This week has actually been pretty good! These wins are super small, but I am going to take them. Though as I go through this, my goals are getting bigger. My first goal was small–lessen the idling by teachers by my neighborhood school, and I have noticed that some of them have stopped idling. (Yes, I check up on my way to school.) So yay! Win! One less person is a win. The Green Team at one of my schools is reaching out to the Department of Transportation to ask for anti-idling signs outside the school. The email back from the DOT did not say no! So win!

In another post, I mentioned that a Senior Inspector from the Department of Environmental Protection had reached out to me to apologize for a missed idling complaint. This week he called again to say he had been out sick, but he has my complaint and will be moving forward on it. (Win!) Yet an even bigger win was the conversation we had regarding the process these NYC311 calls go through. NYC311 alerts only the DEP that there is a car idling. This makes sense for those teachers who are habitual idlers in front of schools every day, but less sense for the truck I saw on Fourth Avenue that idled for two hours as I was in and out of buildings one one day. (Not a win.)

There are so many pressing items police have to deal with in this city. I am not so obsessed that I can’t recognize this fact. However, this week I called 311 for an abandoned car on my block. I was instructed that the police would investigate when they had time. I got a call in 10 minutes. It felt great. But it made me wonder, why for extreme cases when cars are running for more than 30 minutes (sometimes without a driver in them) the police or even the traffic cops can’t be alerted to the 311 call. The Senior Inspector informed me that he has 60 agents for both Brooklyn and Staten Island. He mentioned that even school security officers can write these tickets, if they were encouraged and maybe even informed to do so. There are four agencies that could help combat pollution at least in front of schools, but it falls to just one smaller agency.

Whom do I start to bother about this change? I don’t know. Is it going to be an easy change? Do I think I will get there? Probably not. But I am not going to stop. I can’t stop. Not for my sake, but for the other humans around the world. I would like to quote Martin Luther King Jr. in a respectful way and with the best intentions. “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” There are many fights to be won in this world. Obviously some are more important than mine. But when those fights are won, by smarter people than myself, I hope I have done my part to keep the air clean for them and their children. One small change can make a difference.