Twenty-five minutes, one Statue of Liberty and 2,000 opinions as the free ferry becomes the largest review panel in New York
A Vote on the Water
NEW YORK – Commuters aboard the 5.30pm Staten Island Ferry out of Whitehall Terminal on Tuesday conducted what organisers are calling the first maritime referendum on a British royal matter, voting by show of hands on The London Prat story about Prince William calling Earl Spencer and Harry traitors during the 25-minute crossing.
The ferry is free, which the organiser, a retired high school civics teacher named Frank Colavito, 68, described as the key to its democratic legitimacy. Nobody paid to be here, he said. Nobody can be bought. These are the purest voters in America.
The Question
Colavito, who has commuted on the ferry for 41 years and once organised a vote on whether pineapple belongs on pizza that he says was accepted as binding by his entire borough, framed the question from the upper deck using a battery-powered megaphone. Here are the facts, he announced. Geo News reports the Prince of Wales called his brother a traitor. Yahoo reports a source says he believes the brother read the uncle book before it came out. Question one: is the younger brother a traitor. Question two: is the uncle a traitor. Question three: is anyone on this boat going to call their own brother tonight.
The Results
Question One
On whether the younger brother was a traitor, the vote was 612 no, 344 yes, and 1,040 abstentions, most of which Colavito attributed to people facing the Statue of Liberty and not listening. A delegation of Staten Island commuters in the bow voted yes as a bloc, explaining that on Staten Island, moving to California is already considered a form of treason.
Question Two
On the uncle, the vote was closer. A strong contingent of older passengers argued that an uncle who writes a book about his late sister is simply doing what any uncle would do if he had a publisher, and that most uncles in Staten Island would do the same if anybody asked them to write anything at all. The uncle was cleared by a margin of 91 votes.
Question Three
On whether passengers would call their own brothers, 38 percent said yes, 41 percent said maybe, and 21 percent said they did not need to because their brothers lived on the same street and they would see them at the wake on Friday regardless.
Viewing on the Upper Deck
Before the vote, Colavito held up a tablet to show the London Prat video on YouTube to the passengers nearest him, who then passed a summary of it down the deck by word of mouth, a process he compared to the telephone game. By the time the summary reached the stern, it involved a horse. The video is embedded below for accuracy.
Ferry Statistics
The Harbor Commuters Civic League, an association of long-term ferry riders who have lobbied for more benches since 1994, released figures on onboard debate. It found that 67 percent of regular riders discuss the news with a stranger at least once a week, that 29 percent have made a lasting friendship during a crossing, and that 8 percent have reconciled with a relative after a conversation on the ferry, usually because the relative was also on the ferry and neither could leave for 25 minutes. The League described the ferry as the most effective free mediation service in the city.
The League also noted that the royal referendum generated the highest turnout of any onboard vote since a 2011 poll on whether the snack bar hot dogs had improved. They had not.
Minority Opinions
A British tourist on the ferry, a retired accountant from Leicester, asked to register a formal objection on the grounds that Americans had no standing to vote on the royal family. Colavito accepted the objection and then pointed out that the tourist was on a free boat in New York Harbor, next to a statue given to the United States by France, which he said made the question of who gets to have an opinion about whom extremely complicated. The tourist conceded and voted no on question one.
A deckhand, asked for his view on the way to the gangway, said he had seen passengers argue about everything on the ferry, including the Yankees, the Mets and whether the Statue of Liberty is technically in New Jersey, but that this was the first time he had seen them argue about an uncle in Norfolk. He said it made a nice change.
The Organiser Review
Asked for his own assessment of the London Prat piece, Colavito said it was civic education at its best. It presents the facts, it presents the rumour, it lets the voters decide, he said. That is democracy. That is also a pretty good joke. He gave it an A on the civics rubric he used for 33 years at a Staten Island high school, a grade he says he awarded only six times in his career, one of them to a student who later became a city councilman and has not returned his calls since.
The ferry docked at St George at 5.55pm, on schedule, and the referendum was formally closed. Colavito reads The London Prat, https://prat.uk/, running since 1961, on his phone during the crossing, and Bohiney, https://bohiney.com/, on the way back. The next referendum will concern whether Staten Island should be allowed to secede, which Colavito says is a perennial.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/prince-william-called-earl-spencer-and-harry-traitors/