The week of the 14th to the 20th was a productive week where we began work on our final white paper. More importantly though we attended a community bike tour led by members of South Bronx Unite and Friends of Brook Park. The tour gave us an opportunity to gather important data as well as to see once again the damage that’s been done to the area by companies such as Fresh Direct and the importance of South Bronx Unite’s movement.

To start the day off, we were able to get a statement from leading member Mychal Johnson who has been our community contact for the project. He talked of the importance of people gathering for the environmental justice bike tour. He remarked that they were out there working to educate people on the excessive pollution of the South Bronx’s air and the need for green spaces and an accessible waterfront. The tour would take people past the heavily industrialized areas full of thousands of trucks, so they would be able to see for themselves the uneven distribution of these industrial centers.

Also before the tour began, we were able to get the words of Harry Bubbins, also of South Bronx Unite, and other key members in regard to the issue. These community statements and testimonials are key data for our white paper, especially since they are coming from people who are being directly affected by the issue.

The tour’s commencement was also a wealth of data despite us having seen much of the area before when giving a personal tour by Mr. Johnson. We were able to get a lot of pictures and footage of the area for use in our public engagement product. The images of huge facilities for garbage disposal, wastewater treatment, newspaper shipping, power production, and more will work with images of the consequences (streets lined with trucks burning fuel and broken, inaccessible docks) to prove a powerful point. That point is that this abuse of the South Bronx needs to stop.

An important finding for our group was that this abuse had been going on for a long time in the Bronx as well as in other low income neighborhoods. In “New York for Sale” by Tom Angotti, a recent reading, the author points out examples of unevenly distributed unwanted land uses in the South Bronx that directly mirror the current situation. Fresh Direct is being paid millions in subsidies to move from Long Island City to the South Bronx. New York’s and New Jersey’s governments were actually in a bidding war to see who would get the company and New York won. In a similar manner, in the 1990’s the Bronx Lebanon Medical Waste Incinerator was paid $15 million in order to be developed in the Bronx instead of in Rockland County. In both past and present cases, outdated environmental analyses were used to justify industrial development in an overly industrialized area with high asthma rates.

This was one of the more interesting findings as it gave an extra perspective to the sights that we saw on the environmental justice bike tour. The view from the tour gives a strong narrative and provides a starting point for one of our remaining tasks, the popular education piece. In our case it will be a video meant to speak to residents of New York to highlight the environmental injustices being perpetuated in low income neighborhoods. We already have a filmed statement from Mr. Johnson which will lend our video a sense of authenticity. What remains to be done is to edit together the footage and pictures that we have and to come up with a script that will effectively relay the information that we want to get out to our target audience.

The other last thing for us to do is to complete our white paper. This week we were able to begin outlining the paper and filling out the twelve different sections for it. We have a solid groundwork for getting it done with all of our data consolidated and roles given out. We really haven’t encountered too many challenges in our work. For instance, our interactions with South Bronx have been exceedingly smooth once the initial contact was made. Our community contact has been nothing but helpful and informative. The tours and general neighborhood sightseeing have really grounded us on the matter of Fresh Direct’s move. It’s completely different to read about an issue and to see the issue for yourself. We have just gathered so much data by using our community contact as a springboard. The only real challenge that we may have faced this week is figuring out how to organize our data under main reasons to support our overarching policy recommendation.

In broad, non-fleshed out terms our main recommendation is that the model city council should not allow Fresh Direct’s move to the Bronx. It took some consideration due to the large quantity of data that we weren’t entirely sure on how to use, but we eventually sorted all of our data such that reasons the company should not be allowed to move naturally arose. Fresh Direct shouldn’t be permitted to move because it will cause a further decrease in air quality, it will increase health concerns among residents, and et cetera.

Ultimately, categorizing all of our data was our biggest challenge this week and even that we tackled efficiently and came up with the needed solutions. Our group’s teamwork has been very strong with no one person bearing the majority of the work. Communication has been open and we fully rely on each other to get our work done. We are more than confident in producing strong final products, the white paper and the popular education piece.

That really concludes this week’s report. A lot was accomplished this week. Attending the South Bronx Unite bike tour brought on a wealth of information that we have begun to give order to in our white paper. In the next couple of weeks our work will be done and we will have a product that hopefully both holds up to the scrutiny of a model city council and is accessible to the general public.