BY THE VILLAGE SUN | Hailing Carlina Rivera as a “climate champion,” the New York League of Conservation Voters has endorsed the East Village councilmember in the Aug. 23 Democratic primary for Congressional District 10.
The endorsement comes after the organization hosted a raucous environmental forum for District 10 candidates at The Cooper Union on July 19, at which opponents of the East Side Coastal Resiliency project heckled Rivera for supporting the contentious megaproject, which has already destroyed about half of the nearly 50-acre park and half of its 1,000 mature trees.
Rivera supporters, however, outnumbered the East River Park activists at the forum and loudly cheered on their candidate. E.S.C.R. is razing the park in order to raise it 8 feet to 10 feet to protect the surrounding area from coastal flooding.
“We are proud to endorse Carlina Rivera for New York’s 10th Congressional District,” said Julie Tighe, president of N.Y.L.C.V. “During her time on the New York City Council, Carlina has proven to be a true champion for the environment through her support for key initiatives, including adopting electric school buses, expanding lead-poisoning investigations and improving our city’s climate resiliency. We look forward to seeing Rivera continue to work for a cleaner, safer future for all New Yorkers in Congress.”
“I am so proud to earn this endorsement from N.Y.L.C.V., and I’m grateful for their trust in me to be the next congresswoman for NY-10,” Rivera said. “I grew up in a frontline climate justice community right here in the district on the Lower East Side. My neighbors and I organized relief efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and lived through the devastation ourselves. Those experiences and the countless others from throughout my life here inform how I legislate around climate and environmental issues in the Council. I’m proud of my record because no matter the challenges, I have always put our communities first in the fight for climate resiliency and investments in the greener, healthier future we all deserve — now and for generations to come. I will bring that same fight, rooted in that same sense of urgency for our communities to Congress, and I couldn’t be prouder than to do it with N.Y.L.C.V.’s support.”
In the City Council, Rivera helped secure nearly $1.5 billion for the E.S.C.R. plan and also helped push through legislation like the New York City Green New Deal, which will put carbon caps on buildings starting in 2024, among other things, and the city’s permanent Open Streets program, and has championed mass transit, including the 14th Street busway, and biking to reduce car congestion and pollution.
Rivera ignored the fact that the SoHo “ opportunity zones” for supposedly affordable housing were in either the flood zone or in Chinatown. She ignored the fact that her constituents were facing displacement & onerous charges respecting Joint Live/Work Quarters for Artists (JLWQA). She ignored the fact that there was no guarantee of affordable housing. She ignored her constituents’ call for a more climate-change friendly rezoning that would focus on reuse rather than replace, add green spaces and not focus on commerce, high-end condos and big-box enterprises. A vote for her is a vote for neoliberal approach to land use. No climate champion. No champion, she.
Rivera is weak on climate. She has no opinion on the Governors Island development and upzoning. The matter was so insignificant that she didn’t show up to vote.
We have seen she can’t be trusted. She made broken promises in her race for City Council and we have seen that she is a career politician and such doesn’t care about what would be best for the community but what keeps her in office.
https://govislandcoalition.org/galleries/before-and-after-gallery/
Carolina Rivera is killing 1,000 trees and the urban wildlife in East Side Park and the New York League of Conservation Voters endorsed her???? Someone got paid. Sellouts!!!! Anyone but Caroling Rivera
Rivera might be for climate champion, but she is also a champion of upzoning Soho and Noho. A vote for her is a vote for destroying our neighborhood.
The N.Y. League of Conservation Voters obviously sees private development of Governors Island, which Carlina Rivera also voted for, as an act of nature conservation. During her time in office, quality of life in my neighborhood has markedly declined. I’m sure she and her wealthy husband haven’t noticed.
Rivera is indeed not trustworthy, especially when she made campaign promises to the community which she did not keep. She is also prodevelopment, as evidenced by her support of the SoHo/NoHo upzoning and the destruction of the Elizabeth Street Garden in order to build a senior residence, which could have been built on an alternative lot on Hudson Street. When she ran for office she stated how important community preservation was to her since she grew up in the neighborhood and that the context of a community was important for its preservation. We had 4 years of prevarication during the Trump years — we don’t that quality in our representative in Congress.
I am concerned that Carlina Rivera will not keep her word as our Congressional Representative. On at least two occasions while on the City Council she has promised her constituents that she would vote one way on an issue and then, without explanation, ended up voting the opposite way. This was the case with the Tech Hub (Broadway/14th Street), when she promised only to vote for it if it included full neighborhood protections (it does not, but she voted for it anyway), and more recently, with the Soho/Noho rezoning, when she claimed that the plan GUARANTEED the construction of affordable housing (it does not but she voted for it anyway). [See https://www.villagepreservation.org/2021/12/23/handouts-to-big-real-estate-and-a-festivus-for-the-rest-of-us/ Scroll down to the bottom of the page for report on Rivera.]
She is clearly well-spoken and ambitious, but may not be trustworthy, which is an essential quality.