Jose Serrano still believes the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other terrorists should take place in New York City.
Most of his fellow New York Democrats have backed away from supporting a trial in the city. Serrano himself seemed to be cooling to the idea a couple of weeks ago, but said last week that Downtown New York was as good a place as any other to have the trials.
He told the Daily News that his colleagues might be coddling to big business downtown:
“We were all on board with it, and all of a sudden, I think, that the boys of Wall Street began to say, ‘We don’t want that in our neighborhood,’ he said. “Is it truly a concern about safety . . . or is it just coddling corporate America?”
And:
“Well, we’re gonna have a traffic jam,” Serrano needled. “Hello. This is New York. This is new?”
Never one to coddle to Wall Street, perhaps the release of two recent reports, reminding him of the great divide between downtown and his own district, inspired Serrano to keep the issue up.
Earlier in the month, a Gallup survey revealed that more than 36% of residents in New York’s 16th Congressional District could not afford to feed themselves or their families during the last year. This makes Serrano’s district officially the hungriest in the nation.
Last week, another Gallup survey came out, ranking the relative health and happiness of Americans by congressional district. Take a guess where Serrano’s district ranked. It should come as no surprise that the poorest district in the nation ranked as the unhealthiest and the saddest. The Las Vegas area turned out to be the angriest, but the South Bronx was right behind it in the number two spot.
In the poorest, hungriest, saddest and unhealthiest area of the country, it is probably difficult to take complaints about high costs and traffic jams from your wealthy neighbors seriously.