BK Recycles

In Oregon most homes are provided with, and make good use of a few plastic boxes in which you neatly separate all your recyclable goods, even plastics. Then, once a week you put your boxes out on the street and the Recycling truck swings by, smiling, and takes them away. It feels good. It's a system you can have faith in.

Needless to say, when I moved to NY three years ago I was horrified by the notable insufficiency of Recycling here. For my first year in Lefferts Gardens I was one of the only tenants who placed my bottles and tins outside, separated from the rubbish. Then I moved to Bushwick, to an old industrial hood in an expeditiously developing area. My landlord promises me that the private garbage company separates recyclables from trash - but my conscience just can't take the mindless mingling of garbage, paper and bottle all in one place.

Asf I settled into living here, gradually noticing the depth of my ecology - I started to uncover a very productive recycling system at play. New York City's garbage sector is run by private enterprise; thus, it operates very much like a business - and is quite difficult to grasp. However, there is a folk system occurring on the streets. Intricately run by immigrant families, and those who have caught on and need the extra dimes to make ends meet. NY's garbage piles on the streets and in rubbish bins provide a plethora of potential petty cash.


Immigrants make up 37% of New York's population and 48% of its labor force. Earlier in August a report was released that the effects of the current Recession are effecting immigrant unemployment at a greater rate than Native citizens. The unemployment rate among immigrants in the country was at 4% at the beginning of the recession, and rose to 8.8% during the first months of 2010.

I decided to follow the system at play in my own neighborhood and found staggering results. Each night and early morn people from all over the world walk the streets of their communities in Brooklyn and collect recyclable materials from garbage heaps. Families will separate around neighborhoods, then rejoin, like flocks of birds - ending at places like the 'Redemption Center' on Flushing Avenue. It is a processing hub for old cans and bottles to be separated and amassed with corresponding brands; the result is a stockpile of thousands of cans of Red Bull, Bud or Papbst bagged together, which will actually get returned back to their respective corporations. The people congregate there, separate their goods and are redeemed for the work with a 5 cent bottle return. Some families come with vans full of industrial size garbage bags, containing thousands of bottles and cans.

We must each analyze the system at work in our own neighborhoods and decide the best way to take part. We can all separate our recyclable items, and even make them more readily accessible to the people whom are using the system to all of our benefit.

Don't forget to bring your visa to school

"Three decades after the Supreme Court ruled that immigration violations cannot be used as a basis to deny children equal access to a public school education, one in five school districts in New York State is routinely requiring a child’s immigration papers as a prerequisite to enrollment, or asking parents for information that only lawful immigrants can provide."

- New York Times, 7/22/10

The United States has the greatest number of immigrants worldwide, and almost one quarter of all youth are of immigrant origin. The stories of these individuals cannot be translated in simple terms, immigration is a family affair that webs with complex and sometimes traumatic turns. Children are the veritable fruit borne of immigration, says Marcelo and Carola Suarez-Orozco, NYU professors of Immigration. Children are often the driving force behind a parent's choice to immigrate, they take on responsibilities in the new country, and all too often are tragically separated from their families.

"What are the consequences of this systemic wreckage on the lives of children?"

The reality of Immigration in the United States is a crisis. Suarez-Orozco, in their Huffington Post blog, define the system as 'broken.' And Carola Suarez-Orozco goes on to describe the kind of psychological affects this broken system has on the lives of children. In the United States there are 11 or 12 million undocumented immigrants, the sheer proportion of this number elucidates a great breach in our system.

"They unmask a policy architecture that is at once misaligned with the realities of global migration and plagued by unclear, contradictory, and unrealistic objectives. The result is an immigration system largely irrelevant to any rational labor market objectives, the integrity of the family, the vicissitudes of labor and business, and the requirements of citizenship and social cohesion in the 21st Century."

The issue of immigration has for too long been steeped with misinformation and irrelevance. The fact that children are potentially being deprived of their right to education is unconstitutional. In anticipation of Federal Immigration Reform many States have passed their own initiatives; some of these, like the Visa requirement in schools in NY state are a perpetuation of racial profiling and discrimination. Rather than providing the necessary continuity of schooling, children without proper papers are continuously plagued with fear; Fear of family separation, and the unease of a watchful eye at school.

The immigration debate is one that must be talked about in classrooms. Children and teachers need to be prepared to face and unpack the reality of immigration today. Almost one quarter (16 million) of youth in the U.S. are of immigrant origin - And it is predicted that over 1 third of youth in 2040 will be of immigrant households (Suarez-Orozco). So, how are we fitting this reality into the picture? Both our schools and policy need dramatic restructuring.