Resident’s 3-year stand for justice at Bell Tower Monument

There’s a mail carrier who every time he comes by yells out the same thing, ‘Have a great day, Carol.”

CAROL SPIVACK

If you have driven or walked past Bell Tower Monument within the last three years there is a pretty good chance you’ve seen a woman holding up a sign reading ‘Black Lives Matter,’ ‘Unity Matters,’ or ‘Equal Justice For All.’ Her name is Carol Spivack and over that time she’s come to the monument in Riverdale to bring awareness to various problems in the world.

Through the years Spivack has gotten many hugs, flowers and selfies by passersby. When The Riverdale Press interviewed the recently turned 88-year-old last week there was no shortage of cars honking and greeting her as they passed by the monument.

“I’ve become acquainted well on a rather transitory basis with a lot of the bus drivers who honk and wave,” Spivack told The Press. “There’s a mail carrier who every time he comes by yells out the same thing, ‘Have a great day, Carol.’ And I look forward to seeing a lot of the people. I’m here when the school kids are dismissed. I like them to see that if you believe in something you should stand here and make your feelings known.”

While some have asked Spivack if she’s being paid for standing at the monument or if there’s an organization behind her, she tells them “no.”

The former Brooklyn resident’s activism began in May 2020, the height of the Covid pandemic, when she was walking past the monument and saw a group of people holding up signs saying “Black Lives Matter.”

Intrigued, Spivack inquired and learned that the local synagogues had arranged the demonstration in response to the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis. Spivack decided she would join them.

However as days went by, there were fewer and fewer people standing at the monument, with many having gone back to work and looking after their children. Spivack, on the other hand, the former director of the Riverdale Temple Nursery School, found that she had the time. So she did as much reading on the subject as she could, attached a sign made by Barbara Curran to a tray and came to the monument everyday for about 20 minutes.

She decided to extend to two hours, coming to the monument seven days a week, rain or shine. She would cover her BLM sign in clear plastic and bring two raincoats. She even paid someone to shovel the snow at the monument. People were largely supportive of her, and to the ones who cursed at her, she chose not to acknowledge them.

One of the reasons Spivack started with the BLM movement was because she wanted people to see she had nothing personal to gain. She wasn’t Black and she wasn’t out for somebody’s job, she said. The movement saw a lot of success, she explained, with Black artists and musicians getting more showings and Black candidates being interviewed more equally.

“The most touching thing was on two separate occasions, a different Black man came up and handed me a bouquet of flowers and that just made me cry,” Spivack said emotionally, having to pause. “Because I saw something as simple as standing with a sign meant so much to someone. I’ve gotten flowers from my husband, from my kids, but those flowers have meant the most to me.”

Upon rereading the platform of BLM Spivack found she did not agree on some things so she decided to change course. When Joe Biden was elected president she had a new sign that said in red and blue “Unity Matters.” While people got the meaning of that, she found that it didn’t do much for her, so she came up with a new idea: “Equal Justice For All.”

That meaning, she says, is pretty self-evident: equal justice for all. Some people are more equal than others, she said, acknowledging the sentence was an oxymoron, but the truth. Some of the issues she’s personally stood against are racism, sexism, lack of opportunity for the underprivileged, educational censorship and the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“If people are not doing you harm, let them do what they want,” Spivack said. “If men want to marry men, women want to marry women, you want to color your hair purple. So basically, do unto others as you would have others do unto you. You don’t have to love your neighbor. But you don’t have to hate him either. It’s hard to love everybody but tolerate them, empathize. Learn more about other people. That’s key.”

Before 2020, Spivack had never been an activist or a woman’s libber. But now, she says, she is more aware about what’s going on in the world. She says her late husband, Morton “Morty” Spivack, who passed away in 2018, would have encouraged her, but would want to make sure she’s safe.

Fortunately, Spivack’s family have been looking after her, with her daughter buying her a full length hooded down coach jacket, her son buying her line boots, and her granddaughter buying her warm gloves.

Spivack admits that if people didn’t honk at her or give thumbs ups it would be a lot harder to keep coming to the monument. In recent months she has downsized from seven days a week to three because of her health. But she can still be seen at the tower listening to rock & roll and engaging in conversation with passersby.

“The people who came up to me to talk in person, we always had a civil conversation even when we don’t agree with each other,” Spivack said. “We shook hands and acknowledged that we each had something to say.”

To those who disagree with Spivack’s message or ask her why she doesn’t make a sign for a specific cause, she invites them to create their own sign and join her at the monument.

“I wouldn’t want to go through life knowing that I never spoke out against what I thought was not right,” she said.