Banners Over Our Streets, or Roofs Over Their Heads?
Part Three — What honor looks like when it costs something
EDITING
The clearing.
Banners over roads, or roofs over their heads? For two installments I argued that a city cannot put veterans’ faces on its poles without choosing whose service counts, and that the law it would reach for to defend the choice won’t resolve the quandary. But an argument against a thing is only half a case. Here is the other half. On the other side of Orange County, a mere fifty minutes from Newburgh, in a city with a population of about 8,500, less than a third of the size of Newburgh’s, is one answer to the question the banners do not ask.
June 14, 2026. I woke up to a sunny Sunday morning. After my usual ingestion of industrial strength caffeinated coffee, I drove out to 297 East Main Street in Port Jervis for the Rumshock Veterans Foundation ribbon cutting ceremony for Veterans Village, the first veterans community of its kind in Orange County. I Googled 297 East Main. It was right at the eastern entrance to the city, in a small commercial corridor. Google Street View pulled up this image:
