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

Key climate emergency issue!

Tuesday, December 3rd at 12:00pm -1:15pm.

Location: Stern School of Business (44 West 4th Street) in room 2-80.

-please bring an ID!

With our very own Rob Watson!

The Topic:

Our panelists will talk about what zero waste is; showcase the various applications of zero waste at the local, state, and national levels; and discuss how these initiatives intersect with business and policy, and the challenges and opportunities that arise.

Lunch will be provided!

Speakers include:
Sarah Edwards, Director, Eunomia Research & Consulting Inc.

Julie Raskin, Executive Director, Foundation for NY’s Strongest, NYC Sanitation

Rob Watson, Founder & Co-Chair, SWEEP Solid Waste Standard

FREE but please register here.

“You can neither lie to a neighbourhood park, nor reason with it. ‘Artist’s conceptions’ and persuasive renderings can put pictures of life into proposed neighbourhood parks or park malls, and verbal rationalizations can conjure up users who ought to appreciate them, but in real life only diverse surroundings have the practical power of inducing a natural, continuing flow of life and use.”

-The Life and Death of American Cities

From: Renewing Philanthropy’s Commitment to Local Journalism

Rebuilding local news coverage is part of a civic-repair program we must pursue to restore the democratic promise of our cities and of our country.

“In her 1961 classic, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs described how city life emerged from countless small relationships and residents’ belief that decision makers understood them and their needs. She held that decisions about a city’s development should be based on reality as observed on the street, not on theories or politics developed from afar. She famously described the importance of “eyes upon the street” to keep people safe. ”

PARKS DEPARTMENT MAY SHRINK COSTLY BATHROOMS TO SAVE CASH

Councilmember Mark Levine (D-Manhattan) questioned why the system for other agencies to review parks projects isn’t more streamlined.

“We cannot have parks projects stalling for each of five agencies,” said Levine.

“I’m flabbergasted by the fact that they have 50 open positions while their projects sit there doing nothing for as much as a year,” Kallos, chair of the Council’s contracts committee, told THE CITY.

“All Under Heaven Are Equal” 

Inscribed and gilded in Chinese on the front of the pedestal is the Confucian motto using Dr. Sun Yat-sen*’s own calligraphy.

Council Member Chin, Manhattan Parks Commissioner Castro and many other luminaries spoke of this important moment of the new Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Plaza.

A cold day but joyous celebration – nice to see Harold Moy and the Lion Dancers!

And Karlin Chan, Chinatown advocate.

And our wonderful former Park Manager Terese Flores and Deputy Chief of Operations Ralph Musolino

A great day

*Chinese philosopher, physician, and politician, who served as the first president of the Republic of China and the first leader of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party of China)

Join the local community and the 5th Precinct for this important  event! Ask questions, let the officers know your concerns.

Current Neighborhood Issues

with the MTA project:

We appreciate the MTA’s coming to meet with the neighborhood and with other affected agencies. It helps to struggle through together on this very disruptive and difficult project with some sort of cohesive effort. We thank Council Member Chin’s Gigi Li for her stalwart efforts to organize these meetings.

And.. the Coalition was very grateful for the MTA’s permission for a local high school to chalk for the UN Climate Summit week and the MTA even had the contractor repaint it for us – very much appreciated.

Despite the best of intentions however, the  MTA project has been hugely disruptive and even dangerous at times.

• The fencing used near Delancey Street on Forsyth Street created a blind alley in which two attempted assaults took place, hard drugs were sold and used, sex acts performed (not great for the families with small children finding them in progress!)
• Elders were threatened and buildings doors and a small business’ windows were smashed.
• That small business is struggling due to being hidden behind a wall and the unsavory goings on in front of it.
• The community garden adjacent was overrun with rats because the contractor/MTA didn’t abate (as legally required) before the project began. (And, the rats will get far worse when they do the dig alongside the garden) – planting beds had to be smashed and rebuilt and rat abatement is now constant – no one wants to be in the garden in late afternoon.
• The MTA was forced to remove all the trees alongside the park to great upset from the neighborhood some were saddened by the loss of “transplantable” trees.
• The community has to constantly harp on the unsafe traffic conditions the MTA job has set up.
• A plywood wall was put up a few months ago that abuts Sara Roosevelt Park as a barrier for the MTA’s staging area for their new ventilator for the subway. The wall creates another ‘alley’ between the street and the fences enclosing the park’s soccer fields across from housing for our deaf neighbors and the NYCHA housing complex. We’ve asked for a safety plan that might include gating that area.

This park’s neighborhood is already struggling: one murder last year in the park, assaults in the park and on Forsyth/Chrystie Streets, a homeless population that numbers 40-60 a night in summer (many of whom help us out but some very troubled). The lighting is too dim.

We’ve been extremely “understanding” as a community because we know this needs to be built, but it has been a lot of unpaid hours and effort for very slow and messy results.

We are looking for solutions to help answer (or at least mitigate?) the neighborhood’s understandable upset and anger over the start of this projected four year undertaking.

Neighbors expressed their thoughts:

• “It’s very hard to watch!  Why they didn’t wait for the leaves to fall is beyond me!” 
• “Here is documentation of the trees cut. We will never forget these trees and who cut them with no need. – speaking in behalf of other members of this community”

• “This is hard. There were two London Plane tree limbs near Rivington that are dead and should have been pruned ages ago. We have a lot of other London Planes whose limbs are dead and need removal.”

• “Since we’ve lost these (including a wonderful mulberry inside the garden) we now need to look at the necessity of more diversity in trees here – ones that were better for birds and beneficial insects – and that can withstand draught, heat and flooding.”

“the poor person does not exist as an inescapable fact of destiny. His or her existence is not politically neutral, and it is not ethically innocent. The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible.”

– Theologian Gustavo Guitterez

Bob spoke of his decision to care about all the people in the park and asked us to mark a moment of silence, Michele quoted James Macklin “the only time you should be looking down on someone is when you are bending over to help them”, One man reminded us that the police have helped him, Steve played duduk,  many cried quietly on the bench.

Bob asked anyone who wanted to, to place one stone as we create a garden to remember all who have died here and nearby due to homelessness and to celebrate their lives.

People stayed and talked and remembered community.

Prep work to build the garden: Omar, Kate, Rob, K, Bob

NYTimes:

“We’re Living Act 1 of the Disaster Films We Grew Up With”

“It’s one thing to see images of glaciers cracking apart and to understand, journalistically, the gravity of rising sea levels, longer droughts and frequent extreme weather events. It is quite something else for this thing, this term, global warming, that we’ve talked and written about in the abstract to now be palpable in such a terribly quotidian way. As 11,000 scientists recently explained in an article for the journal BioScience: “The climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected. It is more severe than anticipated, threatening natural ecosystems and the fate of humanity.”