OUR VISION FOR A FEMINIST GREEN NEW DEAL:
Democratizing our Infrastructure to Mitigate Climate Change

As the COVID-19 pandemic has made millions of New Yorkers shelter in place, reliable access to fundamental utilities like electricity, gas, and Internet has only become more critical. Neighborhood infrastructure, like bus lines transporting essential workers, and open streets providing a refuge for our quarantined communities, has not met the demand. From the thousands of students who lacked the WiFi needed to participate in distance learning, to families facing higher utility bills for worse service, our public infrastructure exacerbates inequities. 

As New Yorkers fight for a climate-resilient city, we must fundamentally shift how we approach our basic utilities, through investing in green infrastructure that provides local green, unionized jobs. By shifting to cleaner, renewable, and community-owned infrastructure, we can reduce pollution, strengthen our ability to withstand natural disasters, and improve service and lower costs for consumers. Controlling our utilities cooperatively is also a form of community building and organization. Public utilities should be accessible to all community members, which means taking a decarceral approach and removing police presence, monitoring, and surveillance throughout services.

As a survivor of Lupus, a disease which develops because of environmental degradation, climate change, and living in cramped homes or public spaces with high pollution, more cars, and less open space, Shahana knows the urgency around funding resilient public infrastructure and creating a feminist, livable city that radically prioritizes physical and mental healthcare for all.

As Council Member, Shahana will…

+ Invest in community wifi networks

Free access to WiFi and data are a crucial necessity for all, particularly in times of natural disaster and emergency. As we learned from Hurricane Sandy, disaster resiliency is critical for flood-prone areas like Gowanus, where climate change will only exacerbate natural disasters. Community WiFi networks are a decentralized model for building sustainable community infrastructure, often built by coalitions of local stakeholders, including municipal government. Piloted in Red Hook and Hunts Point, and across the globe, mesh networks are low cost, resilient, flexible, resistant to city power outages, and provide local green collar jobs. As a Council Member, Shahana will uplift local community organizing efforts around community wifi and provide funding for thoughtful training, educational outreach, and general infrastructural maintenance without eroding the spirit of community organizing and participatory democracy.

  • Apply a community based planning approach to piloting programs
    • Host convenings and planning meetings with local community leaders, public infrastructure providers (public libraries, cultural centers), local businesses (coffeeshops), and folks interested in community organizing to brainstorm and develop an organizational strategy
    • Pilot mesh network program on a hyper-local neighborhood level, rather than district wide
    • Partner with mutual aid to collaborate with existing organizational infrastructure to develop a long-term community organizing and outreach strategy
    • Incentivize diverse attendance (Black and Brown, low income, immigrant, limited English proficient, formerly incarcerated folks) through providing stipends and ensuring community leaders are project leaders
    • Provide infrastructure for youth advisory board
  • Collaborate with local non-profits to fund a youth digital stewardship training program to provide lasting community support and environmental resiliency.
    • Partner with the NYC Department of Youth & Community Development’s Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) to provide mentorship, professional development, and funding for digital stewards
    • Provide a thoughtful infrastructure for retaining diverse youth participants
    • Use youth engagement as a mechanism for community education
    • Employ community members who can act as “anchors” to provide support for maintenance and repair
  • Incentivize local participation in community wifi
    • Provide rebates for local businesses that participate in the program
    • Completely fund WiFi for low-income residents, with the eventual goal of having community WiFi in all individual apartments in the neighborhood
  • Develop research and analysis on best community wifi practices, particularly privacy and security measures

+ Support pedestrian-friendly transportation in District 39

More accessible, cleaner, user friendly, and affordable public transportation infrastructure will make Brooklyn more climate friendly and resilient. Making our transportation infrastructure more climate resilient intersects with reconceptualizing our waste management systems; Shahana will work towards banning single use plastics, resuming organics collection, expanding our compost infrastructure, and striving for zero waste.

As Council Member Shahana will...

  • Work with the Department of Transportation (DOT) to:
    • Construct protected bike lanes throughout the district, particularly in Borough Park, a Priority Bicycle district, or area with high incidents of bicycle injuries or fatalities. Only 8% of streets within Borough Park have bike lanes, compared to 45% in Crown Heights and Prospect Heights.
    • Decrease transportation deserts and hubs of inaccessibility, partly through bringing back the B71 bus
    • Increase physical accessibility in existing subway stations, such as building elevators at the 7th Avenue Station
    • Mandate a lessening and eventual removal of NYPD in subway stations
  • Fund bike cooperatives / bike shares directed towards communities of color
  • Partner with transportation activists of color to fund educational programs around bicycling
  • Promote street safety through creating pedestrian facing design elements and traffic calming mechanisms, like eliminating curbs, narrowing car lines, increasing crosswalks, adding parking buffers, and constructing pedestrian oriented plazas
  • Encourage increased street use through funding for safer streets initiatives. Aside from existing weekend walks and summer streets promoted by NYC’s DOT, this includes funding and encouraging street vendors, neighborhood block parties, fruit trees, sidewalk art, street furniture, and promoting safe access to play spaces
    • Expand upon the Open Streets Program
      • Lessen and ultimately remove police presence in open spaces
      • Increase Open Streets in neighborhoods of color with fewer public spaces
      • Connect Open Streets to make the city safer for bikers

+ Shift from investor-owned utilities to public and community-owned instrastructure

From massive blackouts and rate hikes, to cutting service during a heat wave, New Yorkers know all too well the unreliable and unaffordable service provided by investor-owned utility companies like Con Edison and National Grid. New York can join cities across the country that have moved from profit-driven utility companies to publicly-owned utilities.

As Council Member Shahana will...

  • Study the viability and community support of public ownership of NYC’s utilities. Our current system of investor-owned utilities keeps costs high for consumers, while lobbying against renewable energy programs. Moving to publicly owned power can lower costs for consumers and shift our utilities’ priorities from fighting against clean energy, to decarbonizing our communities.
  • Work with colleagues in the State legislature to conduct public hearings on moving from profit-driven utility companies to publicly-owned utilities. Shifting to public power will require collaborating with city and state leaders.
  • Support efforts to build cooperatively owned electric infrastructure within communities, following the model of UPROSE’s Sunset Park community solar project, through sustaining multi-year City support for energy cooperatives
  • Provide sustained funding to support programs to train local residents on solar installations and other green, alternative energy jobs
  • Partner with environmental nonprofits toencourage individual residents and building owners to go solar or explore alternative energy programs, such as rebates, net-metering, subsidies, and educational programming

+ Decarbonize New York City

Rather than shirk the responsibility of energy resiliency onto individual buildings or residents, through asking neighborhoods to cut back on usage or even reducing voltage in communities of color, we should look to infrastructural fixes to buffer our most vulnerable communities against the dangers of climate change, like increased temperatures. With funding from the Council, we can support retrofitting and greening projects in our district’s apartment buildings — providing more reliable service and heat relief for community members, while strengthening our ability to withstand disruptions due to natural disasters. Taking an approach of environmental justice, to dissipate urban heat islands or ensure that greening measures do not spur gentrification, is also crucial in the District’s rezoning process and approach to land use.

As Council Member Shahana will...

  • Expand New York City’s Climate Mobilization Act to provide funding for retrofitting mid-sized residential units, without passing the costs onto tenants. Older mid-sized buildings can be even more carbon-intensive than larger buildings, especially when landlords neglect basic maintenance and upgrades.
  • Strengthen the Climate Mobilization Act’s green roof program to include incentives for retrofitting green roofs on existing buildings
  • Expand retrofits for schools, libraries, and other community centers to provide both cooling benefits to buildings, and hands-on educational and work opportunities for students, families, and community members
  • Support efforts to replace dangerous and high-polluting peaker plants with batteries powered by alternative sources, such as solar power farms
  • Reduce urban heat islands and prioritize neighborhoods with high Heat Vulnerability Indexes, like Borough Park. Residents of these neighborhoods are particularly at risk of death and illness due to a lack of heat resiliency, which is largely caused by infrastructural inequities, environmental racism, and gentrification.
    • Increase shading throughout public parks and spaces through permanent and temporary design interventions
    • Partner with the NYC Plaza Program to provide funding for green, flexible, temporary, low-cost projects driven by community members
    • Revitalize cooling centers, through increasing hours and expanding outreach around programming
    • For immediate relief, in light of risks associated with crowding in cooling centers, expand HEAP coverage to help low income residents pay for utility bills
    • Prioritize cooling centers and cool roofs in communities of color
    • Increase vegetative cover and green spaces, expanding to NYCHA developments
    • Partner with the Mayor’s Office of Resiliency to expand Be A Buddy NYC to neighborhoods in the District