Back a few months but we appreciate their efforts!

They ‘ran’ through the park collecting trash – much needed!

We hope you have had a chance to visit with BirdLink near Houston Street in SDR Park (Chrystie Street side).

Here are a few photos of the work as it was being built:

Productive Meeting with sharp questions and answers. They will set another meeting, we’ll keep you posted on when on the website.

Glad to have State Senator Brian Kavanagh attend.

Appreciations to CM Chin’s Chief of Staff Gigi Li who organized the meeting with MTA officials and Contractors.

The DOE Food Truck makes this park area safer and more child friendly.

The staff are amazing: kind, welcoming, thoughtful – they are neighbors now.

No documentation, registration, or ID is required to receive these free summer meals. They’re a win-win for parents and children and a wonderful NYC resource.

Music, libations, poetry, food, history, flowers, art, community…and

Dreams…

The Music: Robert Bryan, (with Irving Luis Lattin) and others

Debra Jeffreys-Glass organizer and leader and welcomer. Read: Maya Angelou

The Words: Lamar: “What is Juneteenth?”

The Community:

The Flowers:

The Art:

With special thanks to Councilmember Margaret Chin, Partnerships for Parks (Kirsti, Kyle, and Liam), The MKGardeners, Kim Fong ED BRC Senior Center, and the NYC Parks Department (Angelo, Denard, Misty and all).

Massive amounts of work done in Sara Roosevelt Park’s New Forsyth Conservancy and northern plots near the BRC today.

Thank you to Bloomingdales and the Bloomingdale’s volunteers, Citizens for NYC, Partnerships for Parks, Parks Department staff, and SDR Coalition.

Thank you to Ted, Steve, Bob, Lamar, Prince, K, Andrew, Alba, Kirsti, Kyle, Angelo, Denard, Rob, Barbara, DeMarina! Thanks to Officer Bozzo from the 5th Pct for checking in!

We hauled out 60 bags of garbage, removed old broken fencing, weeded out invasive plants, removed trash, mulched, swept, pruned, and sweated!

Before:

And a visit from the Tenement Museum’s Jason Eisner (whose team with Sarah Tomasewski recreated the New Forsyth Conservancy) and wonderful to meet Athena!

AND AFTER:

North Side in front of the BRC:

South Side of Delancey:

Our Park has this issue making it less safe for all park users: especially vulnerable are workers, children and homeless people.

From THE CITY:

“AS THE HEIGHTS STRUGGLES WITH OPIOID USE, NEEDLE EXCHANGE PROGRAM GOES HOMELESS”

By Rachel Holliday Smith

“As the CORNER Project searches for a new home, area residents say they’ve seen an increase in drug use on local streets, while the nonprofit’s clients say they’re grateful for the help.

On a sidewalk on St. Nicholas Avenue, two men stood near a CORNER Project mobile center and ticked off the ways the group serves them.

Clean syringes are the main thing, said Kirk Marshall, 32, who has used heroin since prescribed painkillers first got him hooked on opioids in 2005.

The van’s fentanyl test kits are also key, he said, to make sure his heroin isn’t deadly.

“They’re welcoming. If you want to get clean, they’ll help you get into detox,” said Marshall, who started using painkillers after a weightlifting injury.

Next to him, a man who gave his name as “Frenchy” piped up: “Help with housing.”

“They get you set up with a doctor,” Marshall added.

Frenchy, who is homeless, says he’d “starve a lot of days” without the CORNER Project van.

“Oh, yeah, they provide food in the mornings, too,” Marshall said.”

*********************

We know what works to assist people – where they are at. It doesn’t mean condoning drug use it means helping people find a pathway forward, and a chance to have some respite and resources as they do – while also protecting the public.

From VANN R. NEWKIRK II

Juneteenth Returns to Its Roots

The Atlantic:

“Memory, however, is powerful enough to expose myth. And memory is the purpose of Juneteenth. “

“In 2019, Juneteenth will be celebrated as emancipation was in the old days: with calls for reparations. As the country marks 154 years since news of the end of slavery belatedly came to Texas, the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the subject of reparations for black Americans. It is a watershed moment in the larger debate over American policy and memory with regard to an enduring sin…”

“…Its spread from Texas to the rest of the United States accelerated in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., as a sort of home-going for King and other victims of white-supremacist violence, fusing sorrow and jubilation…”

“…For Du Bois, the path to a full liberation included restitution, land redistribution, the guarantee of a quality education, and positive and proactive protections for civil rights for the formerly enslaved and their descendants. Until those goals were achieved, he predicted, black Americans would be consigned to an unsteady state of second-class citizenship that would always tend toward oblivion. To Du Bois, if true material equality could not be enforced and racial hegemony smashed even by might of victorious arms, then it was proof that white supremacy would always have the power to escape any cage placed around it. Securing reparations, and a companion package of reforms that actually siphoned power from white elites and gave it to black laborers, was not just a practical necessity, but a moral test…”