Theodore Hamm’s Bernie’s Brooklyn describes the strong web of public projects from which the Sanders family benefited as a result of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, which Larry Sanders also invoked at the 2016 convention: it brought baskets of federal money to New York City, expertly distributed by Roosevelt’s local ally, Mayor Fiorello—the name means “little flower”—LaGuardia, who stood only five feet two. Their apartment was rent controlled; Larry guessed the rent was about “50 bucks a month,” perhaps a tenth of his father’s pay. Beginning in the 1930s, there were new roads, schools, and swimming pools, and a new campus for Brooklyn College, where Dorothy Sanders eventually organized the Hillel seder every spring.
It was “an environment where New Deal politics were quite normal,” Larry said in a 2015 interview with Vermont’s Seven Days. “It was widely understood that government could do good things.”
And yet, anybody who has hefted Robert Caro’s The Power Broker knows that these anonymized government works had a dark side. Larry Sanders recalls the new public library, which replaced a makeshift space attached to the fire station, a romantic, enchanting hideaway for the neighborhood’s kids. The update was a modern, spic-and-span building.
Life in the family apartment seemed alternately clenched and explosive. Outside, though, Brooklyn appeared to be blossoming and changing. Government was indeed doing “good things”: Larry points to “a comfortable environment” where the “streets were free and easy and safe.” But ordinary families had no say in their neighborhood’s transformation. Some were relocated by eminent domain if their buildings blocked construction of an exit ramp. Old homes were now mere feet from the cascading traffic; fragrant blocks were turned into dank, toxic canyons by the new highways.
And none of these grand improvements had eased the worries of Bernie’s parents in their small apartment, or altered their wearying daily pattern.
“Nobody would have chosen the new library,” Larry Sanders told me. And the concrete of the new city playground was “very destructive to arms and legs.” It was mystifying when a new building or playground suddenly materialized where another, beloved structure had been. Who made these decisions? The Midwood families themselves had played no role.
I told Larry that it reminded me of seeing Bernie for the first time on my front porch, when I was nine, as he was priming people for votes. It was a scene that played out over and over in his eight years as mayor. You’d hear about a bond issue coming before the city for some important public works project. Soon, Bernie or one of his disheveled volunteers was out on the street, or in the parks, or at your front door, looking for your support. The skinned knees kids got on those Brooklyn playgrounds stayed with him: a visitor to Burlington, Bernie once boasted, would visit its parks and say, “This is a people’s country club. You have tennis, you have swimming, you have softball.”