Nicholas Kristof in NYT:

“…Indeed, 2017 is likely to be the best year in the history of humanity…Just since 1990, more than 100 million children’s lives have been saved through vaccinations and improved nutrition and medical care. They’re no longer dying of malaria, diarrhea or unpleasant causes like having one’s intestines blocked by wriggling worms….

…For most of history, probably more than 90 percent of the world population lived in extreme poverty, plunging to fewer than 10% today. Every day…250,000 people graduate from extreme poverty…About 300,000 get electricity for the first time. Some 285,000 get their first access to clean drinking water….now more than 85% [of adults] can read. Family planning leads parents to have fewer babies and invest more in each. The number of global war deaths is far below what it was in the 1950s through the 1990s…

The truth is that the world today is not depressing but inspiring…. The most important historical force in the world today is not President Trump, and it’s not terrorists. Rather, it’s the stunning gains on our watch against extreme poverty, illiteracy and disease…”

First, and foremost, our hearts go out to the family of Officer Miosotis Familia after she perished in a senseless attack yesterday. We honor her service.

In the hopes of inoculating our communities from all forms of violence in the future we believe community policing is a vital step in the right direction.

Learn more here:

ABOUT NEIGHBORHOOD POLICING & LOCAL BUILD THE BLOCK NYC MEETINGS

Find a local Meeting here: 

MEET YOUR LOCAL COPS, RAISE SAFETY CONCERNS, BRAINSTORM SOLUTIONS

From the website:

Neighborhood Policing is the new direction of the NYPD, and the inspiration behind a new deployment model being implemented throughout the city, precinct by precinct. Neighborhood Coordination Officers (NCOs) are already assigned in over half of New York’s precincts.  They aren’t the only officers serving your area, but they are leading the coordination of policing services and problem solving in your sector.  If you live in a precinct that has already incorporated the neighborhood policing deployment model, we hope you will attend Neighborhood Safety meetings and get to know your cops.  If your precinct hasn’t yet been assigned NCOs,  we hope you will sign up for email updates as the model expands.

THESE ARE YOUR COPS.

Under Neighborhood Policing, Neighborhood Coordination Officers (NCOs) work every day in specific neighborhoods rather than being deployed in different spots around the city. This lets New Yorkers get to know their cops, and helps officers get to know the people, the challenges, and what it takes to make everyone in their neighborhood feel safe over time.

OFFICERS ARE OFF THE RADIO.

Neighborhood Policing ensures that NCOs and all officers spend significant time ‘off the radio,’ not simply racing from emergency to emergency. This gives officers more time to learn about and address problems in the neighborhood – and to work with community members toward collaborative and creative solutions.

SOLVING PROBLEMS AND FIGHTING CRIME.

Neighborhood Policing helps officers fight crime, while also finding ways to defuse and solve problems by engaging in collaborative problem solving with the people of their community.

“Outreach workers have requested more pop-up homeless outreach sites. We think the Stanton Building could serve that purpose. We have a crisis. Intelligently shared resources must be committed to solve the reality of climate change and the burgeoning homeless population.  As we take the (realistically) slow but concrete and steady steps to end these crises, these are rational and humane ways forward.

We get a park anchor for safety, a community meeting site in the evenings, a climate resiliency lab and emergency hub, a youth after-school training center in all things ‘Green’. Everyone wins. No one is left behind.” – SDR Coalition.

From Politico NY:

“An annual count of the city’s unsheltered population showed a 40 percent increase in homeless people on city streets, despite the efforts of the de Blasio administration to curb the rising rate of homelessness.

…It was the largest number since 2005, when the city first began estimating the unsheltered population.

“The de Blasio administration has dramatically increased funding for services for unsheltered homeless people, increasing funding by 250% since 2013 …

[Commissioner Steve] Banks said these services will have their full effect this year, as 260 more Safe Haven beds … 500 new supportive housing units, and the increased outreach staff will be in the field long enough to have developed relationships with homeless people. He said it takes on average five months to develop a relationship and bring someone in off the street.

“To us the most important thing is…the individuals that we are working with on a daily basis to bring them in off the streets,” Banks said. He noted that outreach teams helped 748 individuals come in off the streets last year.

The estimated number of unsheltered homeless people confirms what outreach teams…were seeing… The teams have a list of more than 2,000 individuals who they know by name and a list of more than 1,500 additional individuals they know of and are trying to work with.

…One goal and product of the increased outreach funding was to identify every unsheltered homeless person and have them included in the city’s caseload.”

How cities and citizens are turning back privatization

See video Here. Begins at 2:09.19

Debra Jeffreys-Glass VP of SDR Coalition and Co-Chair of the M’Finda Kalunga Community Garden asked Mayor de Blasio for the Stanton Park Building’s return to community use.

Mayor de Blasio: What is your ideal outcome?

VP SDR Coalition Debra Jeffreys-Glass: “…a resiliency center, homeless resource center, a place for a community organization to provide programming for students, for the homeless, as a community center, it used to be a community center.”

Mayor de Blasio: “Non-committal, in the interest of not being misunderstood, but interested, it’s a first date [laughter] it stands to reason what you are saying that if we could free it up there’s something very good about that. I think Parks is legitimately struggling to find an alternative location in a city in a borough that are getting more and more crowded all the time. This is the challenge were facing everyday in everything we do. At a certain point we are just running out of space. And obviously we need the parks department to provide all the services it does for that park and for other parks. But I still get your point and I’m still sympathetic so I want to hear how we’re doing at looking, if there is any alternative space and what you think about what could be done in terms of addressing homelessness through such a facility or otherwise.”

Manhattan Park’s Commissioner Bill Castro: Yes thank you Mr. Mayor, we are looking to try to find a better space for the storehouse operation which distributes the supplies on a 7 day-a-week basis for our park workers who are out there keeping the parks clean. We’re very serious about it, it’s not easy as the mayor said but wer’re very sincerely looking for this we work with the community we meet with them every month or two for years now about Sara D Roosevelt so we’re going to continue this in a very good faith effort and if we can we will definitely do it. I’d like to get out of there so we have a better space.

Commissioner of Social Services Steve Banks: “On behalf of the Department of Social Services we certainly gotta take a look at this with the parks department I just want to acknowledge and appreciate the leadership of the Council Member and you and others in the community for proposing this kind of resource that would help our clients that don’t have a roof over their heads. We’re trying to bring people in off the streets. We’ve brought in a number of people in this community from the streets and anything we can do to work with the community along the lines of what you are suggesting, we want to work with parks and see what is possible.”

Help Plan How to Improve McKinley Park!

PS 63 The Star Academy, Neighborhood School

6:30pm-8pm

121 East 3rd Street between 1st Ave & Ave A

EVGrieve: “Reps for the Parks Department will be collecting input this Thursday evening on improving the McKinley Playground on Fourth Street between Avenue A and First Avenue…”

“Worth Dying For?‘

A powerful film about how the murder of famed activist Berta Caceres has unleashed a wave of activism across Honduras”

From The March on behalf of Berta Cáceres Outside the UN 2016:

Politics of Death: ‘Am I next?’ Honduras land activists

“Honduras is the deadliest place on earth for environmental activism, according to a January report by UK-based watchdog Global Witness, with about 120 activists killed since 2010 but most crimes going unpunished.

The dangers involved hit the spotlight when renowned environmentalist Berta Caceres – a prize-winning grassroots campaigner – was gunned down in her home in March last year….

…Caceres led a decades-long campaign against the construction of the $50 million Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam that threatened to uproot hundreds of Lenca people and destroy livelihoods.

Both the government and Desarrollos Energeticos SA (DESA), the private company building the Agua Zarca dam, have denied any involvement in Caceres’ murder.

International backers of the dam – the FMO, the Dutch development bank, and a Finnish state investment fund, Finnfund – suspended $20 million in funding following Caceres’ murder.”

…According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)… there are nearly 840 mining projects, most for gold, in the pipeline or under consideration, covering a third of Honduran territory.

From the Guardian: Leaked court documents raise concerns that the murder of the Honduran environmentalist Berta Cáceres was an extrajudicial killing planned by military intelligence specialists linked to the country’s US–trained special forces, a Guardian investigation can reveal.

DNAinfo:

NYPD: “The elderly man was walking with a walker east on Rivington Street when [a cement] …truck … hit him while [the truck was heading] south on Chrystie at about 12:51 p.m…”

This area has a new configuration since the two-way bike lane was installed on Chrystie Street on the Park side of the street with a ‘rest area’ included for safety of pedestrians.