Sarah Martin & Joan Levine
Taking the motto Reduce, Reuse, Recycle to heart, Martin saw that efforts by NYC Housing Authority to introduce trash reduction and recycling were unsuccessful because they didn’t include residents in education and outreach efforts. Together Martin and Levine developed a hands-on educational approach that continues to be used by city agencies to educate volunteers and the public. Martin is on the steering committee of the Broadway Democratic Club and has been able to turn Grant Houses, with its 1,940 apartments and over 4,500 residents, into a powerful political force. She works on issues of air quality and its effects on asthmatics, noise reduction, public safety, and on increasing civic participation by her neighbors. Her efforts (including knocking on 1,940 doors) assured that Grant Houses became one of the most successful public housing recycling programs in the city. She continues to be active with the Morningside Area Alliance, Mt. Sinai’s Center for Occupational & Environmental Medicine, the Partnership Committee of the Morningside Retirement and Health Services, NYCHA’s Manhattan North Council of Presidents’ Committee, and West Harlem Environmental Action. Joan Studer Levine was born to an activist family during the Great Depression, always surrounded by talk of workers struggling for their rights. At 7 years old, she organized what she thought was a sit–down strike in her classroom against the hated “rest hour.” In high school and college, she was active in groups seeking equality, justice and peace. As an elementary school teacher and later a teacher trainer and administrator, Joan introduced new educational methods to better engage the interest and talents of the students. In 1991, she was appointed Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Education at New York’s City College. Here she spent 13 glorious years helping new teachers become avid learners and teachers of social studies. A long-time resident of Morningside Gardens, a housing cooperative in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan, Levine was appointed Chair of the Morningside Gardens Community Relations Committee in 1994. She was troubled by the lack of contact between her middle income co-op and the public housing neighbors across the street. When both complexes were affected by a serious neighborhood garbage crisis, Joan sought out the new President of Grant Houses Residents’ Association for help. Working together, the Morningside Gardens Community Relations Committee and the Board of the Residents’ Association of Grant Houses solved the immediate problem but, more importantly, they learned that working together made them a stronger and more effective force for change in the community. Together, they joined with other block associations to form the Morningside Heights/West Harlem Sanitation Coalition. A member of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, the Coalition works on both neighborhood issues and citywide environmental justice campaigns.
|
Speech
|
Sarah M. Martin was born in South Carolina, and came to New York City when she was 12 years old. A resident of Grant Houses for 57 years, Sarah moved in just after getting married and recalls when the public housing complex had a strong sense of community. “People didn’t lock their doors and residents watched out for each other’s children.” Building on earlier organizations, in 1994 the Grant Houses Residents’ Association was formed to work on issues within the housing complex and in the broader community. Sarah was elected Vice President and then President, and joined forces with Joan Levine, from the housing complex across the street, to tackle trash and rat infestation and to help form the Morningside Heights/West Harlem Sanitation Coalition.