[ by Larry Goldfarb ]

In the end, they decided to cancel the NY Marathon.  I was on an Amtrak train on Friday and my friend Merri was intently speaking with a woman who was leaving NYC.  She had to evacuate her NYC hotel room in lieu of a marathon participant.  It seems her apartment was underwater and she now had no place to stay hence her appearance on Amtrak.

The drama with hurricane survivors being kicked out of hotel rooms around the city was becoming a far too common occurrence.  It was also notable that the start of the race would take place at Ft. Wadsworth on Staten Island.  The former military base which is now a national park was an island in a sea of despair.  Staten Island was suffering with many dead and thousands homeless.  The picture of the runners majestically filing over the Verrazano Bridge, with tug boats shooting plumes of color full water in the air, you know that image, seems to be a little much considering that a few miles inland of the Fort, people are searching for their family members or wondering how they will stay warm.

The most macabre image was the picture of those oversized generators in Central Park powering the tents at the finish line while thousands of citizens in the outer boroughs and Long Island were huddled together to stay warm.  Capitalism provides cover for the haves and have nots.  It allows a wealthy family to live in a$20 Million brownstone while another looks for bottle deposits in the trash.  But this image, for Merri and many of the 30,000 who signed the Change.org petition, seemed to make the decision easy and force the politicians to cancel the race.  When the spoils of money and influence impact the masses, well, that’s when governments get overthrown or races get canceled.