Lights amid immigration darkness
Congressmember Jerrold Nadler, chairperson of the House Judiciary Committee, left, spoke out against President Donald Trump’s immigration
policies at the Lights for Liberty rally.
Hundreds gathered in Lower Manhattan’s
Foley Square on Fri., July 12,
for Lights for Liberty.
The protest criticized the Trump administration’s
immigration policies and
the deportation raids by Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
On the same day, there were more
than 700 Lights for Liberty rallies
PHOTOS BY JIMIN KIM
worldwide protesting anti-immigration
policies and immigrant border camps
between the U.S. and Mexico.
In blackout, Johnson shines, Blaz fi zzles
BY LINCOLN ANDERSON
The big event Saturday evening
was supposed to be Day Two of
the summer version of “Manhattanhenge.”
The sunset would perfectly
align with the borough’s east-west cross
streets, creating a golden canyon effect,
and everyone and her cousin would
snap photos of it and post them on social
media.
Instead a massive blackout hit the
West Side, starting just after 6:45 p.m.,
and affecting roughly 72,000 Con Edison
customers, according to the utility.
Power was eventually restored to all
affected areas, fi ve hours later, shortly
before midnight.
The outage was initially confi ned to
the blocks west of Fifth Ave. between
42nd and 72nd Sts. The New York Post
reported that, by 9 p.m., the affected
area had spread down to W. 12th St.
in the Village, and police were telling
motorists to avoid the blocks between
W. 12th and W. 72nd Sts. west of Fifth
Ave. The New York Times said the affected
area didn’t go south of W. 30th
St.
By Monday, Con Edison’s investigation
had concluded that the “initiating
event” of Saturday’s blackout was
an electrical cable fi re at W. 64th St.,
which, in turn, affected a substation on
W. 49th St.
“Our inspection of equipment and
preliminary review of system data over
the past 40 hours indicates that the relay
protection system at our W. 65th St.
The day after the blackout, Speaker Corey Johnson spoke at a press
conference about next steps as Mayor Bill de Blasio — who had flown
back from Iowa that morning — waited his turn at the microphone.
substation did not operate as designed,”
Con Ed said in a statement. “That system
detects electrical faults and directs
circuit breakers to isolate and de-energize
those faults. The relay-protection
system is designed with redundancies
to provide high levels of reliability. In
this case, primary and backup relay systems
did not isolate a faulted 13,000-
volt distribution cable at W. 64th St.
and West End Ave.
“The failure of the protective relay
systems ultimately resulted in isolation
of the fault at the W. 49th St. transmission
COURTESY COREY JOHNSON/TWITTER
substation, and the subsequent loss
of several electrical networks, starting
at 6:47 p.m.”
Helping New Yorkers remain calm
through it all was Council Speaker
Corey Johnson, who regularly tweeted
out informative updates, earning major
kudos in the process. Meanwhile, Mayor
Bill de Blasio was pilloried for being
out of town, in Iowa, on his apparently
quixotic presidential campaign, and for
issuing just one, fairly generic tweet in
response to the crisis.
Johnson, of course, also represents
District 3, which covers the West Side
from the Village to Columbus Circle,
which bore the brunt of the blackout.
Nicole Gelinas, a Hell’s Kitchen
resident and Post columnist who lives
near the problem substation, tweeted:
“Corey Johnson is in touch with everyone,
answering constituents’ concerned
tweets, and doing minute-to-minute
updates on the radio and Twitter where
de Blasio is, like, where? Looking for a
plane out of place whose population is
smaller than people impacted by blackout.”
The mayor did not get back in town
until 12:30 p.m. the next day, nearly 13
hours after electrical service had been
restored, according to reports.
Other media fi gures likewise spun
the blackout as a major moment for
Johnson but another blot on de Blasio’s
record, adding to his reputation as an
“absentee mayor.”
Jessica Winter, executive editor of
newyorker.com, tweeted: “Corey Johnson
is the mayor now.”
Indeed, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
might dismiss Congressmember Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez and her “Twitter
world” as being just a lot of hype. But
during the blackout, many really appreciated
and relied on Johnson’s tweets.
Ben Max, executive editor of Gotham
Gazette, praised Johnson’s Twitter
skills, tweeting: “Given AOC is in
another stratosphere, no one in New
York politics comes even close to Corey
Johnson in understanding how important
twitter can be.”
Schneps Media CNW July 18, 2019 3
/newyorker.com