Invitation To A Rally For A Car-Free Prospect Park

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photo credit: youthforcarfreeparks on flickr

While I was still in France, I received an email from Jessie Singer, Prospect Park's Youth Advocate Manager, Transportation Alternative. She would like everyone to know about a rally at City Hall for a car-free Prospect Park. Four high-school kids worked hard all summer to get the campaign back on track. I am all for it. Parks should be for walking and bicycling, I say. Please take the time to read Jessie's email and to sign the petition online, And if you can make it to the rally, that would be even better!

Dear Katia,

I’m writing because I want to let you know about a new Transportation Alternatives youth program and invite you and the readers of Pardon Me in Brooklyn to participate in a rally at City Hall in September.

This summer, Transportation Alternatives hired four high school youth interns to enliven and reinvent our long-term campaign to make Prospect Park car-free. The “Prospect Park Youth Advocates” have been working in the park 3 days a week to clock speeding cars, put on fun and educational street theatre and get Brooklyn residents to sign letters to Mayor Bloomberg asking him to make Prospect Park car-free. The youth expect to have 7,000 letters by the end of the season.

The youth have been writing about their work at www.youthforcarfreeparks.org and NY1 just aired a great segment on the project, found here.

On September 15^th the Youth Advocates are hosting an after-school rally and want to invite other concerned Brooklyn citizen, and especially youth, to participate. The plan is that the four City Council Members surrounding the park will meet the kids at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge at 4pm and then walk across the bridge to City Hall together for a press conference and rally at 5pm. We are inviting the Brooklyn Steppers to join us, as well as several local high schools.

Is this something Pardon Me in Brooklyn could help us promote? Would your readers be interested in participating? Our postcards, which we are collecting signatures for in the park on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays (then Saturdays and Sundays after school starts), can also be signed online here.

I look forward to hearing from you, and hope the ways our goals are inline will allow us to work together.

All best,

Jessie Singer

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