my apology for my recent post on brownstoner
you know, it would be great if the community would counter me on here if they think things I may be saying or suggesting are wrong. I am thinking, I can take this and turn it into a real article for publication someplace and if I had some people counter me – both progressives and more conservative or business minded types, I can address the points they raise in the article. I think this has to be written about on a larger scale then just here. I think people have to know the truth.
stevecym
in General Discussion 6 years ago
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stevecym | 6 years and 1 month ago
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
Guest User | 6 years and 1 month ago
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.
stevecym | 6 years and 1 month ago
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.
randolph | 6 years and 1 month ago
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.
daveinbedstuy | 6 years and 1 month ago
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
> @daveinbedstuy
> a lot of kids should learn a trade
day trading is not “a trade”
yudashasom | 6 years and 1 month ago
lol @ randolph
stevecym | 6 years and 1 month ago
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.
stevecym | 6 years and 1 month ago
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?
randolph | 6 years and 1 month ago
> @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
hmmm, then I suppose I must be careful.
stevecym | 6 years and 1 month ago
to continue what DIBS says:
part of the reason of a board like this is that people can speak frankly as we did in communities of the past, where we learned from others of the older generation. so I will continue with something as I think it is good for others, including young people to see:
I don’t think college was for me. I was never happy inside sitting and if I do not do physical work for at least 3 hours a day, I am restless at night (I have a cousin who was a farmer on the east end of long island and after a lifetime of hard work, he retired at 72 and went right back to work doing the very same job only now 3 days a week; he cannot stop). I regret not have gone to a trade school right after college (and I was in Wilmington, NC and there is a boat building program at their technical college; one of my regrets). in Lieu of college, every youth should consider a trade school. a lot of them are gone though; the boat building program in NC has moved their main focus from wood to plastic hulls; who wants to work with plastic?). with the criticism I have put forth about going into a trade, there is something to consider and that would be telecom or electric or IT. running communications or terminating wire or assembling pc’s might satisfy those who don’t think college is right for them.
there is something else DIBS said and I am not sure what this means to everyone and yes, populations have always moved. DIBS said that the trade situation might not be the same throughout the country and that is true. but as soon as he said that, I thought “do I want to work on an oil field out west?” in this country I would like to think that we have the luxury of not having to move too far from our roots to find a job. I was born 45 miles from where I live now and I like it that way. people are different and some don’t mind moving but with the mass of money here in the North East, I would like to think we can stay near home.
being able to think and say what I just did is why it is good to have a “troublemaker” like DIBS on here.
stevecym | 6 years and 1 month ago
and more: when I was finishing high school one of my shop teacher’s tried talking to me about going to a trade school, welding school, to learn to be a “nuclear welder”; someone who works in the construction and maintenance of nuclear power plants. probably a trade that can be learned in the navy. but I did not want a military career and nuclear welding might have been a mistake as we have not built any nuclear power plants in this country probably since before I had that conversation with that shop teacher. and again, you have to be willing to move around.
cate | 6 years and 1 month ago
Please everyone, no personal attacks (and nothing libelous). Thank you!
stevecym | 6 years ago
jhcovert: I was not trying to annoy, offend, or change anyone’s minds on this subject. I know this kind of conversation annoys a certain ilk of person as I have those folks as friends on long island and we begin these discussions just to goad one another (these are life long friends, politics won’t divide us for long). politically and on social issues, we are at opposite ends of the spectrum. I came on here not so people would complain, but to open the eyes of a like-minded and socially progressive audience as to what is going on around all of us. I honestly don’t think anyone complained; no one really did on-line and I got some likes for what i was saying and someone could have anonymously emailed me or tossed a rock through my window, they didn’t. I think what was saying has the potential to tick a certain element off and that may be bad for business. not my business, I work in a highly educated and rational circle of people anyway.
brucef | 6 years ago
Interesting conversation. I have used undocumented workers for various projects over the years, and have found them to be hard working, in stark contrast to many Americans. I have always thought that I helped these undocumented workers out by paying a decent rate, and helping them in any other way I could to help them make their way in a hostile environment. In return I received loyalty and dedication that is greatly lacking in modern America. I don’t regret my actions and take pride in whatever assistance I was able to provide. Roll it back 100 years when my family came to this country. Thank heavens someone helped them out.
stevecym | 6 years ago
@ brucef: if they are paid a fair wage but I am not sure anyone knows what that is when people are working off the books. there is no insurance, no social security, nothing. so people think $30 an hour is good and I have heard people say that is too much. my family came here to 100 years ago and it was a very different time in terms of the work arrangement; there was no modern safety net and pretty much everyone who labored was on the same contract. Today, these folks are here working in the same conditions that existed 100 years ago while the rest of us at least get pay into social security and worker’s comp and a few other things; unemployment. if you tell me you paid self employed day laborers $40 an hour to cover those things, I will stop here. but something tells me that is not the way it works and if they are so hard working, why should they not get that? giving them 40 an hour would be assistance; 25 an hour is taking advantage of them. who is helping whom here?
stevecym | 6 years ago
brucef: i can go one further; my great grand father bought land and built a house and his employer, who he labored for, held the mortgage on the house. is anyone out there holding a mortgage for any of these people? the conditions are not comparable to back then. it has deteriorated to very little.
stevecym | 6 years ago
so if we wish to make a comparison to when our ancestors arrived 100 years ago, I can tell you this:
one of my great grandfathers arrived in 1907 and by 1916 was building a house (as financed by the man he worked as a “gardener” for). this on the east end of LI.
another great grandfather arrive in 1909 and by 1916 he was building a house in central Nassau county and was working as a farm laborer. at some point he worked at Hicks Nurseries as a laborer.
do you think that someone making 25 an hour will be able today in NYC will be able to dream of building a house in say 8 years? 25 an hour is helping someone eat. 40 an hour is helping them out and maybe a husband and wife team each making 40 an hour can save enough to buy something down the road.