Moderator Debra Jeffreys -Glass first question is what is one thing you have learned from your work here?
Jeff Cohen I think the one thing I’ve learned was, I thought this was an underserved population.
I thought that there was no provider that was serving the population. As I look around, I see there’s so many different faces, different organizations that we definitely all need to get together, make this some formal, I guess some type of formal coalition where we can actually use our different resources to help. We see clients out here every day, whether they’re homeless, whether they have mental health, and we don’t have enough people to help them.
I’m so glad now that the Parks Department, this gentleman here, he has been fantastic. The police are involved. They’re not moving patients.
They’re actually helping. I see a bright future. I’m just hoping that we can continue.
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Marcellus Valentin For me, what I’ve learned is that this community is very resilient. I’ve seen this community through many different iterations.
I grew up in Jacob Reese Projects on Ave D. I went to school at Nativity Mission Center (Forsyth Street) that closed down back in 2016. I was the last class to graduate there.
I’ve seen this community through a lot and just being able to work here now has meant so much to me. Resilience is really the only thing I can think of when I think of this community.
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Mason Crawford: I’ve been doing social service work for three years…social service work, two years, two and a half years down in the Lower East Side and the one thing that I notice the most is that it’s connection, that specifically young people, they’re looking for someone who’s going to listen and actually hear them and not give unsolicited advice, but flesh out an answer for them that they feel like they came up with themselves and then be there for that, showing up, asking them if they’ve achieved their goals, asking them where you can assist. It’s that.
I really think it’s the connection aspect of it.
Bob Humber: I am not a paid social worker but I do social work each and every day. I sit by the garden gate and people walk by and I hear, you would be surprised how many problems I have tried to solve. Most times all I’m doing is listening. People like to tell their stories (like a bartender, or a Bob!). I have heard some unreal stories; some I can’t repeat.
But it’s my pleasure and I’ll do it as long as I can. I love doing it. I’m talking about not one, not two, but I would say 12, 13, 14 people each and every day come by and if they just want to say hello or they want to tell me their story, I don’t care whether you’re rich, poor, sick, tall, black, white, or whatever.
I’m there to listen and that’s what I do and I love it.
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Wei Tchou I wanted to piggyback on what Bob was talking about, which is he creates this real sense of intimacy in the park. I think the thing that I’ve learned, I have a baby and we spend 60% of our time walking around the park and hanging out with the gardeners. Also, we spend a lot of time in the south end of the park, which is mostly Fujianese people.
But one thing I didn’t really understand about life is that you can have these pockets of intense intimacy and social trust right next to something quite harrowing and dangerous.
I wanted to tell a brief story, which is also probably an answer to another question …which is about a success that I’ve had in the park. Once I was hanging out with the baby on the AstroTurf in South Sara Roosevelt Park where the Fujianese people mostly hang out and a 14-year-old teenager ran up to me and he asked, “can you watch my stuff?” He slammed his backpack on the grass and ran away for like 30 minutes.
I think there was something about that. He didn’t know that I was in the community. He didn’t know who I was, but he was willing to just say, watch my stuff.
He came back and still didn’t take any of his things. But in the next block, there are unhoused people and people with mental illness and people doing drugs in a way that, I have to really weigh my options when I’m walking around there. I think that’s a really special and unique thing about Sara Roosevelt.
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Noel Sierra & Jake Leibovitz One thing that I think I’ve learned from work here, well, just to reiterate, there is a really strong beautiful community here of very understanding people. A lot of times when I’ve participated in other community board events or things like this in other communities, people are not as accepting as the people here, and the people I’ve communicated with on email, and people I’ve met with before this. That is a beautifully unique thing, I do want to recognize for every person here.
With that, one thing I would like to do through this conversation and through us coming together and meeting in person is developing a little more formalized, streamlined communication so we have a continuation of services in the park and that we understand what we’re doing, when we’re doing it, how we’re doing it. I think this is a great opportunity to cultivate that building. Thank you
Brian Crozier One thing that I think I’ve learned from work here, well, just to reiterate, there is a really strong beautiful community here of very understanding people. A lot of times when I’ve participated in other community board events or things like this in other communities, people are not as accepting as the people here and the people I’ve communicated with on email and people I’ve met with before this. That is a beautifully unique thing that I do want to recognize for every person here.
With that, one thing I would like to do through this conversation and through us coming together and meeting in person is developing a little more formalized, streamlined communication so we have a continuation of services in the park and we understand what we’re doing, when we’re doing it, how we’re doing it. I think this is a great opportunity to cultivate that building. Thank you.
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Carol Prudhomme Davis I live here. I’ve had done huge community events.
This is a community and when you’re in need, just like K said, it might be an unhoused person that’s helping you. It might be an immigrant who’s helping you who doesn’t speak your language or it might be someone brand new in the community and that’s what I’ve learned, that no matter what the strata, we in these parks are a community.