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

REELABILILTIES Film Festival NYC

Beautiful Night, beautiful people. All.

Marrisa Bode and Ethan Slater (from Wicked) in full support.

“I’m through with playing by the rules of someone else’s game

Too late for second-guessing

Too late to go back to sleep

It’s time to trust my instincts Close my eyes and leap

It’s time to try defying gravity”

We agree.

Thanks to NYC Housing Preservation and Development Team for presenting options for seniors in need of affordable and accessible housing and to the BRC’s Kim Fong and staff for hosting and to the interpreters who insured everything said was understood.

Special Thanks to Ahmed Tigani Acting Commissioner of NYC’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development

and Ilana Maier and William Fowler: Communications

Thank you also to LiveOn NY

This was a vital outreach event for our communities’ elders.

– Applications for affordable senior housing in NYC are over 520,000 and growing.
-We had almost 93,000 homeless New Yorkers in December. 4
– The number of single adults ages 65+ in the city’s main shelter system more than doubled from 2014 to 2022.5
– Poverty rates for older adults: Manhattan 16.3%. AARP
-65% of older New Yorkers surveyed live on less than $15,000 a year. 32% don’t receive social security. One in five older women live below the poverty level”. LiveOnNY

Ahmen Tigani (Acting Commissioner of NYC’s Deptof HPD) and K Webster (Coalition President of Sara Roosevelt Park Community Coalition) in the beautiful M’Finda Kalunga Community Garden (all-volunteer maintained a GreenThumb Garden).

Photos: Ilana Maier

For more on the project and it’s earliest vision, photos, interviews, and more:

Hear about the project from RTP founder Alex Aron

See the website here.

“The Resistance Rangers, a group of more than 700 current and recently fired National Park Service employees, are back with another round of protests. Planned for this coming Saturday, they’re asking folks to show up at all 433 national park sites across America.

The invite reads: “You ready for round two?! Protect the Parks Protest is back!” They suggest holding rallies, and “teach-ins” where they say folks can “Teach each other how to contact your reps, then take turns calling. Set up some stations: postcard writing, calling, emailing, etc!”
These amazing current and former park rangers have it right—all of us need to take part in contacting Congress. That’s why we formed our activism arm—The Watchdog Coalition—which has tens of thousands of members who’ve already sent more than 218,000 letters, and made countless calls to the House and Senate.”

–The Dworkin Report

As we approach the Play Fair Rally & Preliminary Budget Hearing on Thursday, March 20, we want to ensure that everyone feels prepared to deliver strong and impactful testimony. To support you, we are offering Testimony Office Hours where you can receive guidance on crafting your remarks, ask questions, and refine your messaging.

? Sign up for a slot here:

? Need help preparing your testimony?
View our testimony talking points and testimony script.

Whether you’re testifying for the first time or looking to sharpen your points, we encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity.

? Thursday, March 20 – Play Fair Rally & Preliminary Budget Hearing
? Rally: 12 PM on City Hall Steps
? Budget Hearing: 1 PM in City Hall Committee Room
? RSVP for the Rally: bit.ly/ParksRally320
? Register to Virtually Testify at the Hearing: Sign Up Here

Note that if you are testifying in person after the rally, you don’t need to pre-register. Your voice is critical in this fight, and we look forward to standing together to make an impact. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out.

March 20!

FABnyc 

In honor of Black History Month, join us for a conversation with

Immanuel Oni, Debra Jeffreys-Glass, Catherine Mbali Green-Johnson and Shanna Sabio!

Resisting Cultural Erasure:
Sharing Black Histories of the LES and Beyond…
Thursday, February 27
6:30pm-8pm, Free
70 E 4th Street, 1st Floor

M’Finda Kalunga ?Community Garden?, through an initiative led and organized by resident, educator, and LES Community Hero Debra Jeffreys-Glass, has celebrated local Black history and shared the history of the Chrystie Street African Burial Ground at its annual Juneteenth festivities since 2004?.

In 2022, FAB began collaborating with Jeffreys-Glass and garden members to honor the unmarked Burial Ground. That work recently culminated in the commission and installation of HALO by artist Immanuel Oni.

IMMANUEL ONI is a first-generation Nigerian-American artist and space doula living between New York City and hometown Houston, TX. He believes design is not about what he is making, but who he is making it for. As for art, it is religion. His work explores loss, memory, and its deep connection with space. He utilizes spatial justice design and visual storytelling to unearth narratives related to trauma, healing, and ritual. His canvas consists of repurposing existing public space infrastructure such as light posts, fencing, underutilized green areas or mobile spaces to prompt community dialogue and connection. His aim is to fuse the physical with the spiritual. He has led and participated in international art and urbanism workshops in Venice, Hong Kong, and Lagos. He has been a Fellow for the Design Trust for Public Space, Culture Push, New York for Culture and Arts, More Art Engaging Artist Commission NY, and received awards from Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts NY, Office of Neighborhood Safety, Architectural League of New York, the New York State Council of the Arts, and commissioned by Fourth Arts Block (FABnyc) as the artist for the Chrystie Street African Burial Ground Memorial Installation in the Lower East Side. He is a former Director of Community Design at the New York City’s Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice and Adjunct Professor at Parsons the New School for Design. He is the co-founder and Creative Director of Liminal, a non-profit that works at the intersection of art, unity, and space.

A native of Philadelphia, DEBRA JEFFREYS-GLASS came to NY to seek her fortune in the motion picture business in the mid-1980s. She moved to the LES in 1989, by way of the pre-gentrified Fort Greene area of Brooklyn. Despite the break-in on her first night on Norfolk street, she never looked back. She worked for 15 years as a production manager and production coordinator in film and television in NYC.  While she never quite found the pot of gold at the end of the film rainbow, she met her husband Ted on one of those film jobs, and found a different kind of gold – a wonderful life with a husband and two little boys who are now grown men. She and Ted found a loving community in their LES neighborhood, and became active in M’Finda Kalunga Community Garden. Twenty-six years later, they are both still passionately committed to this green space. Debra was a long-serving co-chair and is currently the garden’s treasurer, and has organized many garden events over the years, including Juneteenth celebrations in the garden since 2005. Debra serves on Community Board 3s Health, Seniors, Human Services and Education committee, and is currently VP of the SDR Park Coalition. She holds a BA in Radio, Television and Film from Temple University, a dual MSEd in Early Childhood and Childhood education from Bank Street College, and an EdM in Private School Leadership from Teachers College. She has been a classroom teacher and school administrator for the past 17 years, and currently earns her coins as the Elementary Division Director at The Calhoun School. However, she gets most of her wealth from working with like minded folks who want to make their corner of the world a better place.

CATHERINE MBALI GREEN-JOHNSON is a visionary cultural leader and reparationist with over 20 years of experience in arts administration, community advocacy, and social justice. As the Chairperson of the East New York African Burial Ground Committee, she has been at the forefront of preserving and honoring the sacred burial site located beneath the New Lots Library. Under her leadership, the committee’s community-driven visioning process has  secured  a  $7  million  renovation,  ensuring  the  site’s  restoration  and long-term protection as a space of remembrance and cultural significance.

Catherine is also the Founder of The Art of Reparations, a groundbreaking initiative that brings artists, creatives, and communities together to explore reparative justice through art, workshops, and public programming. In February 2025, she will launch The Art of Reparations podcast, creating a platform for dialogue on reparations through the lens of artists  and  culture  bearers.  She  facilitates  reparations  workshops  for organizations, foundations, agencies, and schools locally, nationally, and internationally.

In  her  role  as  Director  of  Programs  at  The  Laundromat  Project,  Catherine  curates programming  that  uplifts  communities  of  color,  supporting  artists  and  neighbors  as change agents within their own communities. Previously, she founded ARTs East New York, where she masterfully combined artistic expression and community engagement to  drive  social  change.  She  also  led  the  ReNew  Lots  Market  and  Artist  Incubator, transforming vacant land into a thriving space for local entrepreneurs and artists.

Appointed by the Mayor of New York City to the Cultural Affairs Advisory Committee in 2018, Catherine played a key role in shaping the city’s first cultural plan centered on equity and inclusion. Her work is deeply rooted in the power of imagination, storytelling, and ancestral research, ensuring that Black and Indigenous histories are honored and that communities of color have the tools to co-create radical, sustainable futures.

Catherine  continues  to  be  a  driving  force  in  cultural  preservation,  community-led development,  and  reparative  justice,  bridging  history,  art,  and  activism  to  create meaningful societal change.

A proud mother of 3, SHANNA SABIO was born in Brownsville, and raised in Bushwick and Bedford Stuyvesant.  She’s an anti-disciplinary artist, curator, cultural strategist, and public historian whose practice uses the intersections of art and technology, travel and urban planning to create healing, anti-racist, equitable, and inclusive spaces.

She’s co-founder and co-director of GrowHouse NYC, a community development cooperative that empowers Black people and our allies to collectively own and develop our communities resources, including property, cultural institutions and sites of memory, and artistic production.

GrowHouse was a founding organization of the Flatbush African Burial Ground Coalition, and has used Walking Tours, Art Installations, Technology partnerships, Events and Teach-ins, Partnerships with colleges and universities to raise awareness of the Flatbush African Burial Ground.

The BLAC Land Trust is part of GrowHouse’s strategy to catalyze Black staying power in Bed Stuy, Ocean Hill, Weeksville and Crown Heights., and will launch a campaign to secure the first collectively owned property in a portfolio in Spring 2025.

NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development

Join HPD and neighbors and housing advocates and hopeful tenants as they present and seek input on the development of new affordable housing at 324 East 5th Street.

Speyer Hall 184 Eldridge Street  – University Settlement donated space. THANK YOU

February 27th, 2025 6pm – 8pm

Many thanks for Margaret’s Interpretation during the South of Delancey Street to Grand Street redesign by NYCParks Department.

Old friends.

Invaluable to ensure the continuation of this 35 year old legacy garden and the wishes of the people who have cared for it!

August 27, 2023

See Redesign here.