Full Transcript

INTRO 

This is The Climate Story Project— where we share real stories about how climate change is shaping our lives. Stories that connect us. Stories that move us to act. This is a project of the New York Climate Exchange, a non-profit organization that’s accelerating climate solutions through a unique partnership model and climate campus on Governors Island. In each episode, you’ll hear voices from different places and walks of life in our growing archive of personal climate stories, so that we can remember, reflect, and respond together.

The story you’re about to hear is from Shaheeda Smith. Shaheeda is the New York City Climate Justice Hub Advocate at Good Old Lower East Side, a partner of the New York Climate Exchange. 

SHAHEEDA

I am a daughter of the Lower East Side. I've been working for my community since I was a child. The Lower East Side starts at 14th Street and it goes all the way down to Chinatown. Um, it's as east as the East River and goes all the way to the Bowery and 4th Avenue. So this community has three bridges. It has the FDR drive. It has constant construction happening.

Growing up in the lower East side, it was a different place for me. I was raised in the 80s. Okay? And so, it's much different, but a lot the same. There’s been a lot of development and creation of programming and things like that. Like GOLES. GOLES has been around for about 50 years. I'm about 50 years old. Right? So people started taking power into their own hands and creating opportunities for their neighbors. Right? Our public officials, back when I was being raised, they, you know, it wasn't important to them. Environment wasn't something that was important to them. Now, our public officials in Lower East Side, they're much more engaged, they're much more on point.

But gentrification did usher in a different level of construction happening. As well as Hurricane Sandy basically demolishing the community's infrastructure that was already very, very fragile. And disinvested in. The difference of my childhood and seeing sanitation not pick up the garbage. Being in the shadow of Con Edison and not really understanding the impact of the smoke that was coming out. And not understanding as a child that NYCHA, which I was raised in, was not invested in for most of my life. And so as an adult I started to recognize these things as an environmental justice issue or a climate justice issue.

And also the health impact of the, the, the things that we face on a daily basis, whether it be the congestion of the traffic or the flooding that happens when it rains. People always think that asthma is a hereditary thing in our community, and it is not. Communities of color that are living in flood prone areas or living next to high traffic areas, living in households that have mold in it, affecting us and impacting us for, for generations and decades. People assume that “oh, that's, my mother had asthma” or they smoked cigarettes and a lot of people just blame themselves. When in reality, it is the accumulation or the onion of all of these social determinants that are really impacting folks' health. 

It's not only just about the asthma, but it's about the skin irritants. Right? Eczema is something that's prevalent in my community. And you would think that it's, “Oh, that also had a hereditary.” Well, no. It's because of extreme heat and your skin being dried out. And it's maybe because of contaminated water. There is a development called Jacob Riis Houses where people have had severe health issues because of the water they were drinking. And it went to the point that they had to buy water to bathe themselves, to cook in. And so that's actually also an economic impact on our community of folks who already are struggling economically. And so it's not just about the health. Right? Like I say, it's a onion. If it's not one thing, it's another. You gotta keep peeling it back and find all of these reasons why the community that we live in, is extremely sensitive to these things. 

For instance, during COVID, unfortunately, a lot of folks passed away because there's no ventilation in the NYCHA developments at that time. And because there was lack of ventilation, it was easy for COVID to be spread through the air. Right? And there was no ventilation because those systems were damaged during Hurricane Sandy and they were never fixed. 

I wasn't living in Lower East Side during Hurricane Sandy. But when I came to Lower East Side, 'cause my cousin and his daughter was still living in Baruch houses at the time. They didn't have food. There wasn't no phone lines. There was no electricity. It was like a third world country. It reminded me of 9/11, when there just wasn't any communication. People just looked stuck and felt stuck, and there was a lot of sadness and a lot of hurt. I went down there to give my cousin money so he could feed his daughter. I went down there to give my neighbors food. Like, I went down there to give people water to drink, clean water to drink. It was devastation. I don't think that world really acknowledge or understand how bad it was for folks in LES. And it wasn't only LES, it was Far Rockaway, it was the Bronx, it was Red Hook, Brooklyn. It was Staten Island, right. 'Cause there weren't protections made for us. And so I think it heightened everybody's awareness of like, “oh, they really don't care about us.” And we are still going through it because of it. We're still literally going through it.

Cause now there's more concrete 'cause FEMA was like, this is gonna help combat flooding, but it's also taking away green space for us and trees. I grew up with a lot of trees. I used to climb trees in the projects. I still have the scars. There are no trees. And obviously gentrification played a big part because, you know, lots that used to be community gardens are now condos. You know? And the folks who are moving in don't understand the evolution of what's happened in the Lower East Side. You know, they just don't get it. I wish that they were more understanding of the struggles that people go through, because we all are going to the same supermarket. We're all breathing the same air, for the most part, we're drinking all the same water. But NYCHA developments are not retrofitted in the same way these newer buildings are retrofitted to combat or to be resilient against climate crises. 

So when people do come into the community and just wanna do research, it's like, “No, what are you gonna do with this research? How is it gonna benefit us?” So it's beyond just the government, right? Is academia too. It's folks coming in finding out what's happening. And although a lot of folks are really good-willed and doing so, what are you doing actually for the community? Are you a part of the solution or are you just making recommendations for your papers? Right? Because we don't just need recommendations, we need actual community action.

We are hoping to create a community resilience plan. So that's gonna be another level of how we are bringing community in to create a plan for them. Right? And when I say community, I speak as myself 'cause I am part of that community. I do have stake in it. It is an emotional thing for me. It is a personal thing for me. And so my why is to make sure that people are aware of what's happening and, and to create some urgency around it. My why is because I'm a little black girl from the projects that didn't understand, for a long time, that a lot of this is intentional. Urban heat islands are an intentional thing. Developers did this intentionally. So my why is to make sure people know that these things are intentional and we have to guard ourselves and our health. And realize how important it is and stop being distracted by other things. And although we have competing priorities in our daily lives, like work, school, children, um, we are living in areas that are impoverished. We have ICE coming down to beat down the doors of people who even speak Spanish. We have so many things that impact us and are hurting us. My why is to make sure that people know that no matter where you are, environment and climate, everyone, everyone is going to be impacted by this. Not just people of color. That's my why. My why is because devastation can happen to us and we know that people are not gonna react to it or save us. We have to save ourselves. Right? We have to defend and protect ourselves. We are already resilient, but if we don't arm ourselves with the knowledge of how to combat this or even create a plan to save ourselves, that's my why. It's like we have to create a plan to save ourselves. Because no one's gonna come to save us.

Continue to be curious and continue to learn and continue to make the plan be strategic. Go for a nature walk, go lay on the grass, go ground yourself in the dirt. Right? Reconnect yourself with nature so that you can see its importance in your life. It’s not just concrete. Everything is not hard. You can be soft and you can be happy. You know? I'm really proud to be a lower East Sider.

OUTRO 

This story is part of The Climate Story Project. To find more stories and learn more about The New York Climate Exchange, visit nyclimateexchange.org and follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram. This episode was produced by Kylie Miller. Thanks for listening.