" St. Ann's Church, on St. Ann's Avenue, is three blocks from the subway station. The children who come to this small Episcopal church for food and comfort and to play, and the mothers and fathers who come here for prayer, are said to be the poorest people in New York".
Jonathan Kozol talks about the church and how the pastor tells him that the people who come there are " the poorest of the poor". The children that grow up in this neighborhood are met with daily unimaginable challenges. The church represents a small beacon of hope and help in a neighborhood surrounded by violence, drug addiction, extreme poverty and depression. Kozol describes entering the church and how children are everywhere. The gentle pastor there, Martha Overall, is surrounded by children. Kozol says " In one of the most diseased and dangerous communities in any city of the Western world, the beautiful old stone church on St. Ann's Avenue is a gentle sanctuary from the terrors of the streets outside".
St. ANN'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH MOTT HAVEN
" The place that Cliffie is referring to turns out to be a waste incinerator that was put in operation recently over the objections of the parents in the neighborhood".
The medical waste incinerator is just one example given of things in the neighborhood that are put there because it is a poverty stricken area. The waste products from 14 area hospitals are all sent there because parents had successfully resisted putting it into another area. Cliffie the young boy who gives the author a neighborhood tours mother tells the author that " there is trashy things all over". There is a garbage dump just three blocks away. People also illegally dump their trash in the area.
This is a link to an article regarding the objections to the waste incinerator in Mott Haven
https://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/20/nyregion/neighborhood-report-mott-haven-illegal-emissions-add-fuel-battle-over.html
3000 homeless families have also been relocated to this neighborhood. Cliffie's mother asks " Why do you want to put so many people with small children in a place with so much sickness?" The sickness and disease and poverty that surrounds the children in this area makes it almost impossible for them to improve their circumstances. The questions that I would want to discus are; What can be done to change these areas and stop this cycle of violence and poverty? Also , why do government officials make these areas worse by putting things like the dump there and ignoring the poverty and children that live there? Why don't these people have a voice in what happens in their neighborhood?
Great blog post! I really enjoyed the quotes you chose.
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