December 21, 2014

By: Brady Wheeler

             “They are not our friends and don’t ever believe the lie that they’re here to help us”, 24-year-old Yonkers resident Veronica Corazon confides amidst an angry and determined crowd forming in Getty Square.

            Advertised as a peaceful demonstration against police brutality that would not escalate into destructive behavior, the march was to help stoke a different kind of fire; one that has continued to spread throughout the ever-growing gulf between the citizens of southwest Yonkers and those that are supposed to protect them. In an otherwise quiet downtown district in the early December numbing New York cold, the animosity and tension is fueled by a larger and increasing suspicion over who deserves care, attention and a voice in American society and who is actually, at the end of the day, granted such considerations.

            “They’re not part of our community”, Corazon continues, “And that’s why they treat us the way they do”. 

It’s the enforcers of the status quo who, according to Corazon and Yonkers residents like her, decide which folks deserve a voice, are represented, cared for and protected. It’s the enforcers of the status quo who decide if the life and passions of communities that are largely composed of the city’s most vulnerable will be honored and respected.

            These particular enforcers, however, do not have a gun strapped to their belts and wear the navy blue uniforms of the Yonkers Police Department. They carry a much different weapon; weapons that have the potential to afflict a much wider demographic. Their weapons of choice are pens, paper and a story to run on. They are the few individuals working in the media of struggling second tier cities like Yonkers and, with virtually no outlets remaining, the search is on for who’s left covering the same stories that have always been worth telling and how they will tell them.

            Given the way Hezi Aris, (founder, publisher, editor, reporter, of the Yonkers Tribune), reflects on the work his publication has done around Yonkers, a city he isn’t from originally, will lead you to believe he’s got a considerably sized staff supporting his vision in a multifaceted way layering his own perspective.

            “They’re a pretty rambunctious crowd, so yeah, I’d say it’s pretty hard to control them” Aris chuckles as he reflects on the opinions he incorporates into the Tribune’s almost daily stories. Laughing to hide the fact of a very different reality, he finally sighs. “No, but I write almost everything. I don’t have a staff. You’re talking to the staff.”

            Aris, who was raised in New York City, moved north to the city Yonkers, which Mayor Mike Spano describes as being a “pimple on the butt of an elephant”, where the elephant is New York City’s sprawling political and economic shadow. Initially making the transition because his girlfriend lived around the area, Aris has, despite acting as a bit of a one-man band, maintained a culture of reporting on local issues he believes his readership actively associates with and are fully incorporated into if they so choose. “People appreciate what I’ve got to say”, Aris adds, clearing his throat. “And if someone has a different perspective and wants to challenge me then sure, no problem! I’ll see if it makes a difference.” His confidence of his reporting style on clear display, however, he proudly clarifies, “I’ve not really needed to change my articles, nor should I.”

            Whether it’s the clear commitment to providing a perspective that is unequivocally his own or the fact that he started covering Yonkers life as an outsider, Aris admits it was a slow process trying to encourage local residents to engage in the subject matter he wrote about. “People didn’t challenge me not because they agreed with me, but because they felt in challenging me it would’ve validated me”, he confesses. “A lot of people in the city don’t want to validate me.”

            Believe it or not, this isn’t necessarily Aris’  trying to throw the world’s loneliest pity party, but rather is grounded in truth. In addition to being termed “an acid-tongued blogger” by the New York Times, Mayor Spano questions “where he gets his information" and calls to attention to how Aris oftentimes “rushes to put [a story] up too quickly”. The mere fact that the elected leader of Yonkers has noticed his work and even developed a criticism on the culture Aris has create around the Tribune suggests he’s acquired some measure of success.

            At the end of the day, though, the Tribune’s focal point strays far from bowing down to the folks looking down on the Yonkers community from above. “I’m not looking for acknowledgement. I’m looking to serve the public and if they don’t like what I’m writing then they’ll either turn off completely or they will validate it and me by returning.”

            Some folks, however, can’t afford to be so unapologetically critical of the political establishment. “I miss those days”, Dan Murphy, editor-in-chief of the only print newspaper in Yonkers today, the Yonkers Rising, comments as he reflect on the vision of how Aris sees the work he’s able to accomplish. Murphy, who’s been writing for Yonkers media outlets for the past twenty-five years and for all past incarnations of the Rising since its inception under owner Ralph Martinelli, is great at pushing his product. Selling over 15,000 copies of the Rising circulating through 120 drop spots around Yonkers and officially endorsed by Mayor Spano himself, Murphy is justified in saying that “A lot of these papers are going out to the streets.”

            Even still, though, Murphy will be the first to admit that “it’s a horrible business to be in” and that the troubles a paper like the Rising have been experiencing are symptoms of a journalistic condition “that we see across the country as more and more newspapers are asked to cut back.” To make matters worse, the timing couldn’t be more necessary to have a watchdog peeking through the windows of authority. Just as Mayor Spano and the City of Yonkers are causing life altering splashes for its residents to tread through, (for a few, see: "This City's Children" in "Education", "Filling the Hole" in "Perspectives", or "No Longer a Hub" in "Politics"), business for good journalism today is increasingly becoming a relic of a mostly forgotten about past industry.

            Is the newspaper industry all that vital to telling the story that’s worth being told, however? Speaking with a tone of desperation, Murphy very clearly believes it to be the case. As if crouched in a bunker waiting for an impending airstrike, Murphy trips over his words, “ Well I guess, yeah, it’s just a part of the business but it still concerns. We, just, we need an independent journalist community. It can’t all be bloggers! There’s no validation in blogging!” Given Aris’s confident validation from those in power isn’t a driving factor in shaping his subject matter, maybe Murphy’s use of “validation” is a bit of a bloated expression of an industry’s underlying motive for profit.

            According to one-time AP reporter and University of South Carolina professor of Journalism and Mass Communications, Doug Fisher, Murphy’s angst speaks more to the potential of losing money than to serving the interests of his neighbors. “Don’t confuse journalism”, Fisher firmly asserts, “with putting out a newspaper or with putting out a six o’clock newscast. That’s what the industry was doing and journalism happened to be a byproduct of that.” For Fisher, the truest forms of journalism that “speaks on behalf of those that cannot speak for themselves or helping a community see itself”, was essentially the bonus to the day-to-day coverage of the local beat.

            Such reporting in the same vein of Aris’ recent emphasis on the new Olive Garden opening in Cross County or a Christmas tree lighting along McLean avenue, might seem trivial but, according to Fisher, this helped mark “the shift of journalism as a product to journalism as a service”. In needing to meet the demand for these stories to have some coverage 24/7, it required newspapers to hire several reporters and cover a variety of stories speaking to several subjects around town. The problem being, however, that in any given city or community, you can only write about so many newsworthy events until you’re left twiddling your thumbs waiting for the next story to break. That’s where journalists could capitalize on their down time, form investigative teams and ultimately help produce, according to Fisher, “all the good of journalism.” And, for now, all the good of journalism may still exist but, for cities like Yonkers, is an incredibly hard feat to find.

            As much as Murphy and reporters like him yearn for the past, however, they must, if they truly wish to keep the newspaper industry alive, wrestle with the notion that affording surplus journalists isn’t destined for the printed future. David Simon, acclaimed filmmaker and director famed for The Wire is currently immersing himself into the tumultuous history as he begins shooting for Show Me A Hero, his upcoming series on the infamous desegregation case of the 1980s. As he’s become well acquainted with through his exploration into the city’s dark political past, Simon understands that what communities around the area need most is fair journalism that is nonnegotiable in how it checks the folks in power.  “[Newspapers] are as essential for channeling dissent and for attending to government malfeasance as ever before.” Although the demand has persisted throughout American history up until the present day, the supply still falls considerably short of where it should. Continuing, Simon touches on the ramifications of this trend, “There’s just a fifth or a quarter of the reporting staff there once was in the newsroom and the product reflects that. I think it’s terrible for our society.” Revenue, as Simon sees it, correlates completely with a paper’s ability to tell a story and get it noticed by a much wider audience who are, in his words, “willing to pay for good journalism.”

            The culture of the printed product Murphy and The Yonkers Rising have established is far from the critical exploratory journalism Simon would happily endorse and pay for. Instead, it’s the last ditch effort of a struggling industry to preserve its most cherished and monetized values amidst becoming rapidly digitalized and democratized. “By and large what’s happened”, Simon theorizes, “is that the internet has allowed everybody to engage”.  

            This engagement, although seemingly advantageous in that it allows more folks to become acquainted with stories worth reading can, in Simon’s eyes, prove to undermine the integrity of how a story is written. “It also prevents copyright from being plausibly applied”, he continues to explain, “When they take that away and they suggest that this can be done as the amateur hour by a bunch of bloggers and interesting people I don’t believe that.”

            Don’t tell that to Aris and the pointed and empowering agenda of the Yonkers Tribune, though. Although Aris admits journalistic respect in the industry is “all based on money” and translates to the belief that “if you don’t earn enough money you aren’t able to stay as engaged as those that do”, he’s firm in his conviction believing that  one’s ability shouldn’t predicate a person’s political awareness. And at the Tribune, he’s been able to actively follow through on this philosophy.  “Its not a question of what I do, its not a question of what you do- its a question of getting the issue out”, Aris claims. “If the issue is important and its pertinent to you then its gotta be pertinent to me.” Laughing into this next point, he states, “Still, I can almost guarantee you won’t be seeing a sports report”. In this sense, though, he’s not ignorant to his publication’s limitations, which, as of now, resembles more of a blog than a widely circulated newspaper. He admits that if he had more money flowing into the project from his advertisers, he would “love to have more reporters, maybe even one covering local sports” arguing that “a city like Yonkers should probably have five or six reporters on all the time”.

            Richard Kielbowicz, University of Washington professor of journalism and mass communications history, touches on how, in its current capacity, the intentions of the Yonkers Tribune can only go so far to making a sustained difference.

“The basic problems in relying upon citizen journalism”, Kielbowicz argues, “and expecting the web to do everything is that a lot of the really big and important stories you need resources and sustained professionals to dig out the stories”. Nevertheless, contributing to a dialogue that needs to take place, especially to a localized issue in a more intimate community, can accomplish more than someone clinging to the relative security and comfort of abstinence from and silence to the issue at hand. Kielbowicz, in speaking to this point, suggest that there are “events that start as small issues, snowball and become bigger issues,” Kielbowicz suggests. Citizen journalists, in this respect, can play a vital role in raising awareness of issues that might speak to something of a more endemic scope.

            Painting this portrait clearer, Simon explains this in terms of the chance occurrence that someone’s house catches on fire. The natural inclination is to, of course, dial in the local fire department to quickly extinguish the flames and potentially save as much property and as many lives as possible from the disaster. This said, how should a neighbor perceive and act upon the moments leading up until the firefighters arrive to battle the blaze? According to Simon, “just because the person’s neighbor has a hose doesn’t mean they can put out the fire”, which could translate into journalistic terms as “just because you have a computer, doesn’t mean you can call yourself a journalist.”

            Fisher, however, in his many years dedicated to understanding the power of community journalism, (defined in contrast to citizen journalism in that it is “less about who is writing a story, and more about helping a community interact with itself”), begs to differ. Affirming that the neighbor with a gardening hose might not be equipped to save the day, he adds that that doesn’t detract from how “they might be able to slow the fire down until the professionals can get there. Doesn’t that person with a hose have a certain civic responsibility to try and save your house until the firefighters arrive?”

            In terms of writing about the most newsworthy stories, Fisher suggests that “the person who knows that something is going on in the community and feels its worthy of public attention sees their hose as their way to write about it through whatever means is available to them?” And oftentimes, Fisher concludes, it might actually alert “professionals to more locally significant stories”, especially given how often the case may be that professional media outlets are becoming increasingly out of touch with the communities they operate within and purportedly on behalf of.  

            For some of the most vulnerable residents living around Yonkers, telling their story can lead to life changing circumstances. Even for the most resilient, as Elizabeth Fernandez has proven with a stigmatizing diagnosis of HIV in 2000 and her concurrent battles with throat cancer, the fight to tell the truth is always easier said than done. A member of the grassroots advocacy group VOCAL New York, established to provide a voice and empowering image for those living with HIV/AIDS, Fernandez knows how much of a struggle is often involved in setting the record straight. In describing her perception on the remaining media representatives around the area, she believes them to be working on behalf of a particular community, but most certainly not for her and her neighbors. “They don’t come out and represent what we’re all about. What the people is all about”, Her hoarse voice barely audible, a daily reminder of her body’s persistent, varied and exhausting battles, the opinions she expressed were unwaveringly clear and pointed nonetheless. “They don’t see those of us who are out here working everyday to make changes in our communities and in our children’s lives.”

            Requiring great courage, strength and trust, she shared her own story of living with HIV/AIDS to a county publication and a reporter that she hadn’t known beforehand. She didn’t expect the shame that could’ve resulted from such a decision. “They lost the whole message that I was trying to portray”. Clearing her throat and looking up to lock her eyes with mine, “that I was trying to educate society on HIV awareness, prevention, on reduction, social justice, human rights. But apparently my message was not politically correct.”

            The following week, the details Fernandez considered most sensitive and told with an understanding of privacy, were jumping from location to location throughout the streets of Westchester County and to people who’d known her before the release. Altering her image and respectability to the community she called home, Fernandez saw her life progressively getting further and further outside of her control.

            She didn’t lay down and accept the fate prescribed the journalist gave to her, though. “Of course, so many details get lost through the media. So I stepped out into my community and tried to set the record straight.” She coordinated an event called  “Keepin’ it Real” where Fernandez shared her story “of empowerment and education not embarrassment and shame”.  She was locating the gaps in the story she had told and filled them with details that took the steering wheel back into her firm grasp. And given the state of Yonkers media today, if that wheel’s direction is left to the guidance of someone else, especially if those in power endorse that guidance, the right story can only be told by those wishing and, at times, needing to take it upon their own shoulders to do so.

            The Yonkers media landscape wound up where it is today due much to the same corrupting agent that’s hindered the American newspaper industry from sea to sea in recent history: lack of a sufficiently sustainable revenue stream online. Without such a reliable flow of money coming in to support acts of a constitutionally defined and encouraged free press, Aris and community journalists like him aren’t capable of expanding their publications’ scopes, reputations and investigations. Kielbowicz explains that because newspapers have historically built their publications from the foundation that their advertisements have afforded them, the digitalization of the medium complicates this point.

            Echoing and validating the frustrations of Murphy, Kielbowicz explains that “a lot of the traditional news organizations have lost their resources because of ads migrating to the internet.” Although certainly metropolitan reporters like Murphy have already felt a tremendous amount of pain and helplessness at such a shift, latest figures on print versus digital news revenue released by the Pew Project this year suggest that the struggle to produce a quality publication may still be in its infancy. Despite print revenue in steep decline, “down 49% from 2003”, the hold traditional print advertising has on the newspaper industry “still accounts for more than half of the total revenue supporting news”. This is foreboding of a time where less funders and subsequently less reporting is yet to come.

            Could it be said then that publishers in the newspaper industry are feeling the effects of the advent of the internet and advertising entities’ inability to keep pace to support newspapers in light of such innovations? According to Fisher, all one has to do is plunge into the pages of a history textbook to see this has happened before, at the start of publicized writing. After Joahnnes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1439, the ability of individuals to capitalize off of a finalized and well-bound book was far from instantaneous. “It wasn’t like he invented the press one day and the next there were books and papers”, Fisher explains, “there was a fifty to seventy year hiatus which, if you study the period, was a total period of chaos until the Italians discovered the form of the biblio or book.”

            Fisher’s argument, then, is that the newspaper industry is struggling to find the binding agent to contain the wide expanse of the internet. Nevertheless, though, he’s convinced that due to how defiantly “business abhors chaos”, how it “wants certainty and a standard operating procedure” to thrive, it’ll find a revenue stream online for the newspaper industry. In the meantime, however, the intimate allegiance between advertisers and the media outlets they support is getting increasingly less transparent and much more problematic.

            Temple University professor of journalism and reporter of twenty years for The Associated Press, and Newsweek, Christopher Harper has been sent all around the globe exploring and spreading awareness on areas with some of the most notorious situations of conflict who admittedly has “reported on more dead people than most journalists.” Still, given his experiences in some of the most plainly corrupt countries and explicitly dangerous war-torn environments, he sees the risks associated with the state of the press in metropolitan communities.

            “I can give you a simple analogy”, Harper prefaces, “In the past many local publications were dependent on local advertisers which could have included automobile dealerships and restaurants, so the ability to do an investigation on how automobile dealerships functioned or how clean restaurants were was difficult to do because you were biting the hand that fed you.” This can result in what Harper refers to as a “chilling effect” between a media outlet and that outlet’s ability to criticize its advertisers, even if those funding groups were especially at fault for particularly destructive societal ills.  Aris describes how the Tribune is different in that he “is not concerned about [his] advertisers, but to serve the public interest by telling them what [he] knows when [he] knows it and to connect the dots if required.” He explains, however, that Murphy isn’t alone in how they “may be conflicted and not willing to pass judgment”.

            In Yonkers, this is especially true given that the hand that feeds a media group like Yonkers Rising is also the hand that predominantly feeds a significant fraction of the city’s employees. Aris elaborates on what he believes to be “a lot of fear in this city” which ultimately, rousing his own fears, can lead to dictating how residents behave in the workplace and out. “If you open your mouth you could lose your job or your relatives will lose a job”, Aris says as his voice drops to an octave of grave concern. “You can’t always talk back to the mayor or other people in office but I can- they don’t pay my way.” For Aris, this particular freedom bestowed upon him, mostly through the gracious authority of the internet, to openly criticize folks on power and in city hall without fear of punishment is pay enough.

            Given that about two thousand Yonkers residents are employed directly through the City of Yonkers and, according to Aris, a few thousand more have been added through the board of education merger this past July, the city’s influence over its constituency is growing. Aris doesn’t stop there. He explains that these figures are only those that are directly correlated with city employment. “Oftentimes, [city employees] are married and together they may have one or two children, most likely two, and those kids are of voting age.” The age of these children are of vital importance to the claim Aris is making that “seven thousand city jobs become, all of a sudden, quadrupled. That’s 28,000 people who are going to vote with their pockets for the man in power”. This, then would almost guarantee a government most dutifully working for those individuals most intimately involved with the folks who sign off on their checks. Given that it only takes about 13,000 votes to elect a mayor in the city of Yonkers, Aris’s figure of 28,000, even if it’s slightly over-embellished, is increasingly worrisome to ensuring fair elections representing the voices and concerns of all Yonkers citizens.

            Aris’s fear that all citizens have not been accounted for, that only the most privileged are seriously considered and that these realities contribute to all Americans not promised an equal right to success in this country, mirrors the frustrations and suspicions of Corazon, Fernandez and residents like them on the state of politics and its once-critical watchdogs. If those in seats of power are sharing space with the folks who have historically meant to check their most dastardly deeds, how can we ensure this continues while the industry continues to try and crack the digital code?

            According to Kielbowicz, the most critical aspects of journalism have arisen when “there’s been a wonderful mix of media outlets seen as part of the establishment” but also when it includes “others that are seen as very critical of certain power structures.” For cities like Yonkers, however, “if you have fewer voices in the media”, Kielbowicz concludes, “you tend not to have that robust mix of different types of media especially traditional print based media.”  At the core of everybody’s anxiety over journalism in Yonkers today, from Fernandez to Corazon to Aris to Murphy and even Mayor Spano, this point is its underlying agitator: there just isn’t enough good media personnel doing its job today. And if any other industry were to slowly but eventually cease the production of seemingly vital goods to a city’s consumers, (i.e. poultry, tobacco, textiles, etc.), the consumers would likely either revolt or start producing these goods and services to the best of their own abilities for their own subsistence. Although not as immediately severe as other industries, the relief of newspapers can only come through the hard-nosed efforts of folks engaged like Fernandez.

            “If you don’t constantly repeat your message and sound like your crazy because you’re repeating the same message, they might edit everything you just said”, Fernandez claims with bitterness consuming her thoughts on the cold winter’s day in Getty Square. Looking over to a young activist, reaching for a sign placed near a receptacle lining Main Street and unfolding a couple of creases in the poster board, she smiles.

            “This is just what we need though- an uprising of our youth, an empowerment of our youth so that they can tell our stories. So that they can tell all of their grandparents’ stories that have values. Values that’ll get lost in the midst of transition to the public media for sure.” In the meantime, however, the search for an adequate forum for Yonkers residents to voice their grievances continues in the depths of the internet, the character limits of a social media update or the streets of a city like Yonkers- a city that’s trying desperately to find the right words to tell its many stories.

November 14, 2014

By Jacob Ready

At a fundraising event like the Harvest Tasting, nobody wants you to see behind the curtain. The perfectly manicured restaurant overlooking the Hudson, the smooth jazz, the delectable hors d'oeuvres, flowing wine, and laughing, schmoozing people rubbing shoulders with the city and county’s elites build an ambience of fun, joy, and exuberance. The guests pile in and out to the valet parking outside, marveling at the polished exterior of the recently redeveloped Yonkers waterfront which, tonight at least, seems worlds away from the declining downtown center just blocks away. The cultivated ambience of this night is very purposeful-- it’s paramount to this event’s success that the guests feel that they are having fun and doing good, without feeling the urgency that their money is needed to sustain services for a highly precarious community. Looking at the finished product, it’s easy to overlook the amount of planning (and adapting to chaos) required to create an event like this-- the favors asked of local elites and business owners, the awkward voicemails and maddeningly unanswered emails, the sweat of loading boxes or stuffing gift baskets, the balancing act necessary to not conflict with other fundraisers while trying to make this event stand out, or the delicate disposal of funds from the agency’s much guarded treasure chest to hopefully turn $15,000 into $100,000 in a single night (that is, if you’re lucky.) There’s a lot at stake in these few hours of drinking, laughing, and bidding on silent auction items-- when the event is over, the nonprofit organization hosting will hopefully come away with enough money to cover the majority of their costs for the next year. If this event goes well, the money raised will provide services including after school programs and residential services for the mentally disabled, services essential to a community like Southwest Yonkers. In a city with this much need, every dollar counts. But in this city, the very scarcity of funding available to nonprofits compromises these organizations’ ability to work-- and their ability work together effectively.

Much of what I want to write about here is behind the curtain-- but as an outsider to most of these organizations, many topics were off limits even once getting under the surface. No nonprofit worker wants to implicate another organization in wrongdoing or problematic initiatives, due both to solidarity between these organizations and, I suspect more pressingly, the knowledge that one organization’s failing can only mean more challenges within the community for organizations already working to the limits of their capacity. I was inspired to write this paper by my own glimpses behind the curtain, working with Yonkers nonprofits Westhab and CLUSTER Community Services (profiled in this article) as well as the Iglesia Memorial de San Andres further south in the city. While my illustrating every tense mention of another organization or uncomfortable pause at a pointed question might entertain a reader, I believe the more meaningful and responsible task at hand is to explore the challenges that community organizations face, and the factors that make communication break down in the implementation of important and highly delicate community work.

For a medium sized city of 200,000, Yonkers is home to a diverse network of community based organizations. Some focus on education, like Yonkers Partners in Education (YPIE) or America Reads. Others focus on preserving the environment, like the Sarah Lawrence Center for the Urban River at Beczak (CURB) or Groundwork Hudson Valley. Many others take on a variety of initiatives in areas to less easy to classify, like CLUSTER Community Services, the Greyston Foundation, or Westhab.  It would be a mistake to say that these organizations create redundancies in their services. In a city like Yonkers, where a history of corruption, segregation, and deindustrialization have led to a present rife with unemployment, concentrated poverty and other forms of marginalization for much of its people, there is no shortage of need. In the face of such immense need, these community organizations are often called to go beyond their own capacity, partnering with other organizations to provide services they cannot provide on their own. Ideally, these community organizations create a broad network of collaboration and support both for organizations and people in the city of Yonkers. But in a city where funding from government is scarce, and business and individual donors are stretched thin, collaboration can often give way to competition for survival.

It should come as no surprise to students of Yonkers history that the legacy of segregated public housing and concentrated poverty in the southwest pocket of Yonkers that most of the community organizations which serve this population occupy spaces in close proximity to each other. Traveling for just a few minutes down Ashburton Avenue to Getty Square or even to further down South Broadway, one can find the offices for these vital organizations tucked between luncheonettes, luxury condo complexes, churches, or even the affordable housing some of these offices work tirelessly to provide. One of these organizations is CLUSTER Community services, located in the historic Getty Square office building which once housed the historic Putnam Railroad Station. Entering this building from the back, as most of the employees of CLUSTER, the Social Security Office, Planned Parenthood, or other service organizations housed in that building do, one is greeted with a large plaque that reads “Welcome to 20 South Broadway, We have been working hard to restore your building. We believe in Yonkers, and its people. Yonkers is a city with a great future.”

If anyone takes the philosophy to heart, it’s the workers at CLUSTER, who spend their days providing services including mediation counseling, youth services, affordable housing for mentally ill adults, and housing resources to disadvantaged people in Yonkers and Westchester. Though it’s clear they believe in Yonkers and its people, a recent history of uneasy funding may raise questions about the city’s future. In her office overlooking the spires of Saint John’s Church, Diana Campos, CLUSTER’s director of development has a lot to say about the precarious state of community work in the city of Yonkers. “The competition is CUTTHROAT!” exclaims Ms. Campos, “They pit us against each other --state grants will tell you upfront that most of their money is going to New York City. They pit the city against the state, upstate against downstate.” Chiming in from her office next door, CLUSTER’s executive director Toni Volchock adds “It’s a political process. When Yonkers wants a program like extended day services [for schools], upstate voters just have more pull.” Yonkers, a city with a great amount of need but very small voter participation indeed lacks the political pull of other towns and cities in Westchester and even the state as a whole, despite being the fourth largest city in the state.

At CLUSTER, the story of lost funding putting quality programs at risk is all too relevant. Just this spring, CLUSTER lost its state funded Advantage After School Programs Grant, which supported the organization’s after school programs. Before 2014, CLUSTER had this grant renewed every year since 2006. “It’s a terrible situation losing a grant,” laments Campos, “It’s a struggle and there’s no rhyme or reason to it.” After eight years of meeting their deliverables (fulfilling what was expected of them through by the state funders) and receiving high marks on their evaluations, CLUSTER lost this much needed funding. Without this support, the organization had to shutter some of its afterschool programs in nearby schools, putting the families who relied on these programs to watch their children while they worked and the children who received mentoring and tutoring from these programs at a major disadvantage. These families and children were not the only collateral put at risk in this loss. CLUSTER’s youth services arm alone partners with many other organizations in Yonkers and the surrounding area, including the CURB center, the Cornell University Cooperative Extension, the Yonkers Public Library, the Yonkers Board of Education, and the YMCA, all of whom, in Campos’s words, now “have to scramble to deliver services without a partner.” While CLUSTER’s administrators called upon connections in the state legislature for answers, few were given. “It’s not even elected representatives who make these funding decisions,” says Campos, “it’s state funding agencies”-- agencies which aim to reissue funding to elsewhere once the Yonkers programs close.  It would be bad enough if CLUSTER alone was forced to shutter its afterschool programs, putting both families and partner organizations at a disadvantage, but in the loss of Advantage grants, CLUSTER was far from alone. Not one organization in Yonkers had their Advantage grant renewed for the 2014-2015 school year.

Joanna Jimenez, a former employee of CLUSTER’s Youth Services arm and current director of the Greyston Foundation’s Child Care Services, is no stranger to the perils of dissolving programs after grant funding travels elsewhere, in her career working with youth programs in Yonkers, she has experienced this circumstance three times. “A nonprofit is a very shaky table to stand on,” says Jimenez, sitting in her street level office on Warburton Avenue, just blocks away from CLUSTER’s office in bustling Getty Square. Located directly below the affordable apartment units that Greyston offers to many of its clients who make use of the childcare program, her office is accessible to the families who seek her help. “Money is extremely tight, and people are very desensitized to the needs of communities,” shares Jimenez, “and our lack of numbers and votes leave us struggling for funds.” Jimenez still worked with CLUSTER in the spring of 2014 when the state pulled Advantage grant funding from all over the city of Yonkers. “I had parents coming up to me with tears in their eyes, asking me ‘is this really over?’” By her estimate, roughly one hundred families were left without afterschool programs after the loss of this grant, and that’s just from CLUSTER’s programs alone. This isn’t the first time a lost grant has caused much greater loss for Jimenez and the families she’s worked with. In her previous work as a community health educator with WestCOP (The Westchester Community Opportunity Program), a very similar scenario occurred. “Working there was the best seven years of my life. We always exceeded our goals, met our deliverables. But that doesn’t on the chopping block. We just had to do our best as long as we could do it until it gets cut down,” says Jimenez. Going through the dissolutions of programs which were both fulfilling to her and valuable to the community has been emotionally difficult for her. “You just get tired of dissolving,” she says, “It was hard to move on. I didn’t want to set myself up for the heartbreak.”

Greyston’s programs have survived the funding chopping block, as their focus on youth workforce development makes them eligible for Workforce Investment Act (WIA) funding. While Greyston could sustain its childcare services and workforce development programs, its own limited capacity means it is unable to absorb the loss of afterschool programs from CLUSTER and many other nonprofits across the city. “This is a constant challenge, most social service nonprofits always feel like there’s not enough funding, scarcity is a constant. Of course, severe budget cuts can exacerbate this.” writes Michael Wells, Principal Consultant of Grants Northwest, a Portland based consulting firm for nonprofit funding. “They do everything they can, but they need pots of money,” professes Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano, speaking at the CURB Center on the Hudson River, “and bigger levels of government have left locals out to dry.”  

While state level politics put Yonkers nonprofits at an extreme disadvantage, city government also has a major impact on the work of these community organizations. “The mayor has to be tough on social services for vulnerable populations,” says Mayor Spano, “we have to inspect places like the Sharing Community [a nonprofit homeless shelter in Getty Square] to make sure the people staying there are safe, but we’ve got to be flexible and work with them too.” With the recent closing of Yonkers homeless shelters the Sleeping Site and the Gospel Mission, it will be difficult for the Sharing Community to absorb the increased demand for their services without going over capacity.

Perhaps the most impactful city issue currently affecting community work in Yonkers is the budget crisis of the Yonkers public school system. The over 300 million dollar debt of the school system has had a radical impact on the Yonkers school system, with the firing of 628 employees (almost 400 of whom were teachers), drastic cuts in arts, sports, and special education programs as well as cuts to guidance counselors, aides, and other necessary. These across the board cuts have been extremely impactful on families and children in Yonkers, they have also spelled trouble for nonprofit organizations in Yonkers. “These budget cuts, especially the loss of guidance counselors, has put a huge burden on the work we do,” says Wendy Nadel, the Executive Director of Yonkers Partners in Education (YPIE), a nonprofit organization focused on preparing kids in Yonkers public schools for higher education. Without these guidance counselors and other liaisons in schools (not to mention the loss of potentially resume building curriculum), YPIE had a lot more work on its hands preparing high schoolers for college applications and supporting them through the process. Greg Arcaro, head of the Community Planning Council (CPC), echoes this sentiment-- “when school funding gets cut, services get cut. Partnerships [of CPC member orgs] have been eliminated in a number of schools, leaving kids on the street after school, and parents at a disadvantage.” CLUSTER too has experienced difficulty supporting the city’s atrophied public school system. The Yonkers Public Schools used to fund CLUSTER’s peer mediation training program within the school system, funding which went out with the guidance counselors. “Our job is ten times more difficult now,” says Diana Campos, “CLUSTER has to make up for the lost pupil support systems, whether its guidance counselors or even food.” Larger class sizes, a consequence of lost teachers, means less productive students and harder work for the staff of CLUSTER’s remaining after school programs. “This loss is extra devastating without support from our Advantage grant,” adds Campos, illustrating how city issues and state politics can coincide disadvantageously for nonprofits working in a vulnerable school system where seventy-four percent of families are low income. Nonprofits filling in the gap in service left by other sectors is hardly rare-- its a common economic trend. “When the private sector doesn’t provide services in high demand, the public sector steps in. When the public sector fails, nonprofit organizations have to pick up the slack. You see this in towns all over the country,” says Dr. Erna Gelles, a professor of public administration at Portland State University. In Yonkers, the cost of filling the service gap left by business and government has grown dramatically.

For newer organizations, breaking into the network of city connections needed to make change in Yonkers can be highly difficult. LaMont OyeWale’ Badru, the executive director of the recently formed Community Governance and Development Council (CGDC), learned this fact the hard way in the campaign that galvanized the organization. In 2012, the City of Yonkers opened a request for proposals (RFP) for the vacant School 19 building, in the very lot Badru spent his childhood playing with neighborhood friends. LaMont envisioned the city RFP as an opportunity to establish what he calls “an anchor neighborhood organization”-- a community center with space for youth programs, neighborhood meetings, and local events. Mobilizing resources both institutional (support from the Elias Foundation, Yonkers nonprofit Community Voices Heard, and outside consultants) and communal (the hard work and ideas of community members), The CGDC emerged through the “Free School 19” campaign, mobilizing resources both institutional (support from foundations, Yonkers nonprofit Community Voices Heard, and outside consultants) and communal (the hard work and ideas of community members) to clean up the school site, promote their mission through social media, and make their presence felt at City Council meetings. The only problem was who they were competing with-- Alma Realty, a major player in city real estate whose wealth and influence outweighed the brand new nonprofit.  Alma’s proposal won out-- both economically (offering over twice CGDC’s $65,000 bid as well as tax revenue from future tenants) and due to their long term relationships with city officials. “Developers with access and relationships getting what they want-- it’s par the course,” says Badru. In Yonkers and many cities like it, community organizations compete not only within the nonprofit sector, but also with private sector actors whose considerable resources give them a serious advantage.  As a new organization working towards community organizing (rather than the service initiatives of the other nonprofits profiled in this article), CGDC struggles with being an unknown quantity in a city built on cozy long term relationships.  “Organizations that are established have closer, long term, structural relationships and consistent funding. We’re still identifying our work and trying to prove ourselves,” says Badru.  Fortunately, there is a silver lining to the “Free School 19” campaign. Leveraging the momentum and visibility of their powerful campaign, members of CGDC were able to meet with Mayor Spano and present an alternate plan for community development. Receiving funding from a city community development block grant, CGDC moved into their new office, a spacious room in a refurbished building by the Yonkers Waterfront, accessible both to City Hall and the Southwest neighborhoods in which the organization works.  While CGDC’s prospects are looking up, the organization is still bounded by the financial constraints of nonprofit work. Though Badru is confident and comfortable in his relationship with funders the Elias Foundation, Sparkplug Foundation, and Lansa Foundation, he must dedicate 20-30 percent of his time to acquiring and managing the organization’s funding, time that could admittedly be spent on less bureaucratic and more community based concerns.  

How do community organizations navigate their work and their partnerships in times of financial hardship?  Making sure their funding comes from diverse sources is one crucial step. “Organizations of any size need a variety of funding sources. Nonprofits have to diversify funding, whether from city sources or private foundations.” says Dr. David Rosenthal, a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. However, the degree to which foundations can make up for a loss in state funding is, on a broad scale, negligible. “Foundations make up only 5 to 6 percent of nonprofit funding at the national level. They don’t fill the gap,” says Dr. Erna Gelles. “Funding can just disappear. Nonprofits can compete, and it can be tense. But collaboration is is the way to compensate for loss of program resources.”

With so many obstacles in the City of Yonkers,  the path to collaboration can be a hard road to follow. “We do our best working with other facilities. Nonprofits don’t make enough money to stand alone,” says Donald Golding, Director of Youth Development for the Yonkers YMCA, “But I would be naive if I said there is no competition. Funding is always an issue, and when you’re competing with this or that organization and many others in the state for a grant, you’ve just got to get the job done.”  Greg Arcaro works with the Community Planning Council, a group of representatives from nonprofits, businesses, and other community stakeholders which has worked in Yonkers in various incarnations since 1920. “Since the financial crisis in 2009, there’s been a lot of push and pull between nonprofit organizations in Yonkers,” says Arcaro. “City and government funding, private or individual donations all want something to fund something new,” says Arcaro, citing a reason why funding gets pulled from so many consistent and successful programs.

How does the dearth of funding for Yonkers community work affect partnerships of organizations? “It’s Econ 101,” says Arcaro, “Scarcity creates competition, whether its stores, restaurants, or social services competing for grants.” It’s one of the CPC’s many jobs to mediate this competition. “We try to be very upfront about competition between member organizations and encourage collaboration. Awareness of financial impact in important, so we try to respectfully share funding sources.” Arcaro points out that collaboration can often be by design in grant funding. “Certain foundations require collaboration, such as the Benedict Foundation Grant which currently supports the YMCA, YWCA, and the Nepperhan Community Center.” Grants which encourage (or demand) teamwork are more common than ever--“There is a general movement in government and some foundations towards requiring collaboration. Sometimes this is good, sometimes not, it depends on whether the collaboration makes sense for the nonprofits and improves services to their clients,” writes Michael Wells. Toni Volchok has some concerns about the intentions of this incentivized collaboration: “Some grants push collaboration, but it’s limited. Sometimes its their way of funding three agencies with what they used to give one.” After all the funding they have lost, it can be hard for CLUSTER to collaborate with other groups. “We used to help other groups set up their afterschool programs, help with licensing, providing information, but we can’t do that now, especially if the organization asking won’t take on any of the kids from our program.”  “If local nonprofits feel like they’re being taken advantage of,” writes Wells,  “it’s likely true, whether that’s the intention or not. There’s often very little understanding of nonprofit realities among government funders.” While collaborative grants may be designed with good intentions, they do not acknowledge the real challenges of nonprofit work.“The problem with collaboration,” says Dr. Gelles, “is that it takes time, resources, and coordination.” For Yonkers nonprofits, those resources are in an especially short supply.

What makes a partnership viable in such a harsh financial climate for community work? Community workers from all over Yonkers may have diverse opinions on the matter, but a few themes prevail. One theme was the quid pro quo (or at least a mutually beneficial exchange) described by Toni in the previous paragraph. Sara Smith Sell, an employee of Groundwork Hudson Valley brought up a similar idea in her office off Getty Square. “In a partnership, organizations both have needs that need to be met, a communication breakdown or a lack of resources can put these needs at risk.” Greg Arcaro also identified the need for mutually beneficial arrangements. “Nonprofits measure success by how many people they can help per dollar. If a partnership means they can help more people per hour, than its a success.” Others pointed to and communication as major factor in successful partnership. When asked about what makes a good partnership, Wendy Nadel of YPIE said “mutual respect for each other's work and honest and clear communication-- it’s the basis for everything we do.” Joanna Jimenez from Greyston foundation outlined three major points for a strong partnership: “1. having the same end goal, 2. Having great communication, 3. Openness-- if one of these principles gets broken, it’s a bad partnership.” With funding tight and many obstacles at the city and state level, the organizations which sustain the people of Yonkers will have to work hard to rebuild these partnerships and explore new, more efficient solutions to serve a community with immense need.

Nov. 5, 2014

By Gussie Gribetz 

The faded bricks, shattered windows, and broken window panes make up the dilapidated school building that stands at the intersection of Groshon Ave. and Jackson St. Trash piles up behind the gate that encloses this grand property that once housed Public School 19 from 1906 to 1991. Now the faded P.S. 19 sign remains almost unrecognizable and the building’s vacancy haunts the surrounding community. In the City of Yonkers’ recent attempts to revitalize neighborhoods, the abandoned building of P.S. 19 stands as a perfect space to do so.

The backstory of this property begins in 2012, when the City of Yonkers issued a call for the acquisition and development of the property that would hopefully result in a finished product by April 2016. An online form sent out by the Mayor’s office announced,  “The City is seeking developers that can demonstrate the ability to execute this project without local governmental assistance and whose experience demonstrates the ability to adhere to strict time schedules.” In response to this call, the City received two plans: one from a Yonkers based non-profit, Community Governance and Development Council, and another from a private development agency, Alma Realty. Similar to other recent development projects, like the daylighting project of the Saw Mill River, private companies throughout the southwest area have established a major presence.  As Joan Gronowski, former council member of the third district, commented during a city council meeting in December 2013, “I’ve seen a pattern in this city….If we don’t give the developer the property their interest in now, all will be lost. I’ve never understood that rationale, 'cause it means that we don’t have much pride or hope in the properties we are offering to begin with. To me, if the developer wants the property, it’s in their best interest to acquire the property.”

The two plans that were presented to the city verged on opposing ends of the development spectrum. Initially, Community Governance and Development Council proposed to turn School 19 into a community center that would provide a sustainable and multi-use space for the surrounding neighborhood and include a media center, a neighborhood center, a daycare, and outdoor play space. In an interview, LaMont Oyewale’ Badru, the executive director of CGDC, explains, “We put together a development team and had the funding behind us. It was a real grassroots campaign; we had the whole neighborhood cleaning up the school and major support behind the project.”  When this project first arose, it had incredible backing from politicians, community members, and even the infamous rapper Styles P, who in an interview calls to the importance of turning P.S. 19 back into an educational facility: “We should hear children’s laughter as we are doing this interview right now because they’re playing at their school on the weekend at the playground. Not only is it a school down, it’s a playground down and that’s not cool.”

On the other hand, Alma Realty Corporation, a private real estate company intended to convert P.S. 19 into a 91-unit market rate apartment complex. Currently, Alma Realty Corp sells properties in Harlem, Washington Heights, Bronx, Queens, and Yonkers, along with other areas in the New York and New Jersey region. Despite repeatedly questioning Alma Realty about the current state of their development plans for P.S. 19, they failed to speak on the matter.

In order for either of the two proposed plans to pass, the Yonkers City Council needed to vote a majority for one of them.  During the council meeting, held on December 10, 2013, politicians such as Joan Gronowski and active community members like Gail Baxter and Reverend Lofton Wood voiced their opinions about the importance of turning P.S. 19 into a community center. Towards the end of the forum, Wood exclaimed,  “Our young people deserve to have a multicultural center that they all can enjoy.”

At first, the votes seemed to favor the community center plan, but at the last minute, the Democrat Wilson Terro voted with the Republicans and the CGDC lost the battle. Alma Realty was given twenty-one months to substantially complete the project or the property would go back to the city.

As more trash continues to pile up behind the metal fence, the old elementary school, once energized by the bright minds of children, now idly waits for its demolishment. Alma Realty has until next year to begin renovating the building into the apartment complex it initially set out to create. But this delay on CGDC’s end provides reason to continue mobilizing the community and strengthening the “Free School 19” campaign.  As Oyewale’ Badru says, “Although legally Alma has control over P.S. 19, we are keeping our options open. We’re keeping an eye on it and seeing if an opportunity develops.”  With that, Badru and his team at CGDC have expanded their organization, including launching a new space in the downtown district and focusing on their new initiative of creating youth programs that seek to create comprehensive neighborhood planning. Additionally, they have begun to develop programs that target connecting residents to particular community locations.

“The thing that bothers me the most,” LaMont passionately exclaims in the City Council meeting, “is that we know that [a community center] is what is needed….My problem is, why is this world not made for everyone?”  As he grasps the podium and stares straight at the council members, he exclaims  “Can we say we’ve made a difference in this city or have we only looked out for a selective few…? Who’s going to pay high-end prices on top of that hill? I won’t. But who’s going to move in, let’s be honest?”

October 27th 2014

Reversing Discrimination Against Ex-Convicts

By Rosie Sofen

Reintegrating into society after prison is fraught. Many ex-convicts turn back to lifestyles of crime, finding no financial alternative. This past week, Yonkers passed “Ban the Box” legislation, taking the box off city job applications where applicants must state whether or not they have been convicted of a crime. The aim of this legislation is to reduce the challenge facing ex-convicts in reintegration. Juanita Lewis is director of the Yonkers chapter of Community Voices Heard (CVH), a community-based advocacy organization that fights for the rights of underprivileged communities.

Ms. Lewis expressed, “Statistically, the criminal background box on applications impacts Black and Latino males at a higher rate than any other group. There wasn’t anything here in Westchester County that dealt with that. Yonkers is the largest city in the county and we had approached the mayor around doing poverty work already. We talked about how it’s a way of removing barriers, how it’s an opportunity to show that he’s starting to address poverty in the city, particularly in communities of color, and it’s just a good first step in worker justice and criminal reforms. Now, this city is going adopt the New York State model of Ban the Box, where it is taken off of applications for the city and they’re going to do it administratively so it doesn’t have to go through city council approval.”

Sixty cities and counties across the U.S. have implemented such legislation; between 2013 and present, seven states, including California, Delaware, and Illinois have implemented statewide Ban the Box. Mass incarceration makes the hardships faced by ex-convicts a pressing issue. As Ms. Lewis stated, “It’s a good first step in removing barriers, resulting in change that’s going to happen in the next couple of months, impacting people for years down the road.”

Keisha Skipper is a legislative aide to Christopher Johnson, a city councilman for Yonkers. As part of his team, she represents the west side of Yonkers, whose residents are predominantly minorities. She had some opposition to Ban the Box. She explained, “When someone checks the box, it opens dialogue in the interview process in the beginning stages, so if your situation was wrongfully accused or even if you were guilty, you have an opportunity to explain how things transpired. Employers will increase the application process, including background checks, fingerprinting and so on, to wean out people they don’t want. Applicants will have to pay fees for all those extra checks employers demand, but where would they get those resources if they don’t currently have a job? Stereotypes make employers make certain assumptions because of the ethnicity/race of potential employees, and they now won’t have the chance to explain, so that judgment will come at a higher cost.”

In response to some of these points of contention, Julia Solow, a community organizer for Westchester County for Community Voices Heard, explained, “Most employers won’t even consider applicants who check that box. Many applications only have a box without room for explanation, in which case the argument that applicants would have the interview to explain their history of incarceration goes out the window. It’s illegal in New York State to discriminate based on history of incarceration. If an employer discriminates based on the initial application, it’s much harder to prove than if an applicant gets through the application process up to the point of a background check and then the employer decides not to hire them.”

In relation to other concerns, if a person’s criminal background is directly related to the job they would be doing, employers can make exceptions and not hire in that circumstance. This exception applies in cases of vulnerable populations, children, and law enforcement. If someone has done something that would impact those populations, employers can decline to hire them. However, individuals in such situations can find employment in other branches of city work.

As Ban the Box is relatively new legislation being passed around the country, its long-term effects on populations it aims to help remain to be determined—but it is a significant first step in a continuing process of criminal justice reform and reducing discrimination.

Dec. 20, 2014

By Gussie Gribetz

As the harsh winter months creep through Yonkers, the homeless population scurries to find shelter and facilities in a city with increasingly limited resources. In desire to rebrand the city, problems of homelessness become valued less by the city government and solutions that would address the homeless issue are pushed farther away. In the words of Mayor Mike Spano, Yonkers is “ held together by chewing gum and band aids”.  Now, in concern with homelessness, the chewing gum is becoming stale and the band-aid is loosing its stick, leaving the homeless without sufficient resources in the bitter cold of January and February.

Driving through the southwest area, LaMont Brown moves with a special sense of urgency as he points to various sites that either once housed or continue to house the homeless.  Just as winter sets in, two important shelters have closed- The Yonkers Gospel Mission and the Sleeping Site, leaving The Sharing Community as the only viable place for the homeless to find adequate resources. However, with that, The Sharing Community currently faces financial and political struggles, making it more difficult to address the demands of the homeless population.

Moreover, it’s not only Yonkers dealing with closed shelters. Emily Cohen from Project Homelessness Connect sees a very similar issue happening throughout the shelters in San Francisco. “Most of our shelters are cutting back on their hours too” Cohen explains, “ They are closed during the day because there’s not enough funding to operate them 24-7”.

“The shelter system is in a crisis”, reports Gabriella Sandoval-Requena from the Coalition of Homelessness in New York City. “It’s a really expensive system to run for the reason that a lot of it is outsourced. You have the department of Homeless Services that runs the shelter system itself and then a lot of service providers who are actually on site with the families, managing the shelters”. 

From San Francisco to New York, shelters across the country are rapidly closing, leaving the few that remain open with the struggle to maintain the financial burden of running the services and managing the demands of the homeless.

While sipping his green juice from the recently opened juicer on Yonkers Ave, LaMont Brown speeds through Getty Square, halting at the stop sign between North Broadway and Main Street. Pointing straight ahead, Brown explains, “We picked up a woman here yesterday, she was completely naked and won’t stop screaming. We called the ambulance and they took her to St. Johns. But she was right in middle of the street, I’m telling you, completely naked”.

Self described as a “crisis manager”, LaMont Brown works for Westchester government as the case manager for the Homeless Outreach Team, concentrating in what he calls the “hub” of homelessness. With one hand on the steering wheel and the other waving in the air, Brown describes Yonkers as “the bud of mental health agencies. You have the mental health association of Westchester, Cluster, Family Services of Westchester, the Sharing Community, The Department of Social Services, St. John’s mental health, and you have various drug treatment programs. It’s a hub. There’s a lot of services around here”.  With these various organizations, many homeless from other cities such as; Tuckahoe, Somers, Larchmont and Mount Vernon, migrate to Yonkers, further increasing the demand on the services already offered within the area.

The lack of agencies in the surrounding cities place a heavy weight on the shoulders of Yonkers and Mayor Mike Spano definitely feels the pressure. When asked about how the city currently attempts to deal with the disproportional ration between the number of homeless and the available agencies, Spano points a finger, “ We continue to be very supportive of the homeless population in Yonkers. But there needs to be more of a recognition on behalf of Westchester county to take responsibility for the homeless. We are doing ours and at the end of the day, I don’t think Westchester is doing their part”  

On top of Westchester homeless population congregating in Yonkers, there is also a substantial population relocating from New York City to the Hudson River.  However, this migration from the city is not as extreme in comparison to the cities in the county because, one, the New York City has more resources than Westchester and two, if an individual is still connected to the welfare system in the city, they are unable to receive food stamps and other services in Yonkers. However, with that said, LaMont Brown still sees homeless individuals coming up from the city “ to seek greener pastures”. Brown mostly knows of individuals traveling from the city that he describes as “knowing a relative who successfully navigated social services or the mental health systems, or have come up here to get help from me (Mr. Brown).” 

Although individuals like Mr. Brown identify Yonkers as the hub of homelessness within the Westchester area, with the recent closing of two important shelters, this label has partially lost its meaning.  About three months ago, near the end of October, both the Yonkers Gospel Mission and the Sleep Site closed.

As Brown weaves through the various pockets of the southwest region, he signals to both the Gospel Mission and Sleep Site. Driving up Locus Hill, Brown points to a faded red small apartment building that, until recently, provided over nineteen beds for the homeless and now remains completely vacant.  Making his way over to North Broadway, Brown motions to a subtle white church building with a red a noticeably red door, “Rumor has it, they sold the building. Staring out the window seat, “People had been there for years, some for decades”. What once stood as Yonkers Gospel Mission, which permanently housed over fifty men, now idly waits to be bought by an real estate investor.  

While the loss of the Sleep Site disrupted the distribution of agencies throughout the southwest region, the closing of Yonkers Gospel Mission has proven to be most detrimental in providing sufficient resources to the growing homeless population.

“Since we preach and we are a religious organization, we really didn’t get city support,” explains Jeff Hage, the executive director of the Gospel Mission. He goes on to say, “ Well, we just didn’t have enough financial support [which] was mostly from Christian churches and that sort of thing. It slowly faded away over the years and was never really replaced well”. Last Spring, the Gospel Mission found out that they could no longer maintain the financial burden and consequently stopped accepting men, leaving over thirty men in need of replacement. With a bit of hesitance, Hage continues; “ I was able to make arrangements with many different shelters and other facilities for the men to go. Welfare helped me accommodate some of the men so that they were all able to go some place else”.

Throughout the fifty years that the Gospel Mission occupied the building on North Broadway, a city official had never once come for an inspection. However, Hage describes, “three days before we closed, they city came down condemning the building, saying that they were not going to allow dormitory residencies in Yonkers, which the Sharing Community also is. They said they weren’t going to allow us to have a big room with a bunch of bunk beds for guys to stay in. You’d have to have individual rooms, which is just not financially feasible, we couldn’t even stay afloat in a dormitory”. Although, the Gospel Mission was initially in financial turmoil when the city unexpectedly came for an inspection, the call to switch from dormitory style residencies to individual rooms would have drained this shelter either way.

If what Hage describes is true, this possible changeover could seriously affect The Sharing Community. The drop-in shelter of The Sharing Community, like most other traditional shelters, has one big room with bunk beds spread throughout and if the city will actually not allow for shelters to house homeless in the classic dormitory style, then this could lead to the closing of The Sharing Community. Being the only large, viable shelter in Yonkers, these implications would be beyond detrimental for the homeless population. The Sharing Community was contacted over six times to comment on this potential threat. They have yet to respond.

The sudden changeover is a likely result from the political agenda of the city government. Reiterated by Sandoval- Requena from the Coalition for the Homeless, “ there are a lot of political interests [in the shelter system]. There are people who use to work for the Department of Homeless Services that now have some kind of relationship to the service providers of shelter.”

On the other hand, although the shelter system might come with its faults, it is still vital to immediately addressing homelessness. A primary cause of homelessness steams from two issues; severe drug and alcohol abuse or mental illness, and in many situations, these two problems intertwine. “Someone doesn’t end up homeless over night” explains Michael Stoops, the Director of Community Organizing at National Coalition for the Homeless, “ and shelters help to get homeless back into the housing and job market over time by providing them with special services to help get them back on track. Shelters help people break out of homelessness”. 

But on the other hand, in Yonkers and cities like it, shelters are under threat due to limited sources of funding and the influence of government officials. “Everything is political, even our food is political. Everything is controlled by politics one way or another”, utters LaMont Brown as he makes the turn from Warburton Ave onto Main Street. Brown refers to how a place that is dedicated to sufficiently providing for the least well off in society has become tainted by petty politics. Without blatantly stating it, Brown is referring to The Sharing Community.

Smacked right in between Getty Square and the Waterfront district, The Sharing Community serves an overwhelming amount of homeless in both their drop in shelter and permanent all male shelter. Westchester County government of Public Services and mental health agencies mostly funds the drop-in shelter, while Department of Social Services funds the shelter proper. To secure a bed at drop-in shelter, one must sign up online around noon, but as Mr. Brown says, “ they really try not to turn individuals away, they’ll turn a room into a sleeping corridor if need be”. And in order to secure a bed at the shelter proper, a person must meet a certain criteria because as Mr. Brown describes, “ it cost about three thousand to four thousand per month to house and supply the necessary means for each adult male”.

However, despite The Sharing Community’s attempt to address the demands of the increasing homeless population in Yonkers, like other shelters throughout the country, this shelter is currently facing challenges of simultaneously meeting the needs of the homeless and the city government. Sitting in the Van der Donck Park on a chilly October evening, Alonzo a fifty something year old man describes his current situation at The Sharing Community and his life as a homeless in Yonkers.

Barely able to make out his facial features, Alonzo dresses in an oversized navy puffer jackets that covers everything up until his mouth and wears a thick grey wool cap that falls right before his eye line. Remarkably comfortable in the chill of late fall, Alonzo meticulously recounts the multitude of events that have left him homeless for the past five years, “You know, I screwed up when I was married and had a daughter. I made those kinda choices that turned out to leave me alone”, he goes on to say “and then I started drinking, lost my job at the insurance company, and couldn’t get hired anywhere else because of that one time I was accused of child neglect”. 

As the sun sets and a warm golden tone takes over the landscape, Alonzo faces the Saw Mill River, “ now I’m here, sleeping at The Sharing Community and trying to spend my days in the library, you know- in those big leather chairs. I’m lonely and don’t have anyone to talk to, so I drink and drink. I know it’s not what I should be doing but….”

Having been in and out of the drop in shelter at The Sharing Community, Alonzo has seen a significant change in the past five years, especially in terms of the time frame that individuals are able to stay inside the building. “ I’ll tell you something, they’ve (The Sharing Community) has gotten a lot stricter in how long we can be there. There didn’t use to be a time constraint. [Now] we have to be out by six o’clock in the morning and aren’t able to come back until five at night”.  

According to Mr. Brown “The Sharing Community is arbitrarily restricting people based on their behavior”.  He explains, “Mind you that some of these people have mental disabilities that they are governed largely by. Let me give you an example, instead of restricting a person for three or four days, some of these restrictions are indefinite. What does that even mean? These are homeless people, how are they suppose to understand until further notice, that’s all insensible”. However, Brown does not believe these restrictions are based on budgetary cuts from the city, rather he firmly views them as arbitrary restrictions set up by the administration.

In the past year, the Sharing Community recently changed over executive directors. Currently Nadine Burn-Lyons serves this position after managing the kitchen for many years. The consensus between professionals like Mr. Brown is that she is doing a relatively good job running the place except for the her arbitrary restrictiveness that she has begun to employ.

Across the country, shelters are placing restrictions in response to the financial burden of maintaining the services all day and all night. Cities have reasoned that during the night, the need for facilities takes precedent over the demands during the day, because similarly to how Alonzo has found the public library as a space to occupy, there are reasonable places (like a library) where the homeless can congregate during the day, or one would hope so.

However, relying on public spaces to address the issue of homelessness does not provide close to satisfactory means or results. Beyond indoor places like the library, many homeless people in Yonkers tend to gather in Getty Square, where a greater exchange between drug dealers and drug users takes place. Pointing to the McDonalds adjacent to The Sharing Community, Brown claims, “ Usually during the warm weather, we have homeless line up here smoking K2 and pan handling”. With no other place to go during the day, especially in the current winter months, homeless individuals crowd around businesses, sit in front of stairwells, or squat in buildings, causing residents to call the police and complain.  By restricting the amount of time homeless can stay inside the Sharing Community and denying these individuals access to places like Getty Square, it creates an innate paradox that pushes the need of addressing homelessness farther away.

Fueled the restrictiveness the city, the homeless population has fewer places to be housed. Specifically to the southwest region, the city has placed a significant effort on the area to invest in increasing capital of both the neighborhood and its residents. More generally known as gentrification, this ongoing attempt has tremendously affected possible solutions to solve homelessness in Yonkers.

“One of the things about gentrification is that it’s obviously a political hot bottom and it’s really simple to say that if we don’t gentrify then we won’t have this homeless displacement” Erin Cohen explains on the topic that gentrifying has on the homeless. She goes on to further spell out, “whether or not you’re gentrifying, the issue shouldn’t be if you are moving people around who are experiencing homelessness. Rather it should be about who’s providing the solution and how the community is involved within the solution”.

In a general consensus among both Yonkers community members and professionals working in the field of homelessness advocacy and solutions, all agree that the best solution to lessening and helping homeless individuals is through the creation of more affordable housing. Looking exclusively at the word homeless, once an individual becomes housed, logistically and practically that individual is no longer homeless.

However, specifically in Yonkers, this solution is not easily achievable because there is simply not enough housing or resources to build affordable housing. And in the hope of bringing a wealthier demographic into the area, agents for homelessness have been further pushed away from the government’s agenda. As LaMont Brown puts it, “ It’s [the building of affordable housing for the homeless] just not going, especially in downtown Yonkers. Downtown Yonkers is in the midst of a gentrification, so the homeless population there, in Getty Square, is not welcomed.  [Getty Square] is the business improvement district where merchants are trying to drum up business ad keep people coming from elsewhere to rent apartments. That’s counterproductive for the city to have homeless around and the potential population calling and complaining. So they’re not going to build anything new. I don’t think”.   

There’s a common belief that by starting with housing, many of the other issues surrounding homelessness will hopefully follow. Cohen from Project Homeless overwhelming supports this idea, believing that “behavioral issues that coincide with homelessness don’t exist anymore, once people have access to housing” She consents however,  “Not always, every issue is different, you’re still going to have challenges, but if you house people you don’t have problems with homelessness. It sounds stupid to say because it’s kina of a duh reality”.

In the larger picture, lack of affordable housing has proven to be the number one cause of homelessness, considering the incredible rise in the housing market. Stoops, who has committed his career to stopping homelessness, believes that in order to expand affordable housing, “we need to first address the housing crisis among young, middle class individuals, then begin to construct affordable housing specifically pointed at the homeless”.

However, what Stoops and many others like Cohen offer as a solution, only addresses the long-term solution to homelessness. What do we do in the mean time in places like Yonkers, where potential housing has yet to be built and shelters’ resources are quickly diminishing?

In thinking about this issue, Gabriella Sandoval-Requena and the Coalition for the Homeless strongly believe, “ that because housing takes a bit longer to develop, programs like food pantries and soup kitchens still need to be implemented, because hunger is significantly tied to homelessness. So those shouldn’t stop, but rather increase”. She goes on to say, “ rent subsides and section 8 housing vouchers are appropriate immediate solutions and might be supportive in terms of affordable housing”.

Though, on a much larger scale than Yonkers, New York City is also experiencing a double edge sword when it comes to addressing homelessness. On one end, there is a noticeable lack of affordable housing, while on the other end, like most cities, the shelter system is proving to be incredibly difficult to maintain. In what can be considered a stalemate to resolving homelessness, Sandoval- Requena believes that vouchers can provide temporary solutions by primarily “alleviat[ing] the shelter system which is right now in a crisis and [then reallocate] those resources [to building affordable housing] because the shelter system is extremely expensive”.

However, homelessness is an issue beyond the lack of housing, mental illnesses and drug/alcohol abuse can also cause a person to become homelessness. And although affordable housing eliminates the largest issue concerning homeless, it does not tackle the other various components. As LaMont Brown says, driving past The Sharing Community, “ Homelessness can foster a depressive state of mind, so people go with the quick fix or alcoholism or drugs”.

Therefore, in developing solutions to tackle homelessness, it is important to incorporate  services that are specifically pointed at combatting the various mental and physical conditions. Cohen from Project Homeless attempts to confront this multi-faceted issue in San Francisco through what she calls community benefit agreements. 

“Here in San Francisco we have a lot of tech companies coming in” Cohen says,  “and with their affect on various neighborhood, I believe that they should be part of helping the homeless situation”. After a couple of long breathes Cohen goes on to say, “ This involves incorporating community benefit agreements for large companies to use as a way to become involved in the solution. It works by giving a tax incentive for companies that do business in downtown and in exchange they need to commit to helping solve problems of homelessness”.

“However” Cohen pauses, “we’ve seen some really good examples of community benefit agreements and some really bad examples of the. Tech companies who give volunteers hours is a really weak version of community benefit agreements, while the tech companies who put money aside to help furnish a new housing development aimed to house the homeless, is a really good version of community benefit agreements”.

What is happening in San Francisco resembles what is occurring in the waterfront district of Yonkers. In both situations, outside companies are coming in and displacing folks that have resided in that area for decades. What seems to be bringing a positive change in San Francisco, based Cohen’s description,  could perhaps help to tackle the current situation in Yonkers, where there is currently no place to house homeless and a strong resistance from the city government to build more affordable housing.  

That is not to say, however, the housing shouldn’t be the first and foremost issue addressed in Yonkers and across the country, but rather, community benefit agreements should supplement housing, especially in cities (like Yonkers) that are currently facing significant “renewal” of profitable neighborhoods.

As LaMont Brown completes his final circle around downtown Yonkers, he drives past the old factory buildings that once produced elevators and automobiles. Now they serve as storage units.

Slamming the wheels with both hands, Brown angrily exclaims, “ These are storage places, storages places! Transient. It’s crazy!” As he comes to a stop outside the Metro North train station, Brown looks back to the to the old industrial factory buildings that line the Hudson River, “ I think those would make great houses for the homeless.. but…. You know… I mean I don’t think that will ever happen”. 

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October 27th 2014

A New Look, But Enduring Issues for Accessibility in Yonkes

By Jacob Ready

In the spring of 2014, Albany legislators approved a bill aimed at changing perception of the disabled in New York State. Replacing the word “handicapped” with “accessible” and replacing the traditional handicapped sign of a seated figure in a wheelchair with a more dynamic one, this legislature speaks to aspirations in New York to replace offensive and negative memories with a future of acceptance and empowerment. Is this bill really a radical improvement? While the cosmetics of empowerment are certainly important, in the streets of Yonkers, continued inequalities continue to create barriers in the lives of the disabled.

“I don’t think the new look will change the way people think, but I do think it reflects a change in how people think about disability,” says Ansel Lurio, whom I interviewed about the reform. Ansel Lurio is a Westchester native who has lived in his waterfront apartment for four years. Ansel uses a motorized wheelchair to get around. He lives with muscular dystrophy, a debilitating muscle disease which prevents him from walking and greatly limits his range of mobility. Despite his condition, Ansel leads an active and fulfilling life, commuting into New York City from the nearby metro north station and working for the Historic House Trust. Ansel is currently working on a project to create disability accessible programming for children in twenty-five of the trust’s homes. “The key is to engage them without tokenizing them,” says Ansel, describing to me how he’s adapting historic program to a disabled audience. For autistic children, Ansel tells me its important for a tour to have no surprises and no direct questions, focusing on nonverbal elements of the experience. For the visually impaired, Ansel works to integrate Braille, tactile, and descriptive elements of the tour.

When I asked Ansel to compare the accessibility of public transportation in Yonkers with that in New York, he gave an interesting answer. Though New York transportation is much more versatile and extensive, subways are not exactly accessible compared with the totally accessible yet often unreliable Bee Line bus. Ansel is no stranger to the Bee Line, living in Yonkers and growing up in Dobbs Ferry, and his description of inefficient but accessible transportation seems to ring true. At least in Yonkers the buses are more frequent than Dobbs, where buses are as rare as once an hour.  Ansel has made use of the Bee Line’s paratransit system, a door to door bus service for the elderly and disabled, but found that having to book trips as far as a week in advance to be an inconvenience. Like most of the services available to the disabled in Yonkers, these buses are provided by the county. A transit analyst for Westchester County revealed that though the paratransit fleet contains eighty buses, these buses are based in White Plains and distributed throughout the county, with no buses specifically designated for Yonkers or other large municipalities.

The lack of services for the disabled at the city level is concerning, and while the county provides many resources, from transportation and connecting its residents to a network of nonprofits, one wonders if the disabled of Yonkers would have better access to services provided locally. I couldn’t even find statistics on the disabled population in Yonkers specifically, and while the Westchester County Office of Planning was happy to provide me with statistics about the disabled population of the county (87,089 of Westchester’s 949,552 residents as of 2012), they had no information specific to Yonkers to give me. “The county provides funding and resources, but Yonkers does not provide specific services,” said Meghan Schoeffling, Deputy Director of Westchester Disabled on the Move, a major nonprofit providing lifespan services and advocacy for the county’s disabled residents. Her office is aiming to change that, working to set up an Advisory Council within the city to connect legislators with the resources they need to make meaningful progress towards accessibility. This council would allow legislators to consult members of the disabled community and organizations like wdom to make sure their concerns are addressed. Meghan’s office also worked with legislators to pass the accessibility bill at the state level. “I believe images have a lot of power, and the new signs are being phased into to replace older ones so its cost effective.” She also told me that she felt implementation of existing laws, such as compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, was a bigger priority right now than implementing new policy.

When I asked Meghan about the challenges the disabled face specific to Yonkers and Westchester, she told me that the cost of living was a major factor. “The cost of living is very high in Westchester, but federal benefits are fixed and don’t account for that.” So while disabled Yonkers tea may receive the same benefits as others elsewhere, much more of that money is consumed by rent and other living costs. For the economically disadvantaged, even acquiring these benefits can become, as Schoeffling describes it “a full time job,” especially for those who have trouble reading or understanding the complex paperwork required to receive disability benefits or social security. Ansel Lurio also shared thoughts on how inequality shapes the experiences of the disabled. “I feel like Yonkers only builds new things for the rich,” said Ansel, expressing his concern over the building of shopping centers like Ridge Hill, where the facilities may be accessible, but quite remote for those without a car or the luxury for Whole Foods Shopping sprees. “Yonkers wants to build these new shopping centers, but doesn’t repair places like Getty Square,” said Ansel, adding, “We need things everyone can use, like a bus depot. Why do we have one in White Plains but not Yonkers, where so many people take the bus?”  While the county may seem to be ignoring Yonkers, Yonkers itself neglects certain neighborhood. Ansel told me that in his observation, it’s busy streets and newer, richer areas like the waterfront that get plowed first in the winter, which can make a huge difference for someone with impaired mobility. For those who follow the city of Yonkers, the neglect of the disabled and economically disadvantaged in city development and maintenance hardly comes as a surprise, but with the energy and imagery of the new state bill and the development of the city Advisory Committee with Westchester Disabled on the Move, the city certainly has opportunity for a new direction. This author hopes the city will take in mind a lesson from Ansel and his work—that meaningful accessible programming works to embrace and engage the disabled instead of tokenizing them with merely symbolic accommodations.

October 27th 2014

Two Westchesters

By Rosie Sofen

In social justice advocacy events, most often the voices of people in power are heard clearly, while those oppressed remain silenced. Professionals, officials, and politicians speak about the nature of problems in communities and their solutions to those problems. But at a recent Westchester anti-poverty summit, organizers structured the event differently. Speakers were community members whose lives had been directly affected by certain hardships linked to living in poverty. These hardships formed cornerstones of the agenda issues Community Voices Heard is now pushing forward from the policy side.

Linwood Lewis, a psychology professor at Sarah Lawrence College and keynote speaker of the event, began, “I am a proud son of the Bronx.” He went on, “I’d like to tell you the story of two Westchesters, one of the top ten income percentile in the country and one of the top ten homelessness rates in the country.” Describing poignantly the divide between rich and poor, Black and White in Westchester County, Dr. Lewis kicked of the summit hosted by Community Voices Heard on October 4th.  

Through meetings with underprivileged communities in places across the county, over the past year Community Voices Heard developed an agenda for combating poverty. Carlos Panjon, a high school student in Yonkers, stated, “We have many families here in Westchester that are struggling because of poverty. Growing up in poverty, I experienced the difficulties of inequality firsthand and find that the responsibility for change lies in our hands.” This summit marked the unveiling of the developed agenda, which includes free after-school programs, childcare for working parents, Ban the Box (legislation removing the question on city applications of whether or not an applicant has been convicted of a crime), and affordable housing needs assessment. To introduce each item, Community Voices Heard invited individuals affected by each issue to speak about their experiences.

“For me, as a single mother of three, a free afterschool program is extremely important. I think that all the people here believe that with a good education comes a better life,” Wendy Cebellos began, in testament of the value of free after-school care. “An afterschool program will offer all of our kids more options and keep them out of the street. If you think education is important for the development of our country, you will stand with us and fight for free and low-cost afterschool programs for low-income families like mine. Because remember—it’s your future too.”

Jasmine Dillard spoke next, a mother of young children. “As a mother to be with goals and aspirations, affordable childcare is a crucial need to help secure a less stressful financial burden on my future. I don’t plan on being a ‘stay-at-home mom’ and my spouse doesn’t plan on being a ‘stay-at-home dad,' however, if the cost of childcare is equal or more than our income, one of us will have no choice until our unborn child is able to go to school. So I take this stand to fight to increase funding for the childcare subsidies that were once slashed by Rob Astorino’s administration.”

“There are so many people in shelters who have no chance,” said Christine Hester, a mother of two living in Yonkers, speaking to the necessity for affordable housing. “They’re livin’ in cars, they’re livin’ in the street, they got their kids out there, and they need better housing.”

Catherine Borgia, Majority leader for the Westchester Board of Legislators, was in attendance. Asked to come on stage, she was then asked for a yes or no answer on whether or not she would fight for the agenda in the next year. She responded, “Well, these agenda items are certainly some I’d like to explore for the upcoming budget cycle.” She spoke about budgeting challenges the county faces, and concluded by saying, “The most important thing is for you all to write letters and call your city councilmen and county executives. They need to hear what you care about and what you want.”

Though it is only the first event of many, the summit proved a powerful jumping off point in the fight against poverty in Westchester County.

October 27th 2014

New Legislation Could Rebuild Buffers for Reproductive Health

By Jacob Ready 

“I’ve seen the protesters in Getty Square. They’re speaking their mind, and I’m okay with it as long as they’re doing so with their words only,” says Bill, a north Yonkers native in Van Der Donck Park. To many Yonkers residents, the sight of pro-life protesters picketing the city’s Planned Parenthood clinic on South Broadway has been a common one since the summer months. While these protesters are peaceful, and do not block access to the facility, the words and images they wield have been a burden to those in need of the clinic’s services. Kim, a health assistant at the facility, confided that a patient of hers was distraught by the protestors: “They made her feel uncomfortable. They made her feel like she was doing something wrong.” A new bill is under debate in Westchester which could redefine the legality of protests like these in Yonkers—The Westchester Reproductive Healthcare Facilities Access Bill, popularly known as the Clinic Access Bill. Introduced to the Board of Legislators by Chairwoman Alfreda Williams and supported by Legislator Catherine Borgia, the bill seeks to ensure safe access to reproductive health facilities such as abortion clinics by allowing an eight foot floating buffer zone around those entering and exiting these facilities in which they can not be approached by protesters or other solicitors without their consent.

If the term buffer zone sounds familiar to you, it’s probably due to the ongoing debate in the past few years involving a debate over whether these protected areas violate the freedom of speech of those who might wish to protest a person’s choice to make use of a reproductive health facility. Perhaps most notably among these headlines was the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in McCullen v. Coakley, striking down a Massachusetts state law which created a thirty-five foot buffer zone around the entrances, exits, and driveways of abortion clinics. While the court ruled that the thirty-five foot buffer created too great a restriction of speech and eliminated the chance for consensual dialog between clinic seekers and protestors, the Westchester bill, known casually as the Clinic Access Bill, takes its inspiration from the floating buffer zones around reproductive service seekers upheld by a previous Supreme Court decision, Hill v. Colorado.

Those following the Westchester Board of Legislators may remember that this is not the first time the Clinic Access Bill has undergone debate, having been passed by the county’s legislators in 2011 but vetoed by Republican County Executive (and current gubernatorial hopeful) Rob Astorino.

The bill has sparked mixed opinions, from the county legislators to the city of Yonkers. Chris, a Mindspark Employee taking a break on Alexander Street, expressed approval for the bill: “The bill seems reasonable. I think it’s important for people to be able to express their views, but people need to make their own choices in peace.” Carol, a resident of the Yonkers waterfront echoed this opinion:  “They should have a bubble, they shouldn’t have to be fearful.” Not all in downtown Yonkers shared this opinion, including Keane, a native of downtown, who did not see the need for a buffer zone. “Privacy? What privacy? She walk in with a baby bump, she walk out without a baby bump, everyone can see anyway.” Perhaps we can seek a more nuanced opposing view from Charles Meldau, the chairman of Westchester-Putnam Right to Life, a chapter of the statewide pro-life organization. “There’s no need for this bill,” says Meldau, “women in New York don’t get a chance to learn about alternatives to abortion. The good people praying and protesting outside these facilities are giving information. Without them, a woman could make a decision that she regrets.” Meldau expressed skepticism over Planned Parenthood’s ability to provide adequate care and counseling to its female patients. “They say it’s a decision between a woman and her doctor. But that’s not her doctor, that’s a clinic that’s designed to kill babies.” Meldau also felt the Clinic Access Bill is an invasion of first amendment freedoms, “This bill makes protesters vulnerable to lawsuits from clinics, which could scare them away from expressing their free speech.”

“You can still hear someone from eight feet away, you can still hear someone yell at you. I don’t believe this is an invasion of freedom of speech,” says Leila Ensha, a public affairs coordinator for Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic. Ensha says she has experienced no shortage of pro-life protestors at Planned Parenthood’s White Plains clinic:  “just being there, spreading false information, and intimidating people, it’s wrong.” Ensha also spoke of the built environment of facilities affecting how people are approached. While the White Plains facility has a private parking lot, the Planned Parenthood facility in Yonkers, based in Getty Square, has no such protection for those seeking reproductive services. Debra Nodiff, a senior clinician at the Yonkers Planned Parenthood also spoke to the frustrating continual presence of protestors. “The protesters outside our building make our patients feel uncomfortable. Their presence is intimidating,” said Nodiff of the two fetus doll wielding pro-life activists who regularly picketed on South Broadway this summer and in previous months. Nodiff also noted that many of her patients at the Yonkers Planned Parenthood clinic are not in fact seeking abortions, and that the facility also provides prenatal care and support for whatever a woman may choose to do with her pregnancy. While she was unfamiliar with the current incarnation of the bill, Nodiff was enthusiastic for its possibilities. “I think it would provide better access to care,” she said of the potential new buffering laws. “It’s an intimidating enough decision to make without outside pressure. We’re here to support or patients.”

Whether or not you agree with the bill, the Westchester Board of Legislators is opening this bill for public comments on October 27th and November 10. The previous public sessions in the past week have attracted a lot of attention, especially from pro-life activists. If you feel strongly about the issue, these public forums are a great way to make yourself heard.