Leading By Example

There in the bushes, across from her house, Majora Carter spotted a puppy haphazardly tied to a tree. It was obvious someone abandoned this small, frightened creature. Not such an unusual occurrence here in the South Bronx, a crime-ridden, poverty-stricken inner city.

"I wasn't looking for a dog but I couldn't just leave her there, so I took her home," she said. She named her Xena, like the warrior princess. It's a fitting name for both dog and owner.

Carter had no idea how the puppy would change her life. "We were out jogging one morning and she pulled me into what I thought was another illegal dump. She kept dragging me through weeds and other garbage … and low and behold at the end of that lot was the river. I knew this forgotten street end, just like my abandoned dog that brought me there, was worth saving. And just like my new dog, this idea got bigger than I had ever imagined," explained 40-year-old Carter.

Today, that "puppy" is more than 80 pounds and Carter has morphed that "park project" into her own agency, Sustainable South Bronx (SSB), where she is executive director. SSB is dedicated to holistic community development, sponsoring projects that create jobs, protect the environment, and bring green space to the inner city.

At the time she found Xena, she was program director at The Point Community Development Corporation, an arts-based youth development group based in the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx. This organization was actively battling a waste facility that wanted to relocate to the South Bronx, her first foray into activism.

"If I looked at a map I knew there was waterfront there but I didn't realize you could get to it from where I lived. There was so much industry and industrial waste that there was no access. If Xena hadn't pulled there I wouldn't have known," she said.

After a great deal of research, she wrote a proposal to get funding to help clean up this waterfront area. She started by getting a $10,000 grant. "We were able to energize and inspire agencies, public and private, to help out. There was 40 years' worth of garbage there that had to be cleaned out," she explained with her trademark radiant smile. She leveraged that grant 300 times and that garbage-strewn lot led to the creation of the $3 million Hunts Point Riverside Park, the first waterfront park on the Hunts Point peninsula in more than 60 years. That small park also launched a green movement in South Bronx. "Green. It's the New Black," is one of the SSB's slogans.

"In April of 1999 the park debuted. It was the first time residents connected to the waterfront in this way. People were out on the water in canoes and kayaks, Carter recalled. "They were saying, 'Wow, oh my gosh, there's water here.' It was a very beautiful moment."

It also served as Carter's inspiration to reconsider her vocation. "Helping to transform that space was absolutely inspiring. It wasn't a huge stretch to think about doing this as part of my work," she said.

Carter has an intimate relationship with the South Bronx. Her parents settled here in the 1940s and raised 10 children, Majora being the youngest. She graduated from the Bronx High School of Science. Community activism was not a career path she planned. "I never envisioned I'd be working seven days a week for a nonprofit," she said with a laugh as she sat behind her desk in her office, the walls covered with colorful vines and greenery she painted herself. She is in touch with her artistic side, comparing her life to that of a canvas at that time, just waiting to be created. As colorful as her life has been, she has never strayed far from home. Today, she lives across the street from the house she grew up in, around the block from her office.

Poor Black Child From the Ghetto
Few can fathom the heartache of inner-city life. "I watched half of the buildings in my neighborhood burn down. My brother Lenny fought in Vietnam only to come home and be gunned down a few blocks from our home. I grew up with a crack house across the street," she said. "Yes, I'm a poor black child from the ghetto. The common perception was that only pimps, pushers, and prostitutes came from the South Bronx. It was the love inside that home, with the encouragement of teachers, mentors, and friends along the way," that Carter said helped her prove that perception wrong.

Carter earned a B.A. from Wesleyan College in cinema studies and then went on to New York University to earn a graduate degree in English with a concentration in creative writing. After her studies, she returned to the South Bronx with a fresh perspective.

It had always been appalling to her that her relatively small neighborhood handles 40 percent of New York City's entire commercial waste but now, that fact was more glaring to her than ever. The South Bronx houses a waste sewage treatment plant, a sewage sludge plant, four power plants, the largest food distribution center in the world, and close to 60,000 diesel trucks maneuver its streets every week. The area also has one of lowest ratios of parks to people anywhere. Obesity, asthma, and diabetes are prevalent. "Why would someone go for a brisk walk in a toxic area?" she asked.

"It was good to come home. I understand why this neighborhood developed the way it did. Regulations were passed, laws were just accepted, because we were a community that is poor and of color and because of that we had less of a political voice. At my deepest level, I don't believe just because you have the ability to discriminate against a group of people that you should," Carter said. "I decided I would like to be part of something that actually makes life better for people as opposed to doing nothing."

Civil Rights Movement Continues
"No community should be saddled with more environmental burdens and less environmental benefits than anyone else," she said. "The work we do is an extension of the Civil Rights movement. It's about equity, it's about equality, it's understanding everyone deserves the minimum standard of support and equality of life improvements. Economic degradation begets environmental degradation begets social degradation."

She formed SSB in 2001; today there are six full-time employees and two part-time employees on staff. SSB, Carter said, was formed "not as a moral crusade but as an economic-development group that was about planning our future, not just reacting to environmental blight."

The accolades she has received have been many. In 2005, she won a MacArthur Foundation "genius award" for her environmental activism. In 2002, she was named an Open Society Institute Community Fellow. Other honors: 2002 NYC Council Women's History Month Pacesetter Award; 2000 Environmental Advocate Award for Achievements in Community Development; and the 1999 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Quality Award.

Projects Green the South Bronx
Another feat she is particularly proud of is writing a successful proposal for $1.25 million in federal planning funds to design the South Bronx Greenway Feasibility Study. This community-led plan encompasses a bicycle/pedestrian greenway along the South Bronx waterfront providing open space, waterfront access, and opportunities for mixed-use economic development. Eventually, she hopes to help connect the South Bronx to Randall's Island and its 400 acres of parks. The two are separated by 25 feet of water.

She has also spearheaded a green roof project. There, on the top of the American Banknote Company Building that houses her offices in the South Bronx, is a 3,000-square foot thriving garden. Living plants here replace the all too familiar traditional petroleum-based tar roofs. She has turned this into a community-based research project, recently adding a temperature study component. "We test different models. The green roof, the black tar roof, and see the differences. We track air quality, storm water improvements, and degrees of energy efficiency here. It's all about the urban heat island effect and how that's contributing to global warming," she said. "I'd like to see green roofs all over the city."

It's not an easy feat. A green roof costs more than a conventional roof, but yields cost savings over time through energy conservation and rooftop longevity. The main benefit of green roofing is energy savings because the vegetation reduces the heat from the sun in the summer and acts as an insulating blanket in the winter. It also helps rooftops last up to 50 percent longer. Another added benefit is that the green area diverts storm water that can cause sewer overflows. SSB is also creating its own green roof installation program.

The Bronx Environmental Stewardship Training (B.E.S.T.) is another SSB creation. This program, particularly aimed at South Bronx residents, offers opportunities to gain skills and certifications in ecological restoration, hazardous waste cleanup, landscaping, and similar fields through a 12-week intensive program. The goal is to provide "green-collar" jobs for residents.

Another one of her current projects deals with the building of a state-of-the-art recycling complex that she says would create between 300 to 500 jobs. Unfortunately, she just got word that in its place the city is planning on building a 2,000-bed jail.

"The way we look at it, the best alternative to incarceration is a decent job, but the city doesn't look at it that way," she explained. Carter has become a well-respected leader in the South Bronx, but not in the political or celebrity sense … and that's fine with her. "Being a black woman as the head of an organization that has the visibility we have, it is sometimes good to be underestimated," she said. "It has served me very well."

"A successful leader is somebody who follows the needs represented by the population. Everybody has the capacity to be a leader. It's just stepping up the plate when something has to be done," she said.

Along the way, she has come to realize the importance of listening, not to be so defensive, and not to take things personally. She has also been "collecting mentors."

According to Carter, "you never know who is going to be your mentor. I've had people I've only met a couple of times give me invaluable pearls of wisdom in the most remarkable ways. They have been just as important as the people who have been there watching me grow up," she explained. Leslie Lowe, former executive director of New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, a coalition of 12 neighborhood groups from all over New York City, has been not only a mentor to Carter but a confidante as well. "She was the first person I told about my plan to start this organization and she couldn't have been more supportive."

Carter hopes to return the favor. "I hope to be a mentor to everybody on my staff, my family. It's about the next generation coming up. Hey, I'm getting old and tired," she said with a laugh. Motivating her staff requires next to no effort. "They all know we're building something vitally important that we can all contribute to it. There are so many folks who are depending on the work we do." This is a group that practices what they preach. Each employee has his or her own thermos and mug (no cans or plastic cups). A favorite mode of transportation is bicycle. Propped up by the front door is Carter's, in hot pink.

Unfortunately, sustainability is all too often for the privileged, something Carter is trying to change. "Hybrid cars like a Toyota Prius don't come cheap. Heck, most people in this neighborhood don't own a car at all, let alone a hybrid," she stated.

Like the artist's canvas, she sees her work not as wide sweeping brush strokes but as individual dabs of color contributing to the whole composition. "Our mission is project based, we don't just do advocacy. We do the kind of works that at the end of the day, at the end of the year, people who walk around the streets of the South Bronx will see in a new park that has been built, or smell because we've done some advocacy of cleaning up one of the polluting facilities. These are real tangible things that impact people's lives. Environmental justice is about people and making their lives better so they can tend to each other as a community."

Full Circle
It was on that garbage-strewn lot that inspired Carter's life work that she gathered with 300 of her closest friends and family members one day this past October to exchange marriage vows with James Chase. He works in film and television and consults with SBA as a communications director.

True to form, Carter did her best to make the reception a Zero Waste event. All the paper goods were compostable and all the food waste went to the Lower East Side Ecology Center to be composted. Cutlery, tablecloths, glasses, and dishes were all rented. "We came pretty darn close to be being zero waste but there was some packaging material that we had at the end," she said. There are not many who worry about the garbage at their wedding but Carter did. "It's horrific to think how much garbage we would have produced if we didn't make this effort." The two honeymooned in Belfast where Carter was speaking at a conference and then they went on to Paris, and Senegal.

A recent meeting she attended that impressed her from an eco-friendly standpoint was the Clinton Global Initiative held in New York City. Started last year, the conference brings together government, business, and nonprofit sectors in an effort to spur action on poverty, health care, global warming, and ethnic conflict. Participants are expected to make a specific commitment toward advancing the solutions to the problems identified during the conference.

She said it was a Zero Waste event. "There were linens on the table. Everything was recyclable and reusable and I believe there was a carbon offset program put into place to make up for air travel although I took the subway down," she explained.

She is not a big proponent of convention centers and stadiums that are not multi-use areas. When you mention the rebuilding of Yankee Stadium, also in the Bronx, she becomes incensed. "They are building a brand new Yankees Stadium and parking garages on a 20-acre park that had 400 older trees in it. They are going to be cut down, just like that. That's obscene. We are not at a point in the history of our world where we can afford to waste resources."

As far as convention centers are concerned, she said, "To spend upwards of $800,000 on a building that only gets 80 days of use; I find that offensive as a taxpayer." She is a proponent of multi-use areas that create full-time permanent jobs for the local community.

She is encouraged by the improvements she has seen in her neighborhood that is undergoing a slow but sure revival. "The abandoned buildings I grew up with have been rehabbed. Some of the people who left the area have found their way back. Our crime rate is the same as Riverdale, a pretty wealthy area. It's not perfect here, we have our issues, but our reputation is little overblown in a lot of ways." But, for better of worse, the South Bronx is her home. She does see SSB, much like the green roof above her, as something that can be replicated in other neighborhoods across the country.

For more information on SSB and the work Carter has done, go to www.ssbx.org.

° Andrea Doyle is Convene's senior writer.