News

Thanks to Park’s Staff for quick removal of trash we hauled out!

Dedicated volunteers (some for 40 years!) work hard to create a safe, beautiful park. Respect!

Below: Thelma and Prince working on the side plots in the Stanton Street Area.

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The basketball courts and soccer fields were full all weekend.

Congratulations to a sister Park for all the efforts “Parks Without Borders” recipients!

Borough President Gale Brewer, Council Member Margaret Chin, Parks Commissioner Silver, Manhattan Parks Commissioner Castro, the Seward Park Conservancy and Community Board 3 Parks Chair Trevor Holland among others who spoke.

The Lo-Down

From Mother Jones:

MAY 26, 2019

Plankton tells us a lot about what went wrong [in the past].

Originally published by Wired and is shared as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. 

“Plankton… tiny organisms (phytoplankton…plant-like cells that produce much of the world’s oxygen, zooplankton being little animals) float around at the mercy of currents and form the very foundation of the ocean food web. …whales…eat krill, which eat…plankton…Phytoplankton soak up CO2 and spit out oxygen, helping keep the planet a pleasant human habitat…Life on Earth shares its fate with the littlest organisms in the sea.”

“But plankton don’t do well in warmer waters, which carry fewer nutrients. One study has shown that phytoplankton alone have declined by 40 percent since 1950…”

Read more Here.

Chinatown Partnership

Check Newsletter:

From NYT By Nikita Stewart

“..There are still thousands of people living in the open overnight. An annual count conducted in late January estimated 3,588 people fell into that category…”

“[they] represent a persistent challenge. Since an annual count began more than a decade ago, that population has never fallen below about 2,300, and it hit near-record levels under Mayor Bill de Blasio.

..But there has been some recent cause for cautious optimism. For the second year in a row, the number of people known as chronically homeless, or “unsheltered,” has fallen.

The decline, while modest, may be traced to more intense outreach efforts and an expansion of so-called safe havens. These specialized shelters have fewer restrictions and a streamlined application process to try to quickly place people into permanent housing…

“..Some of the homeless on the street struggle with a constellation of problems, which may include mental illness and a drug or alcohol addiction. Others prefer the independence of living in the street and balk at having to comply with the rules of the city’s shelter system, such as curfews or sobriety…”…helping them means not only providing shelter but perhaps finding a drug rehabilitation program, a psychiatrist, a medical doctor or even guidance in a getting birth certificate or Social Security card…”

“A lot of us were saying, ‘We need beds, and we need these kinds of beds,’” said Muzzy Rosenblatt, the chief executive of the Bowery Residents’ Committee [The BRC] , a nonprofit that first started the safe haven model…”

Fordham University: By: Bernadette Corbett May 13, 2016

CHAPTER 2:
The History of the NYC Parks Department
“Parks are about so much more than our aesthetics and beauty, as important as that is.
Parks are about healthy neighborhoods? they’re intimately tied to the health of their neighborhoods? they promote community building, social capital, and even in ways we’re only just beginning to understand, our physical health.” (Shakarian)

Urban parks can provide social benefits to neighborhoods because they are public spaces where people from different cultures and backgrounds can convene. In fact, urban parks are supposed to be symbols of democracy within New York City. Experts believe urban parks theoretically represent fairness and civic virtues within society. In other words, urban parks provide society with public places where the rich and the poor can “meet as equals” (Penalosa).
However, these symbols of democracy become warped when private fundraising is the main source of maintenance and upkeep. When urban parks are maintained through private funds, they only cater to the needs of the elite few. Therefore, certain groups no longer feel welcomed in these public spaces. “Some of the most glaring inequities are becoming manifest in the way our public spaces are designed, maintained, and regulated” (65 Ulam). Thus, our society becomes segregated. Many academics and urban planners have opinions on how our society becomes segregated through urban parks, and their theories are analyzed within this chapter.

“we are facing a different kind of threat to public space – not one of disuse, but of patterns of design and management that exclude some people and reduce social and cultural diversity. In some cases this exclusion is the result of a deliberate program to reduce the number of undesirables, and in others, it is a by­product of privatization, commercialization, historic preservation, and specific strategies of design and planning.
Nonetheless, theses practices can reduce the vitality and vibrancy of the space or reorganize it in such a way that only one kind of person – often a tourist or a middle­class visitor – feels welcomed.” (Low 1)