my apology for my recent post on brownstoner

Dear brownstoners:

I wish to offer an apology and some clarification to some recent posts I have made in case I have offended anyone:

As some of you may know, I used a post on here, specifically the post about repairing a cracked sewer pipe and the comment made by DIBS that “our young people should go into a trade like welding” to lay out the reality of such a venture. I admittedly hijacked the original post but continued the discussion and conveyed how this 55 year-old has witnessed the use of race and discrimination to hire low paid help in the building trades. Wednesday, I got home and found an email from a member of the Brownstoner team. He informed me that they had received complaints about my posts about “race, gender, and affirmative action”. My posts were not about “race, gender, and affirmative action”; they were about racism, discrimination and not necessarily affirmative action, but pay parity and the potential use of affirmative action to justify discrimination and low pay in an unregulated environment by someone who very possibly had no knowledge i n determining what to pay a self employed worker. I was condemning racism and discrimination when used as tools to deny pay parity or pay equality.

Setting aside Brownstoner’s rules against off topic posts, which both DIBS and I violated, I wish to point out that Brownstoner encourages discussions of “quality of life issues” surrounding home ownership. I own a home. Quality of Life to me, includes, not just me and my family as we sit in our house, but the school across the street, the nearby shops, the people who ride by on the bus by my houses every morning, and the people who might come to work at my house. Quality of life includes all the people my family and I encounter in the vicinity of our house and how happy and healthy those people we encounter are; are they paid enough to feed their children, do they have health insurance, do they have paid sick days so they can take off as needed, is their employer paying into social security for them so have something for the future, do they have disability insurance in case they fall off a ladder? All that comes under quality of life to me.

I am not going to mention anyone by political affiliation this time, but I am going to say that when I go back to my friends on Long Island, some of them, most often well situated people living in nice communities, and I begin talking about benefits for workers (never mind pay) – even just the mention of the minimal protections required by existing law is met with massive pushback. I never thought I would encounter that push back in a progressive environment like Brooklyn. My guess is one of two things: First, people did not read all of what I was saying and made an assumption that because I am contractor (and I am not a big contractor, I consider myself a worker; I am a corporation in name only) I would have a certain disposition toward labor (and perhaps women; be careful here, my wife has referred to me as a “bigger feminist” than she) and as a result would think a certain way; if they read what I was saying, they would understand, I don’t think like a business owner. The other possibility is, money is speaking. My fear is, that it is the latter, that the people who complained to Brownstoner are thinking with their wallets. I find the possibility that money may be restraining free speech in this political environment to be very frightening.

I do acknowledge one other thing and I am sorry for this: people may find my discussion inflammatory. That may be why Brownstoner contacted me. But to tell you the truth, anyone condemning anything that they see wrong in society (and this is a social issue; its “en masse”) is going to say something inflammatory to someone at some point. It can’t be helped. Writing about UPS knocking down a one hundred and fifty-year-old warehouse over a weekend might be inflammatory to someone (someone who likes old buildings or, conversely, to the UPS executives themselves); writing about discrimination and pay equality shouldn’t be.

All of what I said had to be said. Every day for years, I have been witness to something I consider to be disgusting and wrong and every day I open a site like brownstoner and have felt it was wrong that we were writing about old buildings and nobody was saying anything about the conditions of the people who do the work. Are we actually living in 1890? Isn’t this what some of us are fighting against? I’ve said it and I have faith enough in the people of Brooklyn that my business will not suffer as a result.

Thank you all for taking the time to read this,
Steve Cymbalsky

stevecym

in General Discussion 6 years and 1 month ago

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randolph | 6 years and 1 month ago

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> @stevecym
> others come and go

A LOT OF REGULAR COMMENTERS HAVE BEEN BANNED AND CHASED AWAY THROUGH OTHER FORMS OF SITE OVERMODERATION.

stevecym | 6 years and 1 month ago

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i was thinking about something else here. the thing about dibs is, he has been on here for a long time. others come and go. I got mad about something on here and stayed away for years and in that time, a lot of others disappeared. most of the names are new. but he is still here and that says something. is DIBS the guy who used to have the picture that looked like Thurston Howell (the third, we can’t forget that) sitting pool side in a chaise lounge? what happen to that picture?

stevecym | 6 years and 1 month ago

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FYI: i was happy DIBS said what he did. i don’t think of him as a trouble maker. i think he just likes to shake things up and make people think. and he is somewhat right about what he says about the situation for trades not being the same across the country but having worked in the Midwest, i can say that the loss of manufacturing jobs has put pressure on the trades.

yudashasom | 6 years and 1 month ago

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lol @ randolph

randolph | 6 years and 1 month ago

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> @daveinbedstuy
> a lot of kids should learn a trade

day trading is not “a trade”

daveinbedstuy | 6 years and 1 month ago

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randolph is less of a douchebag IRL too. But I still believe a lot of kids should learn a trade and, experiences of a tradesman in NYC are not going to be the same across the country. College isn’t for everyone.

randolph | 6 years and 1 month ago

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DIBS is a notorious troublemaker, he is bored in his retirement and sits around at his computer just looking to cause trouble. IRL he is much less of a douchebag, I would just recommend ignoring him online.

stevecym | 6 years and 1 month ago

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that someone complained to the office about this is wrong. i suspect most people understand the importance of free speech and i also understand why a certain element wishes to prohibit it, especially if what the person doing the talking is saying will cost money. i am going to leave this here. but what i have been saying is a just bona fide quality of life issue for everyone and i thought it would be welcome.

Guest User | 6 years and 1 month ago

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Steve, this is the internet. People are going to disagree with you and people are going to dislike what you say, just as some will agree and enjoy the thought put into it regardless of their own opinion on the matter. We now live in an era in which offense taken emboldens people to complain. People are going to be easily offended by things they read. Small minds cannot turn aside from a viewpoint that is not in line with their own. The idea that someone could read something online that they do not agree with and move on with their lives is revolutionary at this point. Assuming your account will remain intact, I would encourage you to let it go – you will never please all the people, all of the time.