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Posts from the ‘Bicycles’ Category

Aug 17

Interview with Carlos Menchaca, liaison to Speaker Christine Quinn

"It took two weeks for full earnest visibility from the government. The trailers started showing up and you saw FEMA in a larger way. They trickled in for sure but their ambitions and their plug into the community was not where I expected them to be. And their nimbleness is clearly not at all possible. So I would say in two weeks we finally saw some support where the first two weeks we were really battling it out as a team of volunteers. And some of the liaisons through the government were really real major government institutional support. What you also saw were people coming out of the woodwork with things that were very important. Like somebody in the community owned a warehouse near the neighborhood, instantly everyone got that information and sent everything that was coming in to that warehouse. So that became a warehouse station, the distribution spots, the churches started coming online as distribution sites happily. And so those things were all in place with volunteers and private help which is a great feeling but it wasn’t a great feeling when two weeks later the ambulances finally show up to the public housing. And we had already created a popup medical clinic in one of our locations that were servicing 200 plus home bound senior citizens and non senior citizens but mostly senior citizens. And we were doing this all within our own means."

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Jul 24

Interview with Noah Budnick, Deputy Director, Transportation Alternatives

"I think it was a testament to New Yorkers’ perseverance that folks who could make it through and try to get on with their daily lives really did and it's also, I think it was a great example of the diversity of transportation choices in the city that makes the city great. Because New York has so many ways of getting from A to B it makes the city more resilient which is a great lesson from the storm that we're not just wed to a car or to the subways, that when something goes down we have a backup plan."

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Jul 24

Interview with Josh Bisker, Time’s Up and NYU Office of Government and Community Affairs

"Spaces where it was free reign, where the community could organize what it needed, as it needed, seem to create the opportunity for resiliency and health. Here with the Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew, there with churches -- mostly churches and like a couple of businesses. I've never thought so well of churches. ... The thing that the churches gave to us was space to organize and assess our needs and then deliver upon them. And there are no other spaces like that, no other spaces like that."

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