Nation: Walks on the Wild Side

At 112th Street in Spanish Harlem, the mayor of New York was—literally —on the ropes. As his two opponents rushed him into one corner after an other of the portable boxing ring, he lunged back about as effectively as Charlie Brown. But to the 1,000 Puerto Ricans who jammed the block, he might have been heavyweight champion of the world. “Viva Lindsay!” they shouted. “Higheeah! Oooooah!”

For John Vliet Lindsay, who had planned no more ambitious a ploy than to referee an exhibition bout between Lightweight Champion Carlos Ortiz and his sparring partner, the sweat, the blows —and the appreciative gasps—were just part of the job. But for 2,000,000 people in the city’s slums, they were proof that somebody cared. Indeed this concern was just what they had come to expect from the 45-year-old mayor of New York.

Lindsay began walking the city intensively two years ago when he was campaigning for the mayoralty, found it so useful a means of divining local troubles that he kept it up after his election. For the past two summers, whenever the city seemed on the verge of riot, he discovered that merely by being on hand he could often cool a tense situation in the ghetto. “I wanted the people to know,” he says, “that this city hall was aware of neighborhood problems.”

After every Lindsay “walk,” follow-up teams are sent within a week to remedy complaints. The mayor has no illusions that the palliatives, such as garbage cleanups and street cleaning, will make a vast permanent difference, but he senses that they give residents hope and spirit. The slums, in turn, usually respond with electric excitement whenever he appears. Older men and women hang out of their windows, children clutch at his hand, and teen-agers—usually the troublemakers—tousle his hair, heckle him good-naturedly, challenge him to a ball game.

Beautiful Cat. Most slum dwellers also regard the mayor as their advocate in time of trouble. Rushing to Harlem’s barrio, the Spanish-speaking quarter, after last month’s violent outbreak, Lindsay was immediately surrounded by a loud mob of Puerto Ricans—each of whom wanted to be the first to tell him exactly what had gone wrong and why.

Nor is Lindsay’s unique touch with the poor confined to New York. Touring Newark slums last week as vice chairman of the President’s Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (other commission members were visiting Detroit and New York), he was quickly recognized and surrounded. “You’re the most beautiful cat in the world,” one man told him. Lindsay just smiled. He had heard it before.