What if we actually pulled off a Green New Deal? What would the future look like?
A film written and narrated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and illustrated by Molly Crabapple.
See video HERE.
April 14, 2019
“Dear Friend and Neighbor,
We are writing to invite you and members of your Community Based Organization to join us at a Community Town Hall Meeting on May 6th 2019 on the Disposition of Catholic and other religiously owned and closed properties, currently slated for luxury housing development. This Town Hall meeting is being Co-sponsored by the Cooper Square Community Land Trust and Community Board #3, the Manhattan Borough President, Habitat for Humanity, Cooper Square Committee, Council Members Carlina Rivera and Margaret Chin, and a number of other political representatives and organizations.
In addition to a motion agreeing to co-sponsor the Town Hall meeting, CB#3 also passed a resolution urging the NY Archdiocese, and all other religious institutions in our neighborhood to agree to a one-year Moratorium on the Sale of any religiously-owned decommissioned property from the date of the Town Hall meeting, to give us time to develop alternative development options..
We are extremely concerned about the loss of houses of worship, community centers and schools leading to the secondary displacement effect of the sale of religiously-owned properties for redevelopment as luxury condos on poor and working class neighborhoods and communities of color.
The Town Hall meeting is scheduled to take place on Monday, May 6th 2019 at Cooper Union in the Rose Auditorium, 41 Cooper Square starting at 7:00PM and ending at 9:00PM. The Town Hall meeting will consist of a brief presentation, based on the recent Rome Conference entitled “Doesn’t God Live Here Anymore? on the proper reuse of closed or soon to close religiously-owned properties, where we were invited to make a presentation, followed by three different panel discussions (supplemented by Power Point Presentations) covering:
1. Churches and other places of worship and schools being sold for luxury condos. A focal point of discussion will be the closed Nativity Church, which is closely identified with Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement and currently in the process of canonization by the Catholic Church. However, on our list we include a number of other buildings including St. Brigid’s School, St. Veronica’s on Christopher Street, and the People’s Church on East 111th Street and St. Rose of Lima School on West 164th Street.
2. Political/ Legislative Initiatives to Support and Benefit Communities and Faith-Based Institutions and deincentivize sales for luxury condos.
3. Towards a New Relationship between Communities and Religious Institutions: The Case of Community Land Trusts.
The purpose of the Town Hall meeting is to allow our community, in addition to parishioners and congregations of the NY Archdiocese and other institutions, to have a say in the disposition of decommissioned religious buildings. We recognize the good that religious institutions do for our community, but they have a moral obligation to avoid doing harm.
Attached please find copy of the CB#3 Resolution endorsing the Town Hall meeting. Please let us know if you would like to have your Community Based Organization added to the list of Co-Sponsors. We also would welcome your joining with us to help plan and structure the first public discussion on the reuse of religiously-owned decommissioned properties, including churches, temples, community centers and schools. For further information please contact the Cooper Square Community Land Trust at (212) 228-8210, X108 or Community Board #3, at 533-5300.
Sincerely,
Valerio Orselli, Project Director
Cooper Square Community Land Trust”
April 12, 2019 Larry Levine
“From 2016 (a relatively dry year) to 2018, the number of days with a combined sewer overflow rose by 44%—from 85 days (as if that weren’t enough!) to 122.“
Excerpts: For full story Natural Resources Defense Council
“With climate change driving increased precipitation in the northeast, 2018 brought not only one of the wettest years on record in New York City, but also a sharp increase in sewage overflows. For local waterways, and an antiquated sewer system, it showed.
“Recent data released by the state shows that New York City experienced sewage overflows, on average, once every 3 days in 2018. That’s a 44% increase from 2016.”
“The city’s sewer agency has long-term plans, roundly criticized by City Council and community organizations as insufficient, to reduce overflows over the next two decades. By the city’s own estimates—without accounting fully for climate change—these plans may still leave nearly 20 billion gallons overflowing per year.”
On April 16th, attend public meeting for an update on the city’s development of sewage overflow control plans. The city will present options under consideration to reduce overflows to the Hudson River, East River, Harlem River, Long Island Sound, and other major waterbodies. And members of the public will have a chance to ask questions and speak their minds.
Receive alerts from New York State when a combined sewer overflow has occurred in your area.
Read up on solutions at Cut the Crap NYC, a new website sponsored by Riverkeeper, NRDC, and Save the Sound.
Reduce your own flow into the sewers, to help reduce overflows. ..
Read full article here.
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By Christine Chung, Rachel Holliday Smith, Claudia Irizarry Aponte and Greg B. Smith
Read full story here: THE CITY:
Excerpt: “… an alarming rise in 911 calls seeking police assistance with the emotionally disturbed. Citywide in every precinct, the number of these calls has climbed each year…as City Hall and the NYPD struggle to keep up. NYPD and city officials in charge of wrestling with the issue have noted a concentration of these calls in areas that host psychiatric hospitals and homeless shelters for the mentally ill…
“…As THE CITY reported last month, training for cops to deal with mental health calls has lagged, and special “co-response” teams of police and mental health workers formed three years ago were never connected to the 911 system.”
“…NYPD statistics show that about half off all these so-called EDP calls end up with a patient transported by cops or EMTs to hospital psych wards. And once they’re dropped off, they enter a system that is set up to eventually give them the freedom to come and go at will…”
Read full article here.
(This story published by THE CITY (www.thecity.nyc), an independent, nonprofit news organization dedicated to hard-hitting reporting that serves the people of New York)
Environmental review documents for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development-funded East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) project are available below for download and review. The New York City Office of Management and Budget (NYC OMB) is the Responsible Entity for the grant funds, as well as the Lead Agency under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) overseeing the environmental review for the project. Additionally, the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation (NYC Parks) has assumed the responsibility of Lead Agency under the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) and the New York City Environmental Quality Review (CEQR).
Positive Declaration (October 28, 2015)
Draft Scope of Work (October 30, 2015)
Notice of Intent To Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (November 6, 2015)
Early Floodplain/Wetlands Notice (February 22, 2019)
Notice of Availability (April 5, 2019)
Notice of Completion (April 5, 2019)
Final Scope of Work (April 5, 2019)
Draft Environmental Impact Statement (April 5, 2019)
The DEIS includes a detailed project description and a description of environmental impacts, including direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts, associated with a No Action Alternative, Preferred Alternative, and three other With Action Alternatives.
Comment on the DEIS.
By Jarrett Murphy City Limits
Tuesday, April 9th, 5-7 p.m. Location: Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, 1 Bowling Green, New York, N.YT
“In a process initiated after the devastation of Superstorm Sandy, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has identified five strategies for protecting the city from waves and tides that are likely to become more destructive as sea levels rise… [including] a massive sea wall from Sandy Hook, N.J., to Breezy Point in Queens…”
…Doubts about massive tidal barriers are held widely.
Annel Hernandez, associate director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance: “We’re investing heavily in a new climate adaptation economy. We have to make sure the infrastructure is providing other crucial benefits for communities, not just a wall out in the bay that is only activated during the actual emergency event. We would want infrastructure that would be useful and accessible on a sunny day,” like waterfront parks that absorb water and provide recreation…
“The problem with a sea wall is, it would have a lot of impacts on the health of the waterways which would in turn would have an impact on the ability for ecologically grounded coastal protections,” Hernandez added. Sea walls, for instance, can change how tides and sediments move, which can affect the health of wetlands that resist storm surge.”
POSTED APRIL 3, 2019
ERA BLOG Post
“…the mythic maze of subterranean streams under the East Village…are left off the City’s public visualizations of the East Side Coastal Resiliency project (ESCR) project that is meant to protect our community from flooding. This is a potentially disastrous oversight that will affect my neighborhood as the sea level rises and climate change delivers increasingly intense storms.
Responding to my questions at public meetings, the Department of Environmental Protection says these subterranean streams are not under their jurisdiction, and they don’t know where they are. Why doesn’t the City have a Deputy Mayor for Infrastructure so agencies, adjacent projects and geography can be coordinated?
…subterranean rivers and tidal salt marshes extending nearly to 1st Avenue. The book “The Archaeology of Home” tells how the land was extended and filled in, and how docks and shipyards soon ringed the shore. Even today, people in the community know that willow trees are indicators that these ancient waterways still flow. This year, test bores for rain gardens are being made in the same area for the Gardens Rising project, and there are reports on progress mapping the underground. Can’t these shed light for developing the ESCR, too?”
Read More – with maps HERE.
From ALMA
If you don’t think of homelessness as a feminist issue, you should. We spoke with Doniece Sandoval, Lava Mae’s passionate founder, on how being unhoused affects women differently and the challenges women social entrepreneurs face.
The stats on people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco can be overwhelming: About 7,500 people — including kids, families and people with jobs — are unhoused every night in the city. While the roots of this crisis are deep and wide, restorative experiences for people experiencing homelessness can be really simple, like the chance to take a hot shower. That’s what Lava Mae and its mobile showers have provided to more than 15,000 guests since 2013.
Homelessness is devastating for all people regardless of gender, but for women the challenges are overwhelming. They are disproportionally escaping violence in the home, often single mothers and once unhoused are at greater risk of assault and sex trafficking. They also grapple with the realities of a monthly period and little access to safe, reliable bathrooms.
No one deserves to be unhoused but we must recognize the added risk and burden faced by women and as work to prevent and solve homelessness.
A shower, something so simple that most of us take it for granted, is transformative. It connects us with our dignity and self-worth. It also eliminates obstacles to opportunities like jobs and housing.
”To know that I have 15 minutes to myself, in a safe private space where hot water and wonderful soaps wash me clean is the highlight of my day. I reconnect with who I am; I feel hopeful, and find what I need to hang on another day as I wait for housing to open up.” — Lava Mae guest
The biggest challenge is around equal access to funding. One of the funders supporting us recently conducted follow-up research on the social entrepreneurs in its portfolio. They found that organizations lead by men were funded in amounts almost twice what women-led organizations received. When gender bias exists, it makes it supremely hard to sustain, much less scale, an organization that’s having a great impact.
