NEW YORK CITY ENVIRONMENTAL
JUSTICE ALLIANCE

Standing Our Ground

WE WON!

Thanks to everyone
who worked so hard and gave so much.

Our contact with nature in this urban chaos is being taken away bit by bit.


The touch and scent of earth will be strange to our children.


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Standing Our Ground;

Saving Our Gardens

 

Statement of Leslie Lowe, Executive Director,
New York City Environmental Justice Alliance re:
Garden Auction Cancellation and Pending Lawsuit

May 12, 1999

"This afternoon, it was announced that the City had agreed to sell to the Trust for Public Land and the New York Restoration Project all of the City gardens that were to be placed at auction tomorrow.We feel that the pressure exerted by our coalition and others forced the City into taking that action.

"Of course, we’re pleased that the immediate threat to those gardens has been removed and we fully expect that the new owners will be fine landlords, but there remain 685 gardens that are still at risk of being sold or developed.

"Therefore, the federal Title VI discrimination lawsuit brought by our organization, the New York City Community Gardens Coalition and the More Gardens! Coalition will proceed.

"For us, it was never a question of only saving a few gardens. The issue is the City’s lack of policy on open space equity. Poor and working class communities of color throughout this City have fewer acres of neighborhood parks and green space, in general. Almost all the gardens that were to be auctioned were in neighborhoods of color. At the same time, however, the City has been acquiring parkland, mostly in Staten Island and in Queens for majority white neighborhoods. The statistics bear this out. From 1996 to 1998, the City acquired 799 acres of new parkland. Staten Island, whose population is 80% white, got 522 of those acres — that’s more than 65%.

"It’s not that we think Staten Islanders don’t deserve more parkland. We do think, however, that the City’s current policy on open space does not address the equitable distribution of green space and parkland.

"We will continue to fight until the City has a policy in place that ensures, well into the future, the fair acquisition and distribution of all City green spaces. If that happens, no New Yorker will ever have to face the specter of a garden auction again."

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