Dewey vs Tough Jews 5

Tom Dewey vs Tough Jews 5 I have a book as significant but better known than this one. ‘The Gangs of New York –Herbert Asbury 1928, 2002. And the message is similar to this book, to ‘The Cross and the Switchblade’ –that the Gang Problem in New York is now over- Which is really saying; 1860s- the Irish Gang problem is by the 1920s spluttering out and is over. Or this book the Jewish Gangs are all over by the end of the 40s or Rev David Wilkerson- the out of control Puerto Rican gangs are by the end of the 60s… Gang problem solved! But yes what I guess I am feeling in my spirit as an historian here from too far way trying to understand is for some underlying thread- ongoing theme of evil going back to the first Dutch ship of immigrants who were outcasts, for the most part not even Dutch at all and began to do bad things in that Lower Manhattan location which spread to all of America. A spiritual story… Therefore more than- many times better than Herbert Asbury grandson of pioneer American Methodist Bishop- Rich Cohen is writing instead of a just who bashed whom story of gratuitous violence in New York- trying to get to this deeper spiritual understanding as to what it is to be Jewish- and like King David of olde having the deserved reputation of being a Gangster or Wanted Terrorist. Republican Middle America Tom Dewey walks into this story of Gangs in New York and helps us get some focus. And as we shall see the deep places being revealed by Herbert Ashbury- Deep places- Wells for political corruption in New York of which the gangs at times are just the lid of a deep unhealed wound of my people (Jer 6:14, 8:11 mixed metaphor-Ed!) ‘So in the mid 30s when Tom Dewey, working first as special prosecutor, later as district attorney, then as Governor of New York- and Running several times to become Republican President, went after the gangsters. Jewish kids all over Brooklyn were transfixed by the fight. They followed the action every day in the papers and tried to read between the lines. Most of them believed the gangsters would come out ahead. From their view somewhere above the home run leader and the heavy weight fighter was the gangster. But the view from Dewey’s office was different – that their strength was the strength of the weak, the terrorist, the man outside of the system. With courage and patience, he could topple the leaders of the underworld. And if Jewish gangsters couldn’t give the kids of Brooklyn a victory at least they would give them a terrific fight. Tom Dewey grew up in Owosso Michigan (This is the first time anywhere in this blog when we have had the biography of someone making it big in New York who was not born in The City or in New York State!) …he delivered papers before school and did odd jobs after school, he never missed a single day from school. He was the perfect son of a Republican family his father’s youthful stay in New York pledged him to fight Tammany Hall the corrupt Democrat machine (Little intelligent is said about Tammany Hall that I have read but it appears to have been put in place by the remarkable 1850s politician Fernando Woods) So from the beginning some of Dewey’s dreams were political…Dewey enrolled in New York’s Columbia Law School got his degree in just two years and then early 30s was named assistant to George Medalie US attorney for the Southern District of New York so began his fight with organized crime- son taking on his father’s obsession storming the beehive of city corruption . How strange Tom Dewey the kid from the sticks against the underworld. What could he know? More than coming from a different place, from a different time. How many years lay between Michigan and Delancey Street ? A hundred a thousand? (This line first appeared as a joke in the mid 30s) What could he know of violence of the ghetto? Three thousand people lived in Owosso, the same number lived in a single tenement Lower East Side. (Conditions so bad in the history of humanity that we struggle to comprehend just how bad- and what the death rate for attempting to live in such places.) Tom Dewey was grappling with an army of exotics, men who seemed to threaten everything Owosso stood for. And what did the gangsters stand for? More than anything more than money and power they stood for a style a way of life… never would there be a ‘sucker’, ‘dupe’, ‘do gooder’ ‘rule follower’. For men like Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luciano who wanted more than anything to look cool being taken down by Dewey must have been the greatest insult of all. Dewey perhaps the most ambitious geek in American history. While Luciano was escorting blonds uptown Dewey was back in Michigan setting a shameful record- Perfect school attendance! P158-160 Tough Jews –Rich Cohen. New York. 1998. Comment as a man with lots of ideas some of which may well be false or worse go no where- I do constantly audit my intake to see it ideas are lining up from unexpected sources. As I write this I am writing an IDF Staff School military lecture and the incredible Ai attack story in Joshua –another blog.