NYC NOW - April 20, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

Criminal justice activists are criticizing the City Department of Investigation's review of the NYPD's database of people with suspected gang ties, as many as 3,000 low income homeowners could qualify for free solar panels. And finally, with Earth Day coming up on Saturday, we're taking a moment to reflect on the gardening pioneers who work to transform garbage filled lots in New York City into lush neighborhood green spaces. WNYC’s George Bodarky went to the Liz Christy Garden on the Lower East side which is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Thursday, April 20th. Here's your midday news from Michael Hill. Criminal justice activists are criticizing the City Department of Investigations review of the NYPD's database of people with suspected gang ties. CUNY law professor Babe Howell was among a group of activists who met with reporters to explain.

She called it, quote, troubling. that the DOI and their office of Inspector General for the NYPD found no evidence of harm linked to the database. The Inspector General's job is to serve as a watchdog for the people of New York, not as a lap dog, not as a spokesperson for the NYPD. Professor Hal said the report obscured its own findings, including that the database relied in part on sealed records in violation of state law. As many as 3,000 low-income homeowners in New York City could get solar panels installed in the rooftops for free. Mayor Adams is unveiling a program to offer solar panels to homeowners willing to lease their rooftops.

As part of the arrangement, the homeowner would share in the benefits generated from the system. City Climate Chief Officer Rohid Agarola says it's also meant to bring a costly technology to communities traditionally shut out of the green energy movement. We know that low-income families have more trouble getting solar on their roofs, even low-income homeowners in New York City. The program relies on federal funding, but the city could field interest from prospective applicants as early as the end of the year. 57 and partly sunny out there now, mostly sunny today in a high of 66, and then tomorrow sunny and 74. Again, 57 right now. With Earth Day coming up on Saturday, we're taking a moment to reflect on the gardening pioneers who work to transform garbage-filled lots in New York City into lush neighborhood green spaces. The first city-sanctioned community garden, named after artist and activist Liz Christie, is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

George Bodarki, who heads up WNYC's Community Partnerships Desk, paid a visit to the garden to meet up with Donald Loggins. He's one of the people who joined Christie in the early 1970s to beautify a dangerous blighted property on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Let's go for a walk and I'll show you around. You may notice the paths. They're all curved. Liz Christie who designed the original layout for the garden. Didn't want to be like city streets where you just go through straight and leave. Everything me aired is through the garden. They were originally houses on these lots. And what you're standing on right now is the back foundation of the property, which is still here. As you can see, we have tulips, we have daffodils growing here, we have alium, birch trees.

But let's walk around some more. We have a pond. We have turtles in here. We have coy in here. You don't expect to have a pond with fish on East Howson Street. No, you don't. So Donald, paint a picture for me of what this space looked like in the 1970s. when you first laid eyes on it.

In the very, very beginning, it was about three feet of garbage. There were all refrigerators here, tires, trash, industrial work, all sorts of just horrible stuff. And what happened was Liz Christie lived on Mott Street a couple of blocks from here. She's walking by one day, and she sees a child playing in an old refrigerator, pretending it's a boat. She tells the mother, you know, why don't you clean it up with your friends so your children have someplace nice to play?

And the mother said, you, I have several children. I don't have the time to do that. You're all college students. Why don't you get your friends to clean it up? And this said, okay. And it took us about a year to clean it through all the trash away. But we did it. And the rest is pretty much history.

So you were a college student at the time. We were all college students at the time. We had the summer off, so we had plenty of time. The hardest part was getting all the trash out. We bagged it all up. Sanitation was really nice. They took it all away. And they used to be police stables at the far end of House Street.

And they were really happy to give us all the manure during the summer. And we mixed that in with the dirt to make really good soil. So Liz Christie was a friend of yours? Liz was a friend of mine, yes. Talk to me a little bit more about how this space was utilized, even when it was trash-strewn, because people did come in here, right? Not only did people come in here. Two homeless people died here in one winter.

They froze to death. There was a lot of drug dealing here. So you cleaned the park up, but then what was the thought process on how you were going to go forward and design a park as a bunch of college students in New York City in the 1970s? Well, Liz was an artist for one thing, and she knew graphics and design, and she said, you know, let's do the paths first. She wanted to pass the meander, to curve. She didn't want it like a city street where you walk through quickly and don't notice it. So she built a little cul-de-sacs here, made it weave in it out. And then the plant issue was interesting. We didn't know what to grow here.

None of us were horticulturalists by background. So we got donations of plants and we tried different things. And whatever it took, people came and said, Oh, you can grow that in the city. We'll grow it too. And what didn't take, we just got rid of. Now, Liz Christie didn't stop with this garden. Really, what happened here was the start of the modern community garden movement

in New York City, right? Absolutely. At the very beginning, the green gorillas, and this garden were one and the same. So for those not familiar with the green guerrillas, who are the green gorillas? They were a group that in the beginning were going around to vacant lots

throwing seed grenades in there. Those were condoms or balloons filled with fertilizer, water, and some seeds. Because there were some lots we couldn't get to because they had bobwire fences around them or whatever. And it really worked well. So you all would toss these seed grenades

into vacant lots in an attempt to beautify them in several neighborhoods. right? Well, we started here in the Lower East Side, East Village, we worked up in the Bronx, we worked in Queens. The only burrow we never got to was Staten Island. What was that like to be lopping these seed grenades into vacant lots? I mean, talk to me about that operation. Oh, it was fun. About a half a dozen of us would go in a car, find a place, get out in a car, throw them over the fences, and run like hell.

The city gave you a lease for this property in 1974, right? A year after you started working working on it. Talk to me about that history. Originally, it was owned by HPD. Housing, preservation development. Yes. And they got upset that we were using their property without their permission. And we got the press involved,

and they sort of backed down and said, okay, we can't use it without our permission, so we're going to give you our permission. Here's the lease, a dollar a year. And we said, fine, we'll take it. You know. So are you still paying that dollar a year? No, when we got transferred to parks, we don't have to pay anything.

So now it falls under the Parks Department. Right. Now, how is it here still 50 years later? Because we all know that property in New York City is valuable, space, is that a premium? How is this garden still here? We fought for it. I mean, any time a developer came and wanted to do something here, we mobilized and really said, this is ridiculous.

Like they wanted to put a bridge connecting two buildings across house. We got so much community support. The building came around and turned out to be really nice about it and helped us and said, no bridge. Now, this garden is actually a landmarked garden, correct? We have to be the first and only community garden in the whole country that's on the National Register of Historic Places. How many memories flood back to you when you come to this garden today when you look around? 50 years worth of memories, I mean, it's an unbelievable place. And we've done some nice stuff.

After 9-11, we stayed open all night because people couldn't be in their house. Some people came here and just wanted to sit and talk. Also, when we have power outages, we've opened the garden at night and let people, you know, since they don't have air conditioning, stay here and sit. I think it's great. I can't believe we started something that we only thought it would last a year or two, and 15 years later, it's still here. That's New York City Community Garden Pioneer Donald Loggins in conversation with WNYC's

George Bodarky. WNYC's commemoration of Earth Day continues tomorrow with a special edition of all four things considered live from Transmitted Park in Greenpoint Brooklyn. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.