Omnipresence

From dusk to dawn, the Red Hook Houses hum with construction lights, though there is no construction. The generators rumble to a coughing start as the waterfront's sunlight slides of the red brick of the four-, six-, and fourteen-story buildings, retreating from Red Hook Channel and Buttermilk Channel, Erie Basin and Atlantic Basin.

With a rumble, a gas-generated light pools between buildings, collecting like water, concentrating as the sun dies. Dozens of them, chained fast under the pretense of safety, slapping light across the sidewalks and plazas. Under the pretense of service. These are the largest housing projects in Brooklyn—6,500 people, mostly African Americans, Asians, and Latinos. The lights are the background, the ballast, for their footsteps, their shopping, their gossip and small talk with neighbors, their going out and coming home. A rumble and brightness undergird life here.

In 2012, Hurricane Sandy steeped the neighborhood in a cocktail of sewage, chemicals from the nearby Superfund site, the Gowanus Canal, and fuel oil from basements. The rainbow-colored slick of oils and god-knows-what coated the benches, the cars, the trees. Everything up to your waist was poison. The hurricane's toxic tide killed half the trees in Coffey Park and corroded all the underground wiring for the Houses' outdoor lights. Everybody lost something.

That's when the NYPD wheeled in the generator lights. Never let a disaster go to waste. They were necessary, the NYPD said, for safety. They did not mention surveillance.

No one wants to live in darkness, but the lights aren't really for the residents. They know this. Safety, surveillance: It's hard to tell the difference.