New York, center of gravity – Pauline Londeix column – October 5, 2024

By Pauline Londeix, researcher and writer

To get there by plane, we fly over the Atlantic Ocean, until the first islands appear, Saint John’s in Canada, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, and then we descend south, until we land in New Jersey or Queens. . But before I got on the plane, I discovered New York City through literature, huddled under a blanket from my room in Cantal, then in cinemas in Paris watching Spike Lee films. Certain images from films or created by the text surround us and never leave us. The ones we create later through our own experiences are added to, but the first ones are still there. Everything was new to me when I went there for the first time, in 2007; I wanted to explore everything about this city where there was nothing like Western Europe. I started by finding out about the sad youth hostels, visiting the museums, Central Park, Greenwich Village, SoHo, Ground Zero. And then I found friends who introduced me to “their” New York, traveling by bike, the banks of the Hudson and Sunday lunches at Little Brazil. Since 2007, I have returned to New York often for my health work. Since then, this city especially shows me to move together for more social justice. Because New York is like two sides of the same coin: on one side, it is Wall Street, the heart of empire, capitalism, unparalleled American consumers. On the other hand, with the same intensity, there are activists and politicians very organized, creative, and a city that votes almost exclusively Democratic. A friend told me that the day after Biden’s election in 2020, the sidewalks of Brooklyn were covered with empty champagne bottles, a sign, as in France, of a clear divide between the vote in Paris and in other countries. Of course, this city is also a crazy architecture, its 50-story buildings – the one that caught my eye recently, built by SHoP Architects, in the shape of a chromosome. But this huge city is also characterized by unaffordable rents and excesses.

And there is too much everywhere; in ibuprofen sold in bottles of 1,000 tablets, showing Americans’ penchant for “pain killers”, a sign of dissatisfaction at work and hectic paces, to pay for children’s education, medical expenses, or just his rent financing. New York is also a city where communities can live freely. On the subway there is an advertisement for a dating application for the “3.4 million Muslims” who live in the United States. In Brooklyn, you open the door to Old Fox Coffee and there’s a big LGBTQI flag hanging on the wall, like in many other places. In the cafe next door, Korean community meets every weekend.

In this month of September 2024, the streets of Manhattan are blocked by the police, the secret services, helicopters, the general assembly of the United Nations is under high surveillance being held there. But all the thoughts are turned in the same direction. What will happen on the evening of November 5? Will New York and the United States have a non-white woman president for the first time in their history? If the United States is not at the center of the world, we know very well that it is an important center of gravity, and that what happens there has a great impact on it.