Present In The City is written by Kathleen Brady and will be published once a week.

It is about why New York City as it is today works against the people who live here, including the young and hopeful. Outrage is called for. Venting a gripe and overstating it is “the only healthy American way to write about America for Americans,” as Erik H. Erikson observed in Childhood and Society. That sounds like a plan for writing about the five boroughs as well.

Present In The City will discuss its bad government and the rapacious corporate culture that have created a permanent peon class to serve the privileged, even as public policies savage the middle class and stifle New York’s activist heart and voice. New York City was never an easy place — that was part of its thrill — but now it is a Potemkin Village for tourists and global interests. In living memory storefronts in Manhattan were filled with successful businesses, whether they were delis, coffee shops or retailers, that provided income and solid futures to entrepreneurs and their families. Today even Manhattan’s major crossroads and thoroughfares are riddled with empty stores while generic bank branches metastasize on every corner. This is significant.

Present In The City should have some nice things to say, occasionally. The  blog envisions a better future for New York City as a source of meaningful, rewarding jobs that lift workers and their families to better lives and offer longterm rewards to entrepreneurs, including those who open candy stores. It will focus on the threats to the New York City Public Library from its own bad management and the dismantling of its research collections, which once fostered work that helped society, including Robert Caro’s The Power Broker. 

Every attempt is made to present accurate facts (are there any other kind?) and to properly credit sources. The blog might also might include a few tidbits about technology and baseball. Consumer issues also find their way in.