Despite officials saying that there wasn’t a problem with human remains being exposed on Hart Island, officials this past Monday recovered 174 bones on the shores of the world’s largest mass grave where the poorest of the poor and unclaimed are interred just off City Island and Orchard Beach.
Last month we reportedon two stories which claimed that bones were washing up on the shores of City Island and Orchard Beach and were told by NYC Parks that that wasn’t the case nor that anyone had reported such a thing but this week’s discovery just further solidifies the claims that indeed it is possibly happening.
A spokesperson for NYC Parks last month said, “This report is false. There is no instance of human bones appearing on the shore of Orchard Beach, and the City has received no such complaints.”
However, others claimed it was true and even commented on Welcome2TheBronx that they had come across what appeared to be a human femur on Orchard Beach once.
CBS News reports:
Hart Island is only open to visitors by appointment months in advance. Last week, Hunt and a photographer captured pictures from a boat, showing bones scattered among the rocks.
Suddenly this week, officials fast-tracked the process.
Video from WCBS-TV’s helicopter shows red flags marking spots where archaeologists have found human remains. Once identified, the remains will be reburied by Rikers Island prisoners.
“Why in the world would an agency that’s managing our jails have anything to do with this island?” city Councilmember Mark Levine asked.
Levine wants to transfer control of the island to the city Department of Parks and Recreation, so families could freely visit graves of loved ones without an armed guard.
“It’s simply wrong that people who are neglected in life, who were marginalized in life in the city, are now getting the same treatment in this burial ground,” he said.
The city must ask fast on this and Councilmember Levine is correct in asking why Corrections is managing this island and not some other agency like parks.
People have a right to visit the graves of their loved ones without hindrance.
The following is a series written by Diego Robayo of theHistoric District Councilwhich profiles Bronx community leaders who have contributed to our history and will be published here on Welcome2TheBronx.
Before buying his own house in Longwood, Bronx, in 2013, Dondi McKellar was evicted from Washington Heights in 2010 due to increasing rent prices. After thirteen years living in Washington Heights, his tenancy was threatened by the arrival of more affluent people.
Long-time residents of rent-stabilized buildings were pushed out by hungry landlords who knew the constraints of rent-stabilized buildings. These landlords used callous means to evict residents who were unable to keep up with market price rents.
Nobody likes to be treated without dignity, and landlords sometimes capitalize on this fact to evict long-time residents, which is what happened to Dondi. In the last years he lived in Washington Heights, the superintendent of his building suddenly became apathetic, and would occasionally break into his apartment.
This hostile practice and increasing rent prices forced him go back to Lumberton, his hometown in North Carolina.
Dondi’s bond with New York City was physically broken but it remained strong in his heart. His connection with this city was nurtured since he was a child, as he idolized New York as a place where people from different backgrounds, ethnicities, preferences coexist peacefully, and find relief from previous bad experiences.
From a very young age, Dondi knew he was gay, and he didn’t see favorable prospects for his existence in a conservative town in North Carolina. On the contrary, he regarded New York City as an inclusive and fascinating place to live.
As he grew older, he knew he wanted to serve in the military, following the steps of his father and some of his brothers. His sexual inclination did not stop him from pursuing this desire, and he served in the Navy in 1981, when he was 19 years old until 1985.
During his time in the military, he remained loyal to his nature, and never tried to hide his sexual orientation. This unfortunately created confrontations with some of his fellow Marines, some of whom tried to beat him up.
In the end , these tough situations inside the USS Boulder gave him the resiliency to overcome challenging circumstances after his military service.
Dondi settled in Harlem in 1985, after finishing his active military service. He went through several corporate jobs that never lasted, because his personality didn’t submit to corporate expectations.
He tired of stooping to authority, and was outspoken every time someone interfered with his job.
His first job was at an engineering firmdigitizing information, and one day, a supervisor went to his working area and asked “How is everything going?” Dondi blatantly replied “It’s going well, but it would be better if you let me do my work.”
This kind of unabashed reactions didn’t allow him to keep jobs for long. Later on, he realized that this behavior was being triggered by a post-traumatic stress disorder from the time he served in the military.
Some nights, Dondi would wake up hitting the walls and punching the air. His emotional distress got to a point where he needed an emotional outlet. He turned to his two older brothers and told them that he was sexually assaulted when he was doing his military service. They recommended that he see a veteran therapist.
When he started therapy, he had already moved to Washington Heights from Harlem. His therapist not only helped him find emotional stability but also recommended a new approach for his professional life. She told him that veterans are entitled to licenses to operate vending carts.
He didn’t think of this idea for very long before he decided to do it, and before he knew it, was in the streets of SOHO selling garments.
He didn’t vend in Washington Heights because he doesn’t speak Spanish. Besides, SOHO is one the busiest areas in NYC.
Thousands of people were walking by his vending stand, and he was making a decent amount of money there. His prosperity caught the attention of store owners and other street vendors, who would occasionally use unscrupulous tactics to hold Dondi back from prospering.
In the case of street vendors in SOHO, as explained by Dondi, store owners would sometimes call the police on them, believing that street vendors should not be operating because they don’t have the same economic expenses as them.
In addition to this, when he was a street vendor in SOHO, his fellow street vendors sometimes would throw his products on the ground . To Dondi, it was easy to put up with these situations. His experience inside the USS Boulder with other marines trying to beat him up gave him the confidence to handle any situation.
Sometimes, after an entire day vending in SOHO, Dondi would return to his home in Washington Heights to find out that the superintendent of his building had broken into his apartment. Some of his belongings were randomly placed around, indicating that someone had been inside.
At that time, the neighborhood was rapidly changing. Affluent newcomers were arriving and homeowners wanted to capitalize on this. This demographic change shaped the character of Washington Heights once again.
Over the summer of 2015, a whole block of Latino-owned storefronts in Washington Heights was evicted,Fox News reported. Latino-owned businesses have been particularly vulnerable to this situation.
Margot, a restaurant that catered to the Dominican population, closed its doors in 2015 due to increasing rent prices. It had been open for 26 years before it shut down.
Dondi, as well, was eventually priced out of Washington Heights, and not being able to afford somewhere else in New York, he had to go to his hometown in North Carolina.
When Dondi told his two brothers that he was sexually assaulted in the military, he was encouraged to start a complaint with the military. Dondi started this process but the response from the military was that he should have complained at the time the incident happened. Dondi did not complain because if he had done so, he would have been expelled from the military.
In 1950, President Harry Truman signed a legislation to create the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which in its article 125 forbade sodomy. If Dondi had complained about his incident at the time it happened, he probably would have been deposed from his position.
Subsequent to the Uniform Code of Military, another legislation that didn’t facilitate Dondi’s situation came about. In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed the Don’t Ask, Don’tTell law, which lifted the ban on homosexual service, but kept a statutory ban.
It wasn’t until the United States experienced one of its most significant advancements towards progressive ideals by electing Barack Obama as President that Dondi’s fate started to change. In 2010 Barack Obama enacted a law allowing people in the military to be open about their sexuality.
Soon after, Dondi received an economic compensation from the military, which granted him the possibility to go back to New York City.
The remembrance of a particular venue called the Paradise Garage, of which he was a regular habitué, prompted him to move back to New York City right away.
This place represented everything that he cherished about New York. Its devotees were mainly African-American gay men, and was one of the most iconic clubs in New York City. It functioned between 1977 and 1987, and Dondi was an official member.
“The energy level of this place was off the scale and the music was life changing,” he described.
Dondi moved back to New York City in 2013, after having lived in North Carolina since 2010, this time determined to buy his own property. With the military compensation, he purchased a 3 story home in Longwood, The Bronx, where he has been living a pleasant life ever since.
Having experienced what can happen to tenants who are unable to keep up with rent prices, Dondi’s ideals of New York are now more down-to-earth. To him, this city still is the perfect place for him to be who he truly is, but it is also the city that doesn’t tolerate people who can’t meet the increasing economic standards for a decent life.
“Gentrification is a looming reality that pressures a community to the breaking point. But the power of our community and its diverse cultures, exhibited through food and the arts in a public safe place, bringing us together, is transformative. It empowers us to advocate for ourselves while celebrating and documenting our living histories. Safety and health in the workplace, in the city streets, and in our homes with opportunities and tools for economic and environmental justice and well-being, pick up our community,” said Dondi.
About the author:
Diego Robayo is a historic preservation advocate and works for the Historic Districts Council as the Spanish Language Fellow. He is a strong believer that the history and identity of all cultural groups should be acknowledged in order to advance social development. He has documented life in The Bronx and other outer boroughs through photographs and interviews. He received a scholarship to start a graduate program at Columbia University, which gave him a broad perspective on how to make cultural research and preservation.
“If you are interested in Diego’s work or would like to be interviewed by him, feel free to contact him at drobayo@hdc.org“
This post comes from the Historic Districts Council. Founded in 1970 as a coalition of community groups from the city’s designated historic districts, HDC has grown to become one of the foremost citywide voices for historic preservation. Serving a network of over 500 neighborhood-based community groups in all five boroughs, HDC strives to protect, preserve and enhance New York City’s historic buildings and neighborhoods through ongoing advocacy, community development, and education programs.
Now in its eighth year, Six to Celebrate is New York’s only citywide list of preservation priorities. The purpose of the program is to provide strategic resources to neighborhood groups at a critical moment to reach their preservation goals. The six selected groups receive HDC’s hands-on help on all aspects of their efforts over the course of the year and continued support in the years to come. Learn more about this year’s groups, the Six to Celebrate app, and related events here >>
“If you are interested in Diego’s work or would like to be interviewed by him, feel free to contact him at drobayo@hdc.org“
Co-op City residents over the age of 50 and those with underlying health factors and compromised immune systems are being told not to shower until the New York City Department of Health completes an investigation of a legionnaires cluster which sickened three people in 3 buildings leaving 1 dead.
Residents of the three buildings located at 100, 120, and 140 Carver Loop were notified by a letter dated April 24th of this year.
Earlier this January we reported that legionnaires cases in NYC had risen 65% in 2017 setting a record year of the disease even surpassing the outbreak of 2015 in the South Bronx which left at least 16 dead.
What’s troubling to us is that the city is publicly disclosing the news now and not sooner. Although no exact dates have been given of the death and illnesses, PIX11 News reports that the health department stated these cases were within the last 12 months.
Just ONE case should warrant a quicker alert to the general public especially in Co-op City where many senior residents reside.
Legionnaires’ disease usually develops two to 10 days after exposure to legionella bacteria. It frequently begins with the following signs and symptoms:
Headache
Muscle pain
Chills
Fever that may be 104 F (40 C) or higher
By the second or third day, you’ll develop other signs and symptoms that may include:
Cough, which may bring up mucus and sometimes blood
Shortness of breath
Chest pain
Gastrointestinal symptoms, such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhea
Confusion or other mental changes
When to see a doctor
See your doctor if you think you’ve been exposed to legionella bacteria. Diagnosing and treating legionnaires’ disease as soon as possible can help shorten the recovery period and prevent serious complications. For people at high risk, prompt treatment is critical.
Stay tuned as we’ll keep you updated as more news is made available on this story.
In today’s “and water is wet” news, due to a rail condition at West Farms, all 2 and 5 trains are running express from E 180th Street to 3rd Avenue and 149th Street.
We received the first alert of interrupted service at 7:17AM stating there was no 2 service between 241st Street and 3rd Avenue and 149th Street—basically the entire Bronx leg of the line.
The same went for the 5 train between Dyre Avenue and 3rd Avenue and 149th Street effectively shutting out hundreds of thousands of Bronxites from going to work or getting home for the late night workers on this rainy Wednesday.
By 9:18AM, another alert went out that full service was finally restored.
These problems will only continue to get worse as the population continues to grow and the MTA doesn’t make the necessary upgrades.
A few years ago, Welcome2TheBronx broke the story about the first market-rate, new construction condos coming to the South Bronx at 138th Street in Manhattan.
Last year we found out the name of the development was the Joinery and how we found out was in a rather distasteful manner: The developer decided to throw up a banner that said, “Making The Bronx Great Again“.
After we broke that story, the banner quickly came down but that’s all that dropped.
Since then, prices have increased at the development which is something the developers office told us would happen.
The new images are decent, I guess, but doesn’t really look like much luxury in our opinion and they look rather small for the price.
This post was written by Syed Ali and originally appeared on CoLab Radio, a publication of the MIT Community Innovators Lab. CoLab Radio has graciously allowed us to reprint this important piece.
Growing Community, Gardens, and Land Trusts: Raymond Figueroa, Jr. in the South Bronx By Syed Ali
Ray is a man of many hats, but when I imagine him it is his black beret. I met Ray once, when he hosted our group for a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service project at Brook Park, the community garden he helps lead in the South Bronx. He was wearing the same black beret another time I remember him seeing him around, at a food policy breakfast as President of the New York City Community Garden Coalition (NYCCGC), forcefully advocating for a more community-driven approach in a room full of researchers and public health workers.
I imagine Ray’s beret comes with him to the Pratt Institute, where he is a Visiting Instructor in the Graduate Center for Planning.
Ray Figueroa at Friends of Brook Park/Photo Credit: Rob Stephenson
While I had a heard a little already in these chance encounters, I was intrigued by Ray’s holistic approach to planning and how he connects his passions for food, youth, and community development. I connected with Ray over the phone for about an hour so that I could ask him about his approach.
The responses that follow have been edited and condensed.
1) Where are you from? How did you end up in the work that you are in now? I’m from NYC, specifically East Harlem, otherwise known as Spanish Harlem, or El Barrio. It’s similarly demographically and located geographically across the bridge from the Mott Haven community where I am actively working.
My formal background is in education policy: not so much looking to be an educator but to glean insights into what informs wholesome and robust human development for individuals in their formative years. That led to me to studying how pedagogy and curriculum and resources are shaped by a macro context of expectations for communities.
There are disparities around education and social outcomes and I wanted to glean insights into what is shaping these outcomes. That led me to alternative modalities for education, specifically experiential learning modalities: engaging in activities as a vehicle for learning and for promoting human growth and development. Hence my engagement in urban agriculture and in community gardens and community farming.
2) How did you make that transition? Were you working with schools?
I was solo as an education consultant to after school programs and I attended a conference around agriculture and urban agriculture. I was immediately taken by the opportunity that it represented from not only a community food-based perspective but from a youth engagement perspective.
It was an opportunity to engage in community development through engaging in youth development activities via urban agriculture. That’s a good 20 years ago.
3) How do you describe the work you’re doing now?
It’s an interplay of embracing my philosophies as well as looking at salient issues confronting the young people the South Bronx, specifically the school to prison pipeline.
Young people are being alienated from education.
They are pushed out or dropping out and thus at a greater risk of interacting with the criminal justice system.
From a developmental perspective, young people are looking for alternatives that affirm their personal agency, personal power, personal efficacy via becoming part of a street family, a street organization, more pejoratively referred to as street gangs. That in turn leads to high risk behavior for coming into contact with the criminal justice system.
At Brook Park, we have a youth Alternatives-to-Incarceration program where we work with young people who have been court adjudicated, are currently adjudicated, or who have been formerly incarcerated.
The community youth farm lends itself to working with these young people because from a developmental perspective, human beings in their formative growth and development years have a need for being productive and having agency. The activity of growing, cultivating, and harvesting food and bringing it over to community pantries gives it to them.
At Brook Park, we also have an entrepreneurial dimension for growing, cultivating, and harvesting food where young people also have an opportunity to earn income, which is exciting.
Both of these dimensions of engagement allow for young people to experience a more wholesome sense of their self-esteem, being fed by an activity that is not only socially responsible but can also be personally beneficial.
Some of the youth who come through our Alternatives to Incarceration program are invited to be a part of the pepper growing collective of farms in the South Bronx for Bronx Hot Sauce. Our program is as much an alternatives-to-desperation program as much as an alternatives-to-incarceration program.
Young people are hungry, literally. They’re food insecure and they need money to buy food.
4) It seems empowering to have these peppers served everywhere from the South Bronx to the Union Square Greenmarket. Does that show the young people you’re working with that this is something they should value for themselves?
It is implicit and explicit that work has value. To be remunerated for it helps to underscore that value. It doesn’t take a whole lot for a young person to embrace an alternative, another way of being productive.
That’s what community farming does for young people. These same young people have been involved in building school gardens in Mott Haven, mentoring elementary school children in how to plant, how to prepare soil, how to take care of a plant.
This is a multi-dimensional approach to youth development through alternatives-to-incarceration.
5) Other than being from El Barrio, what events or experiences have informed your decision to get into this kind of work?
It’s really just observing what’s going on in our community and having an overall sense of social sensitivity and social responsibility. I thank my primary educator, my mother, for that.
In El Barrio and the South Bronx, I observed that things were not as they should be. There were far too many disparities informing abysmal outcomes in our community, not least massive unemployment and poverty, which informs food insecurity in particular.
6) You’ve done this work with Brook Park for a long time, but you’re also the president of the New York City Community Garden Coalition and teaching at the Pratt Institute. How do you balance these whole body consuming experiences?
It is whole body and whole soul and it keeps me extremely busy, but I look at it as multidimensional engagement; it’s all part of the same work. With the garden coalition, I’m trying to replicate the community development vehicles we see in Brook Park and other community farms and community gardens around the city.
I’m trying to formally realize, from a public policy perspective, regulatory protections for these types of community-cultivated institutions so going forth there is a continuity that can promote community development.
Community development is not incidental. It requires the continuity of institution building over the long haul.
Pratt affords me the opportunity to go deeply into issues and the great privilege of working with the future professionals coming into urban planning. Pratt is about the future: how to promote sustainable community development from the very practical considerations of urban planning.
We have to look at planning as a field that promotes public service and can help dismantle disparities around race and class. Reach out to Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative. We, through NYCCCG coalition, are working on the establishment of a comparable community land trust.
It’s a formal collaboration between a local community development corporation, Nos Quedamos, and the NYCCGC. We joined in on a project that is now being sponsored by NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD).
We participated in a request for an expression of interest—essentially concept papers—on how community land trusts can be developed. We submitted that they can be developed in a way that is sustainable—that includes green infrastructure, micro-grids, micro-food hubs—along with affordable housing.
We’re now in a concerted effort with other groups that were shortlisted by NYC HPD on the development of community land trusts in the South Bronx and around the city. How can planning and development be rooted in community in such a way that we have active community engagement and stewardship over the long haul?
Community gardens are not an amenity. They have historically always been a grassroots, informal form of community-based institution building. They’re community-cultivated green spaces where folks came together as a collective and came to consensus about what they would like to see out of these previously abandoned spaces.
Folks were really resisting what would otherwise the trappings of poverty, unemployment, and abandonment. Here are folks embracing community self-determination in the humblest of ways, to be productive in such a way that honors their sense of human dignity.
Community gardens serve as a very efficacious foundation for engaging in the next level of development around community land trusts.
7) You’re getting into this already, but I’m curious about your theory of change. What change is your work designed to create? How are you creating the change that you want to see?
I look at the work with and through and by community gardens. These are community cultivated spaces, that allow people to iterate and delineate their productivity in a way that is self-determining and that honors their sense of human dignity. In so doing, it lays the foundation for civic engagement, leadership development, and continued community development initiatives that are genuinely sustainable.
Folks involved in community gardens come out to vote. They hone their sense of leadership by virtue of the initiative that they take. This addresses some of the worst vestiges of poverty.
Poverty is not just economic, but it’s also a poverty of inactivity, of being idle via unemployment. Community gardens do really do get at that in a way that motivates folks to be engaged and build upon that.
With the collective of pepper growers in the South Bronx, we’ve proven already the economy of (production) scale that can be realized as a result of community gardens and community farms coming together in producing and aggregating a harvest of peppers that supports Bronx Hot Sauce, which is being sold in upscale venues and right here in the community.
The young people who are in the pepper growing collective are saving money for themselves but they’re helping to save the city and state money vis a vis incarceration costs. To realize savings and generate income circulated locally is a pretty robust model for community-based economic development.
From an ecosystem services perspective, the permeable surfaces—the rooted plants and trees in community gardens—help to mitigate storm water runoff.
NYCCGC is doing a major storm water runoff mitigation project in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Close to 50 community gardens, through local community garden coalition LUNGS and the NYCCGC, received a $2 million grant from the State of New York for storm recovery.
That may sound like a lot of money but it’s literally a drop in the bucket when it comes to storm water runoff mitigation. Building sewage treatment plants to handle comparable water overflows as a result of extreme weather from climate change the cost would be prohibitive.
That’s another area with cost savings.
8) You talked a bit about the successes, but what are the challenges and struggles that you are facing right now? If these challenges were to be alleviated, what possibilities would that open up for the rest of your work?
Community gardens are still grossly undervalued from a public policy perspective. They continue to be vulnerable to displacement. When one displaces a community garden, one is by extension already acting to displace a community.
In El Barrio, there are 7 community gardens that are threatened by real estate development right now, driven by rezoning for affordable housing. 95% of community gardens are found in the lowest income neighborhoods.
These communities bear the historical legacy of redlining and community gardens rose up as a form of grassroots resistance, reclamation, and rebuilding.
The rezoning is an iteration of urban renewal, undervaluing communities of color and low-income communities.
9) Looking into the future, where do you see yourself and/or your work headed?
We have a burgeoning movement as folks around the country embrace community land trusts. That along with the rising appreciation for cooperative culture and cooperative economics.
NYCCGC is collaborating on the New Economies Project, on public policy around the development of cooperatives and I’m super excited about that. I’m excited about the research going forward and the advocacy and community organizing that’s informed so we can have communities that are rightfully developed.
We in the community garden movement are not against development. We’re not saying real estate development is a bad thing.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
How can realize win-wins with urban planning being a quintessentially public service?How can that inform public policy?
Public policy is about the public good, not the deep-pocketed interests of real estate.
How can we realize real estate development but also realize community sustainability and resiliency?
10) Is there anything else you would like to share? Do you have any final words of wisdom for professionals working in community development after their graduate education in planning?
Revisit the assumptions that are informing urban planning and public policy when it comes to the valuation of communities and how that valuation can sometimes be reductionist from a real estate perspective.
Trying to re-conceptualize around assumptions that have been historically built up is part of my work in this area.
There is an a-historicity, a historical amnesia. We need to contextualize the history so that we can embrace social justice in a way that can be a very practical win-win from a municipal development perspective.
Syed Ali is a Master in Urban Planning candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, studying interventions in the socio-spatial determinants of health and wealth. Syed was raised in the Bronx and is a graduate of New York City public schools.This post is part of the What Does Community Development Mean to You? series. Click here for other posts in this series.
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This post was written by Syed Ali and originally appeared on CoLab Radio, a publication of the MIT Community Innovators Lab. CoLab Radio has graciously allowed us to reprint this important piece.
Ray is a man of many hats, but when I imagine him it is his black beret. I met Ray once, when he hosted our group for a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service project at Brook Park, the community garden he helps lead in the South Bronx. He was wearing the same black beret another time I remember him seeing him around, at a food policy breakfast as President of the New York City Community Garden Coalition (NYCCGC), forcefully advocating for a more community-driven approach in a room full of researchers and public health workers.
I imagine Ray’s beret comes with him to the Pratt Institute, where he is a Visiting Instructor in the Graduate Center for Planning.
Ray Figueroa at Friends of Brook Park/Photo Credit: Rob Stephenson
While I had a heard a little already in these chance encounters, I was intrigued by Ray’s holistic approach to planning and how he connects his passions for food, youth, and community development. I connected with Ray over the phone for about an hour so that I could ask him about his approach.
The responses that follow have been edited and condensed.
1) Where are you from? How did you end up in the work that you are in now? I’m from NYC, specifically East Harlem, otherwise known as Spanish Harlem, or El Barrio. It’s similarly demographically and located geographically across the bridge from the Mott Haven community where I am actively working.
My formal background is in education policy: not so much looking to be an educator but to glean insights into what informs wholesome and robust human development for individuals in their formative years. That led to me to studying how pedagogy and curriculum and resources are shaped by a macro context of expectations for communities.
There are disparities around education and social outcomes and I wanted to glean insights into what is shaping these outcomes. That led me to alternative modalities for education, specifically experiential learning modalities: engaging in activities as a vehicle for learning and for promoting human growth and development. Hence my engagement in urban agriculture and in community gardens and community farming.
2) How did you make that transition? Were you working with schools?
I was solo as an education consultant to after school programs and I attended a conference around agriculture and urban agriculture. I was immediately taken by the opportunity that it represented from not only a community food-based perspective but from a youth engagement perspective.
It was an opportunity to engage in community development through engaging in youth development activities via urban agriculture. That’s a good 20 years ago.
3) How do you describe the work you’re doing now?
It’s an interplay of embracing my philosophies as well as looking at salient issues confronting the young people the South Bronx, specifically the school to prison pipeline.
Young people are being alienated from education.
They are pushed out or dropping out and thus at a greater risk of interacting with the criminal justice system.
From a developmental perspective, young people are looking for alternatives that affirm their personal agency, personal power, personal efficacy via becoming part of a street family, a street organization, more pejoratively referred to as street gangs. That in turn leads to high risk behavior for coming into contact with the criminal justice system.
At Brook Park, we have a youth Alternatives-to-Incarceration program where we work with young people who have been court adjudicated, are currently adjudicated, or who have been formerly incarcerated.
The community youth farm lends itself to working with these young people because from a developmental perspective, human beings in their formative growth and development years have a need for being productive and having agency. The activity of growing, cultivating, and harvesting food and bringing it over to community pantries gives it to them.
At Brook Park, we also have an entrepreneurial dimension for growing, cultivating, and harvesting food where young people also have an opportunity to earn income, which is exciting.
Both of these dimensions of engagement allow for young people to experience a more wholesome sense of their self-esteem, being fed by an activity that is not only socially responsible but can also be personally beneficial.
Some of the youth who come through our Alternatives to Incarceration program are invited to be a part of the pepper growing collective of farms in the South Bronx for Bronx Hot Sauce. Our program is as much an alternatives-to-desperation program as much as an alternatives-to-incarceration program.
Young people are hungry, literally. They’re food insecure and they need money to buy food.
4) It seems empowering to have these peppers served everywhere from the South Bronx to the Union Square Greenmarket. Does that show the young people you’re working with that this is something they should value for themselves?
It is implicit and explicit that work has value. To be remunerated for it helps to underscore that value. It doesn’t take a whole lot for a young person to embrace an alternative, another way of being productive.
That’s what community farming does for young people. These same young people have been involved in building school gardens in Mott Haven, mentoring elementary school children in how to plant, how to prepare soil, how to take care of a plant.
This is a multi-dimensional approach to youth development through alternatives-to-incarceration.
5) Other than being from El Barrio, what events or experiences have informed your decision to get into this kind of work?
It’s really just observing what’s going on in our community and having an overall sense of social sensitivity and social responsibility. I thank my primary educator, my mother, for that.
In El Barrio and the South Bronx, I observed that things were not as they should be. There were far too many disparities informing abysmal outcomes in our community, not least massive unemployment and poverty, which informs food insecurity in particular.
6) You’ve done this work with Brook Park for a long time, but you’re also the president of the New York City Community Garden Coalition and teaching at the Pratt Institute. How do you balance these whole body consuming experiences?
It is whole body and whole soul and it keeps me extremely busy, but I look at it as multidimensional engagement; it’s all part of the same work. With the garden coalition, I’m trying to replicate the community development vehicles we see in Brook Park and other community farms and community gardens around the city.
I’m trying to formally realize, from a public policy perspective, regulatory protections for these types of community-cultivated institutions so going forth there is a continuity that can promote community development.
Community development is not incidental. It requires the continuity of institution building over the long haul.
Pratt affords me the opportunity to go deeply into issues and the great privilege of working with the future professionals coming into urban planning. Pratt is about the future: how to promote sustainable community development from the very practical considerations of urban planning.
We have to look at planning as a field that promotes public service and can help dismantle disparities around race and class. Reach out to Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative. We, through NYCCCG coalition, are working on the establishment of a comparable community land trust.
It’s a formal collaboration between a local community development corporation, Nos Quedamos, and the NYCCGC. We joined in on a project that is now being sponsored by NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD).
We participated in a request for an expression of interest—essentially concept papers—on how community land trusts can be developed. We submitted that they can be developed in a way that is sustainable—that includes green infrastructure, micro-grids, micro-food hubs—along with affordable housing.
We’re now in a concerted effort with other groups that were shortlisted by NYC HPD on the development of community land trusts in the South Bronx and around the city. How can planning and development be rooted in community in such a way that we have active community engagement and stewardship over the long haul?
Community gardens are not an amenity. They have historically always been a grassroots, informal form of community-based institution building. They’re community-cultivated green spaces where folks came together as a collective and came to consensus about what they would like to see out of these previously abandoned spaces.
Folks were really resisting what would otherwise the trappings of poverty, unemployment, and abandonment. Here are folks embracing community self-determination in the humblest of ways, to be productive in such a way that honors their sense of human dignity.
Community gardens serve as a very efficacious foundation for engaging in the next level of development around community land trusts.
7) You’re getting into this already, but I’m curious about your theory of change. What change is your work designed to create? How are you creating the change that you want to see?
I look at the work with and through and by community gardens. These are community cultivated spaces, that allow people to iterate and delineate their productivity in a way that is self-determining and that honors their sense of human dignity. In so doing, it lays the foundation for civic engagement, leadership development, and continued community development initiatives that are genuinely sustainable.
Folks involved in community gardens come out to vote. They hone their sense of leadership by virtue of the initiative that they take. This addresses some of the worst vestiges of poverty.
Poverty is not just economic, but it’s also a poverty of inactivity, of being idle via unemployment. Community gardens do really do get at that in a way that motivates folks to be engaged and build upon that.
With the collective of pepper growers in the South Bronx, we’ve proven already the economy of (production) scale that can be realized as a result of community gardens and community farms coming together in producing and aggregating a harvest of peppers that supports Bronx Hot Sauce, which is being sold in upscale venues and right here in the community.
The young people who are in the pepper growing collective are saving money for themselves but they’re helping to save the city and state money vis a vis incarceration costs. To realize savings and generate income circulated locally is a pretty robust model for community-based economic development.
From an ecosystem services perspective, the permeable surfaces—the rooted plants and trees in community gardens—help to mitigate storm water runoff.
NYCCGC is doing a major storm water runoff mitigation project in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Close to 50 community gardens, through local community garden coalition LUNGS and the NYCCGC, received a $2 million grant from the State of New York for storm recovery.
That may sound like a lot of money but it’s literally a drop in the bucket when it comes to storm water runoff mitigation. Building sewage treatment plants to handle comparable water overflows as a result of extreme weather from climate change the cost would be prohibitive.
That’s another area with cost savings.
8) You talked a bit about the successes, but what are the challenges and struggles that you are facing right now? If these challenges were to be alleviated, what possibilities would that open up for the rest of your work?
Community gardens are still grossly undervalued from a public policy perspective. They continue to be vulnerable to displacement. When one displaces a community garden, one is by extension already acting to displace a community.
In El Barrio, there are 7 community gardens that are threatened by real estate development right now, driven by rezoning for affordable housing. 95% of community gardens are found in the lowest income neighborhoods.
These communities bear the historical legacy of redlining and community gardens rose up as a form of grassroots resistance, reclamation, and rebuilding.
The rezoning is an iteration of urban renewal, undervaluing communities of color and low-income communities.
9) Looking into the future, where do you see yourself and/or your work headed?
We have a burgeoning movement as folks around the country embrace community land trusts. That along with the rising appreciation for cooperative culture and cooperative economics.
NYCCGC is collaborating on the New Economies Project, on public policy around the development of cooperatives and I’m super excited about that. I’m excited about the research going forward and the advocacy and community organizing that’s informed so we can have communities that are rightfully developed.
We in the community garden movement are not against development. We’re not saying real estate development is a bad thing.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
How can realize win-wins with urban planning being a quintessentially public service?How can that inform public policy?
Public policy is about the public good, not the deep-pocketed interests of real estate.
How can we realize real estate development but also realize community sustainability and resiliency?
10) Is there anything else you would like to share? Do you have any final words of wisdom for professionals working in community development after their graduate education in planning?
Revisit the assumptions that are informing urban planning and public policy when it comes to the valuation of communities and how that valuation can sometimes be reductionist from a real estate perspective.
Trying to re-conceptualize around assumptions that have been historically built up is part of my work in this area.
There is an a-historicity, a historical amnesia. We need to contextualize the history so that we can embrace social justice in a way that can be a very practical win-win from a municipal development perspective.
Syed Ali is a Master in Urban Planning candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, studying interventions in the socio-spatial determinants of health and wealth. Syed was raised in the Bronx and is a graduate of New York City public schools.This post is part of the What Does Community Development Mean to You? series. Click here for other posts in this series.
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Evangelina Williams happily celebrated her 106th birthday yesterday in The Bronx with her 103 year old sister, Amparo Perez who will turn 104 this summer.
She told the New York Daily News that her longevity is attributed to her love of music and abstaining from drinking.
Congressman Joseph Crowley has written a letter to MTA chair, Joseph J. Lhota, urging that the agency prioritize and accelerate plans for four new East Bronx Metro North stations so that residents of the area have access to better options in this transit desert.
For over a decade, residents have been teased about getting four new stations located at Co-op City, Morris Park, Parkchester, and Hunts Point which would allow for a faster commute into midtown as well as points north into employment centers in Westchester County and Connecticut.
Map via NYTIMES
While Cuomo indeed has touted this expansion as a plan since 2014 and it has been included in the previous and current MTA Capital Program, Crowley urges that not only should it be included in the next but the time to make this a reality is now.
“Despite the many benefits of bringing Metro-North to the East Bronx, the project has languished for more than a decade,” wrote Chairman Crowley. “It is time to take concrete steps toward making this new service a reality. It’s continued inclusion in the MTA’s Capital Program is critical, as is an accelerated timeline for construction and completion. The residents of the Bronx have waited far too long.”
For more than a decade, Chairman Crowley has been fighting to bring Metro-North to the East Bronx, which would vastly improve transportation options in the area and boost the local economy. The benefits of expanded service would be immense. Currently, residents can only access a single, overcrowded subway line with exceedingly long travel times. Demand for alternative transit options is on the rise in the Bronx, demonstrated by the fact that the borough saw an increase of nearly 800,000 subway riders between 2015 and 2016.
We agree with Crowley on this because we know all too well that our transit infrastructure is crumbling and our East Bronx residents are held hostage by lack of options.
The 6 line is overcrowded and express buses into Manhattan don’t always cut it when your commute can be over an hour with traffic.
Perhaps given that this is an election year for Cuomo and he’s facing heat from opponent Cynthia Nixon, maybe, just maybe, something will finally get done.
What we do know is that the MTA has to do right by the people of The Bronx.
A four bedroom apartment in Longwood on Beck Street for just $100k sounds like a steal and too good to be true but for most in the area and the South Bronx, it is just that.
Our friends over at Brick Underground report that there are four four-bedroom apartments available at an HDFC Co-op at 748 Beck Street but the catch is that you have to have a household income of $71,588 to $151,200.
The average 4 person household in community board 2 (which is the minimum number of people that can qualify for these apartments) only makes $37,582 so these units clearly are not for the average family in the area.
The shame is that home ownership is the best way to combat gentrification but how can local residents defend themselves when the odds are stacked against them and the opportunities created are not for them?
Via Acacia Network
If you want to apply you must be a first time home owner so if you own or have owned real estate in the past, you do not qualify for this lottery.
But you must hurry as all applications MUST be postmarked by May 4th.
Get the application hereand you can head over to Acacia Network for more information.
Engineering students at Manhattan College in The Bronx worked together to create a water filtration system for a school in Puerto Rico dealing with the aftermath of the devastation left behind by Hurricane Maria which created the largest humanitarian crisis in US history.
According to News12, the students hope to have the system in place at the school in Añasco, Puerto Rico by the summer.
Since a 2011 rezoning that increased density in Norwood and Bedford Park along Webster Avenue, these Northwest Bronx communities have been facing an increased onslaught of developments completely out of character for the area.
Now, a new development has been announced for the area which will go up at 3524 & 3528 Parkside Place and 209th Street overlooking Webster Avenue.
No mention if it will be affordable or market rate.
Renderings via UA Builders Group/Marin Architects
YIMBY reports that the 7 story proposed building will have 97 units across the 77,640 square foot development.
No set date for construction or completion is reported as these permits that have been filed and still have to be approved.
Renderings via UA Builders Group/Marin Architects
Existing infrastructure, from transportation to schools, cannot continue to support increased development. These are things that must be addressed before continuing to build.
Renderings via UA Builders Group/Marin Architects
There’s also the case for what does the community want? Many have expressed
What are your thoughts? Do you want to see more of these developments?
Dondi McKellar/©photo by Diego Robayo
3) How do you describe the work you’re doing now?
5) Other than being from El Barrio, what events or experiences have informed your decision to get into this kind of work?
7) You’re getting into this already, but I’m curious about your theory of change. What change is your work designed to create? How are you creating the change that you want to see?
8) You talked a bit about the successes, but what are the challenges and struggles that you are facing right now? If these challenges were to be alleviated, what possibilities would that open up for the rest of your work?
The average 4 person household in community board 2 (which is the minimum number of people that can qualify for these apartments) only makes $37,582 so these units clearly are not for the average family in the area.
