the 100 most powerless new yorkers

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http://www.villagevoice.com/2012-01-11/news/100-most-powerless-new-yorkers/



Have you noticed that power lists, which have been spreading like the clap lately, from the Time 100 to the Forbes 500, tell you things you already know about the rich and famous and give publicity to people who already have more of it than they know what to do with? For the rest of us, here’s a power list to get 2012 going in the right direction. They're in no particular order. (Like it really matters.)

1. Weed-delivery guys

The reason so many marijuana arrests are of black and Hispanic people is not because they smoke weed more. White New Yorkers, by the NYPD's own numbers, have a higher per-capita rate of contraband when they're arrested. However, white people stay safe in their apartments while colored folks deliver drugs to them. Delivering drugs puts you on the bottom of a pyramid scheme where you usually earn less than minimum wage, making you vulnerable to homicide and giving you about as much of a chance of becoming a rich kingpin as being a production assistant or a media intern gives you of becoming a celebrity.

2. The St. Mark's Bookshop staff

These are not good days to be a bookseller, and the staff of the St. Mark's Bookshop are particularly at peril. Although celebrities as diverse as Gwyneth Paltrow and Michael Moore have recently given their endorsement to the quaint bookshop (and Voice neighbor), and Cooper Union has granted it a rent reduction reprieve, its staff's jobs are on the line if either of the seemingly inevitable occur: the continued rise of e-books and the fury of Cooper students at the possibility of having to pay tuition.

3. Bodega owners

Over the past decade, your neighborhood bodega has likely been replaced by a bank outlet or driven out of business by a Duane Reade popping up nearby. Walmart's unrelenting push to move many stores into the city (with a tacit blessing from Michelle Obama and an explicit blessing from Ruben Diaz) seems inevitable eventually, considering mounting public support. The day Sam Walton rolls into town, the few bodega owners still holding on (and their arguably more powerful cats) will be as toast as the bread in a $2.99 bacon, egg, and cheese special.

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1. Rec. nt