Trash Talk
I've been asked to blog for The Huffington Post from a local, NYC perspective, to give some 'net wings to those grassroots activists - non-celebs all -- who are out there working for peace, environmental justice, racial and gender equality, housing for all - you know, those people I consider the Real Americans; those who spend their time expanding the ideas of freedom and democracy, no matter who is in power, while trying to figure out what’s for dinner. I’ve also promised to give the Post’s readers something “to do” right away, each time I post a blog entry. I love progressive folks, but sometimes, there’s just too much whining, not enough doing. So, let’s go.
We’ll begin with an infuriating tale that involves garbage.
Many of you already know or suspect that politics is garbage - well, in the Big Apple, it really is.
To quote NY Daily News columnist Errol Louis
“Here is a tale about the politics of garbage, and the garbage of politics."
Not a sexy issue, garbage, but an issue that heavily affects low income and communities of color, where diesel-fueled trucks spew noxious particulate matter into the air as they make hundreds of daily runs to waste stations sited in those already environmentally overburdened neighborhoods. You're shocked, shocked, I'm sure, to learn that none of these facilities are sited in neighborhoods like, say, Manhattan's generally toney Upper East Side, represented by Mayoral candidate Gifford Miller. You're not?
A few years ago, activists from those impacted communities united under the banner of the Organization of Waterfront Neighborhoods and came up with a plan to share the burden, to stop much of the trucking through local streets and the congestion in poorer neighborhoods by having most of the garbage barged out on NYC waterways. It was a plan so good that Mayor Mike Bloomberg signed on. It was a plan that would force each borough (are you listening, Manhattan?) to deal with its own waste. It would save money down the road, end the stranglehold that the trucking companies have on the City, and would help put an end to bad health impacts -- like some of the highest asthma rates in the nation -- in communities like the South Bronx and Williamsburg in Brooklyn.
So the Organization of Waterfront Neighborhoods went into sell mode, and for about six years, tried to convince City legislators that this plan would work. Lots of local politicians did what lots of politicians do: they jumped up and down and promised to support it - all of it.
But now it’s an election year, and the majority Democratic City Council doesn't want the Republican Mayor (who supports our plan) to be re-elected. And the City Council President, the aforementioned Gifford Miller – “the singing candidate,” who recently crooned “La Borinquena” at a campaign stop -- has now pulled his support for the plan because he says it's not a good idea to put a shoreline waste transfer station in his district - yes, the Upper East Side - where there aren't any environmental burdens at all, and where a large proportion of NYC's waste is created.
Garbage is sickening and so is politics.
But here's where you, intrepid blog readers, come in.
If Gifford Miller has any chance to be the candidate of progressive democrats, he’s got to do a 180. Email him: miller@council.nyc.ny.us or call him: 212.788.7210 and tell him that if he REALLY wants to do something for low income people and communities of color – a whole lot more than the outrageously gratuitous singing of a song in Spanish --it’s time to take the garbage out of his politics and support the OWN plan!
Stay tuned for reports about other fun, sexy and celeb-filled (or not) issues, ideas and events from the ground here in NYC.