Protecting and improving the community for the people who live and work here

The Cost of Care  By Jody Wood

With: Eva Glaser, Georgia Jenkins, Katrina Leung, Doriane Swain, and Cassidy Wingate

Friday June 23rd at 6:30pm & Saturday June 24th at 5:00pm

$15 General Admission, $10 Students and Seniors, Free for University Settlement Staff

Speyer Hall Theater The University Settlement

184 Eldridge, New York, NY

The Cost of Care is a live artistic performance exploring the unintended consequences of caretaking on care providers. The piece explores the caregiver’s perspective and effects of “secondary trauma exposure” on the body and mind. The cast is composed of care providers with first-hand experience of the subject matter, and their performance aims to translate the helplessness, repetition, and limitations of caregiving through movement and repurposed text taken from interviews Wood conducted with various care providers.

This performance follows a series of workshops entitled Choreographing Care. These workshops addressed secondary traumatic stress with social workers at the University Settlement and The Door: A Center of Alternatives. Workshops were facilitated by Jody Wood and led by theater professionals Jan Cohen-Cruz, Rebeca Rad, Margaret Lally, and Rose Ginsberg.

With support from The Performance Project.

Additional rehearsal space provided by Soho20 Gallery

From the Garden Club of the Tenement Museum:

Greetings All!

The summer of 2015 marked the beginning of a relationship between the Tenement Museum, New York City Parks Department, and members of the New York Gardens Movement. A cohort of green minded (and green thumbed) Museum Staff took stewardship of three pieces of Sarah D Roosevelt Park. Our group assumed the name of the previous gardeners, thus we are called, The New Forsyth Conservancy.

Over the past two years we built birdhouses and cobblestone paths, we had fundraisers, and mulched, weeded, pruned, and planted… and mostly cleaned. And this year we are staring it up again!

The New Forsyth Conservancy is looking for new members to join the fun and make a positive neighborhood impact. We meet Thursdays after work at 6:00PM outside the Groups Entrance. It is recommended that you wear a long sleeve shirt and pants that you don’t feel precious about. Gloves and tools are provided (with special thanks to Barry Roseman).

You don’t need a green thumb to be involved. In fact, if you have an interest in object based storytelling and archeology, you might be the best candidate for membership in The New Forsyth Conservancy! During our weekly maintenance sessions at SDR Park, we have uncovered an offbeat assortment of historic objects ranging from cassette tapes to wallets to beer taps to costume jewelry (and of course, the ubiquitous boot). Seen together, these discarded, lost or forgotten objects offer an interesting look at life in city parks.

The New Forsyth Conservancy kicks off their 2017 season of stewardship and storytelling this Thursday (June 8) at 6:00PM. RSVP to jeisner@tenement.org if you plan to attend.

Yours,

Jason Andrew Eisner

Education Associate for 97 Orchard Street

Lower East Side Tenement Museum

91 Orchard Street

NY NY 10002

From the NY Post: Harsher Punishment for Crimes in Parks?

“Assemblyman Joe Lentol (D-Brooklyn) said his proposed “Crime Free Parks Law” is needed to ensure playgrounds and other green spaces remain “sanctuaries” … there’s just too much parkland for cops and peace officers to cover.

“Raising the penalties specifically in parks is the best deterrent to drive down park crime …[the] bill is modeled after the federal “Drug-free school zone” law that increases penalties for drug-related crimes around schools….

Lentol penned the bill at the request of the city’s parks enforcement patrol [PEP] officer union whose 400-person workforce he says is far too small to cover … 30,000 acres of parkland…..the union is pushing the bill partly in response to problems involving rouge vendors pushing tourism trips near Battery Park City.”

“…[Former NYC Parks Commissioner] Benepe ….doesn’t think the number of deputized peace officers on patrol make much of a difference to violent crimes, as those are still the purview of the NYPD.”

Parks do need more help. We continue to believe the best deterrent for negative usage in parks is to anchor parks with positive, robust use. Neither the Police nor PEP, will ever have enough officers to be everywhere crime might happen. But if we create hubs of resiliency centers, youth meeting sites, resources for the homeless, and community meeting space: beehives of activity  – we deter crime, we have more ‘eyes on’ and we can offer to those who might feel pulled to a lousy use of park space towards something more interesting instead.

Photos by Rob Watson

Community Board 3 (CB3) Parks Committee Meeting Thursday, June 15 at 6:30pm at the BRC Senior Services Center – 30 Delancey Street (between Chrystie & Forsyth Streets).

Come by and let CB3 know what changes and improvements you’d like to see in your park. CB 3 will be sending board members out to look at every park in CB3 but that’s no substitute to what you know about your local park from using it day in and day out.

The only good news out of this horror was that someone stepped forward to help.

Thank you to that person.

From the Lo-Down:

“The incident, at the intersection of Forsyth and Stanton streets, happened at around 6 a.m. Brown was taken into custody and charged with assault and drug possession.

Channel 7 talked with the victim’s grandson, who says she had gone outside to collect cans for recycling. “Her face looked really swollen, the doctor had to put a tube in her mouth entirely so she could breathe properly..it’s just horrible,” the grandson said.”

The Daily News reported that the 61-year-old woman, “suffered bleeding on her brain, and needed to be intubated after the Saturday attack.” A good Samaritan apparently came to her aid during the incident.”

From DNAinfo: Excerpt

Photo DNAinfo: A woman was beaten near Sara D. Roosevelt Park’s derelict storehouse at Forsyth and Stanton streets, police said.

LOWER EAST SIDE — A man viciously pummeled a 61-year-old woman near Sara D. Roosevelt Park early Saturday morning.

“The victim was taken to Bellevue Hospital with bleeding in her brain and was intubated Saturday evening, police and prosecutors said. Police were not able to provide an update on the victim’s status Tuesday.”

From SDR Coalition: Our hopes for her recovery and return to her home. And that this provides the impetus to change this derelict building into a thriving community center. The only way you change negative use in an area is to people it with positive use. That’s our 40+ decades of experience removing predators from the park.

BoweryBoogie:

“…the assault that transpired early Saturday morning at Stanton and Forsyth Streets. Near the Stanton Storehouse in Sara D. Roosevelt Park. At roughly 6am, a woman in her fifties was beaten unconcious …She was taken to Bellevue, and was reportedly in stable condition by afternoon.

Par for the course. This area of Sara D. Roosevelt Park is a known hotbed of drug activity for both users and dealers….

Meanwhile, activists from Sara D. Roosevelt Park Coalition are pushing ever harder to reclaim the Stanton Storehouse. And not just as a public bathroom. Advocates argue that reactivating the structure for community use could help mitigate some of the localized violence and illicit activity.”

They continue to argue the following…

• Have the building occupied and active 24/7
• Remove the cargo container alongside it (that holds overflow storage) where illicit activity happens day and night
• Have 24/7 security and maintenance for the bathrooms
• Create an RFP for a local not-for-profit to run, program and organize the “Stanton Center” The local not-for-profit coordinates shared space for:
  • A homeless outreach unit from a reputable homeless aide organization daytimes
  • A resiliency hub/education center to be run by a reputable resiliency organization daytimes
  • An after-school for the local high schools use early evenings
  • Community meeting space in the evenings

This Thursday, May 25 is the last chance for the public to give testimony to the City Council on the upcoming fiscal year city budget. The Committee on Finance hearing will begin at 10 am, with the public comment period slated to begin at 1 pm.

Don’t have time to give testimony? Add your name to our letter to the Mayor and City Council and let them know you support a strong budget for NYC’s parks.

Monday, May 22, 2017

Last Chance to Testify on the City Parks Budget!