Students from International High School learned about compost by doing at Brook Park. File photo by Urban Transformers

Friends of Brook Park is assembling a South Bronx Green Team Collaborative to build a new compost system in Brook Park on East 141st Street and Brook Avenue.

Students between 13 and 19 years old who live or go to school in the 10454 or 10455 zip codes are eligible for the summer jobs, which pay $8 an hour.

Applicants must have good communications skills and be punctual. Each intern will be responsible for sharing his or her experience as a members of the South Bronx Green Team Collaborative with at least one classroom in the South Bronx.

Participants must be available on six consecutive weekends for four hours a day beginning in mid-May.

An application form, due by May 10, can be obtained by sending an email to urbantransformers [at] gmail [dot] com, or an application may be mailed to Friends of Brook Park, PO Box 801 Bronx NY 10454, and should include contact information. Applicants should include a two-paragraph statement about why they are interested in participating in this project.

The parent or guardian of those selected for an interview will have to sign a permission and waiver form.

A project of Friends of Brook Park and the Urban Transformers, the collaborative is financed by grants from Citizens Committee for New York and Department of Youth and Community Development, thanks to funds from City Council members Maria del Carmen Arroyo and Melissa Mark Viverito.

Residents learn about recycling, conservation at annual festival

For the fifth straight year, Bronxites gathered at St. Mary’s Park to celebrate Earth Fest, sharing ideas for innovative ways to green the planet.

Representatives from businesses, community organizations, and city agencies combined on April 21st to promote environmental initiatives, through information kiosks, activities for kids and assorted giveaways at Mott Haven’s biggest park.

Julia Wilson, 6, circled a flagpole several times while trying to decide where to tie a bright orange ribbon, to give flight to a sail made of recycled materials. She settled on a spot she could reach at the bottom of the pole.

“Recycling means cleaning the earth and not leaving garbage around,” she said, standing back to admire the plastic bags and ribbons tethered to it that blew in the wind.

“There’s a lot to learn here,” said Levell Peterkin, 40, who was visiting family in the area. “I was over there and talked to Con Ed, who told me you can change all the light bulbs in your house to these things,” he said, holding up a compact fluorescent light bulb. “I could cut my electricity bill by 40 percent.”

With bright green papers in hand, festival-goers like Peterkin strolled from one table to another listening to vendors peddle their wares. The product vendors stamped the papers, allowing participants to collect prizes based on the number of stamps they’d accumulated.

“It’s fun and free, but you have to work to get the free stuff,” said Rachel Amar, the event’s founder. “It’s a way to incentivize green behavior.”

A crowd swarmed the table that was covered with prizes for most of the afternoon. One volunteer yelled, “Hardcover books, three points. Softcover books, two points. All brand new books, come and get them.” Other prizes included t-shirts, healthy snacks and bottles of lotion.

Nearby, a group of kids played a round of Recycling Olympics, the newest addition to Earth Fest. They competed in a recycling toss, where they had to decide whether an item of garbage went in a blue plastics bin, a green paper pin or a black trash bin.

After playing the game, Natasha Perez, 8, reflected on what she learned.

“Plastic should not go in the paper, because later you can’t recycle,” she said.Across from the games, Jayla Garris, 11, stood on stage singing her rendition of Adele’s “Someone Like You,” as part of the youth talent show that featured spoken-word and musical and dance performances. She said it was her first time at Earth Fest.

“It’s nice of people to throw an event because people don’t usually celebrate the Earth,” she said.

Anna Vincenty, a long-time neighborhood activist who worked for many years for housing advocacy group Nos Quedamos and now works as Congressman Jose E. Serrano’s community liaison, was honored with a 2012 GetGreen Environmental Leadership award.

“There is nothing more important than making sure that today you take advantage of everything that you’re learning,” said Vincenty. “We’ve got to make sure we leave our children and our grandchildren a better place than what we found.”

Superhero Global Man Eco-Avenger also accepted an award for promoting green education to children.

“One of the things I want everybody in this community to understand is we believe in you,” he said. “We are committed to making sure the Bronx gets cleaner and cleaner.”

Mott Haven resident Maria Ojeda decided what initiatives to vote for, with help from her children. Photo by Sean Carlson

Playground repairs and public housing security cameras win

Millbrook Houses in Mott Haven will get long-awaited improvements to its playground on St. Ann’s Avenue, and public housing projects across the neighborhood will receive new tamper-proof security cameras as part of the city’s first-ever participatory budgeting initiative.

Over 1,000 voters in Mott Haven and in the Manhattan portion of City Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito’s district turned out to vote on March 31 for neighborhood projects they wanted to see funded with the $1.1 million she set aside for an experiment in participatory budgeting. In all, there were 29 projects on the ballot, ranging from playground upgrades to a solar-powered greenhouse. Each voter was allowed to vote for up to five items.

Maria Ojeda smiled as she checked off her ballot and handed it to election staff at the Betances Senior Center, where Mott Haven residents voted. Although the minimum voting age was 18, her two children, a boy and girl, whispered suggestions into her ear.

“To know what the people want is so important,” said Ojeda, who lives across the street from the senior center on St. Ann’s Avenue, where she cast her vote. “For me, education is the key. My kids are on the honor roll.”

The voting, which took place over the course of a week and ended on the last day in March, gave Mark-Viverito’s constituents in Mott Haven, the Upper West Side and East Harlem a chance to choose where a portion of their council representative’s budget will be spent.

Along with the Millbrook playground, transportation services for seniors in East Harlem, including a Meals-on-Wheels delivery van, and playground improvements at an Upper West Side housing complex rounded out the top three projects selected to get funding.

But Mark-Viverito had a surprise for her constituents as she announced the winners at an event in East Harlem after the votes were tallied. The Councilwoman pledged to fund the projects that came in fourth, fifth and sixth places, along with the top three vote-getters.

“It’s been great to see some of the creativity in these projects,” said Mark-Viverito. “This is democracy in action.”

An ultrasound system for the Metropolitan Hospital Center, new technology for the Aguilar branch of the Public Library and construction of a youth development headquarters and the DREAM Charter School in Harlem were the other three projects she approved funding for.

Even those whose projects were not voted in saw value in the process.

Community activist Ray Figueroa served as a budget delegate, helping organize the initiative locally and explaining the process to residents at various stages of the campaign. He also pushed a plan for the building and opening of a solar-powered greenhouse in Mott Haven. The project would have grown food that would then be sold at a farmer’s market run by young people from the neighborhood.

“We are not unhappy,” he said of the fact that his project will not be funded. “Mott Haven as a community is benefiting tremendously as a result of this process. Participatory budgeting is a great lesson in social responsibility.”

Angel Molina, a Mott Haven resident, also served as a delegate.

“The community knows what its problems are,” said Molina. “And because of that, they also know the solutions.”

The budgeting initiative was also implemented in three other city council districts, two in Brooklyn and one in Queens.

Community Voices Heard, a development organization with chapters across the state, was instrumental in persuading Mark-Viverito and three other council members to try the participatory budgeting experiment. Members of the group helped organize residents in the participating districts, and staffed some of the polling stations.

“A lot of people feel that the government doesn’t hear them,” said Stephen Bradley, an organizer with the group, who helped run the polling station at the Betances Senior Center. “But who knows what’s better for the community than the people?”

Participatory budgeting was first implemented in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in 1989. Since then, hundreds of millions of dollars from that city’s budget have gone to fund local initiatives through the process. Over 1,000 cities throughout the world have since initiated similar programs.

Cezar Busatto, who works for the city department in Porto Alegre that administers participatory budgeting, toured the polling stations in Mark-Viverito’s district on March 31st. He was impressed with how the process was being carried out in the U.S.

“People are conscious of what they need,” said Busatto. He noted that the most popular participatory budget projects in Porto Alegre were to improve housing, education and healthcare, particularly for the elderly.

“The community should be able to put public money to use to benefit them,” he said. “It’s just so exciting to see this happening in New York.”

MIT planners proposed events in existing spaces to attract people to the waterfront, including temporary closing the 145th St Bridge for a food festival.

Series of forums to seek ideas from residents

With FreshDirect set to occupy a crucial piece of the waterfront, a grassroots coalition, buoyed by promises of federal support, has launched an effort to reclaim recreational access to the Harlem River shore.

The Harlem River Working Group, a two-year-old organization devoted to the initiative, is planning a series of forums in March and April to seek ideas and public support for parks, greenways, boat launches and other public facilities along the river.

Formed by the Bronx Council on Environmental Quality in May 2009, the working group includes some 50 environmental and community organizations. Last October, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar visited Roberto Clemente State Park to announce that the federal government would support efforts to gain access to the Harlem as part of the President’s Great Outdoors Program.

Access to the Harlem in the Bronx is currently limited to Mill Pond Park in Mott Haven and Roberto Clemente State Park in Morris Heights. The working group hopes to see walking trails, boating on city-provided boats, improved water quality, eventually good enough to allow swimming and educational programs and festivals to attract more people to the river.

Last year, advocates worked with students and faculty members from MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning to envision some of the ways the shore might be converted from its current dilapidated state. Among its proposals was the creation of a playground and park on the water at the foot of Lincoln Avenue, a rain garden at Lincoln Avenue and East 138th Street and a new outdoor art gallery and the intersection of Lincoln and Bruckner Boulevard.

The Harlem River Working Group’s forums are designed to showcase such proposals and solicit public feedback on them, as well as to gather new ideas from residents.

The announcement that the online grocer FreshDirect would occupy 16 acres in the Harlem River Rail Yards added urgency to the working group’s agenda. The organizers have joined the opposition to the deal, because it threatens plans to build a pedestrian bridge from the Bronx to the playing fields of Randall’s Island.

The bridge “addresses a decades-old slight to the communities of Port Morris and Mott Haven,” Chauncy Young, the organization’s coordinator, told a public hearing on FreshDirect, as he asked unsuccessfully for the decision on state and city subsidies to be postponed.

Negotiations over the bridge are underway, according to John DeSio, the spokesman for Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., who said the bridge was “a separate issue” from the agreement worked out between the borough president and FreshDirect last month concerning jobs.

The Port Morris gantries. Photo by Alexandra Corrazzo

New use sought for rusting Port Morris towers

The word “gantry” doesn’t mean anything to longtime bakery owner Errol Bier, but when he sees a photo of the rusted, towering structures that stand next to his Port Morris shop, he nods.

“That’s where I used to ride the ferry,” said Bier, who owns Miss Grimble on 135th and Locust Ave. 

Bier, who has been coming to the neighborhood since he was a child, recalled a time when the gantries were filled with passengers going to visit family members interned at Rikers Island. Today, the massive structures stand desolate in a fenced-in field of weeds, surrounded by construction cranes and “No Trespassing” signs.

But the local community group Friends of Brook Park has big plans for the site. Its members want to turn it into a waterfront recreational area in a neighborhood starved for open space.

Earlier this month, the Historic Districts Council, an advocacy group that fights to preserve New York City neighborhoods, put the site on its highly selective annual list of historic sites in need of protection. The council says it will collaborate with the Brook Park group to try to get the gantry site on the National Register of Historic Places.

“We don’t often visit places like this that are so visually striking and make you feel as though you’re experiencing a different time in history,” said Simeon Bankoff, the preservation group’s executive director. “It really brings us back to our foundation and reminds us that New York is a city about water. It’s a really evocative space to think about new opportunities for the community.”

The two structures were built a century ago to load cargo and passengers onto ferries that sailed to Queens and back.

Randall Comfort, in his 1906 book “History of the Bronx Borough, City of New York,” described the opening of the ferry station. “The beautiful, tastefully, and practically arranged ferry house became the talk of the whole Borough of the Bronx, and now especially on a fine summer day, it is a great sight to see the throngs go over the ferry to North Beach,” he wrote.

After the private company that owned the gantries and ferries dissolved in 1918, the city cut service, opting to run ferries only to Rikers for inmates and their families, and to North Brother Island for patients at the sanatorium.

The ferries continued to operate until the mid-1960s when the Francis Buono Bridge, better known as the Rikers Island Bridge, was built and the North Brother hospital was mothballed, making ferry service to the islands unnecessary. North Brother is now a protected bird sanctuary owned by the Parks Department, which has worked with teens at The Point Community Development Corp. to restore native plants.

Harry Bubbins, director of Friends of Brook Park, has been working with architects from City College’s School of Architecture to attain historic preservation status for the site, and envisions turning it into an educational hub that would combine art and ecology lessons for the public, similar to a site in Queens that turned its rusted gantries into a public education space. Bubbins sees the Historic Council’s ’s selection of the site as a first step.

“There’s six miles of shore where there’s no waterfront access,” said Bubbins. “It’s an absolute tragedy.”

The project has received support from Congressman Jose Serrano, who in a June 2010 letter to the state’s Office of Historic Preservation said, “The Morris Gantries are the last historic vestige of the South Bronx’s once thriving industrial waterfront. The gantries have been in existence for many decades and remain a striking visual reminder of a time when our waterways were utilized by substantial numbers of New Yorkers.”

Bubbins says local residents should be encouraged to visit the gantries, but some Port Morris residents don’t agree. John Lekas, who lives in the neighborhood and owns the Locust Restaurant, is skeptical a recreational space in this isolated industrial neighborhood can succeed.

“This isn’t the kind of neighborhood where people come and sit outside with a magazine,” said Lekas. “People come here to work, or for temporary residence.”

Errol Bier, whose bakery has existed for almost as long as the gantries, thinks a park would be uplifting, and would be good for businesses like his and Lekas’s.

“It would beautify the neighborhood,” said Bier. “And maybe then people will stop building recycling plants here.”

Members of Friends of Brook Park canoe on the Harlem River, but it's not easy to get to the shore. That may change.

The Harlem River was once one of the city’s great playgrounds: colorful boathouses dotted its banks; riders on horseback promenaded and raced along the Manhattan shore; the bluffs above the river were home to an amusement park, as well as the Polo Grounds, which later became the home of the New York Giants, and, of course, to Yankee Stadium.

As the river was industrialized, though New Yorkers turned their backs on the Harlem.  Now, with much of the industry gone, Bronxites hope to reclaim the river.

For years, organizations like Friends of Brook Park and the Bronx Council on Environmental Quality have looked at the Harlem and seen a necklace of green the length of the borough. A greenway would connect existing parks, like Mill Pond and Roberto Clemente, along with new parks built on unused land.  Some of them would include fishing piers, places to launch kayaks and canoes, eco-classrooms and gardens.

Pie in the sky? Not really. To see the future, just look at the Bronx River. Not so long ago, it was an open sewer and garbage dump. Today, thanks to the hard work of volunteers whose efforts led to the formation of the Bronx River Alliance and the investment of millions of federal dollars, wildlife has returned, fish thrive, ospreys soar and egrets nest. People play in new parks, stroll and bicycle on the shore and canoe in the water.

Five years ago, Harry Bubbins of Friends of Brook Park urged the formation of a Harlem River Alliance, drawing on the experience of the Bronx River Alliance. Now the federal government has given advocates’ efforts a boost.

Last month, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar visited Roberto Clemente State Park to announce that the Harlem River would be one of a hundred projects nationwide aimed at restoring neglected rivers to the people who live near them. Rep. Jose Serrano, the chief benefactor of the Bronx River, who accompanied the secretary, pointed to the lessons of the Bronx River.

There are plenty of obstacles. Ways have to be found for a greenway to wind through or around a maze of industrial facilities. The city or state will have to seize junk yards. Thusfar, the state has not even been persuaded to designate the Harlem a sensitive area protected for recreation, turning down a request to do so from the Bronx Council on Environmental Quality in a blizzard of bureaucratic initials.

The city’s 2009 Lower Concourse rezoning, which envisions riverside promenades, has yet to attract the development that would yield them, and the boundaries of the newly-zoned area left out the southern end of Park Avenue, where Friends of Brook Park hopes to see a boat launch built.

But the pledge of federal assistance is a game-changer. The Bronx Council on Environmental Quality, which completed a comprehensive plan for a Harlem River Greenway from Highbridge to Spuyten Duyvil four years ago, has also formed a Harlem River Working Group, which has enlisted community organizations and parks groups the length of the river. Energized by Salazar’s visit, it envisions the Harlem Greenway joining the South Bronx Greenway at the bridge to Randalls Island, says its coordinator, Chauncy Young.

The effort to revive the Harlem River can bring jobs and economic development opportunities to the area, give Mott Haven residents a larger role in deciding how waterfront development will proceed once the economy improves and, above all, offer parks-starved Bronx communities a place where they can find beauty and ease at their doorstep.

New Yorkers Against Gun Violence brought a giant puppet to the 40th Precinct, where they joined with Occupy the Bronx to protest the arrests at Morning Glory Garden. Photo by Elizabeth Chen

Five arrested at Morning Glory Community Garden site

Police arrested five people at the Occupy the Bronx general assembly in Mott Haven Saturday, preempting the organization’s plans to hold a rally and “festival” in a community garden fenced-off by the city in mid-November.

“Of the general assemblies I’ve attended, this is the first that I’ve seen this kind of police presence,” said Carl Lundgren, a member of Bronx Greens, a local environmental advocacy group.

The group had publicized plans for a “day of festivities” at Morning Glory Garden a vacant lot on Southern Boulevard and East 147th Street, where gardeners, many of whom are also among the most active people in Occupy the Bronx, had grown flowers and vegetable for the last two years.

The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development kicked the community group out out and tore up the garden, where it plans to build housing.

In protest, participants in Occupy the Bronx had briefly occupied the offices of Community Board 1, demanding that the board support its efforts to meet with the city housing department.

According to Elliott Liu, both a gardener and a member of the Occupy the Bronx facilitation working group, police ordered the protesters to “keep moving,” saying their meeting was blocking the sidewalk. Although the group did move, Liu said, the police arbitrarily singled-out people to be arrested.

According to NYPD spokesman Mike Wysokowski, the five people were arrested for “blocking pedestrian traffic.”

A video taken by a member of the organization seems to confirm the protesters’ claim that they did not block the sidewalks. It shows the general assembly moving to the fence around the garden, leaving ample room for others—including police officers—to walk by.

In the video police are shown interrogating a News 12 reporter and arresting a freelance journalist, Carla Murphy.

In weekly meetings since mid-October, including one at the Hub on Nov. 17, police stood by while the group held its general assembly, and even provided free entrance to the subway on Oct. 15, when protesters marched from Fordham Plaza to head downtown to Zuccotti Park, headquarters of Occupy Wall Street.

“I’ve been doing this type of work for 15 years and this was the most quiet, peaceful convening I’d ever seen,” said Lisa Ortega, a mainstay of Occupy the Bronx and a leader of the Hunts Point-based organization Rights For Imprisoned People with Psychiatric Disabilities. Ortega’s husband, Carlos Sabater, was one of those arrested. “NYPD was already very hostile and aggressive when we got there,” she said.

After the arrests, the general assembly, swelled by marchers from New Yorkers Against Gun Violence who had been protesting violence in the community and by others made aware of the arrests via messages on Facebook, moved to a street corner directly across from the 40th Precinct on Alexander Avenue and demanded the release of those arrested.

“Let them go!” the crowd chanted at the precinct, while holding up a giant, dancing Statue of Liberty puppet draped in the Puerto Rican flag.

The protesters were released from the precinct’s holding cell in the afternoon after being detained for about three hours. They were given summonses to appear in court.

Alex Kahn, a 25-year-old software developer was among those arrested . This was his first time attending an Occupy the Bronx general assembly.

“It was a little scary, but I was with people who I felt safe with,” said Kahn. “It’s the kind of experience that makes it clear that what the role of the police is in society. If their job was to protect the community, they wouldn’t be arresting people for having a meeting.”

After celebrating the release of their comrades, the general assembly joined the anti-violence march.

Occupy the Bronx members say they plan to continue to defy orders to stay away from Morning Glory Garden. Next Saturday, they say, they will meet at the corner of 149th St. and Third Ave. in Mott Haven to rally again.

They are also asking supporters to attend the 40th Precinct Community Council meeting on Wednesday, where they plan to interrogate officials about the arrests of their members.

“We’re community residents who’ve been oppressed for a long time and we don’t intend to back down by any means,” said Ortega. “And if it means that tons of us will continue to be arrested, we’re willing to do so. We’re not afraid.”

Activists invaded Community Board 1’s office on Monday, using Occupy Wall Street tactics to protest the city’s eviction of the Morning Glory Community Garden at Southern Boulevard and Union Avenue.

They demanded to speak to District Manager Cedric Loftin, and when they were told he wasn’t there refused to leave. Instead, they recited their grievances and telephoned board members, producing the video that accompanies this story as the office receptionist Annie Rojas ordered them to stop.

The demonstrators, who have been active in Occupy the Bronx, say the community board has failed to listen to them. It took the part of the city’s Dept. of Housing Preservation and Development, which destroyed the garden, and canceled the November meeting at which they had signed up to speak.

When board member Freddy Perez showed up, they repeated their demand that the board set up a meeting with HPD before the city agency filed plans to develop the lot.

When they finally left, they chanted, “We’ll be back.”

Elliott Liu, one of Morning Glory’s founders, said the group doesn’t have definite plans to revisit Board 1’s office but will keep asking for support.

“Our understanding is that the Board won’t pay attention to you unless you’re a local business or someone with a lot of connections in government,” said Liu.

“They’re more focused on serving developers’ interests than serving as a forum for the community.”

District Manager Loftin did not respond to requests for comment on the protest.

Photo by Lily Kesselman Mott Haven's newest resident gets a big hello.