The Social Order
Like other great metropolises, New York seems prone to crises. A full list of them, ranging across the city’s four-century history, would require a thick tome and make one wonder how a city beset by such horrors could survive, much less thrive.
Defining a crisis, though, is subjective. Some, like 9/11 or the Covid-19 pandemic, clearly fit the bill. But what about the Great Garbage Strike of 1968, when 7,000 sanitation workers refused to collect trash for nine days? Or the summer of 1977, which included an infamous blackout, followed by rioting and looting—while serial killer David Berkowitz (a.k.a. Son of Sam) terrorized the city?