TESTIMONY
Violet Black, Laid-off Community Composter, on the Need to Prioritize Environmental Programs like Community Composting
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126 sec
Violet Black, a former GrowNYC community composter and member of the GrowNYC Workers Collective, passionately advocates for prioritizing environmental initiatives, specifically community composting programs.
- Black underscores the importance of community composting in managing organic waste through increased outreach and processing sites.
- She uses composting as a metaphor, urging society to actively address environmental 'toxins' instead of neglecting them.
- Black calls on those in power to take responsibility and invest in sustainable practices like composting for environmental and community well-being.
Violet Black
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Good afternoon.
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Chair Zebreu, and Brennan, and members of the city council.
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My name is Violet Black.
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I use she and they pronouns.
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I've been working for Grow NYC for just shy of 3 years, and I'm a member of the Grow NYC Workers Collective.
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That, of course, ended today, but I've been telling people that it'll work out okay for me.
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It's the environment not being prioritized that they should worry about My coworkers have and will to continue to tell you how popular important community composting is.
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So why then does the will to keep it funded seem so elusive?
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The people speaking up for community composting have been referred to as true believers.
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Why then are we not proselytizing to convert more?
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We know that the curbside program, in order for it to succeed, we need more outreach, not less.
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In order to handle more volume of organic waste, we need more processing sites, not less.
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So how about another quote from Stan Lee?
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With great power comes great responsibility.
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I hope everyone in this room is under the firm awareness that we as a species clearly possess the power to affect our environment.
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We have done so to our great detriment.
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Yet on a global scale, terrible budgeting decisions are being made scaling back all sorts of environmental programs.
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But again, we need more, not less.
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So what's happening?
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Composting is a perfect metaphor.
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Instead of dealing with our problems, I.
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E.
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The toxic rotting material.
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We send so much of it off to the landfill.
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We stick it somewhere out of sight, out of mind.
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When he tried to get by with less effort instead of more, we just keep kicking the can down the road.
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It's like we're dissociating as a species.
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Composting is the act of taking the toxic material and rehabilitating it with passion or heat, time, and exposure to air We eventually work through our problems and come up with something vital.
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Fertile, nutritious matter that will help grow, it's actually sustainable and healthy for us as humans.
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We can't keep treating our environment in our communities like they're expendable, like they're our lowest priorities.
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We can't we can't keep trying to put our problems out of sight in mind either We need to compost them.
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We and especially you all who have more power, have the responsibility to do so.
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Thank you for your time.