Bx Local Fight vs EJ goes Global
Vice
By Alice Speri
Grocery giant FreshDirect will get $127 million in public subsidies to build a facility on the Bronx waterfront. Local residents took their campaign against it to the United Nations.
For more than two years, a group of South Bronx residents has been fighting against the planned relocation of a giant online grocery store to their doorstep — arguing their case at an endless string of court hearings, community meetings, and street rallies.
But last month, South Bronx Unite took its campaign against FreshDirect to a very different stage — the UN Climate Summit.
The neighborhood's issues — from food sovereignty, to clean air, to climate-related displacement — are the same that affect poor communities across the world, the group says. And, while they feel marginalized in New York City, local residents have been building connections "with communities of color, working communities and the global south who, like the people of the Bronx, are often on the frontlines of climate change," the group wrote in a statement announcing their participation in the international event.
