I’ve been called “effervescent” and “passionate” about my beat as the Staten Island reporter.
I’ve been told “I get it,” and I’m “one of us” and complimented for drawing attention to the place I call home, a borough I find myself defending to the death.
It wasn’t always that way because I, like many of you, didn’t understand this place.
I didn’t “get" the six degrees of separation between almost everyone who lives here, or the way that many people hate city government, or the way they feel detached from the rest of the city.
Or the way many of them don’t want to be told what to do with their time, their money, their property or their person.
That's changed a bit as I got older, as I started to understand the things that make them tick (because sometimes they make me tick too), and to respect the things I don’t understand.
If you’re a person who reads this headline and thinks - 'oh, Staten Island, who cares' - you’re making a mistake.
Because whether you like it or not, we’re a vital part of the city.
We have more first responders living here than any other borough. We pay excessive amounts for that godforsaken bridge to Brooklyn — money that goes to bridge maintenance but also to fund your mass transit commutes.
We are small businesses, parks, good restaurants, the Staten Island ferry and lots of other things that make this borough great.
But perhaps more important than that — we are (whether we like it or not) a microcosm of the rest of the country.
Our small slice of NYC is much more representative of the rest of America than it is the rest of the city.
Those people who don’t want to wear their masks, don’t want to praise Governor Cuomo’s response to the pandemic, and don’t want to see Joe Biden become president — they stand at my socially distanced outdoor gatherings. They have discussions with an equal amount of people in my family and friend circle who don’t understand voting for President Trump, or think there’s anything great about the America we all live in at the moment, and who wear the mask like a badge of honor.
We are more registered Democrats than Republicans, yet we often find people voting off party lines and splitting with people in their own households. I can name dozens of people whose families are divided politically, and guess what, they’ve figured out how to live together without killing each other.
Why do I mention this? To perhaps inform a narrative that’s all too quick to dismiss and detach Staten Island from the rest of the city.
There’s so much vitriol about Staten Island on social media lately — most of it, I’m sure, from people who don’t live here and I dare say probably have never even set foot here.
They’re bashing the borough because it, without counting absentee ballots, voted 62% for Trump over Biden; because restaurant owners, gym owners, small business owners were vocal in their disdain for the phased reopening of the city; because COVID-19 numbers here mirrored the ones seen upstate in counties permitted to open before New York City; and because parents here want to keep their kids in school, as if a wish for a classroom education is somehow a reflection of poor parenting or a lack of love for their children.
I am the first to admit that some of the vitriol is deserved. Earlier this spring, there were photos of people not socially distancing — packing Forest Avenue on warm spring nights like it was the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
And more recently — you’ve inevitably seen the photo shot by our own Jaden Glasford, capturing a man at the St. George Ferry Terminal, presumably a Staten islander, refusing a free mask despite the fact that he wasn’t wearing one.
What Jaden will tell you is that 99% of the people he saw at the terminal that morning were wearing masks,
And yet that moment speaks volumes for the rest of us doing the right thing.
It’s a peephole into a nation exhausted by the pandemic and tired of being told what to do.
But with COVID-19 numbers now rising again — especially in pockets of Staten Island that previously hadn’t seen such levels — it’s disheartening to look at that picture, to say the least.
So for Staten Island — often the brunt of abuse and the wrath of the rest of the city — it once again shows our best defenses are watered down because of the actions of one guy who doesn’t want to follow the rules.
As our borough president, James Oddo, last week pointed out: we’re a unique bunch, likely to cut off our grandmothers on Hylan Boulevard.
But as he ALSO rightly emphasized that we’re at our best when we’re called away from our selfishness and asked to rise to the occasion.
That moment is now.
We can’t expect COVID-19 to go away just because we’re sick of it. I am sick of it. We’re ALL sick of it.
But that doesn’t mean we should pack our homes, even if it IS our right, with our often large extended families for Thanksgiving.
And it doesn’t mean we should shun a mask when it’s offered to our mask-less face.
But it also doesn’t give the rest of the city permission to attack what they don’t understand and rush to blanket statements about the rest of us.