Staten Island Residents Also Feel Forgotten By Bloomberg And The City

I posted earlier today how residents in Coney Island and Gerritsen Beach are feeling forgotten by Herr Mayor and his Sandy response team.

The Guardian reports many on Staten Island are feeling the same way:

Staten Island is barely a dozen miles from lower Manhattan but a world away in terms of the attention it has received since superstorm Sandy hit on Monday night. Across the island, there is a pervading sense of injustice among residents, that their plight has been ignored by a city leadership and a media convulsed by the blackouts and flooded subway tunnels of lower Manhattan.

"Only Manhattan, because of rich people," says Teresa Bar, who lives in South Beach. "They only think of Manhattan, Manhattan, Manhattan."

The home Bar shares with her husband Jerzy has been severely damaged by hurricane Sandy. The storm surge ripped open both their front and garage doors, filling the ground floor with five feet of water.

The couple had evacuated when Sandy hit, but Bar is angered by what she sees as a lack of response from New York City authorities.

"Manhattan and Long Island, all the time, but we don't have any information about Staten Island at all. We pay taxes, everything, but we are the smaller people. We're not important to our government or anything."

....

People here are getting on with the clean-up operation, power-hosing walls and floors and joking about the smell of bleach that pervades some properties, but there is some anger. Teresa Bar was not the only one who felt forgotten, although others were unwilling to put their names to their frustration.

"We got ignored and we got hammered one of the most probably," said a man who gave his name as Alex. "We haven't seen no-one come here." Asked what he would like to have seen the authorities do differently, he shrugged his shoulder. "Maybe just show up," he said. "Maybe just say 'we're trying'."

I would note that Staten Island overwhelmingly voted to re-elect Mike Bloomberg in 2009.

Without the margin on Staten Island, Bloomberg might not have actually won re-election for his third (illegal) term.

And yet he still doesn't seem to give a shit about them.

He's too busy taking bows in Upper East Side steak houses full of rich assholes like himself - you know, the ones with the power on and the toilet tanks full.