Posted on 06/03/2009 8:55:28 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
The constant hum of the air conditioning units across the street could be heard clearly from Ralph Moss's home.
At a word, they were shut off. Sounds of talking neighbors rose through the silence.
"My front porch has become my haven, and my haven is threatened," Moss said, sitting on his porch on North Albany Street. "It's so much of a nuisance, I have to go inside and close my doors and windows to get some peace."
Moss has lived in the neighborhood facing the east entrance of Beverly J. Martin Elementary School on and off since 1982.
The newest addition to the neighborhood bothers him more than a little bit. Several air conditioner condenser units nestled in the shadow of BJM were installed a few weeks ago in a spot where Moss's neighbors were planning to plant a garden with students from the elementary school.
Residents of the block between Buffalo and Court streets say the condensers pose a safety risk for young children and show disrespect for two trees planted there in memory of Bob Navarro, a former principal of BJM, and Rashad Richardson, a seventh-grader killed in 2001. Richardson's tree is now within an enclosure surrounding the condensers....
Jeff Bercuvitz, Moss's next-door neighbor and liaison to BJM for the informal North Albany Neighborhood Association, said the buzz is evidence of an attitude in ICSD that is contrary to its own stated goals of equity and school-community partnership.
"I see some real classism and environmental racism here," Bercuvitz said. "Our assertion is that if the same concerns were raised by a rich, white CEO in Cayuga Heights ... the district would respond."
The street is a heterogeneous mix of backgrounds and ethnicities, Bercuvitz said, with white, black, Latino and Tibetan families living in a tight-knit neighborhood, where the average income is $30,000 or less.
Bercuvitz said for the most part the residents on North Albany have accepted that inconveniences are a part of life when you live next to a school - especially on the side with the bus drop-off. But, "we're not a service area for the school," he said.....
Board members said they hope to abate the sound rather than move the units to the roof, which would cost an estimated $100,000 and require new designs and submitting the plans to the state education department
“Of course he’d be whining about racism if the white kids got nice AC but the black school didn’t.”
LOL ... I think you’re also correct if you had only posted the first six words ... followed by a fill in the blank.
New York State sunk a huge amount of tax money into school modernization and expansion projects under the Clinton administration as a “make work” project for their Union supporters. The offending air conditioners are therefore the work of your friendly local Democrat.
Sorry, that’s not “environmental racism”, the reality is pollution occurs in “minority” neighborhoods because they generally are POOR neighborhoods, and poorer neighborhoods tend to be the neighborhoods close to industrial operations that produce polution... Which is why the property values are lower and poor people tend to live there.
Race has nothing to do with it.
Don’t like it? Get educated, and get better employment that lets you live in a nicer more expensive area, or go out and start your own business bust your butt and build it to a point where you can live elsewhere. Sorry but skin color has nothing to do with the fact that the neighborhood next to the industrial plant has higher pollution, its got higher pollution because its beside an industrial plant, and that’s why property values are lower and poorer people tend to live there.
Liberals lead with their emotions and then twist their intellect to justify their emotions instead of using their intellect to evaluate if their emotions are just to begin with.
Absolutely. They also live to make race an issue when it isnt, because that is how they get positive attention from the MSM. Nothing makes the MSM happier than racism charges.
They also conveniently ignore that middle and upper class folks have not escaped pollution. For ex, the air pollution in LA does not affect only poor people. And IIRC the Love Canal homeowners were middle class.
Oh, suck it up!
Summer only lasts two weeks in upstate New York anyway. If I lived next to a school and my “haven” was my porch, I’d be annoyed at those environmentally racist school buses disrespecting my ears with their constant diesel rattle twice a day. But since the buses that spew diesel fumes endangering tiny little children are accepted in Ithica, I think their priorities are out of whack to demand the cessation of harmless quiet little air conditioners.
these people are all insane
As of Memorial day weekend, when my oldest graduated from Cornell, I no longer have any family living in Ithaca—I was born there. I’ll miss much of the natural beauty of that place; Cornell is a national park setting in itself; and I’ll miss occasionally tweaking of noses of some of the ultra-libs there.
Only a select few have the power and the right to cry “racism” and have governments and administrations drop everything to rush to obey their demands.
It's a legitimate beef, actually. Guys like Bercuvitz are the ones who bear the consequences of NIMBY politics.
Environmentalism is all well and good unless and until it twists the knickers of the rich, white people who "control" the environmental movement.
Wind power, for example, is grand when it only affects poor folks in places where the environmentalists are unlikely to visit. But once you put up windmills in view of Ted Kennedy's house....
I think this guys complaint probably has much deeper roots (even if he hasn't given it much thought). Lots of things the left does, end up flowing down to the poorer segments of society. This one (about which his complaints are legitimate) would have been the last straw.
Air-conditioners, Mandrake ... childrens’ air-conditioners.
So, no AC for the precious little snowflakes, let em sweat.
It’s better for the environment./sarc
Wow.
I had to read this, just to see how air conditioner placement is racist. Let’s review why:
1. The air conditioners make a buzz noise. (As a former Ithaca resident, I will attest that it will only make the buzz noise in July and August.)
2. Apparently, the buzz noise is making porch sitting uncomfortable. Whereas the noise from the school busses every morning and the cars passing by on the busy intersecting streets are ok.
3. The buzz noise is disrespectful to trees (which do not have ears).
4. Someone is making a complaint (the article doesn’t specify if any formal complaints were made or if the resident is simply whinning to a third-rate newspaper). The complainer claims that rich people (in Cayuga Heights??) get better resolution of complaints because they are rich and white.
5. Therefore the air conditioner placement is racist.
I see.
You are right, and he is right. I guarantee they wouldn’t offend the CEO because he does have power, clout. But, did they consult the guy whose front porch was going to face these AC units?
It is sad that those that bear the brunt of all of the environmental requirements are the ones supposed to be helped by it, :-(.
These people are mentally ill.
ping
No, Dat B actin' Asian.
thanks, bfl
Complete, fabricated lie.
As is the compeltely false “concern” about safety for the children from an AC condensor. The complainers WANT to stir up (racial, income, envirnmental hatred and discontent - THAT is their life, what they have been taught since their first days in (government) oreschool and day care.
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