2015-2016

Fieldwork with Talmage Cooley 11/21/16

by Miles

Earlier in the year, our group interviewed Talmage the CEO of the Center to Prevent Youth Violence. He is one of the most important advocates for Gun Control. He told us about a current project called the “Give a Hug Project” which is where you send a card with drawings or decorations to show something good or happy…

by Ruby

We went to the Lower East Side Ecology Center and met with Kaitlyn Parkins. We interviewed her on what she knew about water pollution and what she does. She works as the educational director and helps children learn more about recycling and composting and why they need to do it. We learned that a lot of…

by Cole

On January 9, 2017, my other group members Spencer, Jack A, Willem, and I were fortunate enough to get an interview with Jaqueline Patterson Head of Environmental Justice at NAACP. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as a bi-racial organization to…

by Jack A

Our group went to the Urban Communities climate Resilience Conference. The conference was located uptown near Columbia. When we arrived, we were greeted by David Chang, the Environmental Health Coordinator. We helped hand out information pamphlets about different ways you can stay healthy and use non-toxic products to the guests coming in. I learned that…

by Ciro

We heard about a climate change and oil pipeline rally in Albany and we of course wanted to go. We joined together with the environment group in the other class and we worked to set up a way for us to go. We ended up getting on a bus to Albany at 6:45 in the…

by Ciro

We met up with a GCC member, Micheal Wasserman, at a Brooklyn compost headquarters. We collected a garbage bag, a recycling bag, gardening tools and a cart to put it all in. We walked all together to a large avenue on which there are community gardening boxes. The problem was, however, that very few of…

by Alice

Some of the ideas we had to solve the problem of food deserts was to buy healthy food at a supermarket. What that does is when you buy an item, you are instantly voting for it, the more people buy it and the more they will put of that item, after a long time, they…

by Sophie

The main problem that our group focused on was Children in Poverty. We chose this because many people are unaware of how big of a problem poverty is in our city and in our country. We wanted to help educate others because they may not know about the problem or if/how they should help. We…

by Augustus

First we familiarized ourselves with propny (Police Reform Organizing Project). They were able to help us by bringing us to go court monitoring. He learned so much through them and other organizations and individuals that we put together a teach in for the grades below us. we decided to make a mural with them dipicting…

by Ethan

What were some of the ideas you had about possible ways to address/solve this problem? Teach-In Protesting Flyers Videos Articles Social Media These are some ways we can address Police Brutality and spread the word. Which did solutions feel like ones that you could actually take on? That is, where could you imagine your efforts…

by River

Nearing the end our Social Justice project, we were assigned to write opinion editorials utilizing the culmination of knowledge we gained over the course of several months. These were to exhibit how we grew as advocators for social justice and teach those who read our papers about our issue that we chose to learn about. Mine…

by Maisy

Throughout our project we hoped to learn what we could do to help the climate and how we can prevent climate change. We chose this problem because we recognized that climate change affects us all, and that it is a huge threat that we need to fix. While on our fieldwork, we heard many stories…

by Anna

As a group we worked with about 10 different organization all taking different parts in solving education inequality. Our fieldwork stretched from watching movies, making phone calls, lobbying and hands on tutoring kids. This stage taught us so much. We started not even knowing all the different types of school and what differentiate them. We…

by Will

One idea that we had to address this epidemic of gun violence was to work with existing groups that already had ideas, and elaborate on them. We worked with Harlem Mothers S.A.V.E., an organization that already had an idea for stopping the illegal gun pipeline in their neighborhood by working with the police to watch…

by Aditya

We wanted to help public schools get funded and we wanted to raise awareness about underfunding. We thought that one of the best ways we could help was to participate in protests and lobbies. We met a lot with the alliance for quality education to fight for funding in public schools.

by Dakota

In the “Do” stage, my group and I scheduled a fieldwork with a non-profit organization called Dress For Success. This organization helped women get/prepare them for jobs by giving them interview clothes and prepping them for the interview. Then if the women got the job, Dress For Success gave them a week’s worth of work…

by Anna

Not including our Teach-In Workshop, we had an impact on a company which we visited. The company is called MMC, Marina Maher Communications. They work in marketing to women. After visiting them twice, where we had multiple discussions and interviews with different people within the company, they said that we impacted them because we educated…

by Jaquelin Adler

Throughout this social justice project we hoped that people would understand the discrimination of women in the workforce. We hoped that we would show the younger kids in our school that we can make a difference in the world, and that anyone can. People need to learn about this problem and to fix this! We…

by River

The main problem we wanted to resolve and gain a larger understanding around was freedom of speech in foreign countries. Since we are currently living in a nation that prioritizes our first amendment rights, and makes it a paramount objective to protect them, we believed that solving freedom of speech issues in our country would…

by Reggi

A plan to take action that we had was to tell our students of the teach-in to visit Change.Organization to sign petitions to help solve the issue of poverty in New York City such as raising the minimum wage. We hoped this idea could help accomplish our goals as a group.

by Jane

In the do stage we went on many fieldwork to learn what it felt like to take action. We contacted organizations such as the beyond coal Campain, the Sierra club, El Nevado and many more. We went as far as Albany, New York and as close as an LREI classroom. No matter had far away…

by Theodora Dotson

In the imagine stage, my group and I read the book Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, the former CFO of Google, and the current CFO of Facebook. The book was really interesting for us because it outlined strategies and ways that women could encourage each other to stand up for themselves and what kind of…

by Graham

As the Climate Change group We thought that we could attend conferences and rallies to help spread awareness to people with political power as well as voters. There are no big immediate solutions that we can put in act right now. So we settled for small things that still make a difference such as: recycling,…

by Alice

How healthy is your food? Answer: it ranges to 1-10 depending on what you order. Buy from the right places (union square farmers market). All meat comes from good places. They make their own everything. Where do you buy your fruit and vegetables from? Answer: union square farmers market 4 days a week. Vegetable…

by Sophie SF

During this project, we wanted to address our topic, (hunger) in the most effective way possible. One of the ideas that we had in addressing hunger was creating our own version of Canstruction. Canstruction is an annual exhibition where designers and architects build sculptures completely out of food cans. After Canstruction is over, all of the food cans…

by Onaje

We interview the head of the Police Reform Organizing Projecr, Robert Gangi. It started as four boys interviewing an educated activist and his intern. However, it became way more than that. First he introduced us to court monitoring. In court, we recorded in sheets the name, race, gender, charge and verdict of all of the…

by Mark Silberberg

Click on an image below to see enlarged view:

by Hanna

For our fifth fieldwork, Stella, Alice and I went to a restaurant called Maysville. Maysville is a 4.5 star restaurant, and we wanted to see and hear about the healthiness of food from a different perspective other than just from our eyes. Many people just assume that fast food restaurants are unhealthy while fancy restaurants…

by Theodora Dotson

We interviewed Nigel Barker, an ex model, judge on America’s Next Top Model, and a spokesperson for the UN organization, He for She. Nigel grew up in England, where he was raised in the world of fashion. His mother was a supermodel from Sri Lanka, and both she and his grandmother instilled a strong belief…

by Nika

My group and I visited the MMC (Marina Maher Communications) again. This time we set up a meeting with a specific group of women that deal with advertising different brands. We talked to them about how the media portrays things in a wrong way, and then girls aren’t prepared when they actually need to deal…

by Dakota

On February 18, my group (consisting of Bay, Skyler, Jaquie, and myself) interviewed Nigel Barker. Nigel is a former model and a photographer, and a spokesperson for HeForShe and Girl Up. Both these organizations are part of the UN. The goal of HeForShe is to encourage men to stand up and be a voice for…

by Dakota

On February 1, my group and I went to Zara Terez, located in midtown, to interview their president, Allison Grover. Allison isn’t only the president of Zara Terez, but also a parent of some kids at LREI. She has been the president of Zara Terez for about a year, and before that she worked at Goldman…

by Jaquelin Adler

My group went to interview Noa Meyer who works with 10,000 located in Goldman Sachs. 10,000 women is an organization that helps women in different countries start their own small business. When we first met Noa she showed us a video about 10,000 women and what they do, there was one women that produced her…

by Will

On January 27th, 2016, we went to interview Karen Y. Bitar. Ms. Bitar was a former Kings County prosecutor. When our group first contacted her, we were originally going to do this interview over the phone, but we decided to go to her office, as we had another fieldwork on the same day in the…

by Jaquelin Adler

My group and I decided to interview Nigel Barker who works for He for She and Girl up. He for She is an organization that stands up for gender equality. Girl up engages girls to stand up for girls, standing up for each other and changing the world. The reason why Barker started to work for Girl…

by Ethan

On Tuesday, February 22 my group and I went to NYCLU, for a Know Your Rights Workshop. We traveled there by the 1 train and arrived at 4:20. This was the first fieldwork I’ve been on that was meant for teens. This Workshop was to teach kids what they can or cannot do when stopped…

by Will

On January 20th, Louie and I spoke at the Martin Luther King Assembly about gun violence prevention. Before everyone saw us, Louie and I were approached by Ana, our principal, to present at this assembly. We spent about a week prepping a presentation, a speaker and a video clip. We worked really hard on the…

by Layne

On Monday Sophie and I had the opportunity to interview Sister Mary from St. John’s Bread of Life Food Pantry (a different St. John’s than the one we visited twice.) With our advisories we have been to St. John’s many times. They are a small pantry run out of the basement of St. Johns Baptist…

by Louie

On Wednesday, February 17th, we had a phone conversation with the director of CAGV. In our conversation we discussed the work we had completed and learned what the CAGV does. Connecticut is the state with the second strongest gun laws. CAGV has lobbied for legislation that makes it difficult for Connecticut citizens to illegally obtain guns.…

by Louie

In late January 2016, our social justice group, Stop the Shots, organized an assembly that was in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision for a peaceful and equal America. The focus of the assembly was gun violence prevention. We showed a portion of President Obama’s speech on his Executive Order to increase background checks.…

by Reggi

On Monday, February 1st, our Social Justice group returned to School Visual Arts to attend a symposium on health issues. We heard from important activists on this topic: community leader and public servant, Clyde Williams; Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Junior; Director of the Arnhold Global Health Institute, Doctor Prabhjot Singh; Rob Carmona, Co-founder of…

by Jane

Our interview with Gabriel Mendez was more beneficial to him and El Nevado than to us. We were originally going to be interviewed by Brian Torres but he couldn’t make it. He interviewed us on our views on climate change and how we think it will effect us. These questions and our answers will probably…

by Jaquelin Adler

On February 1st we met with Allison Grover at Zara Terez. Allison is parent at the LREI community as well. She is also the president of Zara Terez and has only been working there for a year or so. Zara Terez is a legging company, but they do sell shirt/sweatshirts as well. They have many…

by Jane

I had to wake up at 5:30 to get to the Starbucks where we were meeting near the port authority our bus left from. We met at 6:30 with both social justice groups. Ming, Maisy, Graham and Me in one group. Brianna, Ciro and Michelle were in another group. The scramble to find how we…

by Sophie SF

On Monday, February 8th, 2016, my group had an interview with Sister Mary, who works at the Saint John’s Bread of Life Food Pantry. We learned many different things about how Saint John’s Bread of Life Pantry works and we also learned many personal stories of people who have to rely on Saint John’s for food.…

by Jacob

This past Friday we went court monitoring with PROP. We went to the arraignment part of a criminal court in Manhattan on 100 Centre Street. After entering the court we received our notes sheets for writing down the cases. There we noticed that all of the people there were either Black or Hispanic. This to…

by Jaquelin Adler

My group and I wanted to talk to other type of women in the workforce, so we contacted Michelle Kaminsky, a parent at Little Red, but also a district attorney in Brooklyn. Kaminsky works in the area of domestic violence and has been working there for 5 years now. She started working in a different…

by Theodora Dotson

Last Friday we had an interview with Lisa Busillo, an anesthesiologist and a mother of three, at the co

by Theodora Dotson

We interviewed Tanya Wexler, a director and mother of four children. Tanya started out as a child actor with her sister, and grew up acting throughout high school. When she was in college, she had to make a short video clip with a sample of her acting in order to start getting professional roles. When…

by Ciro

We met at Idlewild Park with the park services and we also met Micheal Wassermann from the Gowanus Canal Conservancy group unintentionally. We had not talked to anyone in specific, we just happened across the Cleanup and decided that it would be great to participate. We learned a bit about just how much trash there…

by Theodora Dotson

We interviewed Wen Zhou, the cofounder, president, and CEO of 3.1 Phillip Lim. Wen was born in China, and moved with her parents to New York as a teenager. Wen lived on the Lower East Side and attended Brooklyn Tech High School. Wen spoke only mandarin, but where her parents worked in Chinatown, people only…

by Louie

In December my social justice group had a conference call with Joseph Blocher, a professor from Duke University. He had recently written an op-ed on the recent demonstrations supporting being allowed on college campuses. In his opinion, this was a dangerous precedent that he did not support at all. His op-ed was interesting as it…

by Aditya

At the Mount Carmel Holy Rosary School in Harlem, we helped kids write letters to the donors of the scholarship that they were on. It was not a lot of work for us but we learned a lot about the general mood of the school. The kids told us that they have about a 20…

by Aditya

The bus going to Albany Left at 7 from One MetroTech Center and it arrived in Albany at 11. We went into the building and were guided to a room where all the lobbyists were sitting. A few different people made speeches, a parent, a teacher, and a student, about the problems that underfunding caused…

by Michelle

On Friday, January 29th, my group and I took the ferry all the way to Governor’s Island. We met with the Billion Oyster Project (BOP). The Billion Oyster Project is an organization that works with bringing oysters back to NYC. You may wonder, what is the importance of saving oysters? Sure they are delicious,…

by Michelle

On MLK day, Ciro and I went on a clean up in a dedication of MLK day. It was quite frigid but definitely worth it. We met up with NYC Parks at Idlewild Park, Queens. This coastal park was packed with trash, ever since Hurricane Sandy. Our goal was to try our best to…

by Brianna

We took the ferry to the Harbor School on Governor’s Island to volunteer with the Billion Oyster Project. For clarity, the Billion Oyster Project is an ongoing effort to bring oysters back to the Hudson. The Hudson area used to be abundant in oysters, but due to over consumption slowly disappeared. Oysters also have an…

by River

Today, January 28th, my group and I traveled down to wall street to meet with a prolific first amendment lawyer, Floyd Abrams. By the time Abrams was in college, he had taken a liking to freedom of speech related topics. During high school he had participated in many exercises of his first amendment right, including…

by River

Today my group and I held a interview over the phone. We called a man by the name of Nisan Chavkin, the executive director of CRFC for over 20 years,(Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago.) This is an organization dedicated to the education of students and teachers about their free speech rights and others. He made a…

by Nissim

On the 7th of January, our group interviewed the vice president of research at Freedom House, Arch Puddington. Arch talked with us about what Freedom House does, how freedom of speech plays different roles in different places of the world, and some of his views on free speech. Freedom House publishes various analytical documents about…

by Elisabeth

We had the opportunity to sit in on a meeting with parents from all different boroughs that worked with AQENY. We came on time, which was apparently a little late. A few parents and two AQENY people were sitting at a large conference table. A slideshow was on a TV at the front of the room.…

by Elisabeth

On Monday, December 14th, we were originally scheduled to volunteer at a program called DEER, Drop Everything and Read. It was an animal themed reading program held at the school once a month. When we arrived we found out that the event was actually cancelled because a teacher had called in sick and a class…

by Elisabeth

Anna, Sophie, Ryann, Reggi and I all volunteered at a Christmas event at St.Brigids with Children’s Scholarship Fund as a joint effort between the educational inequity and the children in poverty groups. Anna, Sophie and I took the bus across town and arrived in front of the school where we met Reggi. Ryann was already…

by Elisabeth

At 5 in the morning, when the moon was still out, we began our trip to Albany. After driving to One Metrotech and walking around in the freezing cold, we were finally able to board the bus. We were some of the first people on the bus, and we watched as people with a wide…

by Augustus

On Friday 1/22, my Group and I met with PROP leader, Robert Gangi. We met with him for our third time to go court monitoring at a court on Centre street in Chinatown. We had sheets that we could fill in the ethnicities of the people that were being tried for crimes in the court.…

by Onaje

Today we went down near the South Ferry to go to the ACLU/NYCLU. There we had an interview with Sam Thypin-Bermeo. He first showed us the amazing view at his office and then we all sat down at the table. The interview started out awkward and silent since we didn’t now Mr. Bermeo and we…

by Augustus

On Tuesday, 1/26 my group and I met with Sam Thypin-Bermeo from the NYCLU. We had to travel downtown to get to the NYCLU’s office. We immediately started our interview that included questions such as, “How did you get involved in Police Misconduct issues” and “Was there something in your life that drove you to…

by Dakota

On January 21, my group went to the District Attorney’s office in Brooklyn to interview Michelle Kaminsky, a District Attorney’s assistant. While there, we asked her about how it was like to be a district attorney’s assistant, especially as a female. We left school around 12:45, took the F train to Jay St in Brooklyn,…

by River

Today, my group and I met with David Reiter at ABC Studios. We met in a conference room on one of the many floors of the building, after taking a short tour of their offices and recording areas. David is the vice president of data gathering and collection for ABC. He takes any information he…

by Ethan

On January 26 my group and I went to the NYCLU to meet Sam. Sam is a worker at the NYCLU and he focuses on police brutality and he is a lawyer. The ACLU is The American Civil Liberties Union is a nonpartisan, non-profit organization whose stated mission is “to defend and preserve the individual…

by Cameron K

On Friday, January 15th, our group met with an organization named, “Democracy Now.” This tv show deals with several problems regarding freedom of speech and other issues in America. We met in their office and we had the opportunity to participate in research related activities for them. Their offices like last time were just the…

by Jaquelin Adler

My group and I wanted to go out further to interview different women and their occupations. We reached out to Tanya Wexler who is a female director who has produced 2 independent movies. Tanya was very smart and went through Yale and studied psychology. When she grew up she went out to LA and started to…

by Cameron K

Today, January 28th, my group and I traveled to busy crowded wall street to meet with a great first amendment lawyer, Floyd Abrams. Floyd Abrams has done amazing work during his time as a first amendment lawyer, fighting for the New York times on the pentagon papers case which is one of the most memorable…

by Sophie

My group decided to go back to LSA because we enjoyed going so much a few months ago and we thought that it was an amazing organization that helped lots of people. I liked how the organization not only provided people with food but they also helped with immigration, child care, tutoring and more. They…

by Sophie

My group decided that we wanted to go to Washington Square park to ask people questions about their views on poverty. We wanted to see if people knew how big of a problem poverty is in NYC. We asked multiple questions such as peoples thoughts when they hear the word poverty, what they think the…

by Reggi

Our Social Justice group went to Washington Square Park to ask random citizens questions about poverty. We asked many different questions, and got all sorts of answers. All of the people we interviewed happened to be very smart, and they all gave amazing answers. Our group in total interviewed about six people, and each interview…

by Ethan

On January 11th, my group and I had an interview with Ronald Kuby. Ronald Kuby is a lawyer for the American criminal defense. We learned a lot from his work. We asked him what made him start law? The moment he decided to got to law school was last year of college. Why criminal, civil rights? All…

by Sophie

My group went with Mark to a gallery/workshop at the School of Visual Arts. At the entrance of the building there was a gallery that contained different interactive elements that portrayed the Harlem community. There were recordings of the sounds of different neighborhoods and statistics such as diabetes and the number of supermarkets in the…

by Reggi

Thursday January 24th, our Social Justice group visited LSA, Little Sisters Assumption, for the second time. We really enjoyed our first experience there and we learned a great deal from it. The people there were so friendly, and it overall seemed like a great community, so we decided to re-visit. This visit, we helped with…

by Elisabeth

A couple of weeks ago we had the opportunity to stand on the steps of City Hall with AQENY as the conducting a protest/press event. As we approached the front gates, people from the organization and parents were already gathered in the area by the steps. They were handing out signs to be held up…

by Skyler

On Thursday, January 21st (2016) my group and I interviewed a female Assistant District Attorney. She also happens to be the Chief of the Domestic Violence department. Kaminsky’s answers were much different from other women that we interviewed. She told us that she hasn’t faced gender-based discrimination in school or in her career. She told…

by Skyler

On Wednesday, January 20th (2016) my group and I interviewed a female Indie film director. We talked to Tanya about a lot of statistics. Like how only 9% of directors in the U.S. are women. This fact really surprised us. Tanya’s most well-known independent film that she directed was Hysteria. Tanya came out of college…

by Ming

On January 26, 2015, my group had an interview with Anthony Rogers-Wright. We first saw Anthony on our first fieldwork at Patagonia’s screening “This Changes Everything.” We thought he was a very interesting and powerful speaker so we decided to contact him. Once we go in touch with Anthony we set up and interview at…

by Ming

On Wednesday, January 13th, both climate change groups went to Albany to go to a climate rally and march. All of us (Ming, Jane, Maisy, Graham, Michelle, Ciro, Brianna, Scott and Danny) met at a Starbucks near the bus station at 6:30am at around 6:45am two of our group members were running late so the CCC group decided to…

by Will

On January 12th, my group and I went to 306 West 128th Street to meet with Jackie Rowe-Adams, founder of Harlem Mothers S.A.V.E., which is an organization that helps families of victims of gun violence. It is considered to be one of the most prolific gun violence prevention organizations in the whole of New York…

by Reggi

On Wednesday January 20th Mark took our Social Justice group was went to the School of Visual Arts, to talk about Harlem, and what it means to live in Harlem. We were shown a gallery, and in that gallery was a big canvas with a birds-eye map of Harlem on it. They put pins on…

by Onaje

On Friday, after our previous day’s meeting with Robert Gangi, director of PROP, we went to court. In court, we went to a room, sat on the bench and watch as many people walked up to the judge and all the people recording, writing down and saying stuff. Later on, Robert Gangi and his intern met…

by Onaje

On Thursday, we met up with Robert Gangi. Robert Gangi is the director of PROP; Police Reform Organization Project. We first met a while back on an interview with him and his intern. On that first interview with him we discussed the police quotas and how the are forcing police to arrest people for frivolous…

by Pierre

For our fieldwork at Harlem First we learned about East Harlem and looked at many valuable maps on East Harlem. The two maps that stood out to me most significantly was a map that showed the audience the amount of colored skinned people living in East Harlem versus the rest of Manhattan. Another map that…

by Pierre

During our fieldwork at Washington Square Park we interviewed people on there thoughts about children in poverty and the statistics. It was a very interesting to hear people’s thoughts on youth poverty in NYC. People were very disappointed, mad, interesting and some felt as if they needed to do something about this ASAP. Everyone’s answers…

by Oliver

We went to PS 98 for an event called DEER. When we got there we figured out that the event was canceled. We then asked what to do, we were sent to the library to help out in the school. We walked into a class where they were only speaking Spanish. The same was for…

by Skyler

On Wednesday, January 20th (2016) my group and I went to the 3.1 Philip Lim office to interview (one of) the founder(s)/CEO/president of the designer company. Wen Zhou told us her incredible and inspiring story of how she got where she is today. Wen came to America, from China, when she was around 13 years…

by Pierre

For our fieldwork at LSA we unboxed food and put the food on the shelves. After that fun and long process we went “shopping” with some of LSA’s clients. The reason I say shopping is because LSA lets there clients chose what foods they want and they have a certain amount of points they can…