New York, New York

Something happened in this city when the Knicks entered the championship and won. Every block comes alive. A myriad of faces — every kind of person you can imagine — spilling out, acknowledging each other, strangers becoming neighbors for a moment. Even the homeless guys on the corner are yelling, “Knicks in five.” It’s civilized in the most beautiful, chaotic New York way.

And then I look around at everything else.

The anger being fed to us daily. What’s happening in the Middle East. The Jewish community — and I’m Jewish — watching a conflict where it feels less about peace and more about power. Like the church. Always the church. Power over people.

I just finished the Stanford book by Theo Baker, How to Rule the World, a seventeen-year-old kid who dug into the data and uncovered that the president of one of the most powerful universities in the world had faked his research. For years. The disconnection between people and money, between institutions and truth, between those at the top and the rest of us — it’s everywhere.

Which is why we’re watching progressive candidates like Ocasio-Cortez win. People are done. They want something different.

I call myself a progressive capitalist. I believe in making money and I believe in change. I want money out of politics. I want institutions that serve people, not the other way around.

Years ago, I got into a cab in Israel. The driver found out I was from New York. He wanted to know if I was from the Bronx; he saw a Clint Eastwood film. He asked if I was Jewish. Yes. He asked where I sent my kids to school. I told him downtown, a school with all kinds of kids, not just Jewish kids. He seemed almost incredulous. And I said: I live in a city of eight and a half million people. We all get along. You could learn something from that. He roared, laughing.

I think about that cab driver every time I watch this city come alive. The whole world is watching New York right now. And what they’re seeing — this mosaic of people united around something joyful and shared — is so different from what’s coming out of Washington.

We need the world to see us as we actually are. Not them. Us.