By the People- For The People

By the People is a current exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt museum. It presents 60 projects from all the United States which aim to help alleviate the issues of social and economic inequality and disparities that propagate the nation. The exhibit highlights the ingenuity and creativity people have willing to try to find feasible solutions for these issues that plague many low-income cities throughout the nation. All 60 projects highlighted both the issues in the community and the groups of people specifically affected by the issue, which is important to emphasize because not every group receives the same treatment in society and are not affected by a certain topic in the same way.

New York City Metropolitan Project

https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/420778015/

One of the metropolitan New York City area projects featured in By the People was What is Affordable Housing? Toolkit and Rent Regulation Rights Posters, 2010-Present. The project was designed by the Center for Urban Pedagogy. This project focuses on making people aware of their rights and crucial information needed when it comes to “Affordable Housing” and “Rent Regulation”. This project aims to explain “rent stabilization” laws in a simpler, everyday language in English and in Chinese, and it is mainly distributed to Chinatown tenants. The posters utilize colorful and common terminology to explain the concepts of affordable housing and rent stabilization, and provides scenarios for tenants when they are facing their landlord’s forceful evictions.

Forceful evictions and confrontations with landlords are prominent issues that Chinatown tenants face. A large amount of Chinatown tenants are undocumented immigrants. Because of this, many are afraid to confront their landlords when being unjustly evicted or having their rents raised unexpectedly, mainly due to a fear of being reported to immigration authorities and deported to their home country. Also in addition, there is a language barrier between Chinatown tenants, not a lot of information is distributed in Mandarin Chinese.

 

Project Adaptation for New York City

 

https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/420777933/

Fresh Moves Mobile Market, 2009-Present is a project serving underserved neighborhoods in Chicago’s South and West Side. It was designed by Growing Power, Hammersley Architecture for Humanity Chicago, Engaging Philanthropy Inspiring Creative (EPIC) and Latent Design. It was Tyrue Jones’ creation. As the name implies, the project is a transit bus that was converted to a mobile farm stand. It is bringing healthy fruits and vegetables into food deserts in the Chicago metropolitan area. In addition, the fruits and vegetables are grown by local organic farmers, concentrating economic opportunities within the Chicago metropolitan area. In addition, health and wellness outreach is provided to people when they buy produce. This project provides healthy produce to places where there are virtually no supermarkets or stores with these foods. “Food deserts” cause diseases such as diabetes, high and low blood pressure, obesity, etc. It helps further spread these diseases.

This project not only makes good usage of old transit buses, but also it addresses an issue that is usually ignored. Areas where food deserts are usually located at are areas where the majority belong in the low-income bracket, which causes these people to have no other choice but to consume cheap, low-quality foods like McDonald’s. The five boroughs of New York City are filled with food deserts, especially concentrated in the Bronx and in Brooklyn. Food deserts have been already acknowledged as a targeted issue. Most of the time, New Yorkers are busy working to afford to leave their food deserts and seek fresh produce, so this “Fresh Moves Mobile Market” is a great idea to provide fresh produce to people in a sort of delivery service. Therefore, New York City is an optimal place for this project.

 

Arizona-Mexico Border Project

https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/420777949/

This third project is the Humane Borders Water Stations and Warning Posters, 2000-Present. This project was designed by Humane Borders. The project was a direct response to the deaths of migrants in the Arizona-Mexico border that were due to dehydration. They installed more than 100 water blue tank stations. They have an “AGUA” sticker and a 30ft flag pole on them to increase visibility. In the tank that was exhibited, there was a sticker of the Lady of Guadalupe which is the Mexican version of Virgin Mary, a symbol of hope and salvation. In the exhibit, there was a map that showed the potential dangers of the migrating through the border into the United States. Migrants’ dreams usually truncate in their journey across the U.S.- Mexican border. The Rio Grande, the intense desert and the La Bestia (otherwise known as Death Train”) all create a deathly combination. Most migrants come to the United States in pursue of the American Dream and to escape hardships and threats in their native countries.

 

Overall, the projects in this exhibition are community derived solutions, which in a nation filled with bureaucratic red tape and politicians that do not want to solve the social and economic inequalities. This exhibitions shows the power and ingenuity of people which I deeply admire since it is being used for the greater good of society. Exhibitions like By the People can expose people to ideas that can be applied to their own communities for their benefit, highlighting the importance of sharing these projects.