How to Ruin a Thriving City in Less Than a Decade

July 17, 2023

by William F. B. O’Reilly DailyCaller.com

Thirty-five years ago I sat in a meeting in Northern Manhattan watching a group of senior citizens watching the sun go down. As twilight began to give way to darkness, one elderly person after another made his way to the door, clearly frightened.

Darkness will do that in a crime-riddled city, even at a meeting on public safety hosted by a local police precinct. Night had fallen in New York, and anywhere but one’s apartment was nowhere to be.

Within six years it was a different town. Children were back in parks; seniors were strolling up and down its avenues at all hours, and anyone who wanted to be anything was beating a path to the bright lights of Gotham again.