MESSAGE
| DATE | 2014-07-15 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Sanitation Services
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http://www.thefreelibrary.com/%22Taxation+without+Sanitation+is+Tyranny%22%3a+civil+rights+struggles+over...-a0165359505
"Taxation without Sanitation is Tyranny": civil rights struggles over
garbage collection in Brooklyn, New York during the fall of 1962.
Link/Page Citation
During the early 1960s, many residents of Bedford-Stuyvesant saw the
neighborhood's filthy streets as a sign of their community's low status
in New York City. The trash that accumulated on sidewalks and in streets
crowded public space with its bulk and its stench. Children had to play
around hulky abandoned cars. Pedestrians on their way home from work
dodged rats and vermin that darted from the asphalt to alleyways where
bags of uncollected household garbage sat festering, sometimes for days
at a time. Over the years, residents periodically complained to elected
officials and appointees to the city's Sanitation Department, but the
problem only worsened. Bedford-Stuyvesant inhabitants even organized
periodic neighborhood clean-ups through local block associations. (2)
Their efforts brought temporary relief to certain areas, but failed to
remedy completely the overall problem. At its root, the abundance of
garbage was linked to the scarcity of resources in this overcrowded
residential area. Bedford-Stuyvesant required increased garbage
collection and the city was failing to provide it. That this was a
neighborhood with one of the fasting growing Black populations in the
entire city added a racial insult to an already odoriferous injury.
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