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Steve:

I think that we are all happy that you are finally getting public accolades for your hard and innovative work. And, if many in the community are disappointed with your support of the FreshDirect proposed move is precisely because of your history and work in the borough.

No one can explain how a green activist like yourself has decided to support a project that could be so detrimental for the health of our community. No one can understand how a green activist can look the other way when not even a proper environmental assessment of the project has been performed. No one can fathom how someone that has seen the deepest and lasting effects of systemic poverty and environmental racism in our community can support a project that plays unto the need for jobs in the area, by offering below living-wage jobs and promising to bring more pollution to our asthma-ridden streets.

One thing is sure: although your work deserves to be recognized, the timing of it all is deeply suspicious.

No one has the right to tell you with whom you associate. But we all have the right to question the logic behind your entanglements and the wisdom of your decisions beyond the immediate benefits for yourself and your projects.

Everything behind your friend Majora Carter's support of FreshDirect is questionable. Motives, profit, timing, strategy. Everything smells foul. And your public and loud support of their plan, their strategy and their motives renders you open for reasoned and public criticism. Don't be disingenuous: you are a foot soldier for FreshDirect and Majora, their motives and strategy are foul, and you are consequently fouling yourself.

FreshDirect's OWN documents, publicly obtained through Freedom of Information requests (never willingly presented to the community) speak of thousands of added truck trips and traffic to Mott Haven's streets. Their proposed plan will also signify the permanent blocking of Mott Haven's waterfront to green recreational usages. You will surely understand, then, that given your support of this nefarious plan, given your support of their shady strategies, and given your silence concerning even a reasonable environmental impact statement, many in the community are questioning your motives, your logic and your wisdom.

Steve, it is not who starts the game, it is who finishes it and how much the person contributes to the final score. Your past work is admirable, but your current support of FreshDirect is questionable and unwise given the facts that FreshDirect itself has put out there in legally BINDING documents. These facts you call spam, I still call them facts. I believe FreshDirect itself would call them facts -if forced to- in front of a judge.

In the end, let us not forget the community that has given you the raw material for your plans and ideas. Let us not forget that poverty and environmental racism created the 'stuff' that made your past work relevant. You did what you did in the past because of the needs of our community. The ideal would be to eliminate those needs, not to perpetuate them by supporting more poverty, traffic, pollution and asthma. But that is precisely what your support for FreshDirect and Majora Carter means: a perpetuation of the cycle of systemic poverty and the doubling down on our serious health crisis.

This is not about yourself Steve. This is about our community. You don't live in Mott Haven. You are not raising your kids in Mott Haven. I never go to Kingsbridge/Riverdale to tell you guys what parks you should or shouldn't have, what traffic you should or shouldn't have or what usages I think are best for your public lands. If you DO NOT live in Mott Haven please stop bumbling your questionable, self-serving and profit-driven opinions about our neighborhood.

Let us not forget who you have become, and where your loyalties are today (with FreshDirect and her hundred thousand dollars employee Majora Carter). Don't be concerned Steve, you are who you are today, it is what it is, and you will be remembered for it. Don't be afraid of the community's memory: just be willing to live with it, because you will have to.

I will make sure that I remind people who you have become, who you are currently working for, and why.

Best,