This past Thursday, clergy, activists, and other locals gathered on the roof of the Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens building in Prospect Heights to announce the launch of a new sustainable energy initiative.
The initiative – titled the Laudato Si Corporation – was born out of recent messaging from Pope Francis encouraging the Catholic Church to tackle the climate crisis more directly.
In 2018, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio and a delegation of other priests from the Brooklyn Diocese traveled to Rome where they met with the pope and discussed New York’s response to the issue.
Three years later and the Brooklyn Diocese in conjunction with Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens finally announced their plan. The Laudato Si Corporation will oversee a series of construction projects to provide renewable energy throughout the borough and city.
More specifically, the new projects are designed to make renewable energy cheaper and more accessible for local residents and landlords, nonprofit organizations, and church properties.
The buildings that Laudato Si currently has plans for are located in a variety of the city’s most historically underserved neighborhoods.
These include the the Bishop Thomas V. Daily Residence at 683 Dean Street in Prospect Heights, Our Lady of Fatima Senior Housing located at 78-01 30th Avenue in Jackson Heights, Howard Beach Apartments at 155-55 Cross Bay Boulevard in Howard Beach, and the Bishop Joseph Sullivan Residence at 800 Madison Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
All of these properties include affordable housing units, but currently rely on the city’s larger energy grid.
“Pope Francis has said ‘God forgives all the time, people forgive some of the time, but nature never forgives,’” said DiMarzio. “We cannot destroy the nature that God has given to us. That is one of our responsibilities.
“Catholic Charities’ commitment to affordable housing rests upon the Church’s teaching and reflects the dignity of the human person and the value of the family,” he added. “And now the Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens’ commitment to renewable energy reflects our commitment to the planet and our future.”
Reverend Patrick J. Keating echoed a similar sentiment.
“The initiative not only responds to Pope Francis’ encyclical [his call for a climate change response], but preserves affordable housing for low-income neighbors, reduces our carbon footprint, and our energy costs, all while leading the way in New York City,” he said. “This in turn, will allow Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens to invest capital savings into resiliency options and direct services for future generations.”
Catholic Charities has partnered with the energy companies Nixon Peabody, Bright Power, and the Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center at Stonybrook University to help develop the technologies and sell energy to clients.
The funds generated through this program will be reinvested into future Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens Laudato Si sustainability initiatives.

On Saturday, June 5, a ferry traveling from Highlands, New Jersey, to East 35th Pier in Manhattan crashed violently into Brooklyn’s Bushwick Inlet Park. Many of the passengers onboard were returning from a long day at the beach in Sandy Hook.
Over 100 passengers were on board at the time of the crash, all of whom were evacuated successfully by the Fire Department. Multiple travelers sustained injuries and were taken to NYU Langone Hospital.
The ferry, owned and operated by the company Seastreak, malfunctioned while travelling in the East River. The captain subsequently lost control of the vessel’s engine and steering and the boat drifted slowly toward northern Brooklyn.
The Seastreak finally ran aground in a section of the Bushwick Inlet Park that is currently closed for construction. The vessel sustained serious damage in its hull and was taking on water during the evacuation.
Fire Department boats were already near the site due to a nearby jet ski accident, and were able to arrive at the Seastreak within four minutes of the crash.
After the passengers were evacuated, a salvage crew retrieved debris from the ship that had fallen into the water. The company is still investigating the cause of the malfunction.
Saturday’s incident is the latest in a string of recent ferry snafus. On May 13, an NYC Ferry crashed into a construction barge near Brooklyn Bridge Park. Twnety-seven passengers evacuated without any injuries.
Multiple of the ship’s windows shattered upon impact. Officials from the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) attributed the incident to rising tides.
Elsewhere in North Brooklyn, the NYC Ferry landing in Greenpoint closed suddenly last week. The announcement was made via a cryptic message on Twitter, which attributed the service change to a “mechanical issue.”
Since the closure, the MTA has set up a free shuttle bus between Greenpoint and Hunters Point South. The bus route roughly mimics that of the ferry and runs every 40 minutes in both directions.
A spokesperson from NYCEDC offered this paper a statement regarding the recent India Street closure.
“Service was suspended to the Greenpoint landing after a captain noticed an issue with one of the pier piles,” it read. “Yesterday, the landing and piles were removed from the site to be inspected. At this time, the Greenpoint landing remains out of service in both directions.
“Lendlease [the real estate company that owns the landing] is currently performing an examination of the pier’s infrastructure and we anticipate they will share a timeline for repairs next week,” it continued. “As always, safety remains NYC Ferry’s top priority.”

After a months-long effort to save the structure, Greenpointers watched with dismay as construction on the historic Meserole Theater building at 723 Manhattan Avenue began.
The structure has long stood as a monument to the neighborhood’s varied history. Its elaborate marquee and plasterwork ceiling have been in place since the building’s early days as The Meserole Movie Theater, affectionately nicknamed “The Mezzy.”
The disco ball hanging in the grand hall persists from its time as a roller rink in the 70s. Since the 80s, it has been home to department stores, yet the building’s visual flares and distinct character remained.
When news broke in early February that the building’s current owner, Double U Real Estate, planned on partially demolishing the structure to make way for a five-story apartment building, nostalgic Greenpointers immediately expressed their concern.
Locals organized The Meserole Theater Project Facebook Group within a week of the announcement and it quickly grew to over 1,000 members, all of whom were united by their appreciation of the building and a mutual desire to preserve it for future generations.
“We just got to it too late,” explained John Altyn, the Facebook group’s founder and de facto spokesperson. “If I had known sooner, I would have fought for it sooner.”
A native Greenpointer and an artist in his own right, Atlyn imagined a future where the Meserole Theater building could be partially converted into a performance and community space. He hoped that the structure could be preserved to respect the memory of old Greenpoint and that any new development would directly serve the area’s current residents.
Atlyn communicated extensively with Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher in his efforts to preserve the structure, and went so far as to contact the property’s owners to see if a compromise could be reached. Unfortunately, no such deal ever manifested.
“They are going to build their little apartment and they are gonna make their little money,” said Atlyn. “I watch it go up and I think ‘oh my god!’ I just wish we would have looked at a way that it would have benefitted everybody, the community and developers.”
However, Atlyn does not see the Facebook group as a total failure. The page became a forum for the Meserole faithful to share their memories of the theater in its many forms, and led to numerous conversations about premier events, late-night screenings, and roller-derby discos that all transpired under the building’s ornate roof.
“I am still going to keep the page up if people still want to reminisce,” Atlyn explained. “It brought people together who hadn’t spoken in a really long time and it brought new people together. There’s no feeling that people should have done more. We all did what we could and we enjoyed it.”
Atlyn shared a similarly heartfelt message on the Meserole Theater Project Facebook page: “We can tell others that we tried to save it but our efforts fell short. We will still tell our stories about the Meserole Theater and the heart-felt memories about the Meserole.”
The Meserole is going the way of other notable Greenpoint structures that have been destroyed over time and replaced by new developments. However, despite the many changes, Atlyn is still confident that the neighborhood’s spirit – and that of the Meserole Theater – will live on for many years to come.
“The area is still beautiful, it’s still Greenpoint,” said Atlyn. “Things are going to come back with a new attitude and be even better than ever.”

From June 8 to June 28, a new memorial at Green-Wood Cemetery will honor the more than 52,000 New Yorkers who have already died from the COVID-19 pandemic. The new installation — titled ‘WE REMEMBER: A COMMUNITY COVID MEMORIAL’ — features images, nameplates, and other items along a 200 feet stretch of the iron gate at the Cemetery’s iconic entrance on Fifth Avenue and 25th Street.

Naming the Lost Memorials, a nonprofit that has organized previous COVID-19 memorials in New York City, worked in collaboration with Green-Wood Cemetery to bring WE REMEMBER to life. The cemetery also partnered with over 20 local organizations to help promote and finance the memorial, including Brooklyn Roots, Flushing Town Hall, the Worker Justice Project, Hebrew Tabernacle, and the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs.
“All of us at Green-Wood have seen, firsthand, the toll that COVID-19 has taken on family, friends, our community, and even our industry,” said Kay Turner, an artist, folklorist, and team member at Naming the Lost Memorials. “This beautiful living memorial gives us a special place to remember what they meant to us and how they each made this world a better place.”
Turner continued: “Even as New Yorkers begin to feel the joys of opening, the pandemic rages on in other parts of the world. It’s not over. Nor is the sense of loss we feel knowing that 600,000 of our loved ones in the United States are gone from us. Mourning and remembrance are still necessary acts. Naming those lost to COVID-19 must continue. Our memorial at Green-Wood provides a place to do just that.”
WE REMEMBER functions as an interactive exhibit. Community members and passerby are encouraged to create their own nameplates to add to the ever-growing memorial wall.

Unfortunately, the opening ceremony that was planned for the memorial was cancelled due to weather, yet Green-Wood still hopes to organize candle lightings, name readings, and other events down the road.

Green-Wood Cemetery experienced a dramatic increase in burials and cremations during the pandemic’s heights last spring and summer. The volume of deaths was so great that the cemetery was forced to institute a partial cap on the number of cremations it would allow within a day. Although case numbers and deaths continue to decrease, the staff at Green-Wood Cemetery has remained extremely busy since the pandemic’s start.

For more information on the memorial, visit https://namingthelost.com/memorials/.