There's a message to Repave Tompkins in one of the chalk hearts at the entrance to Tompkins Square Park on Avenue A and Seventh Street.
You can definitely make the case for that just by looking inside the entrance at the pathways ...
Sisters and Brothers, East Village residents: Many of our friends and neighbors, as a consequence of the pandemic, have fallen into serious rent arrears and are in danger of losing their homes due to no fault of their own. Any of us could be facing the same fate. We must come together as one body and defend one another!
We are calling on all of you to help organize the East Village Eviction Free Zone in order to prevent the looming reality of mass evictions throughout our community.
We are calling on you to be part of an Eviction Watch Network that will spring into action the moment one of our neighbors is faced with being forced from their homes out into the street. The kind of action we are talking about is Direct Action to block the marshals from evicting our neighbors.
By coming together and defending one another we will force the banks and the politicians to enact policies that draw funds from the rich in order to bail out the owners and the tenants facing this housing crisis. The calamity of the virus should not be born by those least able to do so, while the immorality and injustice of evicting women, men and children from their homes amidst the pandemic, which threatens to reemerge, is self evidently obscene and must be opposed!
Build the East Village Eviction Free Zone!!
Stay tuned for more to come!
PLEASE
RESPECT the
Neighborhood
You Doing
Your drugs!!
CLEAN UP!!!
RESPECT!!!
As a young man in London, Frans spent his meager allowance on King's Road emulating the looks of style icons the likes of David Bowie and Brian Ferry. He worked as a bespoke, made to measure consultant for Alfred Dunhill, Jil Sander, Barney's and Hickey Freeman. He often advised that "The suit is always the best garment to flatter a man."
Without state oversight, New York City could demolish East River Park and build a levee but would not be obliged to return the entire 1.2 mile riverfront to parkland. The city could also exceed its five-year construction timeline.
Those are two of the reasons why state oversight is needed for the massive $1.45 billion flood control project, says a brief filed July 20. The document is a response to the city’s argument that state approval is not needed.
The lawsuit, East River Park Action et al v City of New York, originally filed in February, asks to halt the East Side Coastal Resiliency project that is scheduled to begin this fall. It also asks to declare the City Council vote last November approving the project “null and void.”
Attorney Arthur Schwartz with the nonprofit Advocates for Justice argues in July 20's 42-page brief that the city is required to seek Alienation from the state. Alienation is the use of parkland for non-park purposes, even for brief periods.
Schwartz notes that "Closing the East River Park, whether completely or in phases, will disproportionately affect the health and well-being and recreational opportunities of low-income New Yorkers who live in the neighborhood around the Park."
"We are gathering in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, specifically against the ecocide that continues to harm Black and Indigenous lives globally; to grieve the thousands of lives, neighbors and loved ones lost to COVID'19; and to come together in protection of land, trees, and the wellness of our community on the Lower East Side,” says vigil organizer Emily Johnson, an artist in residence at Abrons Arts Center and a land and water protector from the Yup'ik Nation.
"In the center of a pandemic the city will destroy the Lower East Side’s only large outdoor green space for wellness and exercise, raise toxic dust and cut down 1,000 trees, reducing air quality and putting residents — especially elders and those who are immunocompromised — at greater risk for and with COVID-19," says Johnson.