All posts by Amir Stewart

Project Update April 14-20

Updates - Envr Justice

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.

 

Parallels Between Past and Present Environmental Justice

Clarifying Key Concepts

In “New York for Sale: Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate”, Thomas Angotti gives a compelling history on community planning in New York. He elaborates on the origins of current community movements as beginning in the 1980s with the emergence of two problems, environmental injustices and gentrification. The two problems went hand in hand. With reasons tied to environmental racism, low income neighborhoods/communities of color consistently received the brunt of planned environmental hazards. Facilities such as sewage treatment plants, landfills, and incinerators are needed to keep a city running, but poorer neighborhoods were filled with disproportionate amounts of local unwanted land uses. The city would rather not heavily contaminate upscale neighborhoods in Manhattan to maintain real estate values. As such, even if outer borough communities could cause the removal of environmental dangers from their neighborhoods, they would now be the victims of gentrification and the displacement that follows it. Community planning was born from the need to stop environmental injustices as well as the need to make communities a part of the city planning process. Organizations wanted Jacobs style community planning over Moses style community destruction.

The importance of knowing the history of community planning is clear as circumstances in the past directly mirror the issues going on today. South Bronx Unite currently has Fresh Direct as the face of environmental injustices in the Bronx. This company was given over $140 million in subsidies to relocate to the South Bronx from Long Island City. Meanwhile in the 1990’s, the Bronx Lebanon Medical Waste Incinerator was given $15 million in subsidies to be developed in the Bronx in lieu of wealthier Rockland County. In both instances, now and then, environmental reports were used to justify developments in chronically over industrialized neighborhoods with abnormally high asthma rates. Within 40 years, not much has changed; the development of one waste facility may be shut down but another will appear, funded by the city government. Private developers will continue to build on public land while hundreds of diesel trucks will continue to lower air quality in the Bronx. This is why community planning is needed and why organizations such as South Bronx Unite are taking transformative steps. Only by being involved in the city planning process and renovating unused public spaces, that developers could potentially industrialize, can a cycle of environmental justice be stopped.

Community Organizing with Context

Clarifying Key Concepts

The readings by DeRienzo and DeFilippis/Saegert have a focus on how community organizing takes place. The former author explains the need for a background to be established before organizational efforts can take place. Organizing without fully understanding the community that you are trying to aid may end up only harming those you were trying to help. This parallels what we have been learning to do in class with the establishment of a historical narrative and context of the situation that we are studying. Real movements have a clear understanding of the need to contextualize. For instance, South Bronx Unite is organizing against Fresh Direct, but they are doing it with the knowledge that Fresh Direct is only just the most recent incursion of heavy industrialization and environmental harm upon a neighborhood with unhealthily high asthma rates. With this wholesome understanding of their situation, South Bronx Unite is best able to organize itself and its community to make the best changes that it possibly can.

DeRienzo also describes the two different approaches to making change in a community. These are the Static Enhancement Model and the Transformative Model. They vary greatly in their methods. Static Enhancement doesn’t change the circumstances of the people in a community. It only seeks to improve the way that people are able to cope with the circumstances. It does not directly address the problem. If South Bronx Unite chose to use this model of community building, they would distribute masks in the South Bronx, meant to protect against the smog produced by the hundreds of trucks traversing the neighborhood daily. Thankfully, they choose to utilize the latter method and are seeking a way to improve the South Bronx situation rather than to improve public reception of the situation. They have plans bigger than the takedown of Fresh Direct, such as their Mott Haven Waterfront Plan. The plan will give access to the waterfront back to the community as well as introduce much needed green spaces into the neighborhood.

From reading DeRienzo’s analysis of how community organizing should be performed, it is clear that South Bronx Unite is doing it the right way. With a clear narrative and understanding of the past, they are able to move forward and transform their community with solid goals. These basics of community organizing deserve to be included in any form of community mobilization that occurs.

Looking Up before Acting Up

Uncategorized

In the 1990s, AIDS, acquired immune deficiency syndrome,  was observed in the United States. Contracting it at that early period in the disease’s lifespan was a death sentence for many. Nearly as dangerous as the effects of the illness was the way that AIDS was used to stigmatize homosexual people. Due to its initial prevalence in gay communities, the disease was first known as GRID, gay related immune deficiency. Even when other people started to get it, there was still a conception of it being a gay disease. This led to a suboptimal treatment of the disease by American institutions. From the street level, where homosexuals would be discriminated against in hospitals, to the federal level, where the FDA didn’t prioritize research on drugs that would soothe the condition, homosexuals got the short end of the stick as they saw others in their communities begin to die out.

A lot died from AIDS, but many more would have died if not for the actions of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power. They were a group dedicated to fighting for better treatment of AIDS as it pertained to homosexuals and all people in general. The main takeaway from ACT UP’s actions would have to be the lengths they took to see the change they wanted to happen take place. More than just performing marches and protests, they became science literate in regards to the issue. They observed how the issue was being handled in other countries and what drugs were available in order to come to the understanding that the US government wasn’t doing their own best in regards to the issue. ACT UP went as far as to draft their own version of a national research agenda that spurred the FDA’s work on some treatments.

ACT UP was very effective in its time. This was due to them not just demanding change, but enacting change. They immersed themselves in the scientific literature to fully understand the topic before taking real action to accomplish things such as procuring drugs not legalized in the US and drafting an agenda for the federal government to review.

The obvious parallel to the cause that ACT UP fought for is the mental health group. People with mental health disorders are being ostracized rather than helped, and even though mental health isn’t necessary lethal likes AIDS used to be, it has negatively impacted the lives of many sufferers and their loved ones. However, the way that this particular issue and any other can be combatted is by examining the methods used by ACT UP. Fully comprehend the issue that you want to fight, and you can make the change that you want to see rather than wait for others to hear you and make the change for you. In this day and age, contracting AIDS is no longer a death sentence, but many people who were around when it was were able to make it out due to the actions of ACT UP. The methods that this particular group utilized has applications for any group fighting for a cause.

Two Ways of Approaching Urban Development

“The Patron Saint” and the Git’r Done Man”

The excerpt “The ‘Patron Saint’ and the ‘Git’r Done Man'” described the beliefs of the proponents behind two different philosophies in urban design. On one hand is Robert Moses who was seen as a leader in shaping New York City through brute strokes of modernism. And on the other hand is Jane Jacobs who vied for diversity and a natural integration of new constructs into the already existing city. In order to go forward in growing the city, we have to first analyze the forces that got us to where we are now.

Having had the largest impact, Robert Moses instantly comes to mind when talking about urban planning. Holding several official city positions he used his influence to make abundant public works, highways, parkways, and bridges. His methods were often Machiavellian however with a focus on the end rather than the means. Hundreds became displaced from their homes all in the name of shaping a New York that would be at the center of the world’s political power. His destructive effect on communities in the way of his urban crawl is clear, but he cannot simply be depicted in a purely negative light. Change is a needed force in a developing city, and Moses molded the city into the modern metropolis that it is today.

Focusing on Jane Jacob, her view on urban planning originally began with just four requirements involving land usage, population density, building age, and block size. She focused on the importance of neighborhoods and was against Moses’ thoughtless destruction of communities. In time, her design philosophy shone through as it developed beyond being four simple tenets. She valued a diverse city with mixed use neighborhoods and varying building ages. Moses built a city that would have a place in the modern world, but Jacobs worked for a city that would have a place for people and their need for human expression.

Truly both schools of thought are needed going forward and the two philosophies go hand in hand. A city can be modern without being monotonous and New York reflects that. Old buildings stand by new and the city’s diverse ethnic hubs are tied together by an extensive transportation system. To thrive the city needs to maintain its balance of urban sprawl and community diversity.

Discussion Question: How much does daily life hinge on a city’s urban planning?