February 12, 2012 · www.gothamgazette.com

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Neighborhood Activists' Toolkit

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When she was in high school, Linda Tagini of Sunset Park studied the effect of air pollution on the human body. This was not part of the curriculum; she did it after school, as part of a fight against a new power plant being proposed for a neighborhood that already had four.

Fifteen-year-old Tagini was not the only one learning how to become an activist. Spurred by a local environmental group, UPROSE, Sunset Park residents found their own ways to oppose Sunset Energy’s plan to construct a huge power plant on a barge along the Brooklyn shoreline:

  • Tagini and her classmates attended the afternoon public meetings that their parents could not.
  • Bilingual residents explained the issue to their neighbors in Chinese, Arabic and Spanish.
  • Churches spread the word among their members.
  • Some tech-savvy teenagers made a video that they screened at schools.
  • And a growing group of volunteers were willing to distribute flyers and petitions throughout the neighborhood while plastering stickers on every light pole they passed.

The three-year campaign was not only intense -- it was successful. State officials rejected Sunset Energy’s power plant proposal.

This victory was significant for the neighborhood, but it is hardly an isolated event in New York City. From the defeat of a proposed highway through lower Manhattan in the 1960s to the recent reopening of Chinatown’s Park Row earlier this month, community activists in New York have often met their goals.

Doing so is often a matter of knowing what tools are available and using those tools effectively. Some tools – like knowing which government officials to contact – have always been around. Others – like Web sites and email campaigns – are relatively new.

This Neighborhood Activist Toolkit offers a guide to some of these tools and how community activists have used them.


Discuss what tools you have found effective, and how you have used them on the Neighborhood Activists' Toolkit Message Board.









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