Last week, while watching the evening news, I caught a story on a massive protest taking place on the Upper East Side.
Parents held contrasting signs with graphics of children wearing sports
outfits and others with gas masks. Only a few blocks from schools,
playgrounds and residential areas, a marine transfer station, which
looked like a huge warehouse, was being proposed.
A few New York Daily News articles cited that residents were already
complaining that the garbage transfer site would result in “foul smells,
pollutionspewing trucks and dust and debris blowing around” when more
than 50 trucks per hour would bring waste to the site, located near the
Asphalt Green athletic complex on 90th Street on the East Side.
Wait a minute – this sounds a lot like what happened in Canarsie a couple of years ago when residents protested the medical waste transfer site at East 100th Street and Farragut Road. While everyone says we’re the city’s stepchild, we’re no longer the only community dealing with this issue.
Upon further research, I found articles from 2008 and 2009 on the Department of Parks’ plans to reconstruct Washington Square Park.
Once riddled with drug dealers and unkempt lawns, Washington Square Park
is one of the city’s most populated recreation area. But, according to
Plannyc.org, a web site that informs New Yorkers about city events and
renovations, members of Community Board 2 expressed “disappointment in
what they said was lack of information provided by the Parks Department
at the most recent task force meeting for the redesign of Washington
Square Park.” Reports said protesters believed the renovations would
erode the park’s 183-year-old character and destroy several dozen trees.
This sounds a lot like local opposition to the reconstruction of
Canarsie Park and other natural areas such as Paerdegat Basin, which are
sorely needed to improve the way our community looks.
When I hear civic leaders, residents and politicians say that Canarsie is the only
community that gets dumped on – and that we’re not included in decision
making – it seems like communities all over the city are in the same
boat!
Many issues that have scarred Canarsie
are beginning to scar other communities typically deemed financially
and demographically “better” and comprised of more “dedicated” people
than Canarsie.
Another issue we’re not alone in dealing with is the placement of a
charter school to share the building that houses P.S.114. Borough
President Marty Markowitz held a public forum on Wednesday, June 15th,
on citywide school co-locations. According to the press release
following the forum, over 800 public school buildings in the city share
space with a charter school. Markowitz said he hopes charter schools and
public schools will start regular dialogues to work through the issues
they have with sharing building space. P.S. 114 is the only local school
which is being slighted by co-location, but so are hundreds of other
schools – and those communities hold massive protests against this new
idea, which has been implemented by the Department of Education.
When you read the newspapers or watch these unfair stories on the
evening news, everyone quoted says their community “doesn’t deserve this
treatment.” So who does? New York City as a whole is changing and, unfortunately, Canarsie has no choice but to do the same.
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