"...and frankly nobody in this room has once asked Times Square how it is holding all of that," said Dr. Marisol Venn, who chairs Affective Urban Studies at a university she asked us not to name, so as not to centre the institution.
Venn leads a group of nine scholars who wrote to the United Nations on Sunday. They want Times Square admitted as a non-state member with full speaking rights. Their evidence is the coverage of Monday's stabbing attack, which left one woman dead and ended with NYPD officers shooting the suspect. Al Jazeera, the BBC, ABC and Fox News all filed within hours.
"That is four continents processing one intersection. We extend that courtesy to Belgium."
The proposal runs to nine pages. Times Square would get a chair between Tanzania and Timor-Leste, a trauma-informed interpreter, and a standing agenda item called Check-In. Each session would open with member states naming one thing they appreciate about the intersection. The intersection would then name one boundary.
Venn accepts that Times Square cannot speak. She insists that is the point. "Silence is a communication style," she said. "We have never once pathologised it in Switzerland."
