The eve of destruction in Passaic September 15, 1985

  

The city is coming Thursday to inspect the properties the Labor Day fire conveniently made available for the mayor’s plan for a new Passaic.

Condos and shopping malls. How unfair.  They try to scare us into accepting these by telling us the alternative will be a garbage dump.

It is the same political trash poor people have to suffer through. Bad enough we had the disaster, and now we have a mayor like Lipari trying to make it worse, threatening not just the homes that burned, but those that survived as well.

It just shows just how much politicians care about the people they are supposed to serve.

I spoke with the mayor’s cousin. He didn’t seem all that sad about the impact the fire had on people living down here, saying redevelopment is easier now that the fire cleared everything out.

City planners think in terms of blocks and lot numbers, not people, what does where, and how like one big game of Monopoly. So, what if you have to tear down a few houses to make the whole plan work?

Lipari and his lap dogs on the council have decided to extend their “blighted” designation a few blocks to get rid of the rest, putting people out of their homes that the fire missed.

That seems more a crime than the fire was.

I think Lipari has been brooding since the failure of his Manhattan project last year, and now when it appears as if the landscape has been hit with a real bomb, he jumps in with both feet to take advantage.

As a result of the fire, 50 families lost their homes and 3,000 people lost their jobs – and that isn’t enough for this crooked mayor. He wants to extend the damage, pushing to demolish those houses in which people still live.

The fire did enough to us; do we have to suffer the greedy vision of the mayor as well? Why does he need to take advantage of the people who survived? His great Dundee Project should be one that helps people and heals the wounds the fire inflicted, leaving the poor in place.

But the mayor and his cronies want to change the character of the city, killing off the old to bring in lifeless shopping malls and yuppie palaces the poor can’t afford.

He doesn’t want any of the old population around to gum up the works.

So, we can expect them to arrive on Thursday, to inspect us, the bring us to the eve of destruction, and it may be up to those who still live here to organize and stop him before it is too late.

 

 1985 Menu


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