amanda with i 1st heard about hard island when i was working on a story about a formerly homeless man. he had lived in the tunnels underneath penn station. i

think there was, there's a photographer who photographed his little a little house. he had made himself there. and because of her work, he had been rescued. he'd been given a home and that he'd been found dead in that home. and he was going to go to hard island. and it was, there was such a sadness at the idea that this man who had finally achieved a home of his own was going to be dispossessed. it was going to be one of the multitude in these anonymous graves. mm. mm. i'm a new yorker and i believe that new york is more than you know, the old idea of the city on the hill new york is really what america is

a mountain. and there is a tragedy inherent to in a big metropolis. there are all the stories of the chance has gone by the mistakes or the bad childhood, bad choices, or just bad luck. that's something that any great metropolis contents was me. but there's something more here that you could have a loving family, a career money set aside. and you could still end up in a mass grave on an island, off limits to the public buried by inmates paid $0.50 an hour.

oh i me ah, when rises in from the sound carrying the clang of the bell buoy nearby city island tolling its fitful warning: i all around is desolate and sad. no kind hand the decorative graves with trophies of

love and remembrance. i am even a headstone to show whereas in turn was once a human be oh . ringback busy my baby was already sick, so i already knew that there was a 5050 chance of him living, or diane gave birth to him. i didn't have the financial to be able to bury him and stuff. so the hospital gave me

a week for me to, you know, collect the money. i went to the welfare day after day, day after day the entire week that i was given and they said no good. and at that point i didn't know my real mother. i didn't know my real family so it's like i really didn't have nobody. i was alone now here. living actually literally alone. i can be ungrateful because me living on the public assistance. new york city has been helping my children a lot. but when it comes to my son, they fell to me completely because i put all my trust on them. i put my child's

body in their hands to bury him. you know, is not the way i want it, but i figure at least he's going to be buried. he'll be a piece. but he's he was in ah, woollen heart island is open, new york is on the cost of yet another enormous rush of growth. the city's population basically doubled every 20 years. ah, new york city is the commercial capital of america. is the center which publishing

industry. ah, it's the center of fashion. and, of course, next to the glitz next to the glamour. next to the mansions, being built by a t steward of the vanderbilt's, you have the reality of the 5 points. the slums at the very, very difficult lives live by most new yorkers. that is to say, working class and poor ah, new york is forced to create a whole series of institutions to deal with the realities of tens of thousands of immigrants coming into the city. continually. there was a sense, i think that these people needed to be separated out that it was people when a comfortable seeing the insane seeing the pauper, seeing an elderly alcoholics on the streets of new york. and many of these institutions, prisons, a lunatic asylums, hospitals all were erected, created outside manhattan,

on these islands in the east river. there was well fair island. there were the quarantine islands and of course, ellis island. and these were all various processing stations. hard island was the terminal island in 1890 s. early 19 hundreds. every spring of the police department would have to fish out scores and scores of bodies that float to the surface of the harbor and the rivers. what do you do with these bodies? mostly, lo, totally anonymous. these folks went to hard island. this is a place that new york has to have up to service the reality of death. mm. i think new yorkers understand that there are always going to be inequalities in the city, huge inequalities, and they are in very sharp focus,

but in death were equal. we all die alone. ah, in today's world you have so many families who are a strange or just lost to each other, my distance by misfortune. ah, and yet to know that some one you once loved where that you hoped loved you is buried in a mass grave on hard island. that resonates trevor lou.

we got married in 81092. and i got married at my sister's house cuz i never wanted a big wedding. i'm never the one to be in front of it. you know, where address and have all these people that, you know, sometimes you don't even know half of them. why would you want them? they're joining, but there were a lot of great times with, with bruce in the line. mm hm. when he started spiraling down, that was in 84. we moved right next to a bar called lady, else. we used to go to lady else on on friday nights, got a baby sitter for kimberly. and he started hanging out with a lot of different people and started drinking heavily in the bar was right next door, which is not the greatest thing. didn't think that anything of it when we moved to the house, but it happened and i remember back of bottles being under the bad hit in, you know,

so and then they would argue constantly. so i just remember my childhood, not a wonderful. mm. you know, i think that he hurt his back at work and he got addicted to pain medication. and then cocaine than alcohol. and he just spiraled downhill. mm. oh, you would always enter my conscience. i always wonder if he is he okay, what is he doing? is he living on the streets? even when i would go to manhattan when i was younger, i would always wonder if i was him. you know, i'd always wanna give money to those people cuz i felt like that was my dad. like i hoped switch. people don't hope that he was either in the hospital or in jail where i would get that one moment that he was sober. and i never got it and the fact that

he was in a hospital and nobody contacted any family members and then hit his body for 3 years, is crazy. ah, [000:00:00;00] with

i acknowledge is perfectly well into the future, but we can't change our way of thinking now way that we can visualize how we will flint and how we will feel and how our needs will be in 50 years. so our own, do our own technological devonne pings always further on than our ability to feed. i saw a message from an unknown account because it had a self re with my passport as its profile page. i saw pictures of my documents. it was, they also sent a credit contract. i had just 3 days comply with their demands to see if i didn't send money and they sent up an online hate campaign because i was supposed to be

a very dangerous man. with both. ah, ah ah ah. ah ah, so in the world to day, everyone knows america as the land of freedom and opportunity because you see me in front of you now. but prior to seeing me here,

you didn't know of me except for one day. he is less than a man. he is not america, he is the sleigh that built america for this is the too soon of every man and woman of color. now we, at the point, when we stumble upon a part of history that do encounter us as a people of color of honor, of respect, ah ha. and rack. as allan,

at the time of 1860 was being conversed, and to champ astor me there was, must, in, over 200000. so just come in, america was not america at that time. it was federal c in the south, in up in the no. and what brought us together was the civil war wasn't for these men, we would not be free today. if it wasn't for those united states college troops, we will not be as proud as we are today. mm. mm. united states college troops would definitely go in that out. and there still are certain little indications that there are still

a few bodies that still remain. mm. and it us knocking at the door who is there to open it? a correctional department. i've never so been familiar needed to have a correction officer direct me in prayer. mm hm. when the various began in 1869, the department of charities and correction was one city agency. and what happened more recently was the department of welfare pulled out of hard out and left the department of correction in charge of these barrels.

so it used to be that there was a dead house at the end of 26th street and a dock. and in the dead house, the bodies were, were unclaimed, were put in these boxes and then put on to a boat. there were 2 steam ships, one was called hope. and the other was called fidelity. ah, the blunt facts up to the dead house and takes the coffins with their ghastly freight. they are shoved rudely down a slide like the various merchandise. and as they strike the deck, we hear the thud of the body in its rude receptacle. business is good to day. this shower on the stick says as we count the coffins, heaped up promiscuously. we think so too.

we steam away and soon touch it. blackwell's island. oh, dear. the bodies of those who died of smallpox and other contagious diseases are taken on board charity hospital is also visited and contributes its quota. the coffins are bundled out to men who cart them away into a field. handling them is rudely as baggage masters to trucks at a depot. trenches are about 15 feet deep and 6 feet wide. the coffins are piled up like wood and cords or fuel and a cold pit, 13 d. as soon as the coffin is placed at the bottom of the trench, a barrow, a dirge thrown over it, and another coffin placed above children's coffins are chucked in at the feet of the others and helped to form

a solid mass. the foot of earth is then thrown upon the upper one until the work is completed. thus, all nationalities rest close together. the merge is a close companion of the cease and the suicide is just beneath the pauper. there is no aristocracy. when i 1st heard of hart allentown problem, a physician who was at harlem hospital and she was talking about infants that were born addicted to crack. and that they were buried in shoe boxes a 1000 at

a time on hard island. and at that time, hard island was open to journalists and to academics. and so i decided that i was just going to get there. and it just so happened that that day was the very 1st day that these inmates had ever been on hard island. and these were a young man convicted of misdemeanors like turnstile jumping graffiti. so you know, they're not felons or anything like that. they're young men that couldn't afford a good lawyer. or i used to live in ringo that was one of the bad neighborhoods about about a return only brooklyn in our new york city in who's crazy in,

in 89. it was cracked and stuff like that. and we used to so we'd in, in drugs or stuff like that in our one of getting caught with possession. and i went up going on. right. as oliver a little bit of time. the nose daisy was it was a zoo. you could get anything, you get a knife or anything. 11 term that guy had a gun in there. it was like like, like gladiator school every day. and so when i got short, short means that you go home, you don't have a lot of time left in your stress and they gave me a job in the hodge, ireland. ah, yes, you know the prism shackles on you did a little boss and didn't they take you on a boat? i'm a little scared, carmen hand cos. i'm on the boat to get the boat going to go down. i think the worse or whatever. and they take you to hard charlie and i still didn't know the

hodge. i was protest, feel i heard of policy, really movies and stuff like that, but i didn't, i didn't even know what, what he meant. and there's only 2 offices. no french, no, nothing. and they will just smell, i don't know what the snow was. so the next morning is raining. and they told you we're going to go, we're going to go to work in we will be whole, but it was great. and then they will lead mass graves. we would in boxes and we're going to move them to put more boxes in there. and the people though, there are john doors or people that nobody wants to pay for people that get lost in the system. they were like 5 people. it was a big hole, it was a coffee in the grave. and then the guys will talk about them and they, they would just say crack babies. even though who knows what they were therefore, but mentality, dad does what?

those were like undesirables or whatever. they didn't count or whatever i, ah, when our mayor took office, he was elected because of his campaign on our city, being a tale of 2 cities. the house and i have not. and those who have not are usually the ones who end up being buried on hard. i am the difficulty in government, especially when you are the mayor and you are managing a very large city. the priorities of the public takes shape and become the most important issues you address and not many people bring hard island to elected officials,

attentions is out of sight and out of mind at to so many new yorkers. people just don't care that much unless they have a personal connection. it shouldn't be so removed from the rest of the city. we should know what happens after people die. we should be able to see that space who the fact that we're using inmates to maintain this active burial site, where 1000000 souls are buried. where so much of new york city history is buried is, is dickensian. and it is a document of the inequality that has existed in the city for centuries. i don't think the states is unique in this respect for in this world. are you not powerful? you get forgotten pretty quickly,

and an harland is exactly where our society in our country puts the people who are poor and forgotten. ah, and you have, you know, a situation you couldn't make up in which you have the poor and forgotten people who are alive and are in jail, who are burying the poor and forgotten people who are dead. ah, who is your media a reflection of reality? in the world transformed what will make you feel safer? isolation for community. are you going the right way or are you being

that some with direct? what is true is great. in the world corrupted, you need to descend a join us in the depths. all remain in the shallows. while we made our pilgrimage to vic claim only lamb l salvador were in el dante, better known as bitcoin. big country is really ready to go fall by point hyper, but point is ation joining other countries around the world. the president has made big point legal center. people are using big coin to buy a copy and san salvador, and it's making a huge impact on the population. we're

allowing ourselves to be more efficient for quicker with our transactions. but with that comes a trade off, every device is a potential entry point for security. any machine. as an extension of traditional time, the defenders have always been one step behind the attackers. with this one comes option in the offering. it's not a matter of, if that happens, it's a matter of when we're seeing high levels, one certainty creeping in economic life. and i think we're all aware of the disruption of global supply chains with spike in the cost of energy. we're seeing a reappearance of inflation and i think all of these constitute the economists cool down to sign risks,

which could mean until it is still ahead of us. despite the moderation of the severity of the meeting in people is something that cops right on police reports and all kathleen in december 2020 a group of anti fascists allowed a film crew access for 3 months. so like if people are organization, if an idea that you must be a pose a channel out the gate, they may kill their faces. but they can say what they believe in. we believe in helping our community. we believe that fascism is one of the major threats to the united states has gotten reuben, this is a chance to see who and t for really are in order for me to extract my 1st amendment right and say that my life matter have to be on to the teacher that

that's how america we can't trust the police. we can't trust the government. we can't trust anyone except ourselves to protect ourselves in headlines. the south germany make certain public aries off limits. those who declined to get innoculated against cove it, as it becomes the latest the country to clamp time on the unvaccinated over half a century. that's how long american drugs watchdog wants in order to release all the documents relating to its approval of 5 is code with faxing. but the group of medics who requested it points out that the government took much less time to approve the job. and american tv network, m s m b c is banned from the controversial rash trial of car, written high on the allegation that someone working for the company attempt to