The Forgotten Revolution: How New Yorkers Created Our Political Party System
Thursday, October 14, at 7:00 p.m.
Tony Dapolito Recreation Center
3 Clarkson Street
artsculturefun@parks.nyc.gov
(212) 408-0296
The Founding Fathers envisioned a country free of political parties. They devised a form of government in which only the wealthy or near-wealthy could become involved in politics -- as elected officials, or even as voters. But their nation only survived for about thirty years.
The modern mass-scale, two-party system that replaced it was largely the invention of the Democratic Party -- specifically, the Democratic Party in New York City. Here, in a single generation, the nation's political and electoral system was repealed and replaced, in a bloodless revolution that is barely even acknowledged, but much less given its due recognition, today.
The leaders of this forgotten revolution -- Aaron Burr, De Witt Clinton, Edward Livingston, and Martin Van Buren -- created much of our modern political system almost accidentally, as they sought power for themselves and their allies in the early days of our nation's history.
Alexander Hamilton And The National Triumph Of New York City
Thursday, October 28, at 7:00 p.m.
J. Hood Wright Recreation Center
351 Fort Washington Avenue & West 176th Street
artsculturefun@parks.nyc.gov
(212) 408-0296
The United States is the world's pre-eminent capitalistic economy. It is the most diverse nation in the history of humanity. It also has more lawyers and more lawsuits than anywhere else, and its governmental system is founded on the belief that political conflict, freely and publicly argued, is the best hope for stability in the long run.
New York is THE source of these quintessentially American traits. Yet the New York legacy generally goes unrecognized. How did New York come to have such a formative influence on the United States? And how did it manage do to so without getting any of the credit?
More than anyone else, Alexander Hamilton is the answer to both of these questions. One of the most enthusiastic of our adopted sons, Hamilton successfully spliced much of the City's unique culture into the national genotype. But the twists and turns of the then-emerging political party system, along with Hamilton's own complex and fluctuating national reputation, have long kept this connection hidden from public view.
The New York City Origins Of The Disability Rights Movement
Tuesday, November 16
Columbia University School of Social Work
1255 Amsterdam Avenue
The disability rights movement is an important branch of the civil rights revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. This movement is often overlooked, but it was truly a revolutionary effort. The founders of that movement began the journey of an entire class of the American population up out of utter powerlessness.
By fighting to allow the disabled to enter the agora and participate in mainstream social and political life; by redefining the disabled -- even to themselves -- as a minority group, the pioneers made the disabled community, for the first time, both conscious of its own existence and visible to the able-bodied world. Yet the story of the New York beginnings of the disability-rights struggle has never been publicly discussed, anywhere -- until now.
This event is not open to the public.