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OPINION:
With the hum of Third Avenue in the background, I stood at the northeast corner of 54th Street staring at the side of a guy’s head who had just turned away from me with the clear intention to ignore me.
“Can I just talk to you, stand with you for a sec?” I had asked this complete stranger out of desperation. Just a moment before, I was crossing Third Avenue and a group of visibly agitated men crossing behind me were talking with increased volume.
Las Vegas odds, these were not guys angry about something that had just happened at the workplace or at the home of a dear friend. Rather, theirs was an anger growing with each statement uttered with the intention of alarming bystanders. My emotional state was fear. My cognitive state was fixed on the reality that at that moment, in the city that I love so much, anyone can do anything to anyone without any consequences for the doer. The only consequences of assaults are experienced by the victim and by society. I knew this from my own experience and from the shared experiences of clients in my therapy practice.
My go-to strategy of blending in with others so as not to look alone is one commonly used by many New Yorkers. There have been times when I didn’t even need to ask someone to mesh their walking pace with mine. Once, when walking down Lexington, a man just a few feet in front of me started circling his arms in an odd, taunting manner walking in my direction. To my right, a father pushing a baby carriage exchanged looks with me and without saying anything, we both grinned with pragmatic politeness and walked together until I thanked him as we reached the next corner. Another time, after someone started getting too close to my pocketbook, I walked with a cheerful, talkative couple headed to a restaurant for a family reunion.
“The city has gotten so out of control,” I tried to explain to the side of this guy’s head, in part because I still felt shaky and was still deciding whether to look behind me or to run in my ankle boots and in part to get the same rapport result, I was used to. No use, but no matter. I was OK. Nothing happened to me or anyone in the crowd. But wouldn’t it be advantageous if a Never Walk Alone mentality were more mainstream?
Back in the days of compact discs and even before, heinous violent street crime was targeted, not random. From the 1990s until bail reform, the circumstances of an attack, however undeserved, had a sensical pattern. Someone was wearing expensive jewelry in a bad neighborhood at an off hour, dressed in an attention-seeking style at an off hour, or behaving in a way that would draw unwanted attention. Typically, these and similar themes were taking place in bad neighborhoods, at off hours and when the victim was alone. Today, though the variables are random, being alone is still a liability.
Today, a guy from Goldman Sachs gets murdered during a Sunday morning populated train ride, en route to brunch with friends. A pregnant woman is randomly punched on a Saturday afternoon, on Lexington just north of crowded 63rd Street. A woman is beaten on a subway platform while waiting for the five o’clock train, after a routine day at work. There is no clear provocation that can be discerned and then removed from the equation. No behavior to curtail, no attire to monitor, no time of day to secure a guarantee that matches the percentage from the CD days of safety nirvana.
Like many kids from the Northeast, I grew up wanting my environment to match that of the snow globes sold at Christmastime in my grandfather’s hardware store. I grew up wanting to live inside Currier and Ives.
Today’s status quo forces me and perhaps many people to have a new coveted vision. Instead of marshmallow frosted snow and streaming lights of green and red, let’s share a vision of accessible unity.
The common strategy of blending in with a crowd or helping another blend is in opposition with the collective trend of isolation. But maybe walking with others can become a trend of self-protection meshed with altruism. We can create a math theorem: Self-protection plus altruism equals personal power. It’s near impossible to prove prevention but walking with another certainly prevents one from bearing the target of being alone with the mark of vulnerability for predators.
My wish that New Yorkers will never have to walk alone has replaced my childhood vision of Currier and Ives.
• Pamela Garber is a therapist in private practice who provides counseling for working professionals dealing with depression and anxiety. She has been a guest on radio talk shows and has run the New York City Marathon three times.
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