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

From New Yorkers for Parks: Play Fair

“Wow! Nearly 200 New Yorkers braved the winter weather to join the Play Fair Coalition on the steps of City Hall on February 28 to tell the City Council and Mayor to stop overlooking and underfunding our parks and green spaces! But this is just the beginning, and now WE NEED YOU to sign this petition and tell your elected officials to get on board. “

Tell your elected officials to Play Fair!

Sara Roosevelt Park Community Coalition:

“As wealth and income inequality grow in a greater and greater divide between the haves and the have-nots, NYC Parks are the last democratic meeting spaces in the city. They are the air conditioning, vacation home, vacation, back-yard and get-away from increasingly harsh life here for the many.

We believe public open spaces should stay public, not reliant on the whims of the very wealthy where some parks get lavish funding and others go wanting – especially in neighborhoods that arguably need it the most. Parks are essential to a livable, green, and equitable New York City, and should be funded as such. Park workers should have job security that only comes when a steady source of income exists. Ecosystems world-wide are in trouble, globally insects are in a state of collapse, and climate change is real and steadily marching towards an unlivable planet. Parks are not a luxury – they are essential for the health, livability and sustainability of life here. We are part of a complex network that needs care and nurturing.”

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

‘Play Fair’ campaign launches fight for increased funds for NYC Parks Department

From AMNY: “A coalition of lawmakers, city workers and park advocates have banded together to demand the Parks Department receive a larger share of the city budget.”

“The current funding for the agency is about $534 million, less than 0.6% of the city’s budget, City Councilman Barry Grodenchik said.”

Do your research, then vote!

NYC Council: Powerful testimony by Girl Scouts of NYC, NYers for Parks, and others and Council Members: Grodenchik, Rosenthal, and others..

The Atlantic What is the backstory?

Why a Statue of the ‘Father of Gynecology’ Had to Come Down J. Marion Sims’s advances in medical science were made through experimentation on enslaved women.

The debate over the Sims statue echoes the debate over Confederate monuments, with supporters of keeping the statue accusing those of wanting to remove it of attempting to erase history. Sims developed a groundbreaking series of treatments for a condition known as vesicovaginal fistula, “an abnormal opening between the bladder and the vagina” that causes incontinence, through a series of agonizing experiments on slave women, performed without anesthesia. Those experiments formed the basis of medical breakthroughs that would later be deployed for the benefit of wealthier, whiter clients in more voluntary settings. Sims’s medical advances reflect how white Americans benefited from the slave system as a whole: Just as profits from slavery fueled American industrialization, so modern gynecology was birthed by the anguish of black women treated as chattel. And just as the critical role of slavery as a cornerstone of American capitalism has been neglected until recently, Sims’s reliance on human experimentation has only become controversial in the past few decades.

Play Fair

We’re introducing Play Fair, a new multi-year advocacy campaign for parks leading up to the Mayoral election in 2021. In 2019, we are kicking off the Play Faircampaign by focusing on a significant increase to the expense budget for the Parks Department, which would “baseline,” or secure, funding for much-needed maintenance, gardener and park worker positions in the City budget. Investing in greenspaces also improves air quality, makes our neighborhoods more resilient, and brings New Yorkers closer to nature.

New Yorkers for Parks is partnering with Council Member Barry Grodenchik, Chair of the Parks Committee, the New York League of Conservation Voters, and DC37, the Parks workers’ union, to form the PLAY FAIR COALITION. 

We’re having a rally to formally launch Play Fair, and we want you to be there with us. On Thursday, February 28th from 12:00pm-1:00pm, we’ll be on the Steps of City Hall to demand a bigger piece of the pie for Parks. We need YOU to help us show decision-makers that parks deserve significant public investment in maintenance and operations for cleanliness and safety.

RSVP

The Play Fair Coalition will ask the Mayor and the City Council to direct much-needed maintenance and operations funding to the NYC Parks Department. Although City parks make up 14% of NYC’s land, last year the agency only received a meager 0.59% of the total City budget. For too long, parks and gardens have been overlooked as essential infrastructure for healthy neighborhoods: now is the time to demand change and PLAY FAIR for PARKS!

NOTE: Please arrive to the rally by 11:30 AM to clear security. Signing up isn’t required, but will help us know how many people will be joining us.

RSVP

From The Guardian:

“When you consider 80% of biomass of insects has disappeared in 25-30 years, it is a big concern.”

“More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.”

Prof Paul Ehrlich, at Stanford Universityin the US, has seen insects vanish first-hand, through his work on checkerspot butterflies on Stanford’s Jasper Ridge reserve. He first studied them in 1960 but they had all gone by 2000, largely due to climate change.

Ehrlich praised the review, saying: “It is extraordinary to have gone through all those studies and analysed them as well as they have.” He said the particularly large declines in aquatic insects were striking. “But they don’t mention that it is human overpopulation and overconsumption that is driving all the things [eradicating insects], including climate change,” he said.

From Patch:
“Wins Backing A fledgling effort to fill empty tree pits across the East Village, Lower East Side, and Chinatown is in the works.”

“Wendy Brawer, who has lived on Rivington St. for three decades, first started this specific street trees effort last October, asking herself, “What is something that is a benefit to all?”

“Brawer hopes a community-based street tree program can be a way to increase community resiliency and mitigate at least some of the impacts.”

“It’s a concrete climate mitigation action,” Brawer said.

“The Parks Department street tree map says the East Village, Lower East Side, and Chinatown gain $600,000 of annual benefits — whether from stormwater reduction, energy conservation, or carbon dioxide emission reductions — from around 5,000 trees across the neighborhoods.”

Register here.

From NYC Council Speaker Corey Johnson: “Dear Friends, 

Block associations bring neighbors together and help to maintain and uplift communities. They advocate for safer streets, work to beautify neighborhoods, cultivate a sense of community among residents, and much more.

Please join us for a workshop with the Citizens Committee for New York City to learn how to start a block association or get connected to an existing block association in your neighborhood.”

Big thanks to local resident and professor Keena Suh for her work with students of Pratt Institute.

With critical thinking, sharp questions, careful listening, an analysis of the issues in the park based on in -person surveys and in-person study of the park and surrounding area, historical analysis, and a wealth of creativity and skill we were grilled on our thoughts.

And this was only week 4 of the class!

We look forward to more, and for the opportunity for the entire neighborhood and the Park’s Department to hear and see their ongoing study and expertise in action – as well as having the neighborhood and Park’s weigh in as a group to what they want, what they think is possible here!