The challenge

In 1996, New York City’s then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani announced the closure, by 2001, of the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island, without an alternative waste site to take its place. Environmental justice activists were alarmed: They feared construction of waste-transfer stations, even possible waste-disposal facilities, in already environmentally-burdened communities. Indeed, some low-income neighborhoods seem to be repeatedly tapped: Of the 76 private truck-based, solid-waste transfer stations operating in New York today, most are clustered in largely low-income areas and communities of color, such as the South Bronx, Southeast Queens Brooklyn, Williamsburg-Greenpoint and Red Hook.

Together, these communities process, for out-of-state disposal, more than 80 percent of the city’s waste. Transfer facilities bring an inundation of diesel trucks. They bring traffic, disruption, noise and air pollution. And transfer stations aren’t the only environmental threat: Some of these same communities face the potential construction of power plants, prompted by deregulation and government concerns following August’s Northeast blackout.


Seeds of commitment

As a teenager, Eddie Bautista watched his South Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook unravel. As the shipping industry left, jobs disappeared, buildings were condemned, and families—including Bautista’s own—were displaced. Red Hook had once been a thriving waterfront community of 25,000 residents, but the rise of containerized shipping and the subsequent loss of local contracts led to 40 years of decline. In 1977, city officials began, then suspended, a reconstruction project behind Bautista’s house, exposing the community to an open sewer for over a year. Several buildings in the neglected neighborhood collapsed, killing four residents and much of the neighborhood’s spirit.

Bautista remembers how, as a boy of 13, he watched neighbors organize to save the community. Despite his youth, he joined in, attending meetings and carrying petitions. But the grassroots effort ended when local politicians seized control of the campaign and the city condemned dozens of more buildings. Replacement housing was built but was unaffordable to displaced, low-income Puerto Rican residents.


Accomplishments

Deeply affected by his experiences in Red Hook, Bautista co-founded the Organization of Waterfront Neighborhoods and Communities United for Responsible Energy. The two coalitions worked to block additional waste-transfer stations, power plants, and incinerators in New York’s low-income communities. OWN and CURE helped convince officials to pursue alternative, citywide plans to maximize use of existing infrastructures and develop ecologically-friendly waste management and energy programs. In August 2002, Mayor Michael Bloomberg agreed to OWN’S proposal to equitably upgrade city-owned marine transfer stations and to consider closing truck-dependent waste-transfer stations.

Other campaigns focused on the conversion of city-owned buildings into a bilingual school, and housing and health services for people with H.I.V./AIDS. The Sunset Park/Red Hook communities also gained city council representation for the first time. In 1990, Bautista joined New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI) to bring “communities the resources that my neighborhood could have used desperately when I was growing up.” Through a “community lawyering” model that Bautista shaped, NYLPI lawyers partnered with organizers and residents in their own neighborhoods to provide technical assistance to local empowerment campaigns. This team approach has been nationally recognized for providing effective legal and organizing assistance without interfering with local leadership.



His Leadership style

Bautista, who has a graduate degree in city planning, leads by developing democratic, decision-making networks. He has the ability to develop leadership skills in community activists, grasp local politics, and to make good use of his keen tactical instincts. His origins in Red Hook, Brooklyn afford him added credibility. “My intention is to coordinate and elevate voices and ideas, neither supplanting nor diluting their power,” Bautista has said.

His campaigns embrace three elements: community outreach and education, advocacy, and media savvy. “Once the members of a group hone their community organizing skills, they can participate in the ongoing civic life of their community as active participants and informed consumers, rather than powerless spectators,” Bautista says. “Though tedious at times, collective decision-making processes must be honored—and short cuts resisted—for it is through this process that we are all held accountable.” Bautista’s sense of humor and accessible manner are key components to his success at encouraging people from diverse backgrounds to interact and build lasting relationships.


The future

Bautista plans to develop ties among environmental-justice activists in New York City and other U.S. locales. He also plans to emphasize health-care issues and disability rights. And he will continue to teach his nationally recognized “community lawyering” model to new organizers and attorneys with the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest organization. “Lawyers are not trained to be team players in social justice settings,” says Bautista. He says he envisions the development of a new generation of attorneys who lead differently and more effectively.


More about Eddie Bautista and the communities he serves

“He is a humanist. He has great insight into community building issues/processes, as well as into the content of environmental justice; Eddie grasps ‘the whole elephant.’ He understands the complexity of urban life.”
— Ron Shiffman, Co-Founder, Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development

“Each day, hundreds of heavy trucks carrying thousands of pounds of reeking garbage rumble across Canal Street on their way out of town…according to the New York League of Conservation Voters, air pollution along Canal Street near the Holland Tunnel has increased by 17 percent since the city began exporting its garbage in 1997. Asthma is one of the leading causes of hospitalization for children in the area, and studies have linked the fine particulate matter emitted by the motor vehicles to cardiovascular and lung disease.”
— New York Observer, April 7, 2003