time the Queens Museum developed Immigrant Movement International, a community space meant to address the needs of residents in nearby Corona, a largely immigrant neighborhood. The space offers comprehensive educational programming, health, and legal services at no cost.
Through concerted efforts with partners and local stakeholders, the Queens Museum has also led an initiative to transform an underused block into Corona Plaza, a thriving community plaza with an impressive schedule of community programs. What started in 2005 with the museum hosting events on-site by applying for one day permits to close down the street proved so successful that the street has now been de-mapped by the city and is formally recognized as a permanent public space. The museum continues to host public programming here, and also works to train local community members on how to develop their own programming.
Sharing Flushing Meadows Corona Park with the Queens Museum is the Queens Night Market. The open-air market, which takes place on Saturdays in the spring and fall, features up to a hundred different independent vendors selling merchandise, art, and food and featuring small-scale cultural performances. As you might assume, many of the vendors, artists and performers at the market are immigrants selling both culturally specific and authentic goods from their respective countries, but also food and art inspired by the fusion of different cultures converging together in the borough. The market, now in its fourth year, has been a welcoming presence for Queens residents as an initiative that is truly for and of the borough.
There are also scores of small neighborhood businesses and institutions that have stood the test of time and become part of the borough’s cultural infrastructure. Gottscheer Hall in Ridgewood, which has been serving beer and food to locals since 1924, beautifully illustrates why these kinds of spaces are so important. Even today, many patrons are immigrants or come from immigrant families. At the hall you can still hear people speaking Gottscheerish, the language of the former Gottschee settlement which was located in modern-day Slovenia. This is one of the world’s disappearing languages, with only a few thousand people still knowing how to speak it. Gottscheer Hall is the kind of thing that’s rarely mentioned in mainstream discussions about diversity, but to its piece of the mosaic that is Queens, it’s indispensable.
Queens is also home to two events that celebrate the diversity of the city’s LGBTQ community. St. Pat’s for All, which takes place in Sunnyside and Woodside, is a parade for the Irish and Irish-American communities in New York City that welcomes all to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, regardless of race, gender, creed or sexual orientation. It was created in response to the famed Fifth Avenue St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Manhattan having prohibited LGBTQ groups from marching — a ban that was only just lifted in 2014. Queens Pride, which draws more than 40,000 spectators to Jackson Heights each year, is the second-largest Pride celebration in the city. It promotes awareness and education among and of the exceptionally diverse gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community in Queens.
There are, of course, times when Queens’ tolerance is called into question. Most recently, fliers were anonymously posted throughout the neighborhood that read: “A notice to all citizens of the United States of America: It is your civic duty to report any and all illegal aliens to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They have broken the law.” The bottom of the fliers listed the contact number for ICE. These fliers outraged community members, including local city councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, who stated: “This is a borough of immigrants, a neighborhood of immigrants and I don’t want any of them, even those that are undocumented, to be afraid to walk through these streets.”
The borough’s support system for diversity is deeply rooted. Make the Road, an organization that advocates and provides essential services for immigrant and working-class families, changed the narrative around the guerilla anti-immigrant signage by creating their own posters. Posted around the neighborhood, they asserted that they were “Standing in Support of Immigrants, Refugees, People of All Faiths, TGNCIQ Communities, Black, Indigenous & People of Color. We will not allow hate to enter Queens.”
The people of Queens represent and do many things, but we don’t do homogeny. We’re not out to build a static, predictable culture where everyone looks, thinks and acts the same. My neighbors and I welcome anyone and everyone, as long as they follow a few simple rules:
First, have tolerance for your neighbor.
When they reciprocate, work towards building respect for each other.
Don’t mess with the heterogenous culture that many have worked long and hard to build and preserve here.
Easy enough. Hopefully our new neighbor is listening and follows these rules. If not, they’re in for a hell of a fight.
This post was written by Dylan Stiga with thinking contributed by Brendan Crain. ThoughtMatter is a creative branding, design and strategy studio in New York City’s Flatiron District. Find us on Twitter.
