Kristi Noem

As you say, people were vigilant.

Yeah.

And what was so interesting to me to kind of reconstruct, and I keep using that word because that's what it felt like.

It felt like kind of going back to the beginning, piecing it together was how did that happen?

How does New York City come to feel so under siege, so abandoned, like everything is falling apart?

And what people remember always

And even what they were being told every time they picked up the New York Post, every time they picked up any kind of tabloid media was crime is out of control and there's a certain kind of predator out there.

It was not subtle.

They were young.

They were black.

They were poor.

And you always had to be on the lookout for that kind of a threat.

But what was really interesting when I sort of went back was the realization that there had been kind of this political story behind this.

One of the things that's happening here is that it is the 80s.

And we have had the election of a new president.

This president is Ronald Reagan.

And Ronald Reagan was determined to do something that, frankly, a lot of wealthy people had wanted to do before.

They had not really been successful before.

which was to dismantle the New Deal kind of liberal welfare state in America.

And so he sets about doing this really effectively.