The Bay Ridge Environmental Group is one of the largest and most active groups to emerge out of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bay Ridge. Consisting of an ever-changing array of volunteers, it has gone on to not only beautify our local parks and playgrounds, but also advocate for cleaner and more equitable transit, better funding for green spaces, and much, much more.

But every seed needs to be watered and cared for. Today, we sit down in our studio with Danny Loud, one of the founders of the Bay Ridge Environmental Group, as we dig deep into what has made the group so successful. We’ll learn about the early years, the first cleanups, and the key partnerships that have made the group what it is today: and what the future holds as Bay Ridge steps up to tackle climate change.

Along the way, we’ll discover that not everyone is happy about having cleaner parks. There’s been inexplicable opposition, but BREG. has emerged all the stronger for it, supported by constant action, responsive decision-making, and a friendly come-and-go-as-you-please style of membership.

Join us as we kick off our second season of Radio Free Bay Ridge, explore the origins of the Bay Ridge Environmental Group, and welcome our newest official contributor to the podcast, Danny Loud!

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Show Transcript

(Intro Music: Battle Hymn of the Republic by Red Nichols and his Five Pennies)

Season Two of Radio Free Bay Ridge

Dan. Hey there, and welcome to Radio Free Bay Ridge, your hyper-local progressive podcast focused exclusively on Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. I’m Dan, and… it’s good to be back everyone! I haven’t done this for quite some time. During the pandemic era, we kind of dropped off the face of the map there. But we are back! We have new contributors, new stuff lined up, new episodes. I’m typing new scripts. We’re getting back into it.

We didn’t leave…. we just went on hiatus. So welcome to season two!

Introducing Danny Loud

Dan. To start off, we have in the studio today Danny Loud, one of our new contributors for environmentalism. We never figured out your official title, did we?

Danny. Environmentalism, or anything related to the environment works!

The Origins of the Bay Ridge Environmental Group (aka BREG)

Dan. If you remember some of our older episodes, we would go over Bay Ridge progressive groups and organizations and go into how they were founded.

And Danny created the Bay Ridge Environmental Group (with a bunch of other people, obviously) which now has been going for… how many years now?

Danny. Three and a half. We started in November 2020, so…

Dan. Wow.

Danny. Yeah.

Dan. So why Bay Ridge Environmental Group? Why local? Environment is a big thing. If I’m someone in Bay Ridge and I’m like, “I want to help the environment”, why not go to like some larger organization?

Danny. Yeah. Honestly, it really ties back to our origin.

Pandemic Origins

Danny. Three and a half years ago was November, 2020. It was the middle of the pandemic. Again, I helped start BREG, but I wasn’t the only one. And a lot of us were just feeling very hopeless. It felt like there wasn’t a whole lot that we could do about the many, many problems that we had going on… and that we’re still facing, honestly. But it began with us trying to find a place to talk to each other about what we were all feeling.

The environment has always been an issue that I’ve cared about. It’s been an issue that a lot of people care about. So I think BREG started, honestly, with a post on Fight Back Bay Ridge (A local facebook group). I think I posted, “Does anybody wanna help start an environmental group?” And it ended up getting well over 50 reactions, of some form or another.

Obviously not all of those people became active members or even responded when I said, “Hey, are you serious about that?” But enough people joined on.

We really didn’t have any plan in mind when we started, to be totally honest. We just really wanted to talk about what we could actually do to get involved.

The first thing that we did was just counting all of the street trees in the neighborhood to see what trees looked diseased, and what trees pits were empty. Then we could give that information to the Parks Department. And we just sort of really branched out from there.

Why Local?

Danny. I mean, to sort of answer your question of why get involved in environmentalism locally, so many of these problems are huge. Climate change is a global problem. We can’t even really fix it in the United States alone. But we wanted to make sure that people knew that there was stuff that you can do. And stuff that you can do locally that really matters.

New York is one of the most important states (or should be one of the most important states) for leading on climate change and renewable energy. So we have an important role in talking to our elected officials and making sure they realize that. There is a lot that we can do around our city’s transit and resiliency. And Bay Ridge is a perfect place to focus on that.

And then of course, there are the quality of life issues that we get involved with in volunteering.

One of the things that I’ve discovered being part of this now for a long time is how many issues touch on the environment. We just want to give people a space to get involved and to feel like they’re making a difference. And I think we have been.

Bay Ridge’s Plentiful Green Space

Dan. I’m thinking back to that time, I think I was one of those reactions on Facebook for that initial post.

Danny. I think you were on the first Zoom meeting actually.

Dan. I think I was. ‘Cause that was middle of pandemic. I hadn’t been outta my house for a while. There was something really alluring about, “Oh, let’s go out to a park. Oh, lets go walk around and check tree pits. And that’s valuable somehow?”

Danny. It is!

Dan. I will absolutely count tree pits, because we have a lot of street trees in this neighborhood. More than most districts. And we have a lot of parks, too. We’re lucky that our neighborhood has so many parks, but also means there’s a lot to take care of and it usually gets away from the assigned park staff, which is often one of the first things to be cut in the city budget.

And there are obviously environmental groups that predate BREG: community garden organizations and ad hoc groups for replanting the highway or taking care of parts of Shore Road, things like that. But never was there anything like you’re describing: an organization that didn’t just say, “Hey, we can go and pick up stuff in a park”, but also, “Let’s look at transit.” Transit’s not normally a thing that a local environmental group would think of as super important.

Danny. Exactly.

A Hub for Environmental Volunteerism

Dan. That’s what’s really interesting: BREG’s is doing all of it. Anything that touches on the environment could be a focus of an action.

Danny. Of course. It started really with, “What do you guys want to talk about?” Seriously. I’m pretty sure that’s how the first meeting started. And it’s been evolving over three and a half years now. I think that’s one of the great things about the group: it doesn’t have a set list of issues that we don’t go beyond.

And you’re right about all of the other community gardens, block associations, things like that. They’re really great and we work with as many of them as we can, but the long term goal for the group is to make Bay Ridge Environmental Group a hub for getting involved in the environment. If there’s something you want to do, we can help!

We’re all volunteer though, so at some point we’ll run up against limited capacity. I guess then we’ll get into season two of the Bay Ridge Environmental Group.

Dan. (Laughter) There we go.

Danny. But we want to be able to give people the tools that they need to go out on their own. We’re still working towards that, but I feel good about it.

Early Actions: The Tree Pit Census

Dan. You mentioned that the first Zoom meeting was, “What do you want to talk about?” What were the things that people wanted to talk about in those first few meetings?

Danny. The first one was that tree survey. I think that’s what we called it. Or census or something like that. That’s, it was a tree census! Yeah. We started the group in fall and usually the parks department likes to plant new trees around spring. So we thought we had a couple of months to really do a thorough survey of the neighborhood, put the data into a list and get it back to the parks department.

I hope it was helpful. We were able to get it to the parks department, but I don’t really know internally what they did with it afterwards.

But a lot of what we started in that meeting was going around asking, “What can we do?” Because none of us had done any of this before.

So another thing we did was we reached out to Councilman Brannan’s office and we asked, “What can we do to help out with e-waste recycling?”. That was actually something that I will say did kind of fall to the wayside. Not through anybody’s fault, it’s just they’re really hard to set up.

Dan. Yeah.

Early Actions: The First Park Cleanups

Danny. So those were things that we just tried to reach out to as many people as we could and see where we were valuable.

The first regular aspect of what we do that we really landed on, is the park cleanups. We still do them monthly. We were able to get in touch with a group called Partnerships for Parks, which we still work with all the time. They help set up our cleanups. They’re a go-between, between us and the Parks Department. They make sure that we get all the supplies that we need. That we are set to be in the park. Promotion work. All of that. And anybody can do it with a 40-minute training that I did three years ago and I’ve never had to repeat it. (laughter)

And so that was the first real public facing thing that we did. Of course, it was a 95% chance of torrential rain, so we canceled it. And then, it turns out it was beautiful out, so we did it the next week.

Dan. Ugh!

Danny. And not as many people came. But we started it that way, and we’ve been doing them almost every month ever since. And, again, that was just one of the things that we wanted to do to bring more people in. To let them know that we were here in the community.

The Haters

Dan. That sounds like just the most universally positive thing.

How could anyone have a… and I know I’m leading this question… ’cause I know that people had a problem with the fact that people were cleaning up their local parks. Which is absolutely crazy. I mean, I don’t want to give them too much air, but why would someone not be cool with a volunteer group cleaning up a park? What were the arguments you heard?

Danny. I mean, I guess the most good faith argument is “Why do we have to do this? What are our taxes for?” That’s the fair criticism. Then there have been a lot that aren’t really fair, to be honest, but…

Dan. Well, let’s only deal with the good-faith arguments.

Advocating for Parks Funding

Danny. The fair one is that we do pay a lot of taxes in the city. So why do community groups have to do this?

I mean, I guess honestly, my reaction to that would be like, “Yeah, you’re probably right.” But we have this situation right now where the parks are not funded adequately.

One of the things that we do on the advocacy side is that we’re part of the New Yorkers for Parks Coalition, which has a very simple ask: Put 1% of the city budget towards the Parks Department. Right now it’s hovering around 0.6 and…

Dan. That means that 1% would be almost double what they get now!

Danny. Exactly. I mean, that would be huge. But right now that’s not what we have. So we’re gonna continue to clean parks.

Improving Quality of Life

Danny. I think there’s an important aspect of this, which is, a lot of people like to complain about quality-of-life issues. There’s trash on the streets. The garbage isn’t picked up regularly enough. There’s graffiti here. This isn’t looking good.

We wanted to let people know that there is a place where they can go to begin making progress on that. And we think that we can lead by example. If somebody is gonna be a jerk, they’re gonna be a jerk. But most people aren’t that way. Most people simply don’t know that there’s an option for them to get involved.

Dan. And it might just be that people are judging BREG from just one event. They don’t realize that, yeah, you do monthly cleanups. But it’s a group of people that are also involved in lobbying for more parks funding.

In the end, these are kids play spaces. Do we really want to let them be dirty while we lobby government?

Helping Out The Parks Department

Danny. Yeah, exactly. And none of this is a criticism of the Parks Department. They are extremely helpful with us.

You know, the big event that we do every year is Earth Day. I mean, God, we must meet with the Parks Department at least two, three times per week in the month leading up to the event. They know exactly what supplies we need, exactly where we’re gonna be in the park, and they help us through the whole process.

But they’re limited in manpower right now. So…

Dan. And manpower is something that we have in Bay Ridge.

Danny. We have a ton of it, and people really, really wanna get involved.

I’ve had people that I see on the street picking up litter. During the pandemic, I saw a woman with a grabber on my corner. I was like, “Hey, I’m sorry. I hope this isn’t too weird, but like I run an environmental group. If you wanna do this with some company, you can join us.”

We want to make sure that people know that there’s a place to go where they can do this. Where they can begin to make a positive impact, with or without the parks getting the funding they need.

Growing the Bay Ridge Environmental Group

Dan. How many people were in that first meeting, and three and a half years later, how has the group grown?

Danny. A lot of the most active people have been there since the beginning. We have a five person executive board, who are sort of really the ones who do the day-to-day work and keep things running. Every one of those five people have been there from the beginning.

“Come and Go As You’re Available”

Danny. One of the things that we really try to emphasize to people is: come and go as you’re available.

Dan. Ahh, that sounds nice.

Danny. It’s something that’s really important to us. I knew from the beginning… well, not from the very beginning, but as soon as it was clear that this was becoming a serious thing, I knew that I never wanted the group to collect dues. We never wanted to be a strict membership based organization.

We wanted to, again, be a hub for people more than anything. So if you are really busy at work, come in as you’re able. If you have time or you have interest in something specific, come in and talk to us about it.

No hard feelings if you have to step away for a little while or come back. We’ve had a lot of that. We’ve had people who’ve had to take long periods off. But then they come back for one of the cleanups! And we’re just happy to see ’em. So while a lot of the people have been there from the start, it’s also been a great way to bring new people in.

Meeting Structure: What To Expect

Dan. So you mentioned earlier that you didn’t want bore me with the details and bore listeners with the details, but this is Radio Free Bay Ridge, getting bored by details is kind of our whole shtick. So if I wanted to get involved, you mentioned that there are meetings. How often do those happen?

Danny. So we have our meetings every other Monday.

Dan. Wow, that’s impressive.

Danny. We’ll move them around for holidays and stuff. But it’s a lot, you’re right. One thing that we realized, I’m not gonna say early on, but maybe about a year and a half in, was that that was too much.

But, on the other hand, we wanted to keep up contact with people. Once a month is just too little contact.

Action Meetings and Planning Meetings

Danny. So what we started doing is, as much as possible, we try to have an action meeting and a planning meeting. That was how we originally phrased it. Our last meeting with this past Monday, but the Monday before that fell on Earth Day itself. So we went out and we gathered petition signatures for our Finish Fourth Avenue campaign!

Dan. Nice.

Danny. And it’s good. We probably don’t have enough to… well, actually we do have enough to talk about every two weeks. I do, at least. But people might not want to just hear me talk, so we want to give people a way to actually do work on the streets, too.

Dan. Speaking about Finish Fourth Avenue: Clearly there are other things that the Bay Ridge Environmental Group gets involved in. I’ve seen so many actions where it’s sponsored by multiple groups, including BREG.

It’s obvious that the environment touches so many issues. It’s so easy for BREG to say, “Yeah, we’re gonna get involved in this.” So having meetings every two weeks doesn’t seem too crazy!

Danny. It’s really honestly surprising how much the agendas fill up.

Dan. Especially if, listeners, you decided to just join in. You can just apparently hop in and out as you need to.

How To Join A Bay Ridge Environmental Group Meeting

Danny. You can just hop in and out, honestly. Obviously we don’t put our meeting links out in public, but all it takes is an email or a message on the Facebook group, or anything like that. And we’ll get you in.

Dan. Another way is in-person at one of the cleanups, right? That’s where I imagine a lot of people start out. They go to a cleanup and they can meet everyone face-to-face. You learn some faces, and you’re in the group, basically!

Danny. Yeah, exactly.

What’s Involved in a Park Cleanup?

Dan. What does a cleanup normally involve? I’m gonna go to a park and… what, are you gonna make me do back breaking labor for five hours?

Danny. Yeah, no, not really. We try to be responsive to what people are able to do.

The really basic form of a cleanup is: grabbers and garbage bags. We’re picking up litter and stuff like that.

I will say, again, this is one of the really great ways of working with Partnership for Parks. They’re able to arrange for the trash pickup. So we’re able to tell people: “Stay for as long as you’re able, and leave the bag at a garbage pail in the park. It’ll be taken out later.”

Sometimes yes, the piles of garbage bags that are there for a little while can seem unseemly, but it’s better than what was before, which is the garbage freaking everywhere.

Dan. So basically, you let the Parks Department know you’re doing the cleanup, and they come and they pick it up the bags in the park later on. So if I’m running like 10 minutes late, I didn’t miss anything. And all the stuff is provided.

Danny. Exactly. Everything is provided. Parks is very, very good about making sure we have everything that we need.

And I think… I don’t know for sure… but I think we are one of the most consistent volunteer groups the Parks Department has, at least in Brooklyn. So we have a little bit of cred at this point.

More Than Just Cleanups

Dan. Are there any projects that members have suggested that have turned into cool actions?

Super Stewards and Tree Care

Danny. Yeah, definitely. One of the biggest things that we’ve done, which I’m not as involved in myself, is our street tree care work. That’s headed up by our Vice President, Patricia. She’s a Super Steward, which basically means she’s allowed to take care of any tree pits without parks being present. That’s really great because she’s allowed to lead tree care events for other people too!

So that’s something that we’ve become very active on. That was from a specific member.

Battery Recycling on Third Avenue

Danny. Any suggestions people have, we try to listen to them.

For example, we’ve helped make sure that businesses along Third Avenue are recycling batteries. The person who suggested it came to us and she was like, “I found this service. They seem legit. I’ve talked to them. I have their name. Let’s just write something up and we’ll give it to some of the hardware stores along Third.” That was it. I think it took me like maybe an hour, total, walking along Third, to do it.

So, we really try to be as responsive as possible to what other people wanna do.

Decentralized Decision Making

Danny. It’s very decentralized decision making, to be honest, which is, I think, a strength. It has really let us grow. It’s also let us bring in people from other groups, with all the partnerships that we do. There’s no pressure. Say you’re part of Bike South Brooklyn, or you’re part of Bay Ridge Cares or something? you can still come in, talk to us and we’ll work with you.

Dan. That decentralized decision making has often been the heart of the strongest activist groups in Bay Ridge. The ones that have lasted the longest and have done the most good are often the ones that adopt that method. It’s really cool over the years seeing that play out multiple times, and be so successful for the groups that managed to get it working. It has genuinely improved the neighborhood, and BREG is part of that legacy.

Fostering Stewardship of Green Spaces

Dan. I think Bay Ridge Environmental Group’s work is unsung. Cleaner parks. But I’m sure that a lot of people in this neighborhood have vaguely noticed that they’re a bit cleaner, lately. Consistently.

Danny. I hope so. The thing that I’ve loved seeing the most is, honestly, how much of it is starting to happen without us. We think that showing people that this is possible, that this can be done, is really the most important thing that we can do.

For example, Community Board 10 used to do cleanups all the time, then they stopped them. But we worked with them, helped them get set up on the cleanups. We just had one. I think around 120 people attended last Saturday. It was incredible. There were school children, community groups, families who saw what we were doing and stopped in.

So, it’s spreading. I hope.

How Stewardship Spreads

Dan. We haven’t used the word yet, but that’s stewardship, right? So much of activism is about, you know, stewardship over a specific issue. And even if the group itself happens to wane, or if it changes, or even if the group remains and becomes powerful, its effect is that it engenders stewardship among people who are either a member of that group, or who witness it in action.

And you realize, hey, the tree in front of my house? Or the park that I go to every day after school with my kid? Those are things that you can take ownership of.

And going back to those naysayers at the start, who were like, “How come someone has to do this? I’m offended to see someone having to do this.” Well sure… no one has to. But people want to.

And when you see someone do it ’cause they want to, you realize, “I can want to too? I do! I do want to do that. It doesn’t take much time and it makes me feel good!”

People get something out of it. And the city gets something out of it. And your neighbors get something out of it, whether they’d like to or not. So that’s the funniest thing… all those people who are like, “You shouldn’t have to do that.” Well, I’m sorry, but you get to enjoy a clean park whether you like it or not!

Danny. (laughter) Yeah. We’ll force you to have clean parks.

Dan. Maybe we’ll keep a dirty part of the park for them! (laughter)

Volunteerism Feels Good

Danny. But honestly, I don’t think people realize how good it actually feels. When we had our Earth Day event, just seeing how many people came out. Young people. Personal friends from different parts of my life who I had no idea they even knew about this were there! It’s such a great feeling.

I’m not saying those volunteers are going to turn it into a full-time job, which is what BREG has basically become for me. But… most people just want to spend a couple minutes in the park helping out a little bit. And I think that awareness is really spreading.

Working With Other Communities

Danny. Environmentalism touches on so many different issues. So wherever we can, we branch out.

We do a lot of work in Coney Island with a group called Friends of Asser Levy Park focusing on resiliency, which is a huge issue there.

In Sunset Park, we’ve been active on the BQE redesign, which is huge thing that we haven’t really talked about yet

Undoing Bay Ridge’s existing reputation

Danny. We’ve found that Bay Ridge historically has been perceived as a place where activists from outside the neighborhood think, “Oh, they’re not gonna go along with this. They’re not gonna like this.”

Dan. Yeah. Let’s be honest with ourselves.

Danny. But that’s not the reality. I mean, it can be, but I think when a lot of groups have realized that there is an environmental group in Bay Ridge, they jump on the opportunity to work with us.

You know, it was about a year in, we got in touch with a group called 350 Brooklyn. And within 24 hours, they got us in touch with like four other coalitions. They’re like, “We don’t have anybody in Southern Brooklyn! This is great!” And we were overwhelemed! We had to go “All right guys, we’re all volunteers. Like, we have jobs here!” (laughter)

But seriously, we try to give as much support as we can to other neighborhoods. And part of that is acknowledging where we are more fortunate.

The BQE Redesign and Centering Sunset Park

Danny. For example, the BQE has been a really interesting experiment for us. There are proposals out there to cap extensive portions of the Bay Ridge Trench. That’s great. We want that. The neighborhood should do as much of that as we possibly can.

But Bay Ridge is not the Environmental Justice Community. Sunset Park is. And the amount of toxins and pollution that they have to deal with from an elevated highway on Third Avenue…. can you imagine that in Bay Ridge?

Dan. Yeah. We have sloping green grassy hills and trees on either side for our sections of highway. It’s nowhere near as bad as Sunset Park, so they’re the ones that should be centered, obviously.

Climate Resiliency and Centering Coney Island

Danny. It’s the same when we talk about resilience. Bay Ridge is a ridge. It’s uphill. Yes, there are still ways in which climate change and extreme weather affect us. But when we’re talking about sea level rise and constant flooding, that’s in Coney Island. So we wanna be doing the work there.

Dan. It’s also important that there is a group that represents Bay Ridge in those discussions, as lucky as we are… ’cause if we don’t represent ourselves… you cede that ground to the minority of people who are extremely NIMBY or extremely anti-environment, who gum up the works.

Danny. Exactly. And, and it’s important for people from outside the community to know that we are here and we are doing this.

How Danny Got Involved in Environmental Activism

Danny. The way I came into environmentalism was when I was in college. I was interning in D.C. when Trump pulled out of the Paris agreement in 2017. It resulted in a whole existential crisis.

I was like, “What the hell am I doing any of this for? The planet’s gonna be dead before I even turn 40. So… let’s do something about it now.”

Non-Partisanship and Working with Elected Officials

Danny. The Bay Ridge Environmental Group is not a partisan group, obviously. We don’t endorse candidates. We don’t get into anything like that. But we do think that we have strong relationships with at least our city and state representatives. We’ve even spoken with Nicole Malliotakis… well, her office, at least.

But we do think that there’s a lot of value in showing our elected officials that there are people that are paying attention to this.

Dan. Yeah.

Danny. Often, not always, but often, the solutions to climate change are really not that hard.

For example, Councilman Branan’s office and Kamillah Hanks over on Staten Island have called for a Staten Island to Brooklyn Ferry Connection.

Dan. There we go.

Danny. Or the IBX line. The infrastructure already exists. We have the piers, we have the rail lines. If we add those connections, it’s transformational.

Dan. Think about how many cars would be off of the streets, how much pollution could be eliminated.

And yeah, it might seem small when you compare it to the Paris Climate Agreement. But if there are enough neighborhoods of informed people who care, that matters. It’s important that we’re able to say: “Bay Ridge isn’t in the way.”

Making Small Changes Matter

Danny. There’s no point, especially around environmentalism, where we’ll be done. We’re probably never gonna have a day where we can say “The world solved climate change today.”

Instead, it’s about promoting a different way of thinking about our city and about our country. So we need to look at what the possibilities are, locally, to make a difference. It feels small. A lot of the times it doesn’t even feel perceptible. But it does make a difference.

Dan. I think that’s a great thing to end on, that it matters even if you can’t see it.

And the actions of BREG, I think you can see.

Danny. I think so too.

Goodbyes and Thank Yous

Dan. I know that Patricia, the groups Vice President, couldn’t make it today. So, to her, and all the other people in BREG: thank you so much for doing the work you do. Even if you’re a person who turned on this episode simply ’cause you were like, “Hey, I went to one of those once!” Thank you.

Danny. Thank you so much. And listeners, come to our next event whenever you’re able! We try to be out there in the community as much as we possibly can. So there will always be opportunities to get involved.

Dan. Danny, thanks so much for sitting down with us. And thanks so much for being on our “rekindling” episode, so to speak.

Danny. Yeah, congrats on season two, and thanks for using me as your guinea pig!

Future Episode Sneak-Peeks

Dan. (laughter) I needed to get back into the swing of things. And Danny, you are our new environmental correspondent. So, we have another episode lined up describing all the changes that have happened in our local parks in the last couple of years.

Danny. There are a ton of ‘ em.

Dan. Councilman Brannan has definitely thrown a lot of money toward parks. So we wanted to just do an episode where we cover all the things that you might not have known have changed!

Danny. Yeah, exactly. And, and all the stuff that’s gonna change.

Dan. Oh yeah. There’s still a bunch of stuff in the pipeline.

Sign-Off

Dan. So until then, thank you everyone for joining us. You can follow us on Twitter… (audible disgust) Twitter is kind of a toxic mess right now, but you can if you want to. Like us on Facebook. Definitely subscribe to the podcast. Check out our website at RadioFreeBayRidge.org. And until next time, everyone…

Stay free, Bay Ridge.