S2E5: Parks and Reparations with Deborah Marton
In Episode 5, The Move Podcast interviews Deborah Marton, Executive Director of the New York Restoration Project (NYRP). Co-hosts Ceasar and Ayushi discuss the fraught history of land ownership, the possibility of neigbhors developing their own neighborhood, and the power of public space in bringing together community members with disparate histories and cultures.
Deborah Marton: [00:00:00] In a way it’s like a reparation question, using land to give people back a sense of place and uh, uh, a sense of identity like that they’re connected to place.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:00:16] So, (Ayushi), how you doing?
Ayushi Roy: [00:00:18] I’m good. How are you?
Ceasar McDowell: [00:00:20] I’m fine. You know when we started this season out-
Ayushi Roy: [00:00:23] Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ceasar McDowell: [00:00:23] One of the things we said we’re gonna do is we’re just gonna try to discover what’s going on out there-
Ayushi Roy: [00:00:27] Yeah-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:00:27] In the world with different actors-
Ayushi Roy: [00:00:28] Yeah-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:00:29] You know, and so part of discovery is like doing research and finding out what’s going on, being rigorous about making sure you’ve really covered every bases. Sometimes part of it is just like sitting still and see what comes.
Ayushi Roy: [00:00:42] Mmm-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:00:42] And I was at the (Just City)conference.
Ayushi Roy: [00:00:43] Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ceasar McDowell: [00:00:45] At, uh, Harvard-
Ayushi Roy: [00:00:46] Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ceasar McDowell: [00:00:46] And I’m sitting down next to this person and she gets introduced, and she talks about what she’s doing-
Ayushi Roy: [00:00:55] Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ceasar McDowell: [00:00:56] In New York City-
Ayushi Roy: [00:00:57] Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ceasar McDowell: [00:00:58] With pub- you know as a place that h- h- holds land in public trust-
Ayushi Roy: [00:01:02] Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ceasar McDowell: [00:01:03] And how they’re using that to actually build community-
Ayushi Roy: [00:01:07] Wow-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:01:08] And I turned to Deborah Marton and said, uh, “Would you like to be in our-
(laughs).
Podcast series?” Uh, I didn’t even know her. You know it was just kinda like, okay, here’s someone who’s actually declaring-
Ayushi Roy: [00:01:19] Yeah-
In this conference that they’re doing something that we’re really interested in from a totally different perspective. So I invited her on the show, I hope you don’t mind.
Uh, I mean I guess it’s too late (laughs).
Ceasar McDowell: [00:01:31](laughs). Oh, okay.
Ayushi Roy: [00:01:32] I’m just messing. I’m so excited to talk to her. I mean even on the initial conversation I had with her, it’s incredible to watch, I think just her brain and her wheels like spin as to how, yeah, we can use park land or land just to bring people together, so here we have (Deborah Martin).
Ceasar McDowell: [00:01:50] Deborah, it’s so great to have you here, and you know the- the funny thing about it is we just- we just met, was it two weeks ago?
Deborah Marton: [00:01:59] Yeah.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:02:00] Two weeks ago we were at a (Just Cities)Conference at Harvard, sitting next to each other, and then as we go around and hear what people are talking about, what they’re doing, I just leaned over and said, “I think we should talk.”
Deborah Marton: [00:02:14](laughs).
(laughs).
(laughs). You know I felt like that about everyone who was there. Uh, I’m still thinking about that conference, it was so interesting and- and unusual, really. I’m, uh, I’m trying to think about what we could with all that good energy.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:02:27] Yeah. It was an interesting set of people who were brought together by (Tony Griffin)and uh-
Ayushi Roy: [00:02:32] Oh, yeah-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:02:33] Around her Just City initiative-
Ayushi Roy: [00:02:35] That’s awesome.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:02:35] Um, really just talking about how well those ideals r- resonated with people and if folks would be interested in doing some- something around it. So I think something will come out of it.
Ayushi Roy: [00:02:47](laughs).
For sure.
Deborah Marton: [00:02:47] Yeah, I mean I felt like for me, the biggest take away was the idea that, and this is relevant to our conversation today, sometimes what you need to do is not do what you could do-
Ayushi Roy: [00:03:03] Mmm-
Deborah Marton: [00:03:04](laughs).
Can you say more about that-
Ayushi Roy: [00:03:05] Yeah, (crosstalk)tell us more about that (laughs).
Ceasar McDowell: [00:03:05](crosstalk). That’s- that’s really-
Deborah Marton: [00:03:06] You know I was just reading somewhere that today, 40% of the nation’s wealth sits in 1% of our population and I read that in an article about- about young people who have grown up in great wealth and they’re questioning the idea that somehow they earned it or deserve it, and something that came up at the Just City assembly was this idea that sometimes what people who are- are living with privilege need to do is to not take what they could take as a result of their privilege-
Ayushi Roy: [00:03:45] Hmm-
Deborah Marton: [00:03:46] That’s what I mean by not doing, and I actually think that, that kind of abstinence or selflessness for a lack of a better way to describe it, is an immensely hard, but like necessary step that we have to take in our like development as a nation (laughs).
Ayushi Roy: [00:04:05] Yeah, yeah-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:04:06] Yeah, that’s really right on-
Ayushi Roy: [00:04:07] Ooh-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:04:07] Really well said, well said, uh-
Ayushi Roy: [00:04:10] The idea of self-regulation, I think it’s interesting that you used abstinence as the way of thinking about it, but like, yeah, self-regulation or self-checks. I feel like it’s such a foreign concept. It’s like, well if I can, why wouldn’t I? Right? Like isn’t that (laughs)(crosstalk). What’s wro- what’s wrong, I don’t get it (laughs).
Deborah Marton: [00:04:27] Yeah, I mean the whole idea of capitalism is that, uh, you would maximize your let’s say material or other kinds of wealth to the extent that you possibly could, right?
Ayushi Roy: [00:04:39] Right, right. And I feel like this is a lot about … I mean this- this seems to be … I feel like we’re talking in parallel to the history of the New York Restoration Project as well, right? A lot of the sort of idea of, you know, self-regulation and how you can be a better part of creating a sense of civic place is such a big part of the story for you guys.
Deborah Marton: [00:05:00] It is, absolutely. Yeah.
Ayushi Roy: [00:05:02] I want to hear more about that (laughs).
Ceasar McDowell: [00:05:03] Yeah, like how did you start and where’d it come from?
Deborah Marton: [00:05:06] So the organization started when Bette Midler moved back to New York from LA, and she was driving around town, this was the early 90s, and she was horrified at the condition of a lot of our open spaces, you know, on the sides of highways, but parks, community gardens, the- the whole lot, and she started NYRP initially to have a group of people come together to pick up trash, that’s how the organization started in 1995 when- when we were founded. Over time, what’s evolved is this kind of understanding that while we both manage and own land, we- we manage land that we own, and we manage land that’s owned by the city of New York, and build on land that’s owned by many different private entities and- and city agencies. What we’ve done is- i- is kind of shifted from an, uh, an approach that looks at like, what’s the negative thing that we, NYRP, need to fix to a more asset-based approach where we’re thinking, what’s the thing that we can build on in the communities that we’re in, so that we can help people-
Ayushi Roy: [00:06:11] Mmm-
Deborah Marton: [00:06:12] Or- or pr- or sort of set the table for communities to, in a sense, self-govern and take back, uh, land that they themselves can use, both for recreation and growing vegetables, but also as a- as a locus for collective action.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:06:29] So just for our listeners here, and actually for us, uh, really, I’m curious, can you tell me a little bit about like the kinds of things that you do? What’s the repertoire of your work?
Deborah Marton: [00:06:39] We manage … We have a little less than 100 acres under our management at all times, and that is 80 acres of parkland that we manage through a license with the city of New York, it’s in northern Manhattan, in the Inwood neighborhood. So that’s like, um, along the Harlem River, all the way at the top of north tip of Manhattan. For many, many years, New York City has been evolving towards a, uh, a kind of a public/private partnership model when it comes to parkland, and that means that there’s a conservancy or some other private entity associated with public land, and that private entity raises funds to care for and maintain that public land, and that works really well when you’re in communities that have resources. It doesn’t work so well in communities that are underresourced.
So we have been working to kind of develop a different model, and- and you know, I want to say it was some success and- and some struggles because the- the communities that we’re in don’t have the same kind of resources, so that private/public partnership model doesn’t really apply exactly to those spaces. So it’s 80 acres of parkland, but then we also own and manage 52 community gardens across New York City. And those we own outright, so they’re concentrated in northern Manhattan, South Bronx, and Central Brooklyn, and they overlap almost exactly with New York City’s lowest meeting income neighborhoods, and then the other big programs that we’ve been a part of that was, uh, one was the Million Trees program, and we partnered with, uh, New York City Parks Department to plant a million trees. We were responsible for a quarter of those million trees-
Ayushi Roy: [00:08:16] Wow-
Deborah Marton: [00:08:16] And that we established that, and planted the last tree in 2015, and then we have an ongoing program which is really our- our focus for the future, two programs, one is called, Gardens For The City, that’s an application program where community groups, uh, schools, (inaudible), New York City Housing Authority, uh, folks who have an open space, but they don’t have resources to- to build it into something usable will apply to us, and then we’ll seek funding, and once funded, we’ll build that space and usually that’s sort of an urban ag kind of thing, but it can be like play areas for children. It can be, uh, just a sitting area, quiet sitting area.
So we’ve build some almost 300 of those over the years, over the past like eight years, mostly on New York City Housing Authority property and also schoolyards, but a lot of faith based institutions, community centers, senior centers. And then finally the last thing is we’ve been working for years now, with the South Bronx community to implement a plan for a new connected network of open spaces called, The Haven Project, and The Haven Project’s first, very first, uh, phase and very first project of the first phase is partially funded. It’s a peer park on the east side of Port Morris, and that’s a long-term, probably 20, 25 year project. So that- that’s the work, that’s the footprint in a nutshell.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:09:46] Wow, so, now as I’m listening to you, I mean first of all, congratulations (crosstalk).
Ayushi Roy: [00:09:50] Yeah (laughs).
Ceasar McDowell: [00:09:50](crosstalk). That’s an amazing (laughs)amount of things, uh, that you’ve done-
Deborah Marton: [00:09:54](crosstalk). I’m not doing it alone, I want to say-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:09:55] Yeah-
Ayushi Roy: [00:09:57](laughs).
But what strikes me in this conversation, uh, you know as you know of this- this season, we’re really kind of looking at folks and organizations that people don’t normally think of as holding civic space, and I’m realizing, listening to you, that actually there’s a physical aspect of holding civic space that you’re actually doing, creating these parks and other spaces that exist in the city, and I guess a question for me, like if you weren’t there to do that, right, if that Midler hadn’t been mad at the trash-
(laughs).
And then started to create an organization that can develop and do this, who would’ve created those spaces before? What would’ve happened? What do you think … I’m just trying to understand like-
Deborah Marton: [00:10:40] Yeah, yeah-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:10:41] Who- who’s in this space to actually pay attention to something that’s so vital-
Ayushi Roy: [00:10:45] Hmm-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:10:45] To a sense of connection to the places we’re in and maybe the people that we live with?
Deborah Marton: [00:10:50] I think there’s multiple answers to that question, at the outset, it’s always the community itself who usually starts to use spaces like there’s a vacant lot and people don’t really know, you know necessarily who owns it, and they start using that land, and that you know talking about community gardens more than- than parks. I think that’s usually who’s in that- that space, and New York City has like, something like 700 community gardens in total. I think it’s the most of any city in the nation, many of them are on parkland, and then there are other smaller … We’re the largest private landholder of that kind of public open space in the city, but there are other land trusts like the Brooklyn Queens Land Trust, and the Bronx Manhattan Land Trust, that are kind of like umbrellas that hold, let’s say 20 or 50, uh, community gardens like we do.
The difference in our model is that there’s the top-down model and the bottom-up model. The top-down model is like government says like, “Here, you community, here’s a garden. You take it and we’re gonna regulate what happens here.” The bottom-up model is, “Here, you community, there’s a vacant lot. We don’t really have much to provide for you in the way of modeling governance or technical support, or anything, but like you know have at it.” And there are problems with both of those models.
So what I have observed over the years that I’ve been with NYRP and work with really extraordinary communities and incredible community engagement professionals is that it’s really helpful when you have an organization that functions as a kind of facilitator to provide support as a kind of safety net, or a, uh, a backstop to build strength in communities, and that once the- the governance of those spaces is up and running, they can carry forward on their own, and- and then the organization can deploy its resources elsewhere, but it happens sometimes when you’re dealing with community that, you know, people die or something happens, or there’s an expense, like an extraordinary expense, like a sinkhole opens up or whatever weird things happen, particularly when you’re talking about underresourced communities. It’s really helpful to have an umbrella organization like NYRP that has some resources on the outside to- to be a partner.
And so, ultimately, that’s the point that we’re trying to get our spaces to, that the governance (inaudible)in the garden is so strong that we really consider that group our partner. It’s not like that group of people is using NYRP’s space, but rather, it’s our partner who’s caring for this space in the commu- and it’s- and it’s their space in that community, and we’ll come, we’ll step in if we’re needed, but it- it’s really not, uh, for us to determine what happens in that space because we don’t live there and we don’t care for it.
Ayushi Roy: [00:13:35] This idea of stepping back is so incredible, ’cause I feel like, you know, we start off talking about this idea of self-regulation, and knowing you know what to take and when not to, or when to act and when not to act, and I feel like it’s so rare for organizations to want to make themself archaic, even though that’s often what, especially direct service nonprofits, or governments, or other organizations that work on social services try to do. So I would love to hear more about this idea of, you know, wanting the governance to be sustained by the community themself. Like can you give us maybe a particular story or a particular garden where this played out and how it played out?
Deborah Marton: [00:14:14] Sure. So when we first acquired our gardens in 2000, the idea was that why should, uh, uh, underresourced communities not have the same kind of beautiful landscape architecture and experience of nature that- that other more better resourced communities have. So our board pulled together and- and um, you know famous landscape architects were hired to- to do designs to renovate our spaces and they were done. We had one garden that was in a community that at that time still had the kind of problems with violence, and it was in a community where people didn’t feel quite safe, and this garden’s a narrow space from the front to the back, and the design was made in such a way that there was a kind of a windy path and you couldn’t see from the front to the back, and consequently, the back became a place where illicit activities happened and even someone overdosed (crosstalk).
Ayushi Roy: [00:15:10] Oh, wow.
Deborah Marton: [00:15:10] And- and mothers with children … It was supposed to be a children’s garden. Mothers with children would never go there because they would hear like, what we find in the back. So fast-forward to the present, the first thing that we implemented about eight years ago was, uh, we don’t do any renovation without going out to the community and saying to people … Oh, we have like a very, um, well-established now, three meeting process, where the first meeting, we’ll reach out to people who’ll say, “What do you … What’s your dreams for how you want to live? What would you do with this space? You know, if you could do anything here, what- what would you do?” And we draw that net widely so it’s like neighbors, faith based institutions, public housing residents, schools, whoever’s around. So typically those meetings, they can have like 30, 40, 50 folks show up for the first meeting and tell us how they- what they want, then we’ll come back, show people models, a second meeting and a third meeting say, “Okay, we heard you. This is what we’re building.”
So that process achieves two things, one is it tells us what people want and it’s not always (inaudible). I mean sometimes … A lot of times, people want places to grow frui- fruit and vegetables, but sometimes there’s like a senior center nearby and people just want a quiet sitting area, or there’s many daycare centers and they actually really need play equipment. We- we don’t know, we don’t live there, and- and we need to know. And then the other thing that it accomplishes is- is because we’re not New York City and we’re kind of fast and nimble, and we- we make things happen quickly, from the first meeting to the time that we’ve actually build … complete the renovation, usually is no more than a year and a half to two years. So in that, in that time horizon, people who have c- who have given their time and their thoughts to this process can see their input reflected in the build work. So I- I really think speed is actually like a really important thing-
Ayushi Roy: [00:17:09](laughs). Yeah-
Deborah Marton: [00:17:10](crosstalk). You know especially in underresourced communities, I think a lot of times people are … and we talked about this at the Just Cities assembly. I think a lot of times people are suffer- suffering from planning fatigue because sometimes, you know, the municipality has come to say to them like, “Oh, what do you want?” When people share their dreams, and people become cynical, that just why doesn’t anything ever happen? So the fact that we own the land and that we can move quickly is I think huge, and the result is that then when we’re ready to build the gar- what we call the garden group, there already folks who are saying like, “Yeah, you know I said we needed this, and now I see you built it.”
So we had that age- experience recently in a garden that we renovated in (Morrisania), which is in the Central Bronx. It’s a rela- mostly low-income, but working-class people live there, and it’s a good neighborhood, and there’s you know people are just trying to make their way in the world, lot of recent immigrants, and we had a quite large space, about 11,000 square feet in that neighborhood that we just didn’t have the resources to renovate, and what happened there is what happens unfortunately in open spaces that are … that don’t have the kind of management that we help and provide with is that there were like a few men who kind of took over, and I say men, just because part of what happened there was that people felt intimidated, and consequently, these three or four people treated the garden like it was a private space.
So when we bec- began the renovation process, there’s a school across the street that has 1,000 elementary school students, 1,000, and they have no green outdoor space at all, zero. They have an outdoor play yard that’s like an asphalt yard that’s very, very hot, and it’s just, you know, like not- not what you want for children.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:18:59] How long was that, uh … I’m- I’m just trying to get a timeframe. Like have this been going on for a year-
Ayushi Roy: [00:19:04] Right-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:19:04] Two years, 10 years (crosstalk).
Deborah Marton: [00:19:06] Before the garden got renovated?
Ceasar McDowell: [00:19:07] Yeah, when you saw these-
Deborah Marton: [00:19:08] So that was years.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:19:11] Years, and so, people had just gotten accustomed to it and-
Ayushi Roy: [00:19:13] Wow-
Deborah Marton: [00:19:14] People just got accustomed to it, so much so, that when I went to the principal across the street, and even though there was a sign on the gate, and the garden was open part, you know, part of the time every week in a season, when I went to the principal of the school across the street and told him, “You know, um, we now have resources and we’re gonna renovate this space.” He- he said, “What do you mean? I- I thought it was Willy’s property.”
Ayushi Roy: [00:19:38](laughs).
(crosstalk). And I said, “No, actually (crosstalk).
Oh, gosh (crosstalk)(laughs).
Deborah Marton: [00:19:43](crosstalk). Uh, so he was like stunned by that, but we became … The school became our best partner, and the science teachers actually helped us design the garden, and that now led to them using the half of the garden which is considered like part of the garden that’s the children’s garden, they use it for science classes, and they are the core of our garden group. They have like, at NYRP, we don’t open-
Ayushi Roy: [00:20:07] Wow-
Deborah Marton: [00:20:07] And close our gardens. It’s the garden group who holds … the key holders who open and close the garden in the schools, and that particular garden is our- our … one of our strongest partners.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:20:17] So, okay. Deborah, I want to slow you down-
Ayushi Roy: [00:20:19](laughs).
Because there’s a whole lot in what you just said, like-
Deborah Marton: [00:20:23](laughs).
(laughs).
Okay, what happened to Willy? And (laughs).
Oh-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:20:27] And what did Willy have to say (crosstalk), you know? (laughs)(crosstalk). And like, I can imagine you know these five guys hanging around, “This is our space,” and then all of the sudden, “Hey, I want to let 1,000 kids in here.” They’re gonna go (crosstalk), “Yeah, right.” (laughs).
Ayushi Roy: [00:20:41](laughs). What happened to Willy? (laughs).
Deborah Marton: [00:20:43] Willy … not withstanding the fact that people were a little freaked out about coming into that garden. Willy was in his way … He was … He loved that garden-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:20:52] Yeah-
Deborah Marton: [00:20:52] I think he was caring for it in his way, even though he had like rabbits, and chickens, and dogs, and they were just like, it was a whole menagerie (crosstalk).
Ayushi Roy: [00:21:00](laughs).
He was … He loved it. So when we began this process, our extraordinary community engagement team led by a woman named, (Anelle Cabrera-Morris), who really brought our community engagement to another level, but what we did was all, at every step of the way, we said to Willy, “Willy, we’re renovating this site. We want you to be part of the garden group. The garden’s gonna be closed for this amount of time while we do the renovation, but when it reopens, we want you back and we want your help.” And he is there, he’s still there now. He’s now part of the group that shares the governance of the space, and it’s a healthier relationship to that land for- for the whole community.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:21:42] Yeah, I think one of the things-
Ayushi Roy: [00:21:43] Oh-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:21:43] That’s really beautiful about this, and again, when we were first starting out this series for this time, we were talking about, you know, new actors in the civic space and-
Deborah Marton: [00:21:52] Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ceasar McDowell: [00:21:52] I think sometimes people don’t think about … You can raise the question, well, why are people who are dealing with community gardens considered part of that? I think with your story is illustrating is something that we don’t often see, and the public doesn’t often get to do, which is to imagine something to work with someone to bring it into being, and then to have the responsibility for actually moving it forward, and carrying it forward, and taking care of. So much of our life right now, you know are kind of, to the extent that the public is involved in anything, they have to … You know they have to cede control to someone else eventually. It’s about giving up authority, you know, and maybe these are one of the few spaces where actually the public can actually see itself, you know, not giving up authority, but actually being given authority to take-
Ayushi Roy: [00:22:43] Right-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:22:43] Give a little something-
Deborah Marton: [00:22:44] Yes, that’s the idea. Like we ultimately encourage our garden groups to- to … We give them like a boiler pr- plate example of what bylaws look like, and we encourage them to build their own bylaws, to have their own governing board and subcommittees, so that in some ways, we’re- we’re giving them the tools, but it’s they themselves who do it, and we even have like a- a rating’s system called the, uh, uh, corn, beans, and squash (crosstalk). And uh, and with their corn, we’ve now … It’s almost like our- our community engagement has evolved and it’s got three parts. It’s the outreach related to design, it’s the corn, beans, and the squash in the middle, and then if you become a corn, we’ve now just recently imp- implemented a kind of microgrant program, so that if you’re at the level where you’re actually launching your own public programs, and you want to borrow our projector to have a film night, and you need some money to rent the film and like buy popcorn or whatever, we’ll facilitate that.
So it’s really all the- the capacity building. You have to come up with the program. You have to show us that you’re keeping open hours, and that you’re democratic in who comes in and becomes part of the group, and how you allocate the beds, but if you do all those things, it’s kind of like an extraordinary opportunity for civic engagement.
Ayushi Roy: [00:24:08] I’m- I’m stunned, my head is spinning (laughs). I just want to reflect back to you what I feel like I’m hearing, which is … So on the one hand, right, we start off talking about this landscape architects, fa- the fancy ones coming in, trying to make this park this pretty thing, and that completely failing, and then you gave the … And you’ve kind of walked us through the alternative model that you’ve now used when in terms of including people in the community in this renovation process, and allowing them to govern themselves, and align them to sustain themselves and scale with all these bylaws and ratings, and basically, what I’m hearing is A, more money doesn’t solve the problem (laughs). It seems like the actual focus is around governance, and you’ve basically turned parks into a way of allowing people to govern themselves, and learn how to come to the table and engage each other, despite all kinds of maybe demographic and other sorts of differences, and then on top of that, you’ve now turned all these sort of self-governing park spaces into this massive network. And so, you’re kind of just low-key creating this like, I don’t know, like this infrastructure for people to be able to learn democracy all across the … what you described as like the lowest income or maybe demographically most marginalized parts of Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn.
I mean that’s insane. I don’t know if I’m saying that correctly, but this is insane like-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:25:36](laughs).
(laughs).
Like is anybody else catching this, like this is (crosstalk)(laughs).
Deborah Marton: [00:25:40] I really appreciate your description of it, and that’s our dream, right-
Ayushi Roy: [00:25:44](laughs).
Is that we have that, and we have achieved that in some of our spaces-
Wow-
Deborah Marton: [00:25:48] It- it’s, um, you know when you say, money didn’t solve the problem, it really depends on what problem you’re trying to solve because I don’t want to pretend like we don’t need money, right-
Ayushi Roy: [00:25:59] Right-
Deborah Marton: [00:25:59] But the problem we’re trying to solve, like if the problem you’re trying to solve is taking a place that’s filled with trash and- and turning it into a pretty garden, all you need is money-
Ayushi Roy: [00:26:08] Right-
Deborah Marton: [00:26:08] Money solves that problem-
Ayushi Roy: [00:26:09] Right-
Deborah Marton: [00:26:09] If the problem you’re trying to solve is using land, in a way it’s like a reparation question-
Ayushi Roy: [00:26:16] Mmm-
Deborah Marton: [00:26:16] Using land to give back, people back a sense of place and uh, uh, a sense of identity, like that they’re connected to place, then money’s not gonna solve that problem.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:26:27] I actually love that concept-
Ayushi Roy: [00:26:28] Wow-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:26:28] Garden gives reparations, you know-
Ayushi Roy: [00:26:30] Wow-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:26:30] Uh, looking at them from a framework of reparations, uh, it’s really interesting. You know (crosstalk).
Ayushi Roy: [00:26:36] I don’t want to cut you off, Ceasar. I just … I’m coming up with a really great pun-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:26:39] Oh, no.
Ayushi Roy: [00:26:39] Instead of parks and recreation, parks and reparation (laughs).
Ceasar McDowell: [00:26:44](laughs).
(laughs).
I love it-
Ayushi Roy: [00:26:44] Like can you imagine if we had a department of parks and reparation (crosstalk).
Deborah Marton: [00:26:47] That is so funny.
Ayushi Roy: [00:26:49](laughs).
I think we have a title for this segment.
Yeah (laughs).
Deborah Marton: [00:26:52] Something I’ve been talking to everyone about, and- and Ceasar might recall that I read this-
Ayushi Roy: [00:26:56](laughs).
At the Just City assembly, but New York City just put out, to my knowledge, for the first time in the Department of Health, put out a document saying, redlining has resulted in really poor health, out- health and other outcomes in, uh, uh, many communities, and it’s lack of investment in the land. So I mean I think that, you know every day there’s more data coming out saying that people need connection to nature and open spaces, and that’s true for health, but what people also need is social infrastructure like places to develop connections with one another-
Mmm-
Deborah Marton: [00:27:37] And community gardens like solve both of those problems-
Ayushi Roy: [00:27:40] Wow-
Deborah Marton: [00:27:41] So ultimately our goal would be, uh, right, like you say like low-key, we don’t talk about it this way, ’cause it would sound like too lackluster, but like, wow, that all of our gardens would be connected and people would have a kind of a land basis for- for collective action, and we do have things now where we bring together people regionally and even citywide, uh, on a annual basis.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:28:06] I think this is one of the most really important notions, this idea of a land basis for collective action-
Ayushi Roy: [00:28:11] Mmm-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:28:11] Because I’ve seen in the Boston area, lots of community gardens, and I know there are groups of them and stuff, but I don’t know anyone who thinks about them that way, that there’s something that’s actually helping people to- to start this, stitch this together, right? (crosstalk). And the notion that of, you know, a land basis for people to actually move forward is really important in this country because we have this American dream about homeownership-
Ayushi Roy: [00:28:36] Mmm-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:28:36] And that everybody has to own a home-
Ayushi Roy: [00:28:39] Mmm-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:28:39] And so on and so forth, and so, I think it gives people a false notion of how much land the public actually controls and owns, and it’s very small, it’s- it’s in some sense, I- I remember like 20 years ago, I was looking at some studies that our land ownership of private ownership to government or other institutions ownership was worse than lots of countries in South America that we were fighting wars around this issue-
Ayushi Roy: [00:29:04] Wow.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:29:05] Because we have a lot of people that hold a lot of land, but there’s a lot of land here, and there are a lot of big people, governments and others who own that land and control that land. So there is a sense of (crosstalk)needing to kind of ground ourselves around land as being an important part of actually rebuilding kind of our democracy in this country, right? There’s- there’s a really important part of it. The other thing … So I just want to- I want to test this a little bit. So I think about the- the neighborhood gardens that are going up, and I think about them in Boston, and I think about how Boston’s constructed, and I can say, okay, I can see how this could kind of work, you know? And there are people who live in an area, and they’re actually, you know, some of them are coming together to participate, and it feels more open so others come in, but I also recognize that like, yeah, but we tend to live in somewhat little segregated areas-
Ayushi Roy: [00:30:01] Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ceasar McDowell: [00:30:02] And yeah, maybe there's some differences, but the people who are more different, we kind of you know stay a little bit outside of that-
Ayushi Roy: [00:30:10] Mmm-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:30:10] And I'm just wondering if you have some instances where like, well, actually no, we've actually use this, and it's actually brought some pretty disparate people together, who've learned how to do some governing together.
Deborah Marton: [00:30:21] Yes, I mean we see that every day in our spaces. The story that happened last summer that I've been telling everyone, 'cause it was just such an extraordinary moment. We have a garden, it's in Bedford-Stuyvesant close to- to Williamsburg, and there've been long, many years that the Bed-Stuy side of the garden is mostly like African-American and West Indian families, but on the other side, on the Williamsburg side, there's a lot of Hasidic families, and those two in New York, and then elsewhere I would guess, those groups have had tension historically, but not in this garden. In this garden, there are family who garden and to grow food because there ... They all, the thing they all want, everyone wants to grow nice organic produce in the summer to share with their families, like everyone wants that-
Ayushi Roy: [00:31:12](laughs).
That's just something that they all kind of agree on. So I have seen families in that garden like Hasidic families alongside with West Indian families like sharing, uh, tips about how to grow things-
(laughs).
Which was like an amazing sight. And last summer, it was the 10th anniversary of when this garden had been renovated, and the group decided that they wanted to throw a party to celebrate that, and for whatever reason, they decided that they were going to invite a belly dancer-
(laughs).
(crosstalk).
Wait a minute, wait a minute-
Deborah Marton: [00:31:39] At the party-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:31:40] Wait a minute (crosstalk).
Ayushi Roy: [00:31:41] I'm sorry, what-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:31:42](crosstalk). The West Indians, and the- and the Hasidic Jews decided belly dancers would be appropriate-
Ayushi Roy: [00:31:46](laughs).
(laughs).
Okay, so this belly dancer, (crosstalk)I want to say she was the most covered belly dancer I've ever seen-
(laughs).
But she was a belly dancer and um-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:31:58](laughs).
(laughs).
And the belly dancer came, right, and everyone stayed at like till it was like too dark, and she was belly dancing, and people were leaning out of windows or looking in the garden, and it was this moment where you had this kind of faith, and you know like New York-
Ayushi Roy: [00:32:12](laughs).
(crosstalk). I was born in Brooklyn and I'm a New Yorker, but it's like you ha- so I believe this, but I think, you know, you think like, you know this could work. It could work (crosstalk).
Deborah Marton: [00:32:21](laughs).
(laughs).
(crosstalk). And we can find ways that we can (inaudible)connect, and they'll (inaudible)place that ... I mean I love that belly dancer, 'cause that was just like blew my mind, but you know we ... The other garden I talked about earlier, the one in- in Morrisania, in the Bronx. That also is a neighborhood, it was mostly Dominican-American for many, many years, and now there's a huge influx in that neighborhood of Syrian families, uh, and- and from other, uh, like basically war torn countries where a lot of the children have struggled with trauma-
Ayushi Roy: [00:32:50] Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Deborah Marton: [00:32:51] And all of those families, both kinds of families have come into the garden and joined the garden group there. So you know like they have to work together or they're ... If- if- if they don't all collaborate on the governance of this space, it won't be able to draw the kind of resources that we could help provide over time, and- and it takes a while before people kind of trust you-
Ayushi Roy: [00:33:17] Mmm-
Deborah Marton: [00:33:17] As a- as a partner, but once they do, then there's this sort of understanding that like, um, we're- we're not there to write our story, like we're there for them to write their story.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:33:29] You know it's, uh-
Ayushi Roy: [00:33:31] That's beautiful-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:33:31] That last quote you b- made up ... Yeah, really beautiful. It's also connected to something that we've talked a lot about, which is so much of our kind of political process and our community processes are filled with a lot of trauma for people, people come to them holding a lot of trauma, and that, in order for people to engage with each other in really healthy ways, we need to actually create opportunities for healing, and think about that in relationship to how we bring them together, and there's no more ... probably no more appropriate place than to do that, then in the process of actually bringing people together to make the land rich, to grow food from it, 'cause that in it of itself is a- is a process of renewal and of healing itself (crosstalk). And I also ... I just want to say, you know, thank you for this work that you're doing because we-
Ayushi Roy: [00:34:18] Really-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:34:19] I wouldn't, uh, yeah-
Ayushi Roy: [00:34:19] Thank you-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:34:19] I just want to go back to this point of like, the land as a basis for thinking about governance-
Ayushi Roy: [00:34:24] Amazing-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:34:25] And really having the ... being able to create opportunities for the public to engage each other that way, and this idea of, uh, you know sensibly starting to network these gardens together-
Ayushi Roy: [00:34:36] Right-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:34:37] It's such a powerful concept and it's a- it is a new space for kind of building the civic muscle of- of the public, you know the democratic muscle of the public-
Ayushi Roy: [00:34:46] Absolutely.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:34:46] And another kind of infrastructure, yeah-
Deborah Marton: [00:34:49] The land portion of that equation is particularly important I think in communities of need, where in better resource communities, there are like institutions that people connect with through their- their financial resources and- and-
Ayushi Roy: [00:35:06] Right-
Deborah Marton: [00:35:06] Underresourced communities, like there are ... there isn't a place. Like where do you go actually to meet your neighbors and talk to people?
Ayushi Roy: [00:35:13] But I also think that land is often ... I mean maybe this is just my perspective, and maybe this isn't shared w- as widely as I- as I think it is, but I feel like land is a form of extraction for a variety of people that don't have money. Like it's not just that, you know, there isn't a space to heal or that isn't being utilized to its basic capacity, but it's actually ... It has a very blatantly negative association. You know like at least I see it that way, 'cause I think like being a homeowner is like you were saying earlier, is such a rare ... I mean it's- it's an American myth, it's not even a dream anymore. It's an American myth, right? And for all of the people, the majority of the people in this world that don't have home ownership, that are renters on the land, the land is- is a source of stress for them. It's how am I gonna pay my rent, right? It's how am I gonna continue to live here? It's do I have to move now? Am I being evicted? Do I even have the funds to pay my electricity? You know like, eh, the amount of stress that I think land causes, and for you and your organization to all of the sudden turn land into a form of healing, and self-governance, and ownership, like this reclaiming and reparation is just truly phenomenal.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:36:24] Yeah.
Deborah Marton: [00:36:25] You know if you don't have a- a- a sense of connection to the earth and to land, however small and humble it might be, it's really hard to be fully human I think-
Ayushi Roy: [00:36:33] Mmm-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:36:34] Mmm-
Deborah Marton: [00:36:34] And um, you know we- we need, we have kids come onto our spaces, they've never touched soil, they've never seen a worm, they don't know how things grow. We even in the park that we manage, it's literally a block from a big public housing development, and we often get kids who don't know that the river is behind the buildings there. So I think a sense of place is critical to each and every person's identity.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:37:01] Yes, so true-
Ayushi Roy: [00:37:02] Thank you so much-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:37:04] Deborah, this has been great-
Ayushi Roy: [00:37:05] Oh-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:37:05] Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us-
Deborah Marton: [00:37:07] For sure, I'm honored to be on your show. Thank you for asking me.
Ayushi Roy: [00:37:13] Whoo. How'd you feel about that, Ceasar?
Ceasar McDowell: [00:37:15] Uh, I loved it, you know I-
Ayushi Roy: [00:37:17] Right-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:37:17] It's funny for me because when I first came into the Boston area-
Ayushi Roy: [00:37:21] Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ceasar McDowell: [00:37:21] One of the person- person I met was this woman named, Charlotte (Kahn).
Ayushi Roy: [00:37:24] Okay-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:37:24] She worked at the Boston Foundation, but she-
Ayushi Roy: [00:37:27] Mmm-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:37:27] As considered the kind of person who really started community gardening in Boston-
Ayushi Roy: [00:37:33] Oh, wow-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:37:33] And really growing it throughout-
Ayushi Roy: [00:37:34] Wow-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:37:34] Different neighborhoods-
Ayushi Roy: [00:37:35] Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ceasar McDowell: [00:37:36] And she kind of leveraged that work to do all kinds of community building work-
Ayushi Roy: [00:37:41] Uh-huh (affirmative).
Ceasar McDowell: [00:37:42] But what was different is, uh, than what Deborah's doing is, it wasn't that, that intentional piece-
Ayushi Roy: [00:37:50] Mmm-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:37:50] Like I'm gonna actually figure out how to use this-
Ayushi Roy: [00:37:53] Mmm-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:37:54] Resource that we have to actually start to connect this kinda complex public that we have-
Ayushi Roy: [00:38:00] Yeah-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:38:00] But if we do these series or kinds of things with folks that are connected to the ground-
Ayushi Roy: [00:38:05] Mmm-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:38:05] Into the earth-
Ayushi Roy: [00:38:06] Mmm.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:38:07] Then when they need to deal with some traumatic experiences, they'll be in a better place to do it.
Ayushi Roy: [00:38:13] Yeah, there- I mean she's building community resilience.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:38:16] Yeah-
Ayushi Roy: [00:38:17] That's, uh, uh, it's- it's wild to me, how you can turn something as seemingly simple as a community garden, or a park, or just renovation, just the process of renovation-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:38:27] Yeah-
Ayushi Roy: [00:38:28] From a headache, 'cause I mean I've seen my parents place go through some renovation (laughs).
Ceasar McDowell: [00:38:33](laughs).
That was a headache. I was eating out of a microwave for like months, you know, and to turn something that could easily be a headache or a source of conflict and struggle into a form of resilience.
Yes.
Ayushi Roy: [00:38:44] And not only resilience, but even a form of reparations.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:38:49] Mmm-
Ayushi Roy: [00:38:50] And that was incredible to me to hear her talk about, you know what I mean? Example of the- of the park in Harlem and thinking about how she was able to use that space to bring people together that may not otherwise be able to have that conversation.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:39:04] Yeah-
Ayushi Roy: [00:39:04] And thinking about just even the history of land ownership, and thinking about how land ownership has been, you know, we talked about with (Lindsey Smalling)from Social Capital Markets, land has been probably the biggest source of the racial wealth divide.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:39:20] Yes.
Ayushi Roy: [00:39:21] Because in this country, wealth is based on land and property ownership.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:39:26] Exactly.
Ayushi Roy: [00:39:26] And NYRP is using something that can be so easily divisive and traumatizing or, uh, sort of the opposite of equity creating to create this resilience and create this reparations model, and I- I'm just ... I'm blown away by the work that I heard about today (laughs).
Ceasar McDowell: [00:39:48] Yeah, it's- it's just fascinating with each ... You know with each guest we have in here, we're- we are discovering you know the different ways, different private actors-
Ayushi Roy: [00:39:55] Yeah-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:39:56] Are actually really strengthening democracy on these small scales-
Ayushi Roy: [00:40:00] Yeah-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:40:00] But these small scales of where people live and it needs to happen there-
Ayushi Roy: [00:40:05] Needs to happen-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:40:06] This is a needs to happen in- in much larger scales-
Ayushi Roy: [00:40:07] Yeah.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:40:08] So this is great.
Ayushi Roy: [00:40:09] This is incredible.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:40:10] Yeah.
Ayushi Roy: [00:40:10] Thank you all for listening and joining us.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:40:14] We're a production of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT with support of MIT's Office of Open Learning.
Ayushi Roy: [00:40:21] Our sound is produced by Dave Lishansky , our content by Julia Cubrera and Misael G . I'm Ayushi Roy.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:40:26] I'm Ceasar McDowell.
Ayushi Roy: [00:40:28] And you can find us online at themove.mit.edu.
Ceasar McDowell: [00:40:33] And where our medium site at-
Ayushi Roy: [00:40:35] Medium.com/themovemit as well as our Twitter and Facebook. Thanks so much-
Ceasar McDowell: [00:40:41] Goodbye.
