Respond to Troy (2017~2018)
in three variations for 2 or more players
Afro-Caribbean, African American, and Hasidic Jewish communities make up the majority of the population in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Shops, schools, and eateries east of Troy Avenue (Schenectady, Utica, Rochester Avenues and beyond) are utilized by Black communities. Utica Avenue is the most happening street—it bustles with social and economic activity. Those west of Troy (Albany, Kingston, until around Nostrand Avenue) are clearly operated for Jewish communities. The Jewish Children’s Museum, the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters, and the busiest storefronts are all located along their main street: Kingston Avenue. Albany and Schenectady (two streets on either side of Troy) seem to act as some sort of buffer—rather quiet, though prominently occupied by the dominant community. Troy Avenue sits on a juncture where these disparate communities reluctantly meet. While living in Crown Heights, I was walking down Troy when I witnessed a man angrily yelling at another man to go back to their side of the neighborhood. In 1991, two black children were killed in a car accident involving the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s motorcade. Rumors quickly spread that the emergency personnel operating the Hatzolah ambulance (a volunteer EMS run by the Jewish community) rushed to help the drivers in the car, rather than the dying children. This sparked a three-day riot where an Orthodox Jewish man was murdered. The Jewish community saw this as an act of antisemitism. The media portrayed it as “racial tension.”