Community Leaders: A. Mychal Johnson from stephanie rabins on Vimeo.

Community leaders: Lou Torres from stephanie rabins on Vimeo.

Neighborhood leadership takes many forms. From organizing farmers’ markets to advocating tenants’ rights, Mott Haven has many residents who work hard to make the their neighborhood a better place to live.

The Mott Haven Herald caught up with two local leaders–one who lives in a row house and holds a seat on the community board and one who lives in a housing project and is the voice of its tenants–to find out how they came to dedicate their time and effort to working for their community.

Mychal Johnson knows what gentrification looks like. He grew up in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago, whose struggles in the 1970s with depopulation, arson and crime invite easy comparison with the South Bronx of the same period.

Like Mott Haven and Melrose, Wicker Park has seen remarkable growth over the past decade, but its appeal to white-collar, college-educated residents has raised rents and prices, forcing many longtime residents to leave. “I didn’t want that to happen to this neighborhood” says Johnson, who moved to New York City with his family in 2003 and has lived in Mott Haven ever since.

Hoping to improving his neighborhood while keeping it affordable, Johnson became involved in community organizing as soon as he moved to the Bronx. And while he was working on the house he was finally able to buy, a friend stopped by with an idea.

“He said, ‘Why don’t you apply for a spot on the community board?’” Johnson recalled.

“My daughter went to school here,” Johnson says of his decision to join the board, “and I had become very close with people in the neighborhood.”

That was four and a half years ago. Since then, more families have been fixing up houses like Johnson’s in Mott Haven’s historic district. New restaurants have opened, and artists have found studio space in the neighborhood’s lofts and warehouses.

As a member of Board 1, in recent years Johnson has been focused on trying to guide development, particularly on the waterfront. Last year, the board won a fight against the New York State Department of Transportation’s plan to widen the Major Deegan Expressway. Johnson was a vocal opponent of the state plan, and he says the win was “crucial to the rebirth of the lower Grand Concourse and creating green space along the Harlem River.”

He continues to press for more community input into the city’s Comprehensive Waterfront Plan, and is now looking at ways to address the presence of so many waste transfer stations in Mott Haven.

More challenges lie ahead, he says, noting the rapid gentrification of other neighborhoods in New York City and the way it has pushed out long-time residents.

In addition to his service on Board 1, Johnson continues to do other organizing work. Last spring he traveled to Bolivia for the World People’s Conference on Climate Change. There he acted as co-president of one of the summit’s committees; when he got home, he participated in a panel about the conference.

Almost a mile away from the handsome block near Alexander Avenue where Johnson lives, Lou Torres is hard at work in his own corner of Mott Haven. In a brightly-lit first floor office of the Moore Houses, near St. Mary’s playground, Torres serves as president of the tenants association.

Like Johnson, Torres has also traveled the world, though for different reasons. He spent many years working as a musician and an actor, director and producer of films. But he always knew he would come back to his home base in Mott Haven.

In his capacity as president of the New York City Housing Authority complex, Mr. Torres leads art workshops for children as well as health, legal and educational programming for the residents in his buildings.

Keeping track of two 20-story buildings and representing over 1,000 residents is not an easy job. Torres is often the first to hear about problems in the building, but as a rule he can’t fix them alone.

But Torres is as upbeat about his work as Mychal Johnson is about his. Even after suffering a stroke last year that left him unable to speak for four months, Torres, who has regained his ability to communicate with words, although he still speaks slowly and sometimes haltingly, remains positive. He is in his office almost every day, working to improve quality of life in the Moore houses.

When asked about his accomplishments, Torres seems proudest of the work he’s done with Mott Haven’s young people. He has organized teen anti-violence events and rewarded participants with group trips and prizes. He holds educational workshops right in his office in the Moore Houses, teaching kids animation and other computer programs.

But getting money allocated for the things he wants to get done can be tricky. And as president, Torres also has to worry about serious security matters—about crimes committed on the property, police response time and even police harassment of Moore House residents.

All the while, Lou Torres continues his own filmmaking projects. Quick to hand out a head-shot, he is in the process of trying to fund and produce at least one film, and looking forward to acting in more. His resume ranges from a co-producer credit on the award-winning independent movie “Manito” to playing small parts in “Law and Order” and the big-screen blockbuster “Fantastic Four.”

But even with so much in store, Torres never talks about leaving the Moore Houses, just as Mychal Johnson’s travels continue to bring him back to Mott Haven. Though the men followed different paths to leadership in Mott Haven, both are taking their cues from those who built their neighborhood back up after the hard times of the 1970s. They’re staying.

Weekly cooking demonstrations lure shoppers in to Padre Plaza's farmers' market

Walk by Padre Plaza on any autumn Wednesday afternoon, and you might be lured through the gates by the smells of something cooking. Follow your nose to the courtyard of this bustling patch of green at the corner of St. Ann’s Avenue and East 139^th Street and you’ll find a woman in an apron, preparing a meal under a sturdy, white tent.

Each week, a representative of the city’s Department of Health demonstrates ways to prepare the fresh fruits and vegetables that farmers and community gardeners sell in Padre Plaza’s farmers market. More and more people are shopping at the market, thanks in part to two programs that lower the cost of the food.

Along with the cooking demonstrations, Padre Plaza participates in several programs that make farmers’ markets more affordable for shoppers who use EBT, or food stamps.

The market is one of nearly 60 in the city to offer Health Bucks. For every $5 a shopper spends using EBT, he or she receives a coupon for two more dollars to spend on fruits and vegetables. In addition, Padre Plaza is one of only two gardens in citywide to pilot Double Dollars this year, a program that allows WIC users to get twice the value of their money spent at the market.

Mike Young, President of Padre Plaza, says that these programs have been extremely successful. Sales are up 60 percent this season from last year. “We had no idea it was going to go that strong,” he said. “Oh my goodness, it’s been great.”

Recently, the market has tempted shoppers with beets, potatoes, onions, apples, basil, tomatoes, peppers, watermelons and more. One vendor was doing a brisk business selling his farm’s dried herbs and iced teas.

Garden member Gwendolyn Kennely paused in her shopping to say, “I enjoy preparing meals knowing that the onions, potatoes, and garlic are up to my standards.” The produce “has a better taste than some store-bought vegetables,” she added.

Some shoppers, said Ashley Thomas, “come for specific items from their home countries, like tomatillos, calabaza squash, cilantro and jalapenos.”

Thomas was until recently the Active Living Coordinator at Sustainable South Bronx, which this year, began helping to organize the market’s operations. She said the organization became involved in the market to round out its Smart Living campaign, which includes an exercise program with a bicycling club and yoga classes.

“It’s a way to incorporate healthy eating,” Thomas said, in a neighborhood where obesity and lack of access to fresh foods are both persistent problems.

Young said that Sustainable South Bronx has provided access to volunteers and employees who are able to advertise the market, draw more people in, and clean up at the end of the day.

He appreciates the freedom that Sustainable South Bronx has given him in organizing the vendors. “They allowed me to make personal contact with all the farmers,” he said, leading to good communication and a smoothly-run operation.

Four times on a recent Wednesday, two instructors discussed the nutritional benefits of cooking with fruits and vegetables, gave a lesson in food preparation, and then shared samples of the day’s dish with a small group gathered on benches before them. Recent recipe lessons have included sauteed kale with white beans, poached pears and applesauce.

People nodded approval of a fresh, tangy cabbage salad. Participants then received two dollars in Health Bucks to spend at the market, one of the perks of attending the cooking demonstrations. They stood up, thanked the cooks, and walked right into the market to purchase something fresh, healthy and locally grown.

A version of this story appeared in the Fall 2010 issue of the Mott Haven Herald.

Audience members had a chance to voice their opinions after the panel discussion

But new city rules still have gardeners on guard

South Bronx gardeners responded to New York City’s new guidelines for the protection of community gardens with cautious optimism at a town-hall-style meeting at the New School on Oct. 2 that included a panel of local leaders and gardeners.

A number of Bronx residents were there to represent their communities, and they shared their questions and concerns with the group of several hundred that spent a long Saturday afternoon strategizing for the future of the city’s gardens.

The new rules were revealed after the last set, drafted in 2002, expired in September. Officials from the Parks Department and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development say the rules, which establish a registration system to formalize the plots are designed to protect gardens built on city-owned property,

Among other safeguards, they also promise to offer alternative land to gardens that are being taken over to make way for new development projects.

But many gardeners are concerned that years of hard work could too easily be bulldozed by developers looking to profit in up-and-coming areas.

Hidden loopholes in the rules could provide opportunities for builders to take over healthy gardens down the road.

They “can be used by developers when there is property that they can take hold of,” said Vandra Thorburn, of the NYC Community Garden Coalition. “These gardens are vulnerable.”

In Mott Haven’s gardens, the new rules are being considered with caution. From Padre Plaza to La Finca, the concerns are consistent. For one, these rules will be subject to change when the next mayoral administration comes to power in New York City. In addition, there is language in the rules that refers to gardens “in good standing.”

In good standing “according to whom?” asks Mike Young, president of Padre Plaza, a vibrant corner garden that houses a farmers’ market on Wednesdays. “There are days when our garden is closed.” What if someone were to come by on one of those days and declare Padre Plaza “inactive,” he asks.

Despite these concerns, the new rules are being accepted by community gardeners and leaders as a step in the right direction. But there is still widespread sentiment that gardens need more permanent, clearly-worded legal protection that will be effective beyond the current administration. The Community Garden Coalition is thinking about next steps for conservancy, or land trust, “so we’re not always at the whim of the Mayor,” said Thorburn.

Looking over the bustling Padre Plaza, Young invoked the neighborhood garden’s tradition of fighting spirit. “If we ever hear a bulldozer, we’ll be standing in front of the gates anyway,” he said.

A version of this story appeared in the Fall 2010 issue of the Mott Haven Herald.

Students work hard, sometimes through their lunch breaks, to stay aheadPhoto by Stephanie Rabins

He worked in the financial sector, installing computer workstations for a big company that was acquiring smaller firms.

After President George W. Bush was inaugurated in 2001, though, background checks became tougher. And after the attack on the World Trade Center in September, still more stringent requirements made it even harder for ex-offenders to hold jobs in the financial technology industry.

Worries about security “made it difficult to get a McDonalds job, regardless of any references,” said Hopkins. “People with criminal backgrounds—they try to give you the bottom of the barrel.”

A rough time followed for Hopkins, 34, who has lived for most of the past decade in Melrose or in Harlem. He struggled to earn a stable income and spent time living in homeless shelters.

It was when he was leaving one such shelter that Hopkins heard the name “Per Scholas” from a job placement agency. That was in 2006. Now, Hopkins finds himself turning down exciting international work in favor of his steady job here in New York, so he can spend more time with his kids.

Per Scholas, a non-profit organization whose mission is “dedicated to using technology to improve the lives of people in low-income communities,” trains computer technicians, encouraging them to gain industry-standard certification when they complete a 15-week course.

Hopkins is a poster child for its success.

Founded in 1995, Per Scholas has just moved from Hunts Point to a new and much larger home on East 138th Street in Port Morris. There, near the East River on an industrial block, the school has built a gleaming new headquarters.

Rep. José Serrano and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski were scheduled to tour the new facility on Feb. 8 to highlight the the educational and economic benefits it has created.

When it began, Per Scholas simply aimed to get computers into the hands of schoolchildren and teach computer literacy to a South Bronx community that was largely being left out of the technology boom.

In 1998, it began training un-employed and under-employed people to work on computers. The original school was located in Port Morris, and long-time teacher Maureen Monaghan remembers working in a small space that held only about 13 people.

As Per Scholas grew, it moved to the American Bank Note Building in Hunts Point. When it returned to Port Morris last October, it purchased its own floor of a building, giving it 16,000 square feet of space. The new Per Scholas Institute for Technology is equipped with classrooms, a library, a student lounge and offices for teachers, administrators and job coaches.

“Each new evolution has resulted in a higher quality instruction,” Monaghan boasts. “This place is just magnificent.”

“The interior is really impressive,” says Hopkins, who graduated from the institute in 2008. “It’s more inspiring than the other building.”

Per Scholas is now equipped to train 450 students per year, tuition free. The program demands 15 weeks of full-time study in computer assembly and repair, network connection and specialty areas like printer and laptop repair, and encourages students to become A+ Certified, the industry standard for computer technicians.

Gaining certification was especially helpful for Hopkins. Though he had already worked in computing when he started at Per Scholas, both he and Monaghan, the veteran instructor, agree that anyone who is dedicated can make it through the institute.

“Somebody who has no experience,” Hopkins says, “if they focus and want to learn this, they will come out with great skills.”

Dina Montes, communications director of Per Scholas, says the program is all about economic independence. “I’ve seen all types of lives,” says Montes. Many students have been unemployed for a long time, she said, while others arrive straight from high school. (A diploma or GED is required, along with math and reading entrance exams).

Still others, like Hopkins, have been incarcerated or have lived in shelters. Per Scholas uses its relationships with local community organizations to recruit.

In addition to classroom time, students work on the production floor, where Per Scholas refurbishes computers for resale, one way the organization fulfills the “green” part of its mission.

Students also receive life skills and job placement assistance. “The more you build confidence, the more you can win over in an interview,” says Monaghan.

All this has led Per Scholas to its remarkable success rate; over 80 percent of its graduates land full-time work in the New York City area, as Torrey Hopkins has.

Hopkins is now working towards a Bachelor’s degree in computer science. Recalling when his criminal conviction made finding work difficult, he said, “People look past your experience and say ‘Why don’t you take this low-paying job?’”

Per Scholas helped him break that cycle. “They gave me a great foundation in the industry,” he says. “I’m in it for life.”

Pummeled by public outcry against a plan to extend the off-ramps on the Major Deegan Expressway, the State Department of Transportation has abandoned the project.

Much-needed repairs will be made to the aging roadway over Mott Haven, but the plan to extend the highway’s exit ramps in order to calm the traffic that backs up as cars merge onto Exterior Street is on hold indefinitely, said DOT spokesman Adam Levine.

Opponents were particularly incensed that the Deegan plan ignored the city’s desire to transform the Harlem River waterfront with a zoning plan passed last spring designed to attract developers to build high-rise apartments, new commercial buildings and a hotel.

Every speaker at a public hearing at Hostos Community College on Nov. 9 denounced the state proposal. Some speakers also expressed concern that efforts to ease congestion would simply attract more cars, and more pollution. Others criticized plans to use eminent domain to seize existing businesses in order to make room for the new ramps.

“We need more jobs, more affordable housing, more clean air, not more highway,” said Mychal Johnson, a member of Community Board 1 who initiated a petition campaign against the state plan. “The Deegan should be repaired, but not expanded,” he said in an interview.

Caro Samol, who heads the Department of City Planning’s Bronx office, said that the highway project would “cause a domino effect. It would severely hamper, if not outright preclude” healthy growth of the waterfront properties. She insisted that there were other alternatives that could both improve the highway and leave access to the waterfront open.

At the Nov. 9 hearing, Deputy Borough President Aurelia Greene insisted that while the highway needs work, “it cannot be at the expense of the surrounding community.” George Rodriguez, chairman of Community Board 1 and Arline Parks, who chairs the board’s land use committee, echoed the same cry.

The DOT capitulated at a meeting on Nov. 20 requested by the Bronx Borough President’s office, which brought together representatives of the state agency with staff of the city Department of City Planning department, members of Community Board 1 and local elected officials.

“We don’t want to be a bad neighbor in that area,” said Levine, the DOT’s director of public affairs. “What we heard from the community was that the widening would impede” waterfront development.

“They were very clear that at some point they will revisit the issue,” said Sam Goodman, a planner in the Borough President’s office, but not until the rezoning plan has a chance to spur development. Once the area has been built out, the state will consider its options again. In the meantime, said Goodman, other traffic-calming measures will be looked at.

Johnson, a long-time property owner in the neighborhood as well as a community board member, feels that all the work to inform his neighbors about the project and its implications paid off. “They actually listened to the community and public officials,” he said. “I feel wonderful.”

A version of this story appeared in the Winter 2009 edition of the Mott Haven Herald.

Traffic on the Major Deegan Expressway backs up at Exterior Street. DOT engineers want to change that, but residents say their plan clashes with plans for the Harlem River waterfront.Photo by Stephanie Rabins

Longer highway ramps could scuttle city’s plan for the waterfront

Plans to rehabilitate the Major Deegan Expressway would destroy Mott Haven’s hopes for a brighter future, residents and public officials told a hearing on Nov. 9 to consider the state Department of Transportation’s proposal.

Community voices rang out in opposition to the plan to lengthen exit ramps, saying the new ramps would torpedo the city’s ambitious plan to build housing, parks, office buildings and a hotel on the waterfront, completed last summer when the City Council and the Mayor signed off on rezoning the Lower Grand Concourse.

In an hour of spirited discussion after state officials presented the proposal, every speaker denounced the plan.

“Blocking waterfront access would create a domino effect” that would “severely hamper, if not outright preclude” development on the affected plots of waterfront property, said Carol Samol, head of the Bronx office of the Department of City Planning.

She said the DOT had rejected alternative plans and charged that they had focused so narrowly on traffic issues that they had failed to consider the “public good.”

According to Syed Rahman, an engineer who presented the DOT plan, the short exit ramps cause extensive back-ups on the elevated highway. He said revamping the ramps from 138th Street to 149th Street northbound and from the Macombs Dam Bridge to 138th Street southbound would relieve traffic jams.

In addition, he said, a longer exit ramp would keep cars exiting onto Exterior Street from backing up traffic on the Deegan.

Arline Parks, chair of the land use committee of Community Board 1, noted that the planning department had worked diligently with her committee to come to an agreed-upon rezoning plan through “countless meetings.” In contrast, the DOT had emerged only recently, presenting a completed plan to the board.

“All our work will be lost if the DOT moves forward with the plan,” said Alice Simmons, a member of Community Board 1.

Speakers after speaker evoked the neighborhood’s history, recalling how Robert Moses slashed through whole sections of the Bronx to make room for expressways like the Deegan, which Moses began building in 1950 and completed in 1956.

Members of the audience were also incensed to learn that the state planned to use its power of eminent domain to buy out and eliminate businesses in the path of the new ramps.

Other speakers cited Mott Haven’s high asthma rates, and expressed concern that a rehabilitated highway would attract still more traffic, increasing air pollution.

In an interview, the DOT’s director of public affairs, Adam Levine, insisted that the community’s concerns were being taken seriously. While repairs to crumbling cement and support beams are essential, he said, the department wouldn’t go ahead with its plan to lengthen the exit ramps if it faced strong opposition.

“We won’t do it if we hear from the community and elected officials” that the expansion isn’t wanted, he said. “We’ll take the money elsewhere.”

Pablo Rivera reaches down to check on vegetables in the Bronx Community and Cultural Garden (Click on image to see more)

Urban farmers won’t rest when the last crop is picked

On a warm weekday morning in September, Valeria Cantero arrives at Brook Park, on Brook Avenue between 140th and 141st streets. She opens the gate with a key and locks up behind herself. After leaving her things in the center of the garden, Cantero ducks into the back of the lot, emerging with an armful of sticks to light a cooking fire.

One of 20 people who maintain plots of vegetables in Brook Park, Cantero grows tomatoes, beans, peppers and cilantro for her family. She is in the park almost daily, often working alongside her daughter Esperanza, who tends to her own neighboring plot.

Even as the last vegetables are harvested in Mott Haven’s gardens, the work won’t stop. For Cantero and the others who maintain the gardens and the organizations that support them, the colder months are a time to build, plan and finish projects so that next summer’s crop will be even more bountiful than this year’s.

If the off-season, Raymond Figueroa, the Youth Farm Coordinator of Brook Park, who organizes programs and partnerships for young people, will continue to work with students from the International Community High School on Brook Avenue.

This summer they dug up an area of asphalt right in the center of the garden. This fall a hoop house–a simple greenhouse that uses the sun to heat a protected room–will go up, making it possible to grow early vegetables as well as delicate seedlings that will be planted in the spring and become part of next year’s crop.

Another project in the works for next season will be the expansion of the park’s composting system. Composting is a way to treat waste from the kitchen so that when it decays it enriches the soil. Brook Park currently composts its own waste and accepts food waste (but no meat) from homes in the neighborhood. With more space to treat compost the operation will grow, helping the park’s urban farmers to produce higher quality food.

Encouraging this cycle of planting, growing, eating and composting is all a way for the Mott Haven community to become healthier in the long run, according to Figueroa. “I’m looking at this from a real community development vantage point,” he says. “You have to engage young people.”

Mott Haven and Hunts Point have New York City’s highest adult rates of diabetes, a disease that is linked to obesity and a lack of available healthy food choices. Residents can’t count on finding affordable, fresh foods nearby, Figueroa points out. That is why, he says, it is so important that local gardens teach young people to farm, and why the Brook Park garden donates much of the food it produces to local churches and soup kitchens.

A few blocks away in the Bronx Community and Cultural Garden, at 143rd Street and Willis Avenue, there is an entirely different “to-do” list. For starters, says Liz Gonzales, an active gardener there, “Animals have to eat!” She points to the chicken coop where a number of shiny brown hens are marching around, and to the cage that houses a few floppy-eared rabbits.

Under plenty of flapping Puerto Rican flags, the Community and Cultural Garden produces peppers, squash, tomatoes, eggplant, corn, tomatillos, basil, cilantro, pumpkins, cabbage, and even a small patch of aloe.

After the harvest, a crop of winter rye will be planted to enrich next year’s soil, says Simon Skinner of the New York Restoration Project, the group that owns the land and supports the garden’s programs. Grass will be reseeded where dancing has flattened it over the summer, and members are looking into building a raised deck next to their covered stage.

Major mulching and tree-trimming projects will also happen over the winter in “one of the few gardens where,” Skinner says, “people will sit outside all year.”

In the Community and Cultural Garden, as in Brook Park, schoolteachers are meeting with gardeners about working together this fall to use the garden as a teaching tool for the neighborhood’s children.

Back in Brook Park, Cantero has started a small fire underneath a huge black pot filled with water and ears of corn from the local bodega. She makes a lid out of a large checkered cloth and stands watch over her cooking under an old Willow tree.

Another woman strolls in and asks if she can pick a few sunflowers. Meanwhile, a fourth-grade class from PS 369 has entered the park. They gather in the corner with Figueroa to check out the student farm.

Over in the tool-shed last year’s garlic is hanging to dry. This year’s crop of garlic won’t be planted until after the first frost, sometime in November–one of the many tasks still to come in Brook Park.

The gardeners won’t just be planting the ingredients of future meals, Figueroa says. They’ll be “planting social responsibility while planting seeds.”

A version of this article appeared in the Fall 2009 issue of the Mott Haven Herald.