Winner of Vol. 72, No. 13
the Pulitzer Prize Thursday, May 6, 2021
Police believe they caught shul vandal, but what is next?
What’s inside?
n Neighbors from many faiths come together to make sense of hate acts
Save the Earth
By ETHAN STARK-MILLER estarkmiller@riverdalepress.com
Bill Caplan knows you care about the environment, but there are some facts you might not be aware of. Page A8
Courtesy of Myla Flores
Myla Flores is the founder of The Birthing Place — one of two groups partnering with Moss Café to deliver food to homes with newborns.
Getting word out Community boards may be the closest many get to government. But are they communicating the way they should be? Page A3
Meet a mayor? Maya Wiley knows what it’s like working against the odds, but that’s not slowing down her efforts to lead. Page A12
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Café makes mouth-watering meals meaningful for moms n Delivery service ‘birthed’ out of friendship, and a real commitment to help families By ROSE BRENNAN rbrennan@riverdalepress.com
There’s just something about the bonds a new mother creates, not just with her newborn, but also with the people who helped her along the journey. While the intense experience can be rewarding, it’s also exhausting. Emily Weisberg created those very bonds while pregnant with her third child. Her prenatal support network included Myla Flores and Emilie Rodriguez, with Flores going as far as being Weisberg’s doula — her trained companion — during childbirth. And while the women forging a bond during Weisberg’s pregnancy and childbirth might have been inevitable, one thing they couldn’t foresee it leading to was a business partnership. When a family brings home a new baby, there are many new adjustments that must be made. And understandably, some aspects of life might need to take a backseat, no matter how essential they are. But this Bronx trio of women has banded together to ensure meals and nutrition don’t fall by the wayside in the days and weeks following the
birth of a child. “I stayed in touch with them, I stayed in touch with the work that they were doing, and it was very close to my heart,” Weisberg said. “I thought it was really important work. So I continued to try and think of ways that we could partner. And I saw Emilie posted something about a growing need (of) making meals for postpartum women and families.” Weisberg is the owner of Moss Café on Johnson Avenue, a business she feels is closely tied to her motherhood journey. Especially after realizing she could use her café’s resources to provide nutritious meals for other families in the Bronx welcoming a newborn. eMily Before long, a partner- WeisBerg ship was born among the women. Flores and Rodriguez already were regulars at Moss Café, but now they were also officially business partners. Rodriguez is the founder of Ashe Birthing Services, a Bronx-based group of birth and postpartum doulas. Flores has her own organization, a developing birth center called The Birthing Place. Both are groups where forging mutual support with mothers is essential. Creating a meal delivery service FOOD DELIVERY, page A4
How should a community come together in the wake of hatred and find a way to collectively heal? That’s the question many in this corner of the Bronx are asking themselves after at least four synagogues along the Henry Hudson Parkway were targeted by a vandal last month. The natural first step? Catch those responsible. That’s exactly what happened early Saturday morning when officers from the 50th Precinct arrested Jordan Burnette, 29. The New York Police Department’s Hate Crime Task Force believes Burnette — who lives at the Whitehall in Spuyten Duyvil — threw rocks and broke the windows at the synagogues and vehicles surrounding them, as well as damaging prayer books and even stealing a bicycle. He racked up 42 charges in all, and many carry additional weight as hate crimes. Burnette is free awaiting trial after a Bronx criminal court judge placed him on “supervised release.” That was
‘This was a horrible attack that feels like a violation of our sacred place.’ — Rabbi Barry Dov Katz after an earlier decision from a different judge ordered Burnette held on $30,000 cash bail, despite defense attorneys’ claims he couldn’t be held on bail under current state law.
Caught in the act?
Police say Burnette was in the midst of another synagogue rampage when they nabbed him for riding a bicycle against traffic on Delafield Avenue near West 246th Street in the very early morning hours of Saturday. Police believe Burnette stole that bicycle from the Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel of Riverdale on West 250th Street, not far from where they say he doused a pile of Jewish prayer books with hand sanitizer. SHUL VANDAL, page A4
Nabe planning must start from bottom: CB8 n Council Speaker’s land use overhaul hasn’t quite convinced many it’s right By MICHAEL HINMAN mhinman@riverdalepress.com
Charles Moerdler has never considered himself a “top-down” kind of guy. At least when it comes to government at the hyperlocal level. So why anyone would think he’d support city council Speaker Corey Johnson’s bill he says would overhaul community planning from the mayor’s office on down is beyond him. And Annie Levers, an assistant deputy director of the council’s strategic initiatives office, would certainly have her work cut out for her trying to convince Moerdler and the rest of Community Board 8’s land use committee otherwise. Yet, Levers tried to do exactly that Monday night in her pitch backing Johnson’s “Planning Together” initiative, also known as Intro 2186. Com-
munity planning is a mess, she said, and an overhaul like this is exactly what New York City needs. “The city’s planning mandates, in our opinion, are insufficient,” Levers said. “They’re scattered. They’re confusing. And this leads to inefficiencies on how the city sort of operates, and a lack of coordination between city agencies. Our planning regime is purely reactionary, and there are few meaningful opportunities for communities to proactively plan their futures together.” The legislation would help New York City have what virtually every other major metropolitan area has depended on for years — a full-scale comprehensive plan, deciding what kind of construction goes where. Because of that, Levers said, there’s no real strategy to create affordable housing, to rebuild deteriorating infrastructure, and even to deal with climate change. Many coastal neighborhoods could be flooding every day at high tide by 2100 because of sea-level rise. Of course, many community boards PLANNING, page A4
No more waiting: Overlook gets a Dutch makeover n Victor San Andrés skips red tape, fixing park that languished for decades By ETHAN STARK-MILLER estarkmiller@riverdalepress.com
M
ost anyone who has tried to get as much as a pothole filled on their street knows city agencies aren’t necessarily the fastest when it comes to fixing problems. The wheels of government can be slow-moving, restricted even more by mountains of red tape. But when it came to cleaning up and landscaping some green space near his Spuyten Duyvil home, Victor San Andrés took matters into his own hands, deciding this was an instance where asking for forgiveness was better than seeking permission. He bypassed the city altogether, only conferring with the parks department after already making significant headway. That risked getting him in trouble with those in charge, but San Andrés was determined to transform a part of the HalfMoon Overlook not open to the public into an enjoyable space. “Basically, I started making it very interesting for people to go down there,” he
HirAM AleJANDrO DUrÁN
Victor san Andrés cleared an area in the Half-Moon Overlook park, building a path out of bricks that were once a part of a structure there. san Andrés spent four months building what he calls ‘Halve Maan garden,’ a space he hopes his spuyten Duyvil neighbors can take advantage of. said. “The views are amazing from there, of the Hudson River.” And, San Andrés added, his neighbors have given a thumbs up. For the most part.
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“The feedback is insane,” he said. “Everybody loves the idea. Everybody comes down there.”’ Accessible through Henry Hudson Park near the intersection of Kappock
Street and Independence Avenue and named for Henry Hudson’s famous ship, San Andrés first happened upon the area he would later dub “Halve Maan Garden” when walking around the neighborhood more than a year ago. When he reached the Half-Moon Overlook, he noticed a gate and stairs that led down to a secluded area. “I went down there, and I was like, ‘Oh this is interesting,” San Andrés said. “And then I was like, ‘Maybe I should do something. Maye I should change this. Maybe I should landscape this.’” And it’s not that San Andrés didn’t have some background when it came to projects like this. He used to be an art director on film sets, so designing spaces to be aesthetically pleasing was certainly in his wheelhouse. Now he installs pieces of expensive artwork in homes while working as a photographer on the side. The coronavirus pandemic made that kind of work more difficult, so San Andrés looked for a project to fill his newfound free time. At first, he tried to clean up trash in Spuyten Duyvil Shorefront Park. But no matter how much he cleaned, fresh trash would quickly take its place, with no help from construction work on the nearby Henry Hudson Bridge. OVERLOOK, page A4