Down and dirty in city hall

摘要

"Show me a hero", a new series on HBO, starts with a victory speech: an ominous sign. When a first episode ends in triumph, the only way ahead is down. The year is 1987, and 28-year-old Nick Wasicsko, an ex-cop, has just become the youngest mayor of Yonkers, a New York suburb that was then mostly working-class and white. Wasicsko won because he promised to appeal a federal court order requiring Yonkers to build subsidised housing on its richer, whiter east side, to counteract the concentration of poverty in its mostly black west.