Grassroots

A Field Guide for Feminist ActivismBy Jennifer Baumgardner

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Copyright © 2005 Jennifer Baumgardner
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780374528652
GRASSROOTS
chapter 1Why the World Needs Another Advice Book"How do we bring attention to [an] issue and make change, not just discuss it, not just march about it, but make change?"--Ruby Dee, actor and activistJENNIFER AND AMYIn 2002, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire who believes in the bottom line, slashed recycling in America's most densely populated city. The mayor's office claimed it could save $40 million in crew and export costs. True or not, the city has 8 million citizens, many of whom buy several liters of coffee in paper cups and ask for it in a bag with seventeen napkins and four individual sugar packets--every day. Thus our city's contribution to the world's garbage problem is indisputably significant. Recycling was our one bit of moral credit, not to mention it keptus from drowning in Starbucks frappuccino cups and Glacéau Vitamin Water bottles. In a mere month, a ten-year process of training New Yorkers in garbage-sorting behavior was demolished. Standing in our tiny New York City kitchenettes tossing pounds of recyclables into the trash made us realize how much we waste--and how necessary the recycling program really was.Soon many people were angry with Bloomberg and so eager to have the service back that some were willing to pay for it, and most assumed that somebody else (Giuliani? Nader? Oprah?) would soon be informing us of the new strategy. The two of us also waited for someone else to have a plan. And waited, and waited. Then we realized that we weren't practicing what we preached unless we took some action ourselves. We called a colleague whose family started the garbage removal company BFI (yes, it's helpful as an activist to have a wide variety of friends) and attempted to tackle the recycling problem ourselves.One solution immediately jumped into our heads: Since many of our friends said they were willing to pay for the service of recycling, why not research how much it would cost to have private contractors pick up recycling? We knew this was how other places, such as Marin County, California, dealt with their recyclables. On another track, we noticed that homeless people have always acted as de facto recyclers in the city, returning cans and bottles to grocery stores for the five-cent deposits. The fact that the garbage was no longer sorted impeded their efforts to gather cans and bottles for deposits. As a stopgap solution, perhaps we could amplify the work of the homeless who recycle to make an income. We envisioned placing giant bins outside grocery stores and on street corners as drop-off centers forcans and bottles. Then homeless people or other can collectors could return them for the deposit.We began gathering information. As so often happens, we started with strong assumptions about what was going on, which turned out to not be nourished by facts. We placed a call to the city's Department of Sanitation and were connected with Kathy Dawkins, their PR person. That one call yielded this important fact: recycling wasn't abolished, as we had thought, but merely scaled back. Plastics and glass were no longer considered recyclables, but aluminum cans, newspapers, and cardboard boxes were. Furthermore, businesses in New York were still mandated by law to recycle, a service they paid for out of pocket. Knowing that recycling was technically still in place made us even more depressed since that fact wasn't being publicized. We became obnoxious, seething at our neighbors for throwing away their cat food cans, returnable bottles, and magazines.Our approach was shaping up to be a full-time job, including private contractors, public education, and homeless outreach. This moonlighting couldn't pay the bills, so we decided that if we could mobilize our own neighborhood, that would be a start. We reached out to our local city council representative, Margarita Lopez, who, as a vocal "out" lesbian council member, is known for being radically progressive. Our interns, Liz and Anna, called her office--many times--but never received a response to our request for a meeting. One day we just walked over to the office, knocked on the door, and were able to get an appointment to meet with the councilwoman for the next week. From this we learned that when at first you don't succeed, make a house call.At the meeting, we learned that we were right about herbeing an ally: she was the only city councilperson (of fifty-one members) to vote against the reduction in recycling. She pointed out how lucrative recycling could be and, if done correctly, the city should have a vested interest in maintaining it. Further, the program in New York wasn't actually in the red. "Even with losing money from glass and plastic," Lopez told us, "the city was making money from recycling," a point that had been kept from the council members until after they voted. We told Lopez of our desire to get our neighbors to subsidize curbside recycling, which she promptly shot down. "I represent a poor district," she said. "And having your garbage and recycling picked up is a basic service that citizens deserve." Lopez characterized the service as an equalizer--"whether you are rich or poor, your garbage is picked up." Although, at the time, it was the lack of recycling we were sharing equally, her point was well taken.We left the chaotic but productive meeting, jettisoning the idea of paying for pickup, but with a plan to move ahead with public education and getting returnables out of the trash and into the hands of can and bottle collectors. Lopez also encouraged us to call the council member in charge of sanitation.Ideally, we wanted a homeless organization to work with us. So we pursued a meeting with the outreach coordinator for the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH), only to learn that they could not help us with our project for two reasons. First, people who go to shelters (mainly families) don't tend to be the same people who collect cans. Second, NCH prioritizes direct services for homeless families, from providing clothes and food to finding permanent housing. Recycling was not on the list.The coordinator told us about WE CAN, a redemptioncenter in midtown that serves the poor and homeless who collect cans and bottles to support themselves. WE CAN has paid more than $30 million in rebates since it began in 1987. Some collectors even make a decent living. According to an article in The New York Times, one man who collects cans full-time made more than $35,000 a year in income. When Liz and Anna called the founder of the organization, Guy Polhemus, he said that "it wasn't a good day to talk," because they were getting evicted.1 It turned out that Christine Quinn, that district's usually progressive councilwoman, didn't want WE CAN there since it primarily served homeless people who, being homeless, don't have access to bathrooms and often use the neighborhood as a rustic latrine.With WE CAN too beleaguered to help, we moved on to phoning the councilman in charge of sanitation. We assumed his office would be hostile to our calls or he would put us off as our councilwoman's office did initially, but we were wrong. Counsel to the NYC council committee on sanitation, Carmen Cognetta, called us back immediately and set up a meeting for the following...