GRATZ: Tell me about your arrest in 1968.
JACOBS: The state was holding a hearing to focus on a big promotion for all this great land development that was going to occur. All of a sudden, they were soft-pedaling—or ignoring—the number of cars, because they were now worried about the pollution factor. A committee was researching the expressway’s pollution impact, and they were very frightened. People tried asking: if it wasn’t going to increase the pollution because there would not be many new cars, how could the cost be justified? And they would say: that s not what this hearing is about. It was a great charade.
A very curious thing was occurring. I was used to hearings at the Board of Estimate, where the microphone for the
speaker faces the people holding the hearing—the ones going to make the decision. The speaker’s back was always to the
audience. At this hearing, however, the microphone was directed the other way. The speaker’s back was to the officials. This was very symbolic.
It was phony as a hearing.
So when it was my turn to speak, I drew attention to this— how we weren’t talking to the hearing officers, we were just talking to each other. It was a charade. Furthermore, it wouldn’t matter if we were talking to these officials, because they were not the people who made the decisions anyway. They were just errand boys, sent from Albany to preside while we let off steam under the guise of a hearing. It was phony as a hearing.
I decided that at least I would send them back to Albany with the message that we really didn’t like this, and since talk would never amount to that kind of a message—since they didn’t hear anything—I planned to just walk across the stage and let them know that I was not content to remain down there talking to my fellow citizens, that I wanted to give them an immediate message. And I said, “Anybody who wants to come with me, come along.” I addressed them instead of the hearing officers. They had set it up for us to talk to each other, so I was going to do that. And so I started up the stage. And pretty nearly all the audience got up and began to follow me as I walked across the stage. That’s all I was going to do—walk across the stage and down the other steps.
“Officer, arrest this woman! Arrest this woman!”
And this threw them into the most incredible tizzy, the idea of unarmed, perfectly gentle human beings just coming up and getting in close contact with them. You never saw people so frightened. They had a policeman up there on the stage. As I came tip on the stage with, I guess, pretty nearly all the audience coming along, too, everything was quiet, absolutely quiet, except the chairman, a state engineer, kept yelling, “Officer, arrest this woman! Arrest this woman!”
He didn’t arrest me at first. He came over to me and he said, “Mrs. Jacobs, come on over here and sit down.” And so I sat down where he suggested, and the chairman was now standing blocking the way. Nobody knew what to do. The woman with the steno-type had jumped tip in alarm, and her tape was all running out, and she grabbed her steno-type. So people began picking up this tape that was all around now and sort of tossing it around. That was all that was happening: this eerie silence and sort of leisurely kind of confetti. It was really surrealistic, because nobody was tearing it up or doing anything violent, just wafting this paper. And the engineer was yelling, “Arrest this woman! Arrest this woman!” Everybody else was absolutely silent. Nobody knew what to do.
The policeman said, “March down the other side; just make a gesture.” So, I made some derogatory remark to him about these people holding the hearing. I forget what I said; it was pretty plain. Something like, “They’ve got their minds made up; they’re just trying to do us in, these people.” And he said, “Aren’t they, though.” And so there I sat.
This scene went on, and after a while I thought, “Somebody has to bring this to an end. Nobody knows what to do any more than I do.” So I got up from the chair—all these frightened men went down the other side—and went to the microphone again. I said, “What’s the charge? Why am I being arrested?”
I wouldn’t arrest you except that he has demanded your arrest.
The policeman said, “It’s at the request of Mr. Toth [John Toth, chief engineer for State Department of Transportation]. I wouldn’t arrest you except that he has demanded your arrest.”
So, I said again, “What are the charges?” And he said,
“Well, that will be worked out at the station house. But I must arrest you, I’m sorry.”
And I said, “Well I think they’re making a mistake.”
And he said, “I think they are too, but I have no choice.”
“They’re making new charges against you. They’re opening up law books they’ve never opened up before.”
He was really nice. He was always on my side. I was booked on disorderly conduct. A court date was set. When we got to court I waited and waited all morning. My case wasn’t called. My arresting officer came down to me at one at one point and said, “They’re making new charges against you. They’re opening up law books they’ve never opened up before.”
The charges they came up with were riot, inciting to riot, criminal mischief and obstructing government administration. Four years in jail. They’d have liked to put me in for it too. They really would.
They made out what a dangerous character I was: inciting to riot. I was a menace on the streets. I had to be silenced. If I spoke I was to be put right in jail, because it would probably be incitement to riot.
They turned up with all kinds of lies.
GRATZ: What happened next?
JACOBS: At the pre-trial hearing, they turned up with all kinds of lies about how I had damaged the steno-type machine. That’s what the “criminal mischief” was. Mr. Toth was there, and he gave a horrendous account of how terrifying all this was. I guess it was, to him. I guess he wasn’t putting this on, but it sounded ludicrous to me. But he really was terrified.
I had a very expensive, top-grade lawyer, and we had to hold fundraisers to pay him. The lawyer’s strategy was this: to put it off and put it off, as long as possible, until they cooled down. Because they were furious and they wanted to really sock it to me. He found that out.
By the time it came to court, we plea bargained. I pled guilty. I was convicted of disorderly conduct and let off with a suspended sentence and ordered to pay for the damage done to the machine. I hadn’t done any damage to the machine. They had said a whole lot about how it had had to be repaired and how much it had cost, hundreds of dollars’ worth of damage to this valuable machine. This was all made up, a hoax. But that was all they had to really substantiate anything—except my standing around where I wasn’t invited.
What we wanted to do was get a receipt and then investigate and see what corruption and phoniness there was about this receipt, since we knew the machine had not been damaged. The lawyer got no answer at all about the receipt, so then I wrote to the judge, saying that I had this judgment to pay. I didn’t like this debt hanging over my head. I enclosed a copy of the letter that had been sent, told him about the phone calls, and asked him to please order them to comply with their part of the court order, so I could comply with my part. Got no answer. But at least I had the letter on the record, if ever it was said, “Well, she was ordered to do this and she didn’t.” I guess they could see the trap that we were hoping they would fall into. We would have had a field day if they had tried to falsify a repair bill.
I would have gone to jail if necessary.
GRATZ: Did the arrest accomplish anything tangible?
JACOBS: Some issues you fight with lawsuits and buy time that way. With others, you buy time by throwing other kinds of monkey wrenches in. You have to buy time in all these fights. The lawsuit way is more expensive.
We did accomplish something with all this mess. The Feds held a hearing, declaring the expressway environmentally unacceptable. Well, well, that verdict really changed the subject. My arrest bought some time, and it was well worth it. That’s why I plea bargained, to buy more time. I would have gone to jail if necessary. But the only point of it was to buy time to continue working in Washington on the environment and get a judgment against the expressway.
GRATZ: How did the fight end?
JACOBS: It was a little like the West Village fight. After a while, Washington wanted the West Village thing to end. It was giving the urban renewal program a bad name all over the country. There were editorials in the Saturday Evening Post about the West Village. There were pictures all over the U.S. of people protesting it with adhesive tape and Xs on their glasses. It was a bad image for them, bad press that they were getting. I think highway people in Washington began to feel the same thing was happening with the expressway, too.
It was one of the earliest cases to go this way. And it was an unequivocal thing. You could see how much pollution would occur. The state had used these increased car figures very early to justify spending this much money and doing this amount of destruction because of how much traffic it would accommodate. But now it was over, and, eventually, demapped.
GRATZ: How can one oppose Westway when the city so desperately needs jobs to revitalize the economy?
JACOBS: That’s the question asked again and again by the parade of highway advocates at public hearings. But they never tell us who will get those jobs. And they never count the jobs that may be lost in the displacement process that inevitably accompanies new development.
A trade-in of the Westway money, for transit rehabilitation plus a modest rebuilding of the West Side Highway, according to a six-month Sierra Club study, would deliver 103,000 man-years of employment, both inside and outside of New York City; Westway promises only 78,000, and most of those will be outside the region—in plants manufacturing the steel, cement, and other component parts and materials. What’s more, most of the promised Westway jobs are temporary; but many permanent jobs are endangered by the displacement of businesses along the Westway construction site.
The silence from those who honor Jane Jacobs with their lips but not with their hearts is an expected silence. Get used to it. This is why these people spoke out against silence. I have done something many around the world see as good. “My mother loved you,” Jane Jacobs children have told me. Were I to be silent I would not be worthy of that love. –Reg Hartt 01/27/2017.
Reg Hartt Links
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2010/09/15/fiorito_we_gotta_have_hartt.html
http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/lawrence-solomon-fords-blow-for-film-freedom
http://torontolife.com/tag/reg-hartt/
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