New York City

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New York Stories

New York City has over 8 million stories.

Lenape Manahatta

Our city is built on Native American Lenape land. The First Nations arrived around 13,000 years ago. “Manahatta” is now Manhattan. The Lenape village was up in Inwood. Naturally, it’s the most beautiful and calmest spot on the island. The trail to the trading post at the southern tip of Manhattan is now called Broadway. The trading post later became the U.S. Customs House. It is now the National Museum of the American Indian. The Lenape sacred council elm tree was where Bowling Green Park is now.

We are still here. We have always been here, and the Great Spirit will be here when all the people are gone. In the Indigenous way of thinking, land is not owned by anyone. It belongs to all the people. New York’s cultural community gets it.

The City of Immigrants

We are the immigrant city, the gateway to the United States, a land of immigrants. When new communities arrive, the “natives” complain we are low-class, unskilled, uneducated, oversexed, and basically inhuman. Of course, that’s nonsense. We get to work, start marrying each other, and enter politics. We become New Yorkers.

People from the entire world come here to work and reinvent themselves ~ to create a better future for their children. Diversity, work and density have been the defining characteristics of New York City since the first immigrant, Juan Rodríguez (from what is now the Dominican Republic) established the city’s first bodega (convenience store) at the Lenape trading post on the southern tip of Manahatta in 1613.

Everyone is here, but the communities that define New York City are:

• Native American Lenape were the First Nations. They have been in the region for about 10,000 years.
• Dominicans made Manahatta a Dominican City in 1613. 🇩🇴
• Dutch came to make money and defined the culture of the City of Work in 1624. 🇳🇱
• African Americans built Wall Street and New York City starting in 1626. 🇺🇸
• Jewish made New York an open city in 1654. 🇮🇱
• English took over in 1664. 🇬🇧
• Irish came to escape famine after 1845. 🇮🇪
• Italians came to work with the big migration around 1900-1910. 🇮🇹
• Puerto Ricans came in the 1950s when we were pushed off our farms in Puerto Rico, and New York had good jobs. 🇵🇷
• Dominicans came to work, mostly since the 1970s. 🇩🇴

New communities keep arriving in waves. New immigrants start in the lowest jobs and then move up. Today we are becoming more Mexican and South American, South Asian, and Chinese.

This is New York

New York is a great diversity of interlocking purposes. We are not the biggest city, but we are the world’s most diverse city, and diversity is a sign of a healthy ecosystem. Everyone from everywhere is here. The best and worst of every good and bad idea are here.

If you look at how people live around the world, New York City shouldn’t function at all. Humanity’s investment in petty differences is too great. But on most days, New York does work, and it works surprisingly well.

Perhaps the hurry that is necessary to survive here forces us to drop our differences and let go of our baggage. When you do that, the only thing left is our common humanity.

This is my city. This is your city. This is New York. We are glad you are here. ¡Bienvenidos!