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Thanks to all who came, who spoke, and who stood in silent testimony.

Melissa Aase: University Settlement, Alysha Coleman: neighbor/activist, Bob Humber: M’Finda Garden

Thanks to our electeds and their representatives: Council Member Chin, NYState Senator Kavanagh and Representatives Affaz Kahn (Manhattan Borough President Brewer’s Office),  Assemblywoman Niou’s office and Michael Stinson (Comptroller’s Office). And we are always grateful for the support we’ve received from Community Board 3 and their staff.

To our sister and brother organizations that fight for a decent society for everyone:

Including Steve Herrick & Val Orselli (Cooper Sq Committee), Ryan Gilliam (Downtown Arts) Ron (Friends of Joe H) Persephone Tan (Student) and Brandon Culichi (ACT-UP), Emily (Grand Street Settlement), 10 Stanton Street (Alysha), Wendy Brawer (Green Map System) Michele Campo and Ralph Lewis (Bowery Alliance of Neighbors) and others.

And the people of the local and far-flung community who insist on caring.

And the people, organizations, and Friends of the Steering Committee of Neighbors to Save Rivington House [N2SaveRh]: University Settlement, Former staff of RH, UHab, Hand in Hand, JFREJ, M’Finda Kalunga Community Garden, Sara Roosevelt Park Community Coalition, GOLES, CAAAV, Lisa, The Tenants of Neighboring RH Buildings, Neighbors, VNSNY Chinatown NNORC, Institute for Career Development.

Visiting volunteers gave Bob a hand in the Garden today led by Dr Thandeka Mazibuko a founder of Sinomusa Nothando Community Development.

Volunteers today were Baye Diof, David Loye and the Dr. herself and of course Bob. 

Dr. Mazibuko: “The reason for donating our services to the park is motivated by #67minutes for Nelson Mandela”

From the Nelson Mandela International Day website:

Mandela Day is a global call to action that celebrates the idea that each individual has the power to transform the world, the ability to make an impact. The Mandela Day campaign message is: “Nelson Mandela has fought for social justice for 67 years. We’re asking you to start with 67 minutes.”

Can you spare 67 minutes of your time helping others?

Every year, on Mandela Day, people around the world are asked by the Nelson Mandela Foundation to do just that.

By devoting 67 minutes of their time – one minute for every year of Mr. Mandela’s public service – people can make a small gesture of solidarity with humanity and a step towards a global movement for good.

UN staff around the world have made a difference through a variety of activities in the past – from rebuilding homes destroyed by hurricane Sandy, to offering school supplies to children, preparing meals for the elderly, helping out in orphanages, cleaning up parks and delivering computer literacy workshops.

In 2016, UN staff in New York helped women in need receive professional clothing donations, career counselling, child care, and nutritious meals, in volunteer activities organized by the UN Department of Public Information and supported by UN Women.

In 2015, UN staff volunteers in New York, partnered with GreenThumb, East New York Farms, and the UN Food Garden, to plant seedlings, pull weeds, and water plant beds in community gardens across the city.

….In 2014, in New York, UN staff, joined by the Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and in partnership with MillionTreesNYC, volunteered their time and got their hands dirty by pulling weeds, putting down mulch and watering tree beds to help take care of newly planted trees on the streets of Midtown Manhattan and East Harlem. See video.

In 2013 UN staff  in New York helped rebuild homes destroyed by Hurricane Sandy.

If you would like to donate your own time to public service, here are some things you can do to take action and inspire change:

• Make a new friend. Get to know someone from a different cultural background. Only through mutual understanding can we rid our communities of intolerance and xenophobia.
• Read to someone who can’t. Visit a local home for the blind and open up a new world for someone else.
• Help out at the local animal shelter. Dogs without homes still need a walk and a bit of love.
• Help someone get a job. Put together and print a CV for them, or help them with their interview skills.
• Many terminally ill people have no one to speak to. Take a little time to have a chat and bring some sunshine into their lives.
• Get tested for HIV and encourage your partner to do so too.
• Take someone you know, who can’t afford it, to get their eyes tested or their teeth checked.
• Donate a wheelchair or guide dog, to someone in need.
• Buy a few blankets, or grab the ones you no longer need from home and give them to someone in need.

From the Lo-Down:

“Coming up on Friday, Dec. 1, local activists will mark World AIDS Day and the two year anniversary of the closing of Rivington House.

The former nursing home for AIDS patients was shuttered by the Allure Group in December of 2015. At the same time, it became known that deed restrictions were lifted on the longtime community facility, clearing the way for the sale and luxury condo conversion of the building at 45 Rivington St. A local group, Neighbors to Save Rivington House, has been battling against the condo developers ever since.”

Read more here.

And Patch. Read more here.

“The purpose of the Candlelight Vigil is to remember the losses of the residents of Rivington House who were our neighbors, and the many, many losses to AIDS of our LES and NYC neighbors over the last 40 years, Importantly, we also hold up many candle flames in the name of community memory, struggle and solidarity in face of these losses.”

Beau and Security Staff Rivington House

From Brooklyn News

“Landmarks Preservation Commission voted on Tuesday to approve a controversial redesign of one entrance to the neighborhood’s eponymous park, arguing the plan barely changed after landmarks honchos criticized its disregard for the meadow’s creators’ vision and told Department of Parks and Recreation officials to take it back to the drawing board months ago…

“… history buffs contended that planner Frederick Law Olmsted would prefer the grassy knolls over a paved walkway because park-goers can hang out on them.

“[The hills] seem to be a very large gathering place, versus more of a passageway,” said commissioner Wellington Chen. “If you’re saying I can perform many programs on a passageway, that’s true. However, that’s not what Olmsted intended, which is a public gathering place.”

..The landmarks agency’s vote followed that of Community Board 2, which approved the redesign in September after months of debate over whether it catered more to gentrifiers than to longtime locals who often visit the meadow.

The Park’s Department’s amended makeover of a corner of Fort Greene Park

Residents fumed at the new agency head for the majority of the earlier meeting.

Residents from nearby Walt Whitman and Ingersoll Houses wanted:

– a people’s playground .

– perks for the people who live in the public housing complexes surrounding it.

– “We want more grass, more intimate spaces.”

– “We want more recreational opportunities for our kids and seniors.”

– “This is everyone’s backyard.”

– Understand how popular urban meadow

– outreach.

NOT

– a fancy facade to make the meadow look good for gentrifiers,

“We don’t want a vanity project.”

– “We don’t want a promenade.”

“Don’t want more pavement.”

– taking out a stone wall and granite platforms.

– chopping down rows of trees to create the path up to the memorial.

‘…it probably doesn’t matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly.

It probably doesn’t matter if, while trying to be modest and eager watchers of life’s many spectacles, we sometimes look clumsy or get dirty or ask stupid questions or reveal our ignorance or say the wrong thing or light up with wonder like the children we all are.

It probably doesn’t matter if… a neighbor, fetching her mail, sees us standing in the cold with our own letters in one hand and a seismically red autumn leaf in the other, its color hitting our senses like a blow  from a stun gun, as we stand with a huge grin, too paralyzed by the intricately veined gaudiness of the leaf to move.’ – Robin Morgan

Before:

The overgrown foliage and trash were pruned and cleared up today. Bob and K spent the afternoon getting the front in shape for the eventual placement of new windows that have been promised for a number of years now.

After:

We did discover where people have been going in the absence of 24/7 sanitation access.

Mulching to come…

From City Limits: A Must read for anyone who cares about Parkland. (Excerpt below)

Manhattan Parcel with Murky Origins Could Frame a Debate Over Parks and Development in the City

“Is the Marx Brothers Playground [Marx Brothers Playground—named after legendary comics Chico, Groucho, and Harpo who were raised at nearby 179 E 93rd St] on 2nd Ave between East 96th & 97th Streets a park or a playground?

To realize the scope of its blueprint, AvalonBay obtained City Council approval for changes to the site’s zoning, waivers for parking and open space requirements, and permission to build a higher tower in exchange for affordable housing—a newer tactic that required creating a Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) zone. The Marx Brothers Playground, however, presented a more complicated issue.

Back in 2004, when the MTA was authorized to stage its Second Avenue Subway necessities on a piece of the playground, the state law that temporarily permitted the takeover labelled the Marx Brothers as “park lands.” Now known as Chapter 543 of the State Laws of 2004, the bill directed the MTA to “restore the surface of the lands” when it was finished with its project and provide “replacement trees to be determined by the Parks Department” so that the “lands shall continue to be used for park purposes.” As a piece of protected parkland, then, the playground was exempt from all zoning laws and unable to generate useable floor area. A developer couldn’t build anything there.

So AvalonBay once again solicited the City Council for aid. In June 2017, the body voted in favor of asking the New York State Legislature to strip the playground of its parkland status. Called a “home rule request,” the resolution was quickly taken up by both the Assembly and Senate and approved. The playground was officially “alienated.”

The residential tower will be the second tallest building on the east side

Now, as a regular lot, it was immediately subject to the laws of whatever zoning district had jurisdiction. Moreover, the changes that AvalonBay procured through ULURP also went into effect. The former playground now produced floor area. The ECF could officially take possession of the Marx Brothers-COOP Tech site and transfer it to the developer. Demolition and construction teams could finally emerge.

But after news broke of the Marx Brothers’ plan, stakeholders in the community like Carnegie Hill Neighbors [East Harlem Preservation are also opposed] and watchdogs like Geoffrey Croft at NYC Park Advocates got involved. In July, Carnegie Hill Neighbors, the non-profit group operating a few blocks west, appealed to Governor Cuomo to reverse the legislature’s decision. More groups followed its lead. In August, the Municipal Art Society, New Yorkers for Parks, and the Trust for Public Land sent off similar petitions (Change.org Petition too). …New York City mayoral candidate Sal Albanese and public advocate hopeful David Eisenbach staged a protest outside the playground on August 17th….

Parks. Playgounds. Both terms have a curious history of being used interchangeably. For example, when Seward Park on the Lower East Side was established in 1903, the Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) observed that it was “equipped as a permanent playground.”

… Aren’t parks and playgrounds just the same thing?

It’s not just semantics. Depending on one’s take, these terms suggest—if not dictate—how the parcel of land is to be treated.

Historically speaking, the City has often claimed playgrounds as part of its park system. In doing so, it may have given them an “implied parkland” status. Under public trust doctrine, all that is necessary for a parcel of land to establish itself as a park is for it to have been “continuously used as a public park.” Moreover, as both the City has dedicated playgrounds for public use and its residents have accepted them as such, the notion of playgrounds as parks has solidified. You can see the idea at work in recent administrations.

In 1986, for example, as part of its Neighborhood Park Restoration Program, the Koch Administration touted spending $4.3 million to “refurbish” 144 Jointly Operated Playgrounds (JOPs). It added 600 workers to the DPR’s roster that year, including 248 “playground attendants.” The Times reported that “more than half of [them were placed] at the rehabilitated playgrounds” and quoted Jack Linn, Assistant Parks Commissioner for Government Relations, as justifying the deployment with this: “It makes sense to put your resources into defensible areas. You invest in something you can hold.”

On February 3, 1999, then Mayor Rudy Giuliani and DPR Commissioner Henry Stern issued a joint press release to celebrate an amazing accomplishment. They had brought the City’s total parkland to 28,000 acres, covering 14% of the five boroughs. “In the past five years,” the bulletin conveyed, “the Parks [Department]” had attained that milestone after “working with other City agencies…to identify potential parkland both for natural areas and neighborhood playgrounds.”

Under the Bloomberg Administration, the City was more explicit. When it released the 156-page tome called PlaNYC for a “greener, greater New York” in 2007, the administration was clear about its view of JOPs like the Marx Brothers Playground. “Today, there are 269 Jointly Operated Playgrounds open for public use,” the Plan read. “Since 1938, JOPs have been considered designated parkland, which restricts how the land can be used.” And, furthermore, when updating the City’s anti-smoking laws in 2011, the City Council not only banned smoking in “public parks,” it also defined what it meant by the term itself: “Park or other property under the jurisdiction of the department of parks and recreation’ means public parks, beaches, waters and land under water, pools, boardwalks, marinas, playgrounds, recreation centers and all other property, equipment, buildings and facilities now or hereafter under the jurisdiction, charge or control of the department of parks and recreation.”

The Marx Brothers Playground—whether originally parkland or playground—is now alienated and poised to supply its development rights to AvalonBay. Because of the de Blasio administration’s current position on the Marx Brothers, it is conceivable that other playgrounds, JOPs, or even parks themselves could have the potential to be alienated for their development rights. The risk is not new: The Bloomberg administration often worked parkland into development projects, from Yankee Stadium to Brooklyn Bridge Park to Flushing Meadows….”

The de Blasio administration is poised to go back on the promised park replacement (that never should have happened in the first place – re Bill Moyers Essay: Yankee Stadium – a scathing indictment from one of the most trusted voices in our country).

Village Voice: City Hall says expansion of Bronx green space was never a formal commitment

by Patrick Arden September 5, 2017

“Antonetty and her neighbors still pine for the old parks along Jerome Avenue, which had been the centerpiece of their community. Macombs Dam Park was established in 1897, a quarter-century before the Yankees arrived in the Bronx, and the neighborhood grew up around it. Macombs Dam and Mullaly parks were worn from heavy use — one field was bare, and the grass could often be brown — but they had hundreds of mature leafy green trees, some sixty feet tall. The outdoor space held special importance for families crammed into one-bedroom apartments.

All that was lost in August 2006, when the city closed off the parkland to make way for a new stadium. State law requires the formal “alienation” of parks by the legislature before they can be used for non-park purposes. When Albany lawmakers alienated portions of Macombs Dam and Mullaly parks in 2005, Mayor Michael Bloomberg vowed to replace the green space with a new park on the old stadium site across the street, and with the addition of a set of other parcels elsewhere in the neighborhood.

Locals had problems with the “replacement” parks from the start. In exchange for a unified stretch of parkland, they would get plots of land scattered across more than a mile, with much less greenery and fewer ballfields. One of the largest replacements would sit two stories above street level atop a parking garage, with artificial surfaces and no trees. Small “pocket” parks would be in the shadow of the 4 train’s elevated tracks. A 2.89-acre asphalt ballfield wasn’t even replaced — the city converted it intoanother garage, insisting the land had only been used for parking cars, though project documents acknowledged it had been parkland.”

Yet Adrian Benepe, the city’s parks commissioner from 2002 to 2012, tells the Voice that all of what’s currently built of Mill Pond Park — including Pier 4 and the developed slice of Pier 5 — ended up as part of Yankee Stadium’s replacement parkland. The undeveloped section of Pier 5 wasn’t in that deal, Benepe says, though “it had been envisioned that it might be nice to have a park there one day.”

A little more history:

And from March 2006 Gotham Gazette:

“What if the city decided to put a stadium in the middle of your local park?

…instead of being set inside a large, green space surrounded by hundreds of mature trees, the fields would be scattered on separate parcels, including the tops of parking garages. The new recreational spaces would be closer to the highway and train tracks and an additional five-minute to half-hour walk from where people live. Most of the trees would be cut down. The new stadium would go smack in the middle of the community’s current park, next to a residential area.”

NYTimes 2008: “None of the replacement parks have been completed, and construction on several has not yet started; however, the parks department has built a temporary replacement park on a parking lot in the area, opened a ball field this spring at a school almost a mile to the east, and is building a sports field at a recreation center about a mile to the north.”

…Mr. Benepe [former NYC Parks Commissioner] said he was sympathetic to All Hallows High School and others …[re].. old Macombs Dam Park… “By the time all of the construction is done, this neighborhood will have one of the finest collection of parks and sports facilities anywhere in the city…”

From Bill Moyers (Updated September 12, 2013):

“There, in the South Bronx, the poorest district in the entire country, taxpayers were being asked to subsidize the private profits of one of the wealthiest franchises in organized sports. The Yankees’ owner at the time, the late George Steinbrenner, had bought the team for $10 million dollars in 1973, and by the time the old Yankee Stadium — “the House that Ruth built” — was ready to be replaced, it was worth $1.3 billion, according to Forbes.

Taxpayers were promised big bang for their buck, with new jobs and prosperity coming to a neighborhood feeling the full impact of the recession. The claim was considered dubious at the time, and a study conducted in 2011 found that the 3,400 stadium jobs paid a median wage of $10.50 an hour for non-managerial positions. The Yankees, meanwhile, had grabbed $50 million in tax breaks, $326 million in capital improvements, $1.2 billion in tax-exempt bonds and 24 acres of parks that had been owned by the public (after dragging its feet for several years, outrage over the loss of the parks eventually led the city to complete a long-promised facility for local youths last year).”