{"id":12351,"date":"2008-11-28T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-28T08:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wordswarm.net\/dictionary\/spoliate_1.html"},"modified":"2008-11-28T08:30:00","modified_gmt":"2008-11-28T08:30:00","slug":"spoliate_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2008\/11\/28\/spoliate_1.html","title":{"rendered":"Spoliate"},"content":{"rendered":"

To practice plunder; to commit robbery. In time of war, rapacious men are let loose to spoliate on commerce. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I lived in Washington Heights during the riots of July, 1992, and have long been impressed by the fact that I did not know about them. <\/p>\n

My ignorance comes with a bit of a handicap: I was in Philadelphia the night the riots began, and news in the early 1990s did not travel like it does now. <\/p>\n

I came back to New York the next day to find the neighborhood in ruins. Windows of cars and buildings smashed to bits formed a frosting of broken glass on the sidewalk and street. Traffic signs were twisted and toppled. The contents of garbage cans had been set on fire, with charred hulks of I-don’t-remember-what sitting at pulverized attention. <\/p>\n

The neighborhood was mostly silent as I walked home from the subway, thinking "Looks like they had one hell of a July 4th party."<\/p>\n

Aware of the damage I nevertheless thought little of it. I wandered among it like it was normal. The neighborhood was hardly idyllic, and I thought the damage I saw might have meant the street-cleaners had gone on strike or that some other tipping point had been reached.<\/p>\n

I eventually became aware of the situation as police patrolled the neighborhood with clubs drawn, anticipating altercations. I watched one police officer warm up for battle on the George Washington Bridge, swinging his club like a baseball bat, chuckling to his fellow police officers that that’s what these kids have in store if they come anywhere near him.<\/p>\n

I approached Broadway, where stores had been looted and businesses ransacked. The A&P was boarded over and the street felt nervous. <\/p>\n

On Broadway, as in other places during the days of the riots, I could always spot someone going about business as normal. Through my window I saw a man who lived in my building amble home with his briefcase in hand, adjusting his gait to dodge piles of shattered glass. Later I saw a postal worker deliver mail by stepping through the frame of a door that had been entirely destroyed.<\/p>\n

The riots never got the national attention of the earlier Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. People were hot, unemployed, and frustrated about a lot of things, and when word got out that the New York police had shot and killed a man the stories swirled that the police had brutalized a helpless citizen. Stories I heard at the time told of a dramatic roof-top chase in which the victim was forced to jump from the top of a building. <\/p>\n

Few people in my circles of influence knew about the riots. I worked at a company where most of my co-workers lived in Connecticut, Queens, Long Island, and other places which at the time seemed remote. Most people I knew thought Washington Heights was a remote planet, a place beyond "Upper Manhattan" which to them began and ended at 96th Street. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To practice plunder; to commit robbery. In time of war, rapacious men are let loose to spoliate on commerce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whats-the-word","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-3dd","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}