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

“The forest does not know this. It does not think. It just acts. Because it is so good at sprouting, resprouting, reiterating, and repeating the entire process, it can keep up the living and dying for as long as it takes, even if that is a thousand years. The trees are not conscious. They are something better. They are present.”

NYTimes:  By arborist and author William Bryant Logan  July 20, 2019

“The insistence of wild growth at Fresh Kills Landfill should make us rethink nature”

“At the time of its closing in 2001, Fresh Kills contained more than 150 million tons of New York City garbage. Where there had once been salt marshes and wildlife, gas-emitting hills of garbage rose up to 225 feet high… After the Sept. 11 attacks, a section of the site reopened for a time to serve …as a search and sorting place for remains and effects recovered from the World Trade Center wreckage.”…

“We know how long it takes most kinds of leavings to decay. Organic material goes quickly: cardboard in three months, wood in up to three years, a pair of wool socks in up to five. A plastic shopping bag may take 20 years; a plastic cup, 50. Major industrial materials will be there for much longer: An aluminum can is with us for 200 years, a glass bottle for 500, a plastic bottle for 700, and a Styrofoam container for a millennium …”

“My God, I breathed. It was suddenly, momentarily beautiful. From a coyote’s-eye view, you could see what the trees were up to: Growth, failure, decay and the drip of acid water through the gravel were mixing a dirt out of the detritus. This hideous forest, I suddenly realized, was there to repair the damage done, and not at our bidding. Its intent was not to look good. Its intent was to stay alive, year by year, century by century, until at last it had recycled even the nylon stocking…”

“…We need to change our thinking: Ask not just what these landscapes look like, but also what they are doing. Fresh Kills Landfill taught me that they may be places of struggle and healing as well, particularly when they come to restore what people have deranged.”

In 90 degree heat. To see the finished product: MKGarden Blog 

From Co-Chair Jessica Guo:

I want to give another huge shout-out to Penny for her spirit, perseverance, dedication, and time, both with the group and outside of the group hours, in getting this thing put together. Penny has spent a lot of time coaching, thinking, sanding, treating, assembling, etc. She has been there every day and every hour that the group was putting together the compost bins, in the cold last fall and in the heat this summer. Penny has been a real force for this project and we wouldn’t be here without her. Thank you Penny!

I also want to give a particular shout-out to Jonathan, Ryan, Amy, and Alex, who have also been there consistently and put in the hours to get these up and running. There are many others who also stepped in to help when they could – thank you as well. 

I am so excited to see the final product and thank the garden for your support and contributions towards the hardware we needed. 

Thank you all!

Jessica

From a 2013 story in Hyperallergic:

When the New Museum was built remains were found under the parking lot that it was to emerge from.

They were taken to Cypress Hills cemetery to be reinterred but no archeological study done as was done for the first African Burial Ground.

Will the New Museum and a construction project on Chrystie Street also uncover remains? Who tracks such things?

Meanwhile, this is a great read from Allison Meier:

“It took two centuries for the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan to be remembered, when 18th century bones were found interred in a forgotten cemetery beneath the construction of a new high dollar federal development in 1991. While that long-overlooked cemetery is now remembered with a museum and monument, much less has been done to commemorate New York City’s Second African Burial Ground, and the dead deserve better.

If you go to the area between Stanton and Rivington along Chrystie Street on the Lower East Side, you’ll find busy basketball courts and a playground in Sara D. Roosevelt Park, but no sign that this used to be one of the only places for African-Americans to be buried between 1795 and 1843 in the city where the cemeteries were segregated. That is, except for the tranquil oasis that is the M’Finda Kalunga Community Garden, meaning “Garden at the Edge of the Other Side of the World” in the African language of Kikongo, which was started in 1983 as part of an effort to combat the park’s drug problem. It’s a beautiful, unexpected oasis for the Lower East Side, with winding paths around lush foliage and even the crowing of a rooster sounding from its coop. It takes its name from the forgotten burial ground as the sole tribute to this history.”

Read more here.

And this map from research by Emlyn Brown.

From NPR:

“…dozens of students at Brownsville Collaborative Middle School … in the past year built a high-tech, high-yield farm inside a third-floor classroom. They decided what to grow, then planted seeds and harvested dozens of pounds of produce weekly.

The vegetables never stop coming because the crops are grown hydroponically — indoors, on floor-to-ceiling shelves that hold seedlings and plants sprouting from fiber plugs stuck in trays, each fed by nutrient-enriched water and lit by LED lamps. The students provide weekly produce for their cafeteria’s salad bar and other dishes.

“…school [children..sell] some of their harvest — at a discount from market rates — to community members. It’s part of a new weekly “food box” service set up in the school’s foyer. Each of 34 customers receive an allotment of fresh produce intended to feed two people for a week. Three students, paid as interns, used digital tablets to process orders, while peers handed out free samples of a pasta salad featuring produce from the farm.

Quigley’s passion for farming stems from Teens for Food Justice, a 6-year-old nonprofit organization that has worked with community partners to train students at Brownsville Collaborative and two other schools in low-income neighborhoods in New York City to become savvy urban farmers and consumers…”

“…A shortage of healthy, affordable, accessible and reliable food options particularly affects urban residents who live below or close to the federal poverty line. And decades of discriminatory pay rates, banking practices and real-estate policies, among other factors, have prevented many black and Latino Americans from accumulating wealth, which fuels a correlation between race and income — and thus, food injustice.

But local networks of small urban farms, grassroots community organizations and partnerships with nonprofits and for-profit businesses nationwide are growing stronger. That’s changing how people in underserved neighborhoods think about their food choices and consolidating their voices and power as they demand better.”