The NoSpray Coalition against pesticides has for 14 years opposed the
application of glyphosate (RoundUp), particularly on sidewalks around
schools and parks. In response to our letters and meetings, the City
did add a colored dye to the chemicals to warn people that it had
been applied, so if you see blue or yellow dye on grassy areas,
between sidewalk cracks, etc., you know to avoid it.
However, young kids see that dye and stomp through it, roll around it
it (!), ride their bikes through it, etc. It is an ATTRACTOR to
children, despite the intent.
The City Parks Dept. personnel has been cut by 80 percent over the
last 20 years. So where workers used to weed areas by hand, the
layoffs accelerated the use of chemical herbicides to get the weeding done.
Around 10 years ago, a group of us met with former Brooklyn Parks
Commissioner Spiegel, and he agreed with us to at least have
announcements made over the speakers in every public school if
glyphosate -- or any herbicide -- was applied in the general
vicinity. This seemed to be a cost-effective no-brainer.
But, as far as I know, it never happened despite the agreement with
Spiegel (who seemed to be a caring "good guy"). His right-hand man, a
much younger biochemical "specialist", engaged us in a frothing
debate over glyphosate, with him saying how "safe" the chemical is
despite the written and very thorough information we provided from
Greenpeace and Beyond Pesticides (one of the co-Plaintiffs in the
NoSpray Coalition's lawsuit against the City, which was settled seven
years after filing, in 2007) showing it to be a dangerous and
potential carcinogen. Those meetings with Spiegel were TEN YEARS AGO!
Now, finally, we're vindicated by an important international agency
which has condemned the use of glyphosate, but how many people have
been injured in the meantime? Thousands in Brooklyn, I bet.
Brooklyn remains the most heavily pesticided and herbicided county in
the entire state, a situation exacerbated by the switch to chemical
pest controls to substitute for the workers who were laid off.
We suggested that, along Eastern Parkway and Ocean Parkway, each
block organize volunteers to do regular weeding, instead of
applications of RoundUp. Spiegel liked the idea, but he didn't have
the authority to organize such a project, and we didn't have the
reach to accomplish it without the City's support. This may be a good
project to bring to the City Council. (Another of our proposals, to
hire a handler of goats or sheep and have 500 of them graze down
Eastern Parkway did not go over well -- tons of doo-doo -- even
though I met and spoke with a shepherd from Wyoming who contracts out
with different urban areas to do exactly that!)
In other words, there ARE creative and cost-effective solutions that
involve mobilizing communities, and that avoid poisoning people. We
need to set up a new round of meetings with the Boro President, for
one, and others.
I am bringing this up also in the context of our fight against the SW
Brooklyn Marine Transfer Station, in which the NoSpray Coalition is
one of the groups that have filed an appeal of the NY Department of
Environmental Conservation decision to move forward with that garbage station.
Mitchel
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Check out <http://www.mitchelcohen.com/>http://www.MitchelCohen.com
* <http://www.mitchelcohen.com/?p=2968>FREE LINA KHATTAB!
18-year-old student imprisoned and beaten, in Israel
* <http://www.mitchelcohen.com/?p=2962>A SATIRICAL MESSAGE TO ALL
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* <http://www.mitchelcohen.com/?p=2953>DRONES & TARGETTED
KILLINGS including interviews with Marjorie Cohn & Jeanne Mirer
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* <http://www.mitchelcohen.com/?p=2805>IS VIOLENCE IN YOUR GENES?
NO! Genetic Racism & Biological Determinism, by Mitchel Cohen
Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack, a crack in everything, That's how the light gets in.
~ Leonard Cohen
Realize that little things lead to bigger things ... And there s a
wonderful parable in the New Testament: The sower scatters seeds.
Some seeds fall in the pathway and get stamped on, and they don t
grow. Some fall on the rocks, and they don t grow. But some seeds
fall on fallow ground, and they grow and multiply a thousandfold. Who
knows where some good little thing that you ve done may bring results
years later that you never dreamed of.
~ Pete Seeger