The Bushwick Tailor Who Un-Schlubbed Clinton
Martin the Tailor from Ed David on Vimeo.
Only a Holocaust survivor has the chutzpah to tell the US president, no, you can’t dress like a schlub — my reputation is at stake. (I’m sure you don’t need to be told that it was Bill Clinton.) Martin Greenfield came to New York in 1947 and put his talents from his, uh, apprenticeship to work at a clothing factory on Varet Street. He now owns the company. Ed David’s cinematography is noiry and haunting — the film is a wonderful snapshot of entrepreneurship and community stewardship by a shrewd businessman and a true mensch. It is, unfortunately, also propaganda “presented by” EWVIDCO, the City’s pathetic last-gasp attempt to keep parts of Brooklyn a sweatshop warren.
Hat tip to Racked.
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:03 pm
i loved this post. i’ve pretty much grown up in bushwick/ridgewood and have been less than thrilled with some of the posts featured here. but i do appreciate this one and the culture ones slowly popping up. here’s to things to come.
June 27th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Are you kidding me? The whole point of this video is that this guy treats his employees with respect, pays a decent salary, and offers benefits. In fact, most manufacturers in your beloved Bushwick pay well above the minimum wage. If you want to clear away the City’s industrial past, and instead have your neighborhood replaced by luxury condos and big box stores full of part time, minimum wage workers than I guess your attitude makes sense. I know we all have an idea of turn-of-the century factories being hellholes of worker abuse, but this is a different, more recent story. Martin used to be one of thousands of garment manufacturers in Bushwick, businesses that paid a decent wage and gave their employees the chance to support a family. Unfortunately, and contrary to your opinion, these businesses are almost all gone now; pushed out by the immense pressure to outsource their work to real sweat shops in China and rising real estate prices driven up by landlords all to willing to convert space into illegal apartments just to make an extra buck. This piece is not part of some last ditch effort to preserve a non-existent warren of greedy sweatshops. It is a tribute to the idea that American’s can actually make something, produce actual goods, by actual workers, that can actually move up the economic ladder.
June 27th, 2008 at 11:21 am
I used “sweatshop” loosely to mean a factory where people toil with their hands making consumer goods. I shouldn’t have, and I wasn’t in any way saying this factory was a bad place to work. I just think subsidizing American clothing manufacturing is a ridiculous concept in 2008.
It is not at all “contrary to my opinion” that these business are all almost gone now — that’s why I said EWVIDCO is the city’s “last gasp” attempt to keep what remains of these businesses here.
However, there is no basis in the argument that Americans should do things here that can be done more cheaply somewhere else. Moving these jobs overseas 1) helps the poor of the third world rise out of their hideous poverty and 2) makes things cheaper for all of us. I don’t see why the majority should be forced to pay more for something so the minority who makes that something can continue to be comfortable without having to provide any actual value to anyone. Screw protectionism and the selfish, third worlder-loathing American businessmen and workers who benefit. They are the truly greedy ones. A Vietnamese or Bangladeshi person is just as worthy to make your clothing or machinery or light bulbs as any American.
June 27th, 2008 at 11:52 am
I don’t use the word sweatshop lightly either, and that is where the people who make the clothes we buy work. They work in sweatshops with long hours, almost no pay, zero rights, for American businessmen and women who capitalize their desperation to make a fortune. Yes, these manufacturers are able to provide us with cheaper products, but does it really help “third-worlders” out of their hideous poverty? Or does it perpetuate their hideous poverty? If they were given the same rights and protections as American’s are, do you think their product would be as cheap? And about those selfish, third worlder-loathing workers who benefit from local industry, where will they work when the lose their jobs due to overseas competition? Will they be lawyers, doctors, graphic designers? Do they have the education and the opportunity to get jobs that require a college degree? Or will they be forced to live in their own, hideous poverty in Bed-Stuy, East New York, Brownsville, and the South Bronx?
June 27th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
There is absolutely no question that “sweatshops” are currently, right this minute, raising third worlders out of their endless, grinding poverty. The alternatives to working in a sweatshop are usually working in the fields for a subsistence. The workers in factories choose these jobs over worse alternatives. The evidence is in the plain fact that former sweatshop host countries are now economic powerhouses, lifting millions and billions out of poverty over the years at an ever-increasing pace. South Korea used to be wall-to-wall sweatshops. Sweatshops suck, there’s no doubt about it, but they are a step in the transition from eating dirt to being rich.
There are no hideously poor Americans. Comparing what we consider poor domestically to the poverty of the third world is just evil. Nobody starves to death in a cloud of flies here if they have to work minimum wage (not that many Americans even make a wage that low). That’s not even up for debate.
Hampering world trade more than it already is will only make everyone poorer. Letting people be free to trade and work as they wish will make them wealthy.
June 27th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Hi. I am the director of this video, and I just want to set the record straight. This is not propaganda. This piece was made purely to honor and celebrate the achievements of one man who rose from tragedy and found a way to succeed in life. EWVIDCO had no other goal in creating this video than to have Martin tell his story. I had total creative control and was never told to stay on message or do anything other than present a glimpse of his life, his struggle, and his accomplishments, which I found to be incredibly interesting and inspiring. I find the whole sweatshop argument a bit ridiculous and simplistic. The point is, well-paying manufacturing jobs, the kind that working people can truly support a family on, with good benefits etc., are disappearing from NYC. Period. The workers in this factory are lucky to have the opportunities they have, and they know that. That is why they stay with him for so long. Personally, I don’t want to turn around one day and find that New York has become one big Loft/Condo complex next to a Starbucks, next to an IKEA, next to an Urban Outfitters. Companies like this one help keep NYC a diverse place, economically, socially, etc, and there is more to life than consuming cheap goods. I appreciate you linking to our video and sharing it with others, but please put some real thought into what you have to say about the people and the neighborhood that you claim to care about on this blog before you post. Thanks.
June 27th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Galen: the guy is great and the video is great. I said that. This is aside from the fact that since (if I understand your comment correctly) EWVIDCO did indeed commission this video. EWVIDCO only has one purpose — that of trying to preserve manufacturing in Brooklyn. So this can only be seen as a propaganda piece on their part. There are many benign things that can be used by different parties for different, even opposing reasons.
“There is more to life than consuming cheap goods” — oh, certainly, but if the likes of EWVIDCO had its way, we would have no choice but to consume expensive goods. How that is supposed to help the less fortunate in America, I don’t know.
I do care about Bushwick — I live here. But I don’t care to subsidize uneconomical industries (I am not saying Greenfield’s company is subsidized). And sorry, your personal and rather hysterical concerns about the future of New York City’s aesthetic environment has zero bearing on my opinions there.
June 27th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
“Hey, this wasn’t propaganda! This is just me trying to tell this man’s objective story and its inherent nature as a defiance against the ENCROACHING CAPITALIZMZ NIGHTMARE DYSTOPIAN FUTURE ALL WILL KNEEL BEFORE THE DOLLAR!!!”
June 27th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
As a Brooklyn/Bushwick-loving former employee of one of those government entities engaged in a so-called ‘last ditch effort’ to “save” manufacturing (no, not EWVIDCO), let me add a few facts to this discussion. 1. People in manufacturing jobs keep, percentage-wise, more money in the local NYC economy than those in many other types of jobs (i.e. finance, real estate, etc.). So manufacturing jobs help the local economic base more than many other types of jobs here, and it extends beyond the individual employee. 2. In economic downturns, a diversified manufacturing sector is a less volatile component of local city economies than most other sectors. 3. The manufacturing businesses that fail aren’t necessarily failing due to global competition (it depends on the sector they are in, of course). But one of the biggest disincentives to continued investment in and expansion of manufacturing companies by their owners is the fact that M-zoned land is harder and harder to come by because it’s being rezoned for commerical and residential use around the City. The majority of manufacturing companies in NYC rent their space. So when the city makes a decision to rezone areas to make way for the Ikeas of the world, they are explicitly choosing to strip the city of that type of economic diversity. Keeping land zoned for manufacturing is not subsidization. Land use decisions don’t happen in an open market. All land use decisions are deliberate, and made considering subjective notions of what the future of our city should be. As more and more manufacturing companies are kicked out when their leases end because buildings owners wait with baited breath for their buildings to be allowed to go residential/commerical, businesses like this prove the point that people without advanced degrees can make a living in New York. I’m sure Mr. Greenfield owns his building. Choosing to create a real estate market entirely hostile to manufacturing use means fewer jobs for skilled non-college grads. This is what our city has consistently chosen to do. If we want to support and strengthen our middle class (something America has the luxury of having, and something that has defined what makes this country so great), we need to support and strengthen the sectors that employ skilled, lower educated people at higher wages and provide health care. Manufacturing does this, and provides a critical ladder to the middle class for those at the bottom. I’m certainly not a protectionist. As other countries look to bring more of their poor into a middle class, they ought to be able to look to the US as an example of how a diversified economy can create progress.
June 27th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
“Keeping land zoned for manufacturing is not subsidization.” — Yes, it is, it’s just not directly through the public purse. It is artificially inflating the inventory of industrial space above what the market demands. You’re right that land use is not decided in an open market. This should be, instead of an argument against allowing other uses to land formerly used for manufacturing, an argument for liberalizing land use everywhere. It’s hard to argue that this would endanger currently residential neighborhoods with possible future manufacturing in their midst — after all, it is the situation NOW that people live across the street and between warehouses in Bushwick. It is precisely because central planners cannot predict future market demand for industrial space in Brooklyn that they should be removed from the decision making process altogether, and the market should be allowed to function more efficiently on its own.
The claim of alleged benefits to the local economy is a ruse designed to distract from the benefits to Americans and the world at large — after all, the “local economy” is an artificial entity based on geopolitical borders. Why I should care about whether a factory is in Bushwick or Islip or St. Louis or Hyderabad still hasn’t been explained to my satisfaction. The arguments amount to a demand that every American — even the poorer ones who are far more likely than the wealthier ones to buy foreign-made products — pay more for the products they buy so that a few hundred people in Brooklyn, Michigan, or wherever can make a few dollars more an hour. And then we can call this forced transfer of wealth from the poorer to the not-nearly-as-poor-but-hooked-up-with-a-protected-job a “progressive, diversified economy.” Well done. Oh yeah, and the people starving to death in the East Asian countryside? Fuck ‘em, right? I mean, they’re not Americans, so why should they get American jobs?
June 27th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
American investment in South Korea provided a foundation upon which that country “grew” (if the measurement of growth = dollars).
Had South Korea been part of America, I guess we would call it a subsidy?
But I took this film to be nothing more than a loving look at the life of a pretty swell guy, probably commissioned by his sons who work at Greenfield Clothiers. I don’t get the propaganda element.
June 27th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Measurement of growth does not = dollars — it equals massive improvement in the quality of life for every South Korean. I have no idea what your subsidy comment could possibly mean.
The propaganda element, as I explained, is only apparent when you know the sponsor. With or without EWVIDCO’s involvement, the film is interesting and nice. Nobody disputed this. But the association can’t be ignored. At least not by me. Really, Leni Riefenstahl would have been thrilled to have such impartial critics.
June 27th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Jeremy - do you realize that in effect you just called a holocaust survivor a Nazi? Yes, Martin did in fact found EWVIDCO over 30 years ago, with the initial intention to combat crime in the neighborhood you now call home. Your lack of respect and understanding is incredible, and lends credence to the idea that the main purpose of blogs is to spread misinformation, rumors, and snarkiness.
June 27th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
No, I did not call Martin or EWVIDCO a Nazi or Hitler or anything like that, and you know it. Saying otherwise lays bare your rhetorical dishonesty, just as your comment on the “importance” of manufacturing in America lays bare your economic ignorance.
I’m saying that associations matter all the time, not just when you want them to.
June 27th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
South Korea is an economic success story (once again, thank you America) but the quality of life has been slow to follow. I hate to be a nit-picker (whatever THAT is) but South Koreans still work close to 60 hours per week and often earn as few as 3 vacation days per year. The country is still known as a sweatshop. They have huge travel times to get to these jobs. Air, water and land pollution is becoming a huge concern.
EWVIDCO’s Chairman of the Board is Mr. Greenfield’s son. I figured this explained their involvement - sort of son’s tribute to his dad rather than the propaganda of a sponsor as you suggest.
July 21st, 2008 at 9:50 am
SK is not still known as a sweatshop — it’s a modern, wealthy country and now that the US-backed dictatorship fell in the early 80s, a socially free one. South Koreans work around 44 — not 60 — hours a week. It’s about the same in Japan, which nobody could accuse of having a low standard of living. Asian natives working in the US tend to work more than their American counterparts, too. It’s a cultural thing.