PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Rafael Lopez, Member of the Public, on Linda Carter Cooper Street Co-naming
0:03:46
·
134 sec
Rafael Lopez testifies in support of co-naming a street after Linda Carter Cooper, describing her significant impact on the community of 84th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. He highlights Cooper's involvement with local children, her efforts to maintain affordable housing, and her role in fostering community connections.
- Cooper helped many families transition to Mitchell-Lama housing, enabling them to become apartment owners.
- She supported ESL education, helping Spanish-speaking families secure jobs in education.
- Cooper's legacy includes creating a strong sense of community and providing guidance to neighborhood residents.
Rafael Lopez
0:03:46
The sorry.
0:03:46
There you go.
0:03:47
My name is Rafael Lopez.
0:03:49
I moved to 84 Street in Amsterdam in 1984 and immediately was greeted into the neighborhood.
0:03:57
We have, 2, parks.
0:04:00
We have the Brandeis, yard, and we have the PS 9 yard right there.
0:04:04
So I was in there playing basketball, ended up meeting miss Linda Carter Cooper, who was very involved in the community and with the children and was kind of like a second mother while our mothers were at home or, busy doing other stuff.
0:04:19
She was out there watching us all day and really creating that sense of community that's really important because there's edifices and there's businesses, but it's the people that make the community.
0:04:30
And she created that sense of community where you could always come to her or she would come to you to check to see if you were doing alright in school, how is your family doing at home, is everything going alright with rent, Stuff like that.
0:04:43
A lot of our families were getting pushed out at that time, so she helped a lot of us switch into Mitchell Lama.
0:04:48
So not a a lot of us are apartment owners as opposed to renters, and that's only because of her.
0:04:54
She was very involved with, getting ESL so that a lot of the Spanish speaking families could get jobs even in education, which they thought would be impossible, but they became ESL teachers.
0:05:07
So she created a lot of lasting legacies in the neighborhood.
0:05:12
We are reeling since she has left us.
0:05:15
We have a huge hole.
0:05:17
She is still here in our hearts, but we would love to have her up there on that street so we could still have her there watching over us.
0:05:26
Community was huge to her.
0:05:27
The other people will speak on how big religion and the community inside the church was, how big her family was with her.
0:05:34
She had a large family.
0:05:36
I'm just here to speak about the neighborhood and how much she was beloved.
0:05:41
And people will say she needled us, but only when she needed to, and it was always lovingly, and it was always because she knew what was best for us.
0:05:50
And as we wonder now what to do, we only need to think about what she told us before, and that's how we carry on.
0:05:58
I don't wanna take up too much of your time.
