Friends of Mosholu Parkland and local volunteers braved the early evening summer heat to join Members of the City’s Parks’ department and some elected officials for a clean-up of the parkland on Monday, July 20.

 

A group of about 30 people, young and old, met at Mosholu Parkway subway station where masks, bags, gloves and tools were distributed before the group set to work cleaning up the area on a day when temperatures hit the high nineties. Norwood News asked the participants why it was important for them to come out and volunteer their time.

 

Aesha Valencia is an environmentalist, local resident for 25 years, and a member of Friends of Mosholu Parkland, with whom she has worked for about six years. “I’m out here because it’s important to take care of the parkland in the Bronx,” she said. “You know, there’s not a lot of places in the Bronx with this much greenery, so we do stuff like this every summer – just this summer has been a little more challenging. Usually, these activities are [carried out] with the summer youth employment program kids. They’re a huge help.”

Valencia said events like the volunteer clean-up are the only help they can get now, and therefore, she really appreciated all the volunteers coming out and doing their part. “What we want to do is start initiatives in the community – teach people why it’s important not to litter and keep the place clean,” she said. “We’ve actually, with the bottle caps [been] teaching people about when metal breaks down, how it affects the composition of the soil, so all these things that people don’t really know about – that’s why we’re here.”

 

Norwood News mentioned to Valencia that some residents had commented that the “No Barbecuing” signs in the parks are too small. “I agree, we just have to get money!” said Valencia. “Then, we can pay for bigger signs. As of right now, we’re solely relying on our own funds and certain grants that we’re able to get, so we’re working on that.” She said donations would be appreciated in order to put the larger signs in place, and encouraged any businesses willing to help, to allow them to put up “No Littering” signs in their windows also.

Lisa Gomez and Tecumseh Ceaser are local Bedford Park residents. Ceaser spends a lot of time outdoors and noticed over time how the state of the parks had deteriorated. “Why I started doing this is because I like to walk the park, and at one point, when we started to go into Phase One [of reopening], I saw that there was a lot of garbage,” he said. “I saw that the animals were trying to eat the garbage, and so that bothered me because before we were [re] opened, there were tons of animals out here – hawks, squirrels, raccoons, and now when I’m walking, I see animals trying to eat the garbage and it’s not fair to them.”

 

Ceaser is Native American and said he was taught to see the earth as Mother Earth. “I was always taught you have to treat your mother how you want to be treated and so, to see garbage on her is unacceptable,” he said. “I usually try to come out here once or twice a week, when I go on my walks, and then on my way back, I’ll have my bag and I clean and try to pick up as much as possible.”

He said it was unfortunate that there were not more garbage cans in the parks. “There’s a lot of garbage because people don’t have a place to put it, and there’s ‘No Barbecuing’ signs but there’s no ‘No Littering’ signs,” he said.

 

He added that he thinks people shouldn’t expect to leave everything for the Parks’ department to do. “Because we live in a society where we pay people to service food and stuff like that, we assume it’s the Parks’ department’s job but that’s not realistic,” he said.

 

“Mosholu Parkway is huge, and it’s not just one person’s responsibility, or even the department’s responsibility to keep the park clean. If you go somewhere, you’ve got to clean up after yourself, so that’s why we’re here today, kind of hoping to talk to the council people and also other people who are not usually out here.”

Ceaser said it was great that people volunteer their time on occasions like Thanksgiving but suggested that volunteering for a few hours each week in the park could also be easily done. “If everybody did that, then we wouldn’t have to be out here,” he said.

 

Norwood News mentioned that its reporters had witnessed at least two dead squirrels in recent weeks in the area, one of which appeared to be burned, and asked Ceaser what he thought about this. “That’s a very real thing,” he said. “I have pictures of animals, of squirrels trying to eat Nutella cups, birds with straws in their mouths. Because of COVID, we’re like, ‘We need to social distance,’ so everybody’s like, ‘Let’s go out into these parks,’ but this is where the animals are living, and we’ve already taken tons of their housing by building these apartments, by putting cement down.”

Ceaser said people should be mindful that parks are where animals live, and it has a very real effect on them when people don’t clean up after themselves. “If you leave fireworks, or if you leave charcoal, just like children, if you leave charcoal oil, they’re going to get hurt,” he said. “Animals, they smell food, and assume that’s good to eat. They don’t know the difference between plastic or food.”

 

He said people have become disconnected from their food, and from the earth because they buy their food at grocery stores. “If an animal eats it, and then they go and poop or whatever into the foods where your food is getting grown, that’s coming back to you,” he said. “If we ruin the environment, it’s going to come back to us whether we realize it or not.”

Local resident and candidate for District 11 City Council seat, Eric Dinowitz, also participated in the clean-up efforts, saying it was vital that people took ownership of their own communities. “Parks are where families get together, friends meet, parents get to watch their kids grow up,” he said. “So, it’s very important for all of us to take ownership of our own parks and make sure they’re healthy and beautiful.”

 

He said parks have historically been underfunded, and therefore it has always been a battle to get funding and resources for them. “When we, as a community, take ownership of our own parks, especially with events like this, like you’re seeing, that’s when we have positive interactions with our neighbors and our parks,” he said. “One of the wonderful things is that people are rediscovering the wonders of our local parks, as they’re unable to go to other places.”

Meanwhile, Bronx Community Board 7 Chair, Emmanuel Martinez said, “Parks are essential to the community, for the livelihood, for the ambience of our community in which we live, so it’s important for us to be out here, give back and help out an agency like Parks that doesn’t have the proper funding at this time. It’s up to us to come out and show support.”

 

On the topic of litter and noise disturbances, he said it came down to educating people about cleanliness and picking up after themselves at the end of a family gathering. “It’s essential for us to be good community leaders and communicate any nefarious acts, anything that’s going on to our local police so that the proper enforcement or the proper surveillance takes place,” he said.

Council Member Andrew Cohen said despite how difficult times have been, he felt like people had a lot of gratitude, and wanted to express it. “Our park clean-up usually just makes people feel good,” he said. “It gives people an opportunity to come out. We were a little concerned about how hot it was, but people seemed to want to come out anyway.”

 

Local resident, Julio Casado, said with COVID, he was spending a lot more time in his neighborhood and not traveling into Manhattan as much. “I just want to make sure that it looks good, and looks clean,” he said. “I think it’s very difficult for City employees to be everywhere at once, especially with everything that’s happening right now. I’m just trying to do my part. I live like, a couple blocks down, so it was like, ‘Why not pop out and help them?’”.

 

Patrick Hill is also a local resident and lives close to the reservoir. He said he decided to participate as it was a nice day, even if it was a bit hot, to try to make the area look a bit nicer. “It’s a very heavily trafficked area,” Hill said. “We want to be able to have a nice place where people can spend time outside and not feel like they’re surrounded by trash. This is a good place to start. There’s a ton of other areas that need it as well so this is only the beginning in a sense, but we’ll do whatever we can. I saw it online and I thought it was a good way to do something and to reach out.”