2023 PortSide year-end report
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Update since posting this blog on 12/21/23
We had a jolly December holiday party with about 80 people. Lots of families and kids in the first hours, with a committed firepit choir closing down the party after singing Christmas carols for two hours.
We received more historic engine parts from Carver Companies!
Our Operation Christmas Cheer this year reached 43 vessels on Christmas day and made many tug crew happy. Below, see the feel-good video we shot, and you can see the drone+time lapse video shot by crew of two tugs here.
We visited tugs and barges on Christmas day and gave them cookies and let the crew know they are appreciated. It’s a gesture that spreads a lot of joy.
PortSide 2023 in review
PortSide NewYork had an impactful 2023 with diverse work on public policy, education (elementary thru grad school), and historic preservation! Below is recap of that, but first we want to share news of a special award.
Our ED Carolina Salguero and PortSide have won awards from the White House, the NYS Senate, and culture and preservation groups for PortSide work. A few days ago, Salguero received a deeply meaningful recognition of PortSide’s impact in our neighborhood for “your unwavering commitment in educating the Red Hook community in maritime sciences, safety and sustainability.” This is named for Nancy Kearse Gooding, a powerhouse advocate for Red Hook decades ago. Her granddaughter Dashana Gooding-Gladney got a street co-named for Nancy and gave NKG service awards to a cohort of Red Hook leaders. Her granddaughter Dashana Gooding-Gladney had a street co-named for Nancy and gave NKG service awards to a cohort of Red Hook leaders. See the moving event here.
For those more eager to donate than read, here you go:
Please support our capital campaign now! We need matching funds in hand or confirmed at the time we apply for the National Maritime Heritage grant deadline of 2/28/24. Now is THE time to support our updated #makeMARYrunagain campaign with a goal of $40,000 by 2/28/24 here.
If you want to support the general fund, that’s here.
National significance for the MARY WHALEN!
In December, our flagship MARY A. WHALEN had “National Significance” added to her National Register of Historic Places listing! This increases grant opportunities for us, and gives Red Hook a nationally important feature. The main reason for the update is the MARY’s involvement in the Supreme Court decision U.S. vs Reliable Transfer, a widely invoked case. More here.
We’ve made the MARY a community center, a third place for adults, and a fun learning site and exploratorium for kids. There’s no established fan club for oil tankers as there is for tugs and tall ships, so the MARY is a beloved ship largely thanks to PortSide’s approach.
Historic Preservation of the MARY A. WHALEN
We continued getting parts to restore the engine room and working on the scope of work to put that space back in working order, and other assessments prior to hauling the ship out in a shipyard such as creating a ballasting plan and surveying the cargo tanks.
A major and beautiful restoration project was executed by our friends at the training center of union District Council 9. Apprentices from several of their locals transformed seven steel fire doors, now gorgeous with restored faux-wood grain and re-polished brass hardware. Thank you DC9!
Just some of the ship parts we added to our collection this year.
Education
We created new curriculum for Red Hook PS15 elementary school working with two of their teachers Shandrika Bethea and Kaitlin Steers making four units (Sound+light in maritime, whales, simple machines, Puerto Rican Red Hook WaterStories).
241 students from PS15 took our sound+light field trip for 723 hours of instruction, with 23 special ed students getting 46 hours of classroom instruction. Simple machine trips to come in the Spring semester!
290 students from PS15 went on 835 hours of whale watch trips out into the ocean from Sheepshead Bay!
Below how we used our ship MARY A. WHALEN and NYC Ferry for the sound+light education. Thanks to Naoufal Enhari for this video!
PS15’s principal Julie Cavanaugh is effusive about the impact: the trips exposed kids to experiences they would never have had otherwise, got them excited, they brought that energy and new ideas to class (and home), and it’s reverberating through the community. One grandmother said she wanted to go on a whale watch trip too.
The trips “gave the students agency, showing that they can access a larger world” outside our isolated peninsula of Red Hook. “Kids in class talk about how they now know there are jobs on boats, jobs with dolphins in the wild. “I didn’t know you could see dolphins outside an aquarium, said one.” “Kids are studying environmental justice (EJ) issues and saw harbor pollution they’ve read about when visiting you, leading to that essential synthesis of what they read and lived experience,” a goal of PortSide’s place-based education.
We also created a high school earth sciences and resiliency curriculum with a focus on dealing with flooding working with teacher consultant John Russo (formerly at Summit, now at PAVE) that is aligned with NYS standards. It will be offered starting next semester. This curriculum and the PS15 work was funded by a $115,000 federal DOE grant from Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez. Thank you, Nydia! Your impact lives on!
We also worked with graduate programs:
Pratt students working on Red Hook resiliency. Saba Mahmood has created a flood prep awareness flyer we will share with Red Hook in 2024.
Hunter students working on Red Hook air quality related to lack of shore power use at the Brooklyn cruise terminal and the surge in last mile facilities in our neighborhood. Please sign the petition by the PTA of PS15 in support of Intro 1050 which mandates that the EDC use shorepower at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal adjacent to the MARY A. WHALEN.
We worked with an undergraduate Cornell student researching NYC Museum practice.
We served private, public and homeschool programs in and outside of Red Hook on various topics at elementary, middle and high school levels as well as individual youth volunteers.
Policy
There are several pieces of new legislation proposed (and some approved) by our City Council and NYS elected officials that reflect PortSide’s input and align with our positions on all the policy topics below. We are heard!
U.S. Army Corps resiliency plan for the NYC and adjacent NJ region
PortSide advocacy helped get the USACE HATS resiliency comment deadline extended 30 days for the whole region. We argued that Red Hook and our district lacked Congressional representation during the original comment period due to redistricting: Nydia Velazquez was exiting, and our new Congressman Dan Goldman was still hiring staff and opening offices, so we needed more time. Velazquez and Goldman shared that with the USACE, and voila!
corner of king and conover streets near the Mary whalen, by Kiki Rakowsky
Our deep work on the USACE HATS resiliency plan is on this blogpost. We did major outreach in Red Hook to ensure the community commented, and we worked closely with multiple property owners that looked to be adversely affected by the proposed plan to deal with flooding.
We hosted a Zoom with local and international experts to inform the community. That Zoom audience reached well beyond Red Hook.
Part of our comment was echoed by NYS DEC which said the USACE plan did not deal with all types of flooding, just coastal surge, and echoed in a bi-partisan statement by elected officials about the plan.
NYC EDC management of Atlantic Basin, Red Hook
We did considerable work to improve the NYC EDC management of cruise traffic in Red Hook during several months of weekly zooms hosted by our Councilmember Alexa Aviles with the Red Hook Business Alliance, of which we are a member.
PortSide also insisted that Red Hook finally get benefits from the EDC’s management of Atlantic Basin. We credit our #rethinkEDC campaign and work on those Zooms for the proposal the EDC released in September. We’re glad to see it and see room for improvement. Meetings to follow in 2024!
Last Mile Facilities in Red Hook, with implications beyond
We’ve been a leading voice calling for new last mile facilities to use the marine highway to move freight. See this blogpost.
Weather and air quality (AQI) reports
Lastly, you can now get your weather report from us here. We installed the weather station as part of our new high school resiliency curriculum. It can also be viewed as a phone app.
You can also check air quality here at that link above for the Davis Instruments reading, and get our Purple Air monitor reading here.
TankerTime
With PortSide Park evicted by the NYC EDC in September 2022, we looked for new ways to serve small children. We beefed up the resources in the Tankerman’s Cabin and made that cabin available during TankerTime.
The free library in PortSide Park was hugely popular, so we created the BookTent to add a library to TankerTime. It’s bigger than the park library since we observed that kids liked to play in there, and adults would squeeze in there with a child for read-aloud sessions. The BookTent also offers all the fun of a tent. Families had take-out dinners in there, and some even rode out rain storms in there.
We had some fun joining the summer Barbie crazy by making this video. Barbies on loan from and art direction by 6-year old Xiah.
Coda - more impacts of the NYC EDC
PortSide did A LOT despite not hosting public programs from June 16 until October 6 due to the NYC EDC’s machinations during negotiations for our current berth permit. This shutdown of our public events was unnecessary and punitive and hurt PortSide in that we may lose grant funding for programs we did not execute, and did not have events that always attract volunteers and donations. It hurt the large, diverse community we serve in Red Hook and well beyond. We were not able to have the film series, concerts, and visiting vessels we planned.
We thank Councilmember Alexa Aviles for her role in moving those negotiations along and ensuring that we got a berth permit that ran until the end of 2024, not just until the end of 2023 as the EDC initially offered in October.
The NYC EDC has released an RFP for this site that could displace us. Stay tuned!
We look forward to serving you in 2024!
Please support us with a year-end donation here. Thank you!
