News

It was a great evening organized by Kim Fong of the BRC Senior Center and Jean, Joe’s longtime friend and advocate.

We saw beautiful photographs, ate delicious treats and talked to old and new friends.

Joe was radiant – as were his photographs. It was a lovely evening.

The Citation honored his long time commitment as an activist and volunteer gardener in the M’Finda Kalunga Community Garden and in Sara Roosevelt Park.

Thank you everyone who helped organized this and thank you Margaret, an old friend of Joe and Elizabeth Hubbard (who were among her first champions when she ran for City Council – before she became the first Council Member of Chinese Heritage to represent her district).

We Won’t Wait

Recently Neighbors to Save Rivington House was invited to attend the We Won’t Wait conference. It was good to be with like-minded women and men dedicated to figuring out a just and caring society.

The historic gathering brought together over 1,000 community leaders and organizers from around the country to elevate the voices of women of color and low-income women and call for a comprehensive women’s economic agenda that will advance the lives of working women and families across the country.

We also attended the Vigil to honor the lives of loved ones whose lives were cut short by racist and sexist and anti-child acts of violence.

Anchored by over half a million conversations with women and their families across the country, our collaborative is embarking on a significant effort via targeted voter education, engagement, and mobilization efforts within key states centered around prioritizing an inclusive women’s economic agenda.

“VISIONS“

The Photography of Joseph A. Hubbard

 September 28 – October 13, 2016

Opening Reception

Wednesday,September 28, 6 – 8 pm

 BRC  30 Delancey Street

Information: (212) 533-2020

Dumpling FestivalDumpling Festival

September 24th, 2016

12 Noon to 5PM

Sara D. Roosevelt Park

( on E. Houston St Between Chrystie St and Forsyth St )

The Indigenous Peoples of the Sioux nations and their allies are fighting to protect the water for everyone.

Communities are joining to end irrational private profiteering interests when they conflict with rational life-sustaining public interests. When private corporate decisions lead us to the brink of our planet becoming uninhabitable those entities simply cannot be left in decision-maker roles.

The video has violent content.

Video

From Democracy Now!

“On September 3, the Dakota Access pipeline company attacked Native Americans with dogs and pepper spray as they protested against the $3.8 billion pipeline’s construction. If completed, the pipeline would carry about 500,000 barrels of crude per day from North Dakota’s Bakken oilfield to Illinois. The project has faced months of resistance from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and members of nearly 100 more tribes from across the U.S. and Canada…..

Democracy Now! was on the ground at Saturday’s action and brings you this report”

The United Nations stepped in and said that according to a declaration that President Obama signed, the Sioux, who this land belongs to, need to have a say in whether the pipeline happens.

AP: “The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe must have a say with regard to a $3.8 billion oil pipeline that could disturb sacred sites and impact drinking water for 8,000 tribal members, representatives of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues said Wednesday.”

“States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.”

and last from USUncut:

“Enbridge Energy Partners is pulling out of the equally controversial Sandpiper pipeline in northern Minnesota. The Sandpiper Pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline would both have originated from North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields. Ground hadn’t yet been broken on the Sandpiper Pipeline, but the Dakota Access Pipeline was expected to open by the end of the year.”

With so few sites out of the FEMA flood zones, why not make the Stanton Building in SDR Park an Evacuation Site?

For a better view and more information go the NYC Hurricane Evacuation Zone Finder.

Our former President (of the Sara Roosevelt Community Coalition) Anne Fredericks moved to Kauai a while back. Here is how she is keeping busy (among other things).

She now heads this local environmental organization. Its Mission sounds familiar!

More and more environmental organizations  understand that we are all engaged in a complex and indivisible struggle for food, democracy, stewardship and economic justice.

HAPA’s mission is to catalyze community empowerment and systemic change towards valuing ‘aina (environment) and people ahead of corporate profit.

HAPA advances the work of progressive movements across the islands by sharing resources, creating effective and consistent communication and advocacy, organizing, educating and framing local efforts so we can see their global connections, their root causes, and our linked struggles.

CURRENT CAMPAIGNS

Under HAPA’s 2015 Strategic Plan, the focus of HAPA’s work over the next one to three years is on the following four campaigns to support, promote, and foster local initiatives which advocate:

Fair and Sustainable Food Systems

Forwarding Hawaii’s transition from GMO+Pesticide “Ground Zero” to a more sustainable, fair and secure food system.

Reclaiming Democracy

Interrupting corporate influence on our government, restoring transparency and citizen-driven democracy.

Community Based Resource Stewardship

Supporting customary land-based Aha Moku organizing, and the protection and restoration of sacred sites and traditional food systems.

Economic Justice

Addressing the structural ways that economic inequality is perpetuated, towards a more level playing field for all.

Best of luck Anne!

From the Guardian:  by Jason Hickel

“…. extreme events [are] becoming more commonplace, few deny climate change any longer. … a consensus is crystallising … fossil fuels are killing us. We need to switch to clean energy…fast.

… But … As important as clean energy might be, the science is clear: it won’t save us from climate change…

Why? Because the burning of fossil fuels only accounts for about 70% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The remaining 30% comes from….Deforestation …. industrial agriculture…. industrial livestock farming … Industrial production of cement, steel, and plastic forms …and … landfills…

… the problem is not just the type of energy … it’s what we’re doing with it. …[we] raze forests, build more meat farms, expand industrial agriculture, produce more cement, and fill more landfill sites…

We will do these things because our economic system demands endless compound growth…we have not thought to question this.

… the basic logic of our economic operating system…[is] … the broader imperative of GDP growth.…[it] demands ever-increasing levels of extraction, production and consumption.

Clean energy, important as it is, won’t save us from this nightmare ….rethinking our economic system might. GDP growth has been sold to us as the only way to create a better world.

But we now have robust evidence that it doesn’t make us any happier, it doesn’t reduce poverty, and its “externalities” produce all sorts of social ills: debt, overwork, inequality, and climate change.

We need to abandon GDP growth as our primary measure of progress, … immediately – as part and parcel of the climate agreement that will be ratified in Morocco later this year.

It’s time to pour our creative power into imagining a new global economy – one that maximises human wellbeing while actively shrinking our ecological footprint.

This is not an impossible task. A number of countries have already managed to achieve high levels of human development with very low levels of consumption…”