Neighbors to Save Rivington House:

An education and community-building art project with Neighbors to Save Rivington House, local artist Lee Brozgol, and the youth of University Settlement.

From UN AIDS:

“This #WorldAIDSDay we stand in solidarity with all people living with or affected by HIV, and remember our friends and family who have died from AIDS-related illnesses”

ACT-UP NY “Silence = Death” Meetings Dec 7, 2018

NYTimes: “Loss and Bravery Intimate Photos from the First Decade of the AIDS Crisis”

More Photos:

Beautiful day and beautiful visit from Nordea Fonden and their guide Green Map‘s Wendy Brawer. More info here.

From CBC News:

Hemimastigotes are more different from all other living things than animals are from fungi

“Canadian researchers have discovered a new kind of organism that’s so different from other living things that it doesn’t fit into the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, or any other kingdom used to classify known organisms.

Two species of the microscopic organisms, called hemimastigotes…”

This is an important meeting to find out why after four years of public input the administration has now proposed a new plan that appears to be a radical change for the East River Park:

From BoweryBoogie:

“The eponymous Sara D. Roosevelt Park Coaltion, led by Kathleen Webster, argues that the return as community amenity would help cut back the open-air drug market and reduce overall crime in the park …”

“Once the community feels an ownership [over the Stanton building] it invites more active positive use, not experienced as a derelict area,” Webster told us. “So yes, the building will not be used for storage. For the first time concrete mechanisms are in place to move the toilet paper out.”

Jarrett Murphy of City Limits moderating the discussion

On Monday (November 19) NYers4Parks invited an array of open space leaders to talk about what, in their view, it means to be a public open space in NYC. Next Open Space dialogue (see below)

“New York City is a metropolis that excels in reinvention, and that’s true for land as well. New Yorkers want – and deserve – local open spaces, and creative solutions exist to make vibrancy out of vacancy. This installment of the Open Space Dialogues explores the ways New Yorkers have, and want to, create nontraditional open spaces in unusual places, from a single lot or tunnel to entire neighborhoods and whole islands.”

It was a wide ranging discussion focused on how do you keep public spaces truly public, deal with unequal resources, beautify without gentrifying and serve the broader public without discounting the real needs of the neighborhood that the open space is sited in.

The best advertisement to potential volunteers was offered up by both Bill LoSasso (GreenThumb Director) and Jarrett Murphy (Executive Director of CityLimits): Both met their current partners while volunteering in a NYC Park!

Moderated by

Jarrett Murphy, Executive Editor & Publisher, City Limits

Presenters

Bill LoSasso, Director of GreenThumb, NYC Parks

Dan Barasch, Co-Founder & Executive Director, The Lowline

Michael Samuelian, President & CEO, The Trust for Governors Island

Bill LoSasso of GreenThumb with images of what the community garden movement was faced with during in the abandoned communities of NYC.

Respondents

Tom Hillery, Founder & Executive Director, Harlem Grown

Regina Myer, President, Downtown Brooklyn Partnership

Marlene Pantin, President, Red Hook Conservancy

Tony Hiller of Harlem Grown: “We are from Harvard to Homeless” – they feed the neighborhood with volunteers, residents and young people from the community.

To continue the conversation:

Next Open Space Dialogue: the intersection of parks & health Wednesday, January 9^th

More questions answered on Check CityLimits next week.

To Subscribe to NY4P monthly e-newsletter.

The Villager 

By Sydney Pereira

“Lower East Side park activists embraced a small victory at a Community Board 3 Parks Committee meeting last Thursday…

Bill Castro, the Manhattan borough Parks Department commissioner, told Downtown politicians that Parks is working with city agencies to relocate staff and storage from the Stanton St. building in Sara D. Roosevelt Park, according to Gigi Li, Councilmember Margaret Chin’s deputy chief of staff….

…Lower East Side community activists have fought for years to restore the Stanton St. building as a community center after Parks first promised to do so in  1998, or — after Hurricane Sandy — as a resiliency space…”

Read More Here.

Lo-Down: “The Parks Department finally agrees to relocate staff and equipment in the Stanton Street Park building, a modest but important step in returning the structure to the community for local uses.”

++++++++++++++

Thanks to Council Member Chin, Borough President Brewer, Senator Kavanagh, Commissioner Castro, Community Board 3 and the neighbors, tenant leaders, small businesses and non-profit organizations who have actively worked to return this Park resource to the neighborhood and NYC’s park -going public.

This is what our reimagined Stanton area could be like: