[00:00:18] Speaker A: Welcome to Uptown Chats, a podcast where we share stories about environmental justice by and for everyday people. I'm your co host, Lonnie.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: And I'm your other co host, Jaron.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Today we are celebrating Earth Day, Earth week, Earth month. I feel like it's changed over the years. Since I was a kid, it was just one day. We were literally at school one day, drawing pictures of the earth, and that was it. And now I think we've graduated to a whole month. But I'm not sure.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, at this point, every day should just be Earth Day. We're always doing this work. So as far as we're concerned, every day is Earth Day.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: Yeah, every day is Earth day for us. So to celebrate Earth Day, we'll be joined by Stephanie Caban from Riverside Park Conservancy.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: That's right. Stephanie's great. And I think folks will really enjoy our interview with her, hearing about her experience, first of all, working in one of New York City's largest parks, Riverside park, and also why parks are so important.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: But before we get to that, Jerry, can you read WEAC's mission statement?
[00:01:15] Speaker B: I sure can. WEAC's mission is to build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and or low income residents provide, participate meaningfully in the creation of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Of course.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: So, I don't think this episode actually needs too much introduction, but it's worth mentioning one of the major campaigns that we act as a part of is called 1% for parks.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really helpful that we're talking about this, because we've talked so much about city budget stuff, and my understanding is that 1% for parks is a budget issue. Right. So, like I said, I know we've talked about budget stuff before, so I think maybe, Lonnie, you know, a more about 1% for parks. Can you say a few words about what it is, just for some context?
[00:01:59] Speaker A: So the 1% for parks kind of relates to taking 1% of the total city's operating budget and dedicating it just to the Department of Parks and Recreation. And this is, like, a really true baseline of the needs that parks have throughout the city, and that's maintenance. That's making sure parks are resilient, you know, the beautification aspect of it, but also making sure our parks are safe and well maintained as well. And we'll talk a lot more about that with Stephanie. But when Mayor Adams was running for this position that he was elected to, he publicly committed to increasing the budget of the parks department to 1%, which would mean about a billion dollars annually. But since then, he's continuously cut funding to the parks budget, and advocates want the mayor to fulfill his campaign promise. And I think this is a. It's a really important aspect of the work that we do in having access to green space. And parks has a lot of different benefits, as we'll hear. And on top of that, we are very behind as far as the city, in terms of other cities throughout the country, we have more acreage of parks, but we spend far less on our parks compared to other cities that are spending a much larger percentage of their budget.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: Yeah, it seems like such a basic thing to do. Just, first of all, do the thing you said you're going to do. And second of all, parks are something that we all benefit from, so why would you not invest in them as a resource? So I cannot think of a better topic for us to be talking about when we're thinking about Earth Day, Earth week, Earth month, thinking about parks and something that is such a good outdoor resource for people who live in the city. And really any city. I mean, we can all appreciate our parks in our hometown.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Cause it's nice to sometimes go to some of our bigger parks and be like, I'm in the city, but I'm getting that moment of nature. I'm leaving that concrete jungle and into, like, literally the northern woods of any park that you want to go to that you kind of feel like, oh, I'm surrounded by some green space. Yes.
[00:03:51] Speaker B: Some people do walk into the park like they are going hiking. Like, hiking boots and all. They look like they're gonna camp out there for the night. They're not going to, hopefully, but it looked like it.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: Sometimes you gotta cosplay.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: Exactly. But I think all that context is super helpful. You'll hear from Stephanie a little bit more. About 1% for park. So, with that said, I say we go ahead and jump into our interview. What do you think?
[00:04:13] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah, it's great. I'm excited for it.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: All right, let's go.
Well, thank you so much for joining us, Stephanie. We're so happy that we got to have you on the show. I feel like it's kind of overdue. We've kind of touched very closely on things that are related to parks. But today is the day we got you here. For all of our guests, all of our listeners, can you please introduce yourself?
[00:04:45] Speaker C: Hello. Of course. I'm happy to be here. I'm honored. Thank you so much. My name is Stephanie Ashley Kavan Shiea the funny thing about me is that every single time I introduce myself, I always have to say I'm from the Bronx because it's part of who I am. So I'm from the Bronx, New York. Gotta rep all the time. And I work at Riverside Park Conservancy. I am the North park outreach coordinator for the Harlem and Washington Heights portions of the park, which are in Manhattan. And, yeah. Oh, my gosh.
[00:05:16] Speaker A: Bronx will always Bronx, you know.
[00:05:18] Speaker C: Bronx will always Bronx. Yes.
It's just funny. Cause my friends are like, you always have to fit that into the first, like 20 seconds of your introduction. And I'm like, people have to know.
[00:05:29] Speaker B: I feel like it immediately gives you some street credit.
[00:05:31] Speaker C: You're like, yeah, I know what I'm talking about. I'm from the Bronx. Excited to be here.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: And we love that. We always try to make sure we have some representation from the Bronx. Cause we work so closely with the folks in the Bronx. We have South Bronx unite. We've had some folks on Leslie from South Bronx unite on an episode last year.
[00:05:48] Speaker C: And shout out to Matthew Shore as well. Yes, he's my neighbor, actually, which is funny. He lives across the street from me. So I was having a party one day and I was like, hey, are you home? Do you want to come over? So that's great.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:05:59] Speaker C: Matthew does great work at South Bronx unit, for sure.
[00:06:01] Speaker B: Some interorganizational bonding. We love it. Yeah, we love it. Well, with that, let's jump right into the fun questions. First of which is what brought you into your current role at Riverside Park Conservancy and your work in general, working in parks and working on park related issues, for sure.
[00:06:19] Speaker C: So again, I'm the North park outreach coordinator. And kind of what that is, is we have 6 miles of park. We run from 59th street to 181st street. And that encompasses a couple different parks. Riverside Park, South Riverside park, robber, I guess, or main or however, West Harlem, Pierce Park, Sakura park, and a little bit of Fort Washington park as well. Not the entirety of Fort Washington, but like all the way up to the little red lighthouse and 181. So I work around 100 2125. So around Sakura, West Harlem, Pierce park, all the way up to the little red lighthouse. And part of my work is bringing in volunteers for that, bringing a lot more love for that side of the park, a lot more stewardship, working with our development team to bring in more funding. There is definitely a super big issue between the Upper west side portion of the park and the West Harlem Washington side portion. Of the park in terms of funding and in terms of inequity, in terms of disinvestment. And so talking a lot about that, which is really fun, talked to a couple of schools about the relation or connection between redlining the highway that Robert Moses built, the few that he built, the relation between what we're seeing in the park now, and that's been kind of cool, or not cool, really, but to talk about how things affected us are still affecting us today, especially in the northern parts of the park. And. Yeah, and a little bit of advocacy work. So I saw y'all at the environmental Bond act rally last year, and so that was something that. And 1% for parks as well, which I would love to talk about later, you know, and so focused a little bit on that advocacy portion, which is cool because I think that one of my brother, my family. I love my family, but they don't really know what I do. They're like, you just dig holes in the ground, right? And I'm like, yes. And so, like, I plant stuff. And then, you know, also kind of just trying to make sure that the park is part of the community or trying to bridge that gap between being a community member and then being a community member involved in the park and then also making sure that as a park, we're 6 miles long, we should be much more invested or at least knowledgeable about the needs of the surrounding neighborhoods. And so trying to make sure that we're as involved as possible is a lovely job, and I love it, and it's not stressful at all. So that's really helpful.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: I feel like it's. I can totally relate to what you said about your parents not understanding what you do. Cause, trust me, no chance.
[00:08:47] Speaker C: Green things. Environment.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Like, yeah, yeah, I love that our parents immediately, oh, you just plant trees and stuff. Like, no matter what you do in the environmental sector. Like, that's what it comes down to.
But I feel like one thing I appreciate you mentioning is the West Harlem Pierce park, because inherently, we got some connection there. I think we've maybe briefly talked about it in one of our past episodes, but it's great that that falls kind of under the work that y'all are doing. One thing I wanted to ask a little bit more about is, was there a moment for you when you realized, this is kind of what I want to do. This is what pulled me into this work. Cause I feel like a lot of people come at it from different directions, and there's different motivations for what's bringing you to that, yeah.
[00:09:30] Speaker C: Again, for the listeners, the questions are in front of me, and I realize I didn't answer the first question of what actually brought me to my current role. I just explained it. I'm so sorry. The moment, I guess. So I, born and raised in the Bronx, started off my career in the Bronx in social services. So I was actually in food insecurity and housing insecurity before I jumped into parks probably about a year and a half ago. And so there is kind of a correlation there, but it's not always, like, it's not super.
You can't see it, like, immediately. But I was actually the volunteer coordinator, and so I think in social services and at part of the solution, Potts Bronx, and I did a lot of work there. Again, kind of bridging the community between, you know, between the needs of the community and just the general community as a whole. Like, I looked a lot, I worked a lot with Fordham University or super elite private university that has a bunch of super big ten foot gates. But then, you know, the reality of it is that, like, five people just overdosed outside of your gates. Like, what are you doing? As such a big organization with a lot of money and a lot of funding, and yet there is so much injustice happening right outside of where you're at. And so that was really, really difficult. I did that work for four years and got kind of burnt out. COVID happened being involved in an emergency food provider, the second largest in the city, the first largest in the Bronx.
People coming to your doors, you can't touch them, trying to be like, hey, we need space here. Necessito espacio here. Entre los percionas. In between, everyone and everyone's just clamoring on top of each other because they're hungry. And then you see all these people are mostly elderly, and you're just like, oh, my God, my heart. And it's a really big problem. And so a lot of the work that I did there was talking about the injustices of the Bronx, but also talking about the beauty of the Bronx, because again, for the third time, born and raised, and we are the greenest borough. We have the largest parks. We have Pelham Bay Parkway, Van Corland park, and yet we also have the. We are, like, number 62 or 65 something, 60 something out of 60 something counties in New York state that have the worst health disparities. Asthma is hereditary. My father was born and raised in the South Bronx, and we all have asthma. Great. You know, talking a lot about both those beauties and injustices was part of it, you know, my job, it got to just be a lot. After COVID, it just, you know, you get burned out in that kind of job. And I think taking care of yourself mentally is something that I'm still struggling with. And so during COVID I became a licensed hiking guide, which is really fun to tell people because you're like, you're from the city. Like, what, hiking? And I'm like, let me tell you, the hiking in the city or the importance of green spaces in the city and, like, access to that. Like, I think people don't know that you can reach Van Cortlandt park on the BX nine, or you can reach Inwood Hill park on the one train or the a train, or you can take the metro north to Hudson Valley. And this is where your mental reset could happen. You know, this is where you could not be burnt out. And so I started doing that, and I think that's the reason why. Cause I didn't come into the park with any park experience, and so I didn't think I would get the job. But then I just started talking about green spaces, like, how I'm doing right now. And they're like, mmm, you know, some stuff. You don't know too much about plants, but you know that green spaces are important. So we'll get you. We'll get you this job. And so I was like, yeah, they're.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: Like, you get it. You get it.
[00:13:01] Speaker C: You get why we're here.
[00:13:03] Speaker B: Yeah. I really appreciate you kind of sharing that personal background, because I feel like, like I said, so many people come to this work in different ways. And having that moment where you realize, like, this is such an important benefit and resource to all of us. And being able to live that mission, I feel like, means a lot to bring you there. And I know you said you didn't feel like you answered the question in the first place, but I feel like it's helpful to get that perspective of what it actually looks like, and we'll maybe talk about this more if we have time, what it actually looks like to work in a park, you know, because I feel like, like you said, thinking about our parents, they have a very specific idea what that means, but there's, from what you said, there's so many dimensions to it. So we. Hopefully, you can unpack that a little bit more. But we have some questions to get through.
[00:13:42] Speaker A: So one of the things that I thought was very interesting in kind of how you ended up in the park was you mentioned a lot of different things, but you know that. But when we kind of hit that COVID pandemic and the world knew what to do, didn't know what to do. I was also in healthcare at the time, at the start of it all doing operations and works like that. So my burnout was real as well. But one of the things that I think people discovered kind of there was this moment of togetherness and bliss that we did have. It was short lived, I will say, during kind of like lockdowns, where parks became extremely important to people, like going outside, being able to even remotely socialize by being distanced for something, but be able to go outside, be able to appreciate what parks do and the purpose of parks and everything like that, I thought was amazing. And one of my two parks that's in my home parks, one of them is Riverside park, the West Holland pier right there as well, with Riverside. And then also on the east side of where I live is St. Nicholas park.
[00:14:41] Speaker C: Nice. Okay.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: So one of the kind of questions that I want to ask so that people can kind of understand a little bit is I didn't realize, and we can touch on this a little bit, the kind of inequities within Riverside park. You mentioned that. But one thing that I've always been curious about is the difference between a park that has a conservancy and one that does not have a conservancy. And, like, I did not know that there was even inequities within parks that had conservancies. So if you want to kind of explain that a little bit to the folks of, like, what the difference is and talk a little bit about those inequities that you see within the park.
[00:15:11] Speaker C: For sure. Thanks for asking that. Shout out to Lasharon Pierce park and waterfront access. So I was thinking about this question about the differences between a conservancy, like a park with a conservancy and a park with without one and those inequities now, I just keep thinking of the negatives of it, and I'm like, I'm working for this conservancy and I'm representing it on this podcast. So I should also talk about those positives. But I think that there are definitely a lot of negatives because a park with a conservancy, you know, the positive is that we have a lot more attention drawn out to us. We have more workers and staff who can, like, we're the park's advocate. So, you know, we're also helping to create a space for local communities to come together, whether that's through you know, your dog run or, you know, this really pretty pollinator Meadow. Or the playgrounds have a lot of, like, all those spaces have a lot of volunteer groups or community members just attached to them in the sense that they go there every day or they go there once a week or whatever, but they really care about it. And so when, for example, on the upper west side portion of the park, somebody frequents, I don't know, hippo playground in the eighties, right? But if there are benches in hippo playground that aren't, that are falling apart, we can have people from the Upper west side, you know, kind of draw attention to that. People in the community can draw attention to that. That then gets brought to the conservancy, who has a whole development team, who has an outreach coordinator, who has, you know, an executive director, who has ties to local evolved officials, who are like, hey, 2000 people use this park a day. And half of them came to me saying that these benches are unsafe. The benefit of that is that you can also get people from the Upper west side portion of the park to donate or to fundraise or to give their own money or to become donors. We don't have that option in West Harlem and Washington Heights, because if you look at salary rates, excuse me, between West Harlem and Upper west side, you see a significant difference. People utilize the park on the northern parts of the park, but it's not like people can just give me money for all the broken benches that we have or all the garbage cans that.
That we don't have. Right? So there's that inequity. And then I think the difference is a park with conservancy versus a park without. Again, we just have more love. Like, we can advocate more. And that sucks, because there are places like Jhead Wright park, for example, in Washington Heights. Great park is actually like a connector park into Fort Washington, which is amazing. But they don't have a conservancy, which means that they don't have as many gardeners, they don't have as many outreach coordinators. They just have the parks department, which is amazing. We love the parks department. We work side by side with them, and they need more funding. They currently only have 0.6% of the city budget, which is equivalent to something like $600 million. I'm approximating there. And we're fighting for 1%. We act is also part of the 1% for parks campaign. We're also a part of that, because in New York City, it's something like, we have one gardener for every 114 acres in cities like Chicago, they have one gardener for every 18 acres. And so when you have a conservancy, you're just able to give more love to the park. And that's amazing. And Riverside park is super important, but those small pocket parks are also hella important because they also help fight things like the urban heat island effect. Right. And so when we don't give love to those parks, we lose that funding, and then those parks become not the super greatest place. They don't have proper lighting, whatever. Right. And that sucks because those are actually also much more accessible parks to go to sometimes than some places in our park, like Fort Washington park. Super inaccessible. Right. And so I think that, you know, with conservancies, you can bring a lot more love and attention. And I love Riverside park. They gave me this job and it's great. And they have more funding to do that. But then, you know, parks without conservancies are also not, you know, they're getting the brunt of everything. They're not getting as much love as we could give them. And I think that bigger parks like Riverside park, like Central park, like, you know, whatever you can name prospect Van Cortlandt, all those parks with like, friends of or conservancies attached to them can also bring more attention to that, I think, too. Okay, I have to say that, but also shout out to my home, one Pelham Bay park.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: So, yeah, I really do appreciate that kind of conversation and kind of breaking it out for folks to understand what the differences are. There are some benefits, obviously, but those are, those benefits are not necessarily seen equally throughout all the parks in New York City, unfortunately. And I definitely resonate with the difference between the Upper west side and West Harlem, Washington heights. Again, you don't have necessarily the money. And if you've been along Upper west side and you've been along riverside parking, you see those buildings just walk through.
[00:19:58] Speaker C: All those 6 miles and you can just see all the differences just between how nice and shiny and safe. Like, there's much more lighting, things like that in the 59th street to 120th portions of the park versus, like, the northern parts of the park. And I'm like, oh, this looks darker and less. You know, there are some, like, wild portions that we've kept in the northern parts of the park. But just in terms of, like, you can tell that some gardens weren't as well maintained because we don't have enough funding or staff or gardeners or volunteers.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: I'm like, yeah, I think a lot of people don't even understand how much that kind of goes into the maintenance of a park. Like, I think some people think a park is there and you just let it do its thing. You ain't gotta do nothing, gotta prune anything. You don't have to take anything down, just let it run wild. And it's like, no. Parks are meticulously maintained when they do have the proper funding to do that, are sweating. So can you take a second to just talk about some of those jobs and the things that come from maintaining a park?
[00:20:57] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. One of the things I also wanted to. One of the supervisors, Manuel Alarcon, also wanted me to share about the different landscapes that we now have to do because of climate change. We're going to have to find a different plant material to withstand some of the weather that we're having. Whether it's. We're facing super severe drought in the summers, or whether we're just having a hurricane every week. We're going to have to find different plant landscapes to be able to respond well to the weather, I guess. Right. Or else everything's just going to die and look bare and just be lawn, which is great, I guess so, yeah. We do a lot of work trying to revive and make sure that our native plants are alive and well and not struggling. We do have a lot of. A lot of people call them invasive plants. I call them introduced species. They both mean the same thing of just a lot of introduced species kind of taking over the native plants. Our native plants are important for things like pollinators, like bees and butterflies, birds, and all those lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely things. So that's really important to take care of those spaces. We also take care of fallen limbs, like tree limbs, the broken branches. We have really specific memorial aspects in the park, like Ralph Ellison Memorial on 150th, 151st street, that we want to make sure we keep tidy and maintained. We plant a bunch of azaleas there in the spring, and they're beautiful. And so a lot of it. A lot of it is beauty and aesthetic. Sorry. When you live in an apartment along Riverside Park Drive and look down and you see these beautiful things, it's like, we take care of that for y'all to kind of have enjoyment from that. And it's not a bad thing, I think, to think, to plan around like, the beauty and aesthetic of a park as well, but also like, we're meticulous in thinking about. We want more native plants here. We need the bees and the birds to come back, and we need to keep things like spotted lanternflies out of this park, right.
[00:23:00] Speaker A: Do not get me started on the spotted lanternflies. I was hoping you would mention this.
[00:23:03] Speaker C: I wanna talk about these invasives.
[00:23:06] Speaker A: It is my passion. When I start seeing them, I will literally spend hours killing them.
[00:23:11] Speaker C: You are not the only one. We have so many people that are like, I did 532 today. I was like, 532. We killed 532 lanternflies. And I was like, good for you. I'm proud of you. Do you wanna work for us?
[00:23:24] Speaker A: And we will definitely put in the show notes for anyone who doesn't know about the spotted lanternfly. And once you see, and once you know what it's there and that you can kill them, you will. You will see them everywhere and you will just start doing it.
[00:23:35] Speaker B: You will quit TikTok to get in this game.
One of my favorite things, I remember when I first learned about this, I saw this video of this lady. I don't remember where she was at, but she had like, a bugs, she had equipment, she had an arsenal, a utility belt around her waist of equipment. She's like, this is my full time job now.
[00:23:52] Speaker C: Oh, my goodness. It's like a new pokemon go. I feel like because you see people, like, going like that, I'm like, what are you, what are you doing? What did you get doing?
[00:23:58] Speaker B: Yes. I love that.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: If you really want to get involved in parks and an easy way to volunteer without volunteering, we can just go to a park one afternoon and start killing some lanternflies.
[00:24:06] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:24:06] Speaker B: Go to your nearest dollar store, get yourself a little badge, and just put lanternfly assailant.
[00:24:11] Speaker C: Put the RPC logo on it. I support. I don't get.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: But as someone who has spent a lot of time in Riverside Park, I do appreciate all the work that you all put in to make it beautiful and keep it operational.
[00:24:23] Speaker C: We have a lot of really steep slopes that are hard to get to as well. And so things like that, like, we'll have a lot of, like, 30, 50 volunteer person groups. So, like, a lot of that too, especially in the spring and summer and fall. Like, our peak seasons are spring and fall for volunteer groups. And so having them come out and, like, hoards is amazing because they can do a bunch of work in, like, 3 hours. Right. And so to change a whole landscape in 3 hours, it's just a great thing. So thank you to those volunteer groups.
[00:24:49] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. We've already touched on a lot of different things that you've talked about already, whether it be you've mentioned extreme heat, you talk about quality of life and just the aesthetics of a park as well, and what it can do for a community, which is why it's important to kind of deal with those disparities between neighborhoods. Because if you have a beautiful park that you can be proud of and look at and be a part, and be a part of, you know, just. It just does something. Something to you. But why are parks important and what benefits and value do they bring to the community?
[00:25:15] Speaker C: Sure, I think that a lot of people do talk about the mental wellness and the connection between that and parks, and it's absolutely lovely.
I think the more parks that we have, definitely the better of a mental reset we can get. Right. Studies have shown it's linked to less anxiety, less depression. There's something I also want to talk about as well, because recently as I went through the past year or two, found out about it, and it's wild to me. I'm also a part of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, and we do a lot of health justice work fighting for the New York Health act, which will guarantee healthcare for all New Yorkers, regardless of employment, regardless of status, regardless of XYZ, which is amazing. And when I was jumping into parks and looking at park inequity, I also saw that there was such a huge correlation between asthma rates and how close you live to a park and hospitalization rates and how close you live to a park.
The farther away you live from a park, the more likely you are to be hospitalized for a lung related issue. And it's wild to me cause I think of my father was born and raised in the south Bronx. Didn't have any green spaces there. My father unfortunately died from the COVID-19 pandemic. And so I'm also doing emergency food services thinking of my father. And then I'm going on solo hikes to just kind of like, I couldn't see people, I couldn't hug my family. I couldn't do any of that. But then I started thinking of how my father was. Was raised. I started thinking about all the asthma and lung problems that he had and how that was probably helpful in his decline to COVID. And I'm thinking, oh, shoot, this is a direct correlation. Living next to a park. I wouldn't want to say it's a life or death issue, but it could be. And I think about that a lot because of the work in health justice that I do in the Bronx, because of my father, because of the fact that I work for a park now, and because of the fact that the reason why I'm a hiking guide on my own time is because of that. I need that connection to happen between New York City folk and nature. It's not just for your mental wellbeing. That's amazing. It could literally.
It could literally change your ability to breathe. And that kind of sucks to think about. And that's why I think about the pocket parks like that, because having pocket parks would help in that front as well. Riverside park is 6 miles, but it's only along one strip. And having those pocket parks, like, when you look at the aerial view of it, like, having those pocket trees would be amazing. And I think a lot of people saw that article between, like, a year or two ago of, like, the 30 degree difference between.
I forget what neighborhoods it was. It was. I'll just name two. River. Like, 30 degree difference between Riverdale, which has a lot of trees and has Vanquitland park, versus East Harlem. Right. No trees, no parks. And so, you know, thinking about heat and how we had people where I used to work out in the super kitchen, they would faint online because we couldn't have them inside, so we had them wait outside. And it's summer. It's like June 2020. Right.
We had a few people faint, and I just remember calling the ambulance and not, you know, having a difficult time figuring out how to move them and touch them because it's COVID and I couldn't. But also to make sure that they're in resting position. Right. So we had no trees on that block. We had no shade, and that kind of sucked. So I. Yeah, it might be indirect, but, like, I definitely think that the importance of. There's definitely that health value of parks, and it just makes me think a lot of just really severe cases of asthma, really severe cases of heat stroke.
There's so much of that direct correlation to dying if you don't live next to a park, next to green spaces. I don't know if that's a big stretch or not, but there is a correlation of some sort. And so it's more into fun parks as well as, like, the street maintenance for street trees as well. If you don't have a park, like, having trees on your block would be amazing. My apartment is so hot in the summer because I don't have trees on my block, and it's just sun, and I love the sun, but I'm gonna die if I don't get this ac in my window soon.
[00:29:31] Speaker B: So, yeah, I feel like you touched on a lot of important things in there, so I appreciate that. You know, we touched on the mental health benefits, the physical health benefits. Obviously, there's some ecological benefits, too. For the sake of time, we don't need to go into this. But I figured you mentioned this earlier, and I want to give you space to kind of circle back to this because it's kind of embedded in this question. But the 1% for parks with all of these benefits, all this value that parks are adding to our communities, why is it important to fund parks, and how does the 1% for parks fit into that? And is there anything else that you wanted to kind of say in that video?
[00:30:04] Speaker C: Yeah, no, I think. Thank you for asking. 1% for parks. I realize that. Not a lot of, like, my friend, like, so if you're in, like, the parks world or in, like, the environment world, you might know more about it. But I realized, like, not as many people who are outside of that know about that. Right. And it's just like you're in your own little bubble. 1% for parks is definitely super important. We're literally just asking for double what we're getting, which, again, is something like zero point five, zero point six percent of the budget. There are so many jobs that are gonna be lost if we don't fund parks. There are so many important initiatives like composting that won't get properly funded if we lose this funding or if we don't get this funding. But it's just like, also, if you think in comparison to other cities that are getting so much more funding, we're like, yeah. Oh, that's great that y'all care about the environment. Why don't we? We definitely deserve all this as well. We definitely deserve funding for parks. We definitely deserve clean parks. We definitely deserve parks with proper lighting. We definitely want to increase job security as well within parks. It's definitely such a great opportunity to work out and in your local park and in your communities.
And so 1% per parks is that is just funding your communities is putting investment in communities, as well as putting investment in places that people often frequent, like, during the pandemic, where did everyone go? Because they couldn't go anywhere else, the park. So funding that, you know, and working with New Yorkers for parks, for this 1% for Parks campaign has been really eye opening, for sure, and something that I really, really hope everyone supports.
[00:31:38] Speaker B: Thank you so much. So many reasons to support parks, to volunteer for parks, to remind folks why funding for parks is important. So thank you again, Stephanie. We hope to have you again soon.
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[00:32:01] Speaker A: Dot check out weact on Facebook.
That's w e a C t f o R e J. Also on Instagram X and YouTube at weact for EJ. That's w e a c t, number four, ej. And check out our website, weact.org, for more information about environmental justice.
[00:32:19] Speaker B: All right, and until next time, support your local park. Go parks.
