Here is a quick map of child care programs in our community. The dots are sized according to the enrollment. Zoom in for more detail, and hover over any of the dots.
Join the Voter Awareness March in Harlem on Saturday, May 8th at 2:00 PM.
March from the Adam Clayton Powell State Building (ACP+125) to the Frederick Douglass Monument (FDB+110)
Mental Health Awareness Rally
Join mental health experts, local leaders, political candidates, and advocates for mental health support for all at a rally at City Hall on May 7th. Then, on May 8th, stop by Marcus Garvey Park for giveaways, information, and referrals for you or a loved-one. Details on the poster, below:
These NYC Parks job opportunities (below) made possible by the recent federal reinvestment bill are open to people of all ages and require no experience.
CAN YOU & YOUR ____BE LITTER AMBASSADORS FOR OUR HISTORIC HARLEM PARKS? (Jackie Robinson/Marcus Garvey/Morningside/St Nicholas) NYC Parks is looking for weekend volunteers we call * Litter Ambassadors * who can greet park visitors having special events & BBQs and offer them orange (!) garbage bags to “love your park!”. Litter ambassadors will share where park visitors can drop their full orange trash bag after their event in a “Love Your Park” trash corral nearby. A NYC Parks staffer will provide you with bags and answer any questions. Ambassadors can volunteer as often as you want through Labor Day (and beyond)! Parents with children / friends / couples / co-workers / group members are all welcome to volunteer (dogs welcome too)! Just a couple of hours this summer give invaluable help to our parks to help us ensure our parks are clean, safe and green for our visitors, children, families, friends & neighbors. To learn more & volunteer – contact Historic Harlem Parks Administrator Jana La Sorte at [email protected]
NYC PARKS JOB OPENINGS FOR 18-80+ Mayor De Blasio has announced the creation of the City Cleanup Corps, an economic recovery program modeled on The New Deal that will generate 10,00 jobs in NYC and focus on cleaning our public spaces. Initial hiring began this month and more positions will be added through July. Details include: – Up to 8 months long with potential for full-time placement – no experience or drivers license required for the “seasonal” job
Check link below for information on how to apply for “City Park Worker Clean Up Corp – Manhattan” and/or “City Seasonal Aide Cleanup Corp – Manhattan” & note other job listings for all boroughs too. Please forward this far & wide to young & old alike who may be looking for good work!
ITS MY PARK DAY IS MAY 22 — A DAY OF FUN VOLUNTEERING TO LOVE YOUR PARK ! Join thousands of New Yorkers who come together each year to volunteer and celebrate their neighborhood parks and public spaces through It’s My Park Day. What might your group – neighborhood association / sorority / fraternity / school / arts group / temple / mosque / church / family / friends, etc! – want to do to help love our parks? Cleanups / painting / weeding & more pitch in help is welcome at ANY time of the year but May 22 has been set as the spring It’s My Park Day for our historic Harlem parks. Contact[email protected] at Partnership for Parks to arrange for your special volunteer day and ask questions, particularly for groups of 10+. NYC PARKS www.nyc.gov/parks
Do We Live in a Democratic Bubble?
Apparently, yes, we do…
You can see the blueness of upper Manhattan, below, and note the outcrops of red republican voters across the Hudson, and a few in the UES/Midtown as well as Queens:
The bubble visualization (below) shows how our neighborhood looks if you group all the Democrats and Republicans together:
This is in contrast with Fort Lee, across the Hudson, which is almost 50/50 split.
What researchers in the NYT article propose is that lifestyle choices drive many location decisions, and thus segregate us into political clusters, even if this clustering is driven by individual decision making:
To test this out yourself, enter some Zip Codes here:
The Department of Health and Mental Hygene (DoHMH) has an interesting set of maps showing which communities are most impacted by small particulate matter – PM2.5 – which comes from burning/exhaust.
Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) are tiny airborne solid and liquid particles less than 2.5 microns in diameter. PM2.5 in NYC comes from inside and outside the city from all kinds of combustion activity, including the burning of fuel in vehicles, buildings, power plants, and construction equipment, as well as commercial cooking and industrial activities. PM2.5 can either come directly from these sources or be formed in the atmosphere from other pollutants.
PM2.5 is the most harmful urban air pollutant, small enough to penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream, resulting in adverse respiratory and cardiovascular health outcomes and contributing to an increased risk of death and lower life expectancy.
In New York City, current PM2.5 levels contribute to 2300 deaths and 6300 emergency department visits and hospitalizations for respiratory and cardiovascular disease each year. 17% of all emissions come from traffic.
PM2.5 and related health problems from traffic are highest in the poorest neighborhoods in fact, PM2.5 levels from all traffic sources are 50% higher in high poverty neighborhoods relative to low poverty neighborhoods.
Wanted to let you know we’ve got a summer youth program we’re running through WHDC this summer, and applications close end of day Monday. If you know of any teens/ parents of teens in West Harlem (CD9) looking for a summer opportunity (with a stipend for all who completer the program), you can share the info below
This summer is our 5th ARISE! program. The program is 6 weeks (July 12- Aug 20th), for current 8th- 11th graders (rising freshman – rising senior). Students who are selected will receive a stipend for participating in the program. The program is hybrid; virtual Mon – Thurs. (academics/ civics), with Fridays being hosted in person by our outside community partners (entrepreneurship, gardening, basketball). We prioritize and focus on CD9 applicants for this program.
Here is information for the summer ARISE! program we’re running (flyers attached in English / Spanish).
Our application due date is coming up on 5/3. Thanks for any potential assistance in spreading the word!
Substance Use Disorder Reimbursements
Because Harlem and East Harlem is oversaturated with substance use programs and has been used as a regional hub where only 1/4 of the patients who attend the clinics located in our community:
Many of us have speculated on how much money the clinics are paid for the treatment they provide.
NYS’s Office of Alcohol and Substance Use Services (OASAS) has an Excel spreadsheet that gives you a rough idea of what each component of care is worth to a provider. To use the spreadsheet, simply download the spreadsheet from the download link (below) and enter a number of patients or patient visits in the Service Volume column.
Note that the tabs on the bottom of the spreadsheet show you the reimbursement rates for upstate and downstate.
OTP stands for Opioid Treatment Program and is the kind of service provided in the Lee Building at 125/Park, and on West 124th Street between Lenox and ACP.
As a part of a FOIL request I recently sent to the Department of Homeless Services (DHS), I was given a map illustrating the number of buildings (466 in total) in which DHS provides shelter and services (as of January 31, 2021). The sidebar, next to the map, claims that there were 31% fewer buildings than the 647 buildings reported in DHS’s “Turning the Tide” in February 2017.
On the map, DHS claimed to be working to ensure that shelters are distributed equitably across the five boroughs, including in communities that do not currently have any shelters, and at the end of the text they note that the NYC DHS shelter census stands at less than 53,000.
(note the huge disparity in building totals, above)
What is interesting is that they decided to focus on the number of buildings and not the number of people in the buildings. This is especially interesting given that by including their DHS shelter census total, they’ve indicated that they do know the number of people.
Until DHS replies with the community district population totals (which they have refused to do in response to 4 FOIL requests I’ve made), it is impossible to assess the balance or imbalance, of these facilities, and how they burden some communities more than others.
Below is a close-up of the density of shelters in northern Manhattan and the southern Bronx:
And compare that to Staten Island which has only only 1 shelter (the size of which we don’t know).
Here’s something you can do beyond flowers for mom on mother’s day. The tech nonprofit Urban Archive this week launched “NY <3 Moms,” a new crowdsourced campaign in celebration of Mother’s Day.
Urban Archive wants you to submit photos of your mom or caregiver. The caveat is that the photo has to be taken across the five boroughs. Urban Archive will then take all of the crowdsourced images and add them to their extensive digital map of historic images.
For those interested in participating, send the photo of your mom in New York to Urban Archive, along with a few sentences about when and where the photograph was taken, at te[email protected] or by direct messaging them on social media.
Don’t forget to include your name and email, the location and date of the photo (if possible), and a brief description.
Urban Archive will accept submissions through May 9. They will wrap up the campaign on Mother’s Day with a story that spotlights all of those “city moms” on Urban Archive. See examples of what they are looking for here.
(or, to see a picture of my mom, search on 1665 Park Avenue…)
Your Stomach Loves Us Launches GoFundMe Campaign to Stop the Hate One Belly at a Time
Rising above racial hostility, a non-profit initiative hopes to heal hearts through food starting early to mid-May this year.
Designed to give an alternative to the violence that has erupted toward Asian Americans since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Your Stomach Loves Us (#YSLU) comes to the rescue. Assured that hate and hangriness needs to hit the skids, the initiative will feed the communities where hostile incidents have occurred; and they’ll do it free of charge. With a full-stop win/win, dishes like Filipino lumpia, Chinese baozi, Korean dukbokki, and Japanese takoyaki will help chefs fight anti-Asian racist hate with the great equalizer – food. It’s the high road where it’s more than okay to stand armed in the streets with bento boxes. Welcome to practicality. Welcome to humanity on its best day. Can someone say, #dumplingpower?
Greg Taniguchi, the founder of Your Stomach Loves Us, said of the campaign, “I’ve seen too many posts and videos recently of anti-Asian violent incidents. This time, I’m not simply closing my browser. I’m doing something about it. I want us on the ground in these walking communities where the incidents took place because that’s how you connect. The person you share food with could, one day, need you to watch their back. It’s bigger than color. It’s a practice of love.”
With GoFundMe contributions, pop-ups from New York to San Francisco will serve curated cultural dishes to people who need to remember that love matters. Served at no cost to the communities where anti-Asian violence has recently occurred, YSLU organizers need financial support to “help fill people’s bellies with some luv’n.” They call for support to turn the 3,800 racist incidents into an opportunity for local restaurants and the people they feed. With a pay it forward approach, YSLU will target residents and restaurateurs in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Denver. The first event will happen in New York City early to mid-May, and recurring events will follow throughout the state. Tips, donations, and the profits from promotional products will fund all future events. But, right now, Your Stomach Loves Us needs contributors’ monetary help as well as expertise and knowledge about how to support and rebuild communities.
Co-founder and owner-operator of KarlsBalls Takoyaki in NYC said, “If we get cut, we bleed the same color. If only the people attacking our elders and community realized there’s a little bit of themselves in every person. And by creating harm, in reality, they’re hurting themselves.”
Your Stomach Loves Us is a non-profit initiative that hopes to address anti-Asian racial hate through food events in communities hard hit by the pandemic.
Please join us and your neighbors for a very important bystander intervention training with The New York City Anti-Violence Project on Wednesday, May 19, from 6:00 – 8:00 PM.
At this training, you will learn how to assess safety and use verbal de-escalation tactics as well as intervening against violence.
Please note this event will be capped at 100 people to allow for the full training. A waitlist will be created after the 100th sign-up and additional trainings will be offered.
653 West 143rd Street (Between Malcolm X Blvd & Lenox Ave)
Event Hours: 1:00PM-6:00PM
To make Black Girl Magic Day more spectacular than ever, we want to make sure that every little girl who attends our event walks away with a goodie bag and a huge smile on their face. To make this possible, we are kindly asking for donations through our GoFundMe account. We are also accepting toy(s) donations as well. To donate a toy(s), please connect with us via our online contact form.
As most New Yorkers know by now, there are far, far too many people running for Mayor of NYC. All this, plus Ranked Choice Voting, is making for a confusing primary this coming June.
Interestingly, one of the candidates has a book credit to his name. A number of years ago, while Manhattan’s Borough President, Scott Stringer edited a book on healthy eating and recipes.
The book – Go Green East Harlem – is a fun, modest cookbook and guide and the only published work I know of from the current array of candidates.
