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












Mitchel Cohen's book, " What Is Direct Action? Lessons from (and to) Occupy Wall Street" (foreword by Richard Wolff) (596 pages). Get it now! And, new editions of Mitchel's poetry books "One-Eyed Cat Takes Flight" and "The Permanent Carnival" now available.

Check out http://www.MitchelCohen.com
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