“It’s just where people go to get on the ferry”

Christie Administration Shows Disdain for An Iconic American Place

Liberty State Park (2/7/15)

[Update below]

Responding to critics of Governor Christie signing into law a bill that would promote development of Liberty State Park, DEP spokesman Larry Ragonese set a new low with this one, quoted by NJ TV News:

“We’re looking at every inch of the park,” DEP Spokesman Larry Ragonese says. “What amenities can we add? What services and programs, because it’s the perfect site for events. At the moment, it’s just where people go to get on the ferry. The potential to improve recreational possibilities are enormous. Improve the park and bring in more revenues. That’s the goal.”

That disgusting comment was ignorant and hateful – even by Gov. Christie Administration standards.

Ragonese is a former Star Ledger reporter who covered Morris County.

Given that Morris County background, such ignorance – while seemingly a credential for entrance into the Christie crowd – may reflect the elite bubble he’s been ensconced in for many years.

Regardless of Ragonese’s personal background, could anyone imagine the immediate condemnation if a a Cuomo spokesperson said Central Park was “just a place where people go to catch the subway”?

Ragonese should be fired for that comment. Period.

So, while it was a cold, gray, snowy day, to push back against Ragonese’s sickening vision, I visited Liberty State Park today.

And I can assure you of one thing: no one was there just to “get on the ferry”.

I saw many people having fun and heard many languages spoken – and all in a reverence for the place – take a look:

[update: 2/8/15 – just read this essay – the conclusion seems to capture the essence of what I sensed among visitors to LSP and their self insinuation in the visual landscape:

The praxis of our daily living rests on a solid base of common background convictions, self-evident cultural truths, and reciprocal expectations. If violence thus begins with a distortion in communication, after it has disrupted it is possible to know what has gone wrong and what needs to be repaired.” This is the foundation, if you like, of Habermasian cultural vision and pedagogical hope in despairing times. Martha Nussbaum, writing in The New Religious Intolerance (2012), speaks of the “cultivation of the ‘inner eyes,’ the capacity to see the world from the perspective of minority experience” (p. 59). This cultivating process is at the heart of the pedagogics of mutual tolerance and respect.