OUR WORK
IN QUEENS
Since 2025, we’ve been hosting our annual flagship event, the Earth Month Convergence at
Socrates Sculpture Park. A two-day, free, family-friendly weekend event, through the Earth Month Convergence, we have convened over 2,700 Queens neighbors, local organizations, families, artists, and youth for over workshops, skillshares, trainings, art-builds and more. Through this, we’ve sat down with local residents and youth and brainstormed tangible solutions to the flooding that climate change is bringing to waterfront neighrborhoods.
Through our work in Queens, we've come to see how Astoria and LIC's parks, gardens, and green spaces, often led by the residents who live around them, carry their own histories of neglect and repair by the institutions meant to care for them. In 1986, local Astoria artists and residents, many living in NYCHA housing, looked at an abandoned, illegally dumped on lot on the waterfront and saw something else: a park. They reclaimed it, and what was once a dumpsite became Socrates Sculpture Park, now a lush, open space for art and community.
This history matters, because Astoria and LIC’s parks, gardens, and green spaces have always carried this pattern, envisoned, designed, and cared for by the residents around
them. But today, current and incoming extreme weather and structural damage are threatening the East River, the neighborhood, and the green spaces
alongside it, all over again.
THE PROJECT
We believe how we treat each other is how we treat the land.
So we’re bringing Long Island City and Astoria residents together to facilitate a community design process.
One that shares leadership with BIPOC, immigrant, queer, and frontline residents to reimagine our public spaces as real, caring infrastructure for our needs.
This fall 2026 and spring 2027, we’re inviting residents and Indigenous stewards of this land to be part of the
first phase, sharing your honest onions about:
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What community wellbeing means, in your own words
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What you want to look like in the years ahead
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How you releate to the land, the stories, memories, and the skills you want to bring into this work
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What it would take to have real influence over the forces already reshaping our neighborhoods: gentrification, displacement, inaccessibility, food insecurity, private space, land neglect
These insights will shape the community design plan that brings in all the shared experiences, histories, and futures of residents, artists, organizers, and educators across Long Island City, Astoria, and eventually possibly the wider Queens community.
WHY THIS?
WHY NOW?
The water is rising. Storms + flooding are intensifying. The land
we live, gather, and build on is changing.
And decisions are about what comes next are already occuring, and, without the people who
will be most affected.
Since we’ve been left out of the conversation so long, we hesitate to notice these changes, name our dreams, and come up with a real action plan to strengthen this land using our varying cultural
ways, insights, and practices.
Moreover, developers, real estate interests, and governments plan in 50- to 100-year horizons. Community organizers are usually working in 1-2 year windows, at most, 5- to 10-year
stretches.That gap in timescale is part of how communities lose ground, literally and otherwise.
We want to close that gap, by starting the twenty to fifty year conversation early, because the coasts
are getting muddier, and it’s important that the people rooted in this place help shape it.
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HELP CO-DESIGN THIS PROCESS
participants
If you live in LIC and Astoria, take part in the sessions and shape the future of wellbeing in your neighborhood.
FACILITATORS
We're looking for community organizers
and inviduals to
volunteer to facilitate
these conversations.
If you speak Spanish, Chinese, Russian, or
another language, we
could use you as an interpreter at the sessions.
translators
Collaborate with us to shape how we frame "community well-being," and hold land stewardship in this process.
PARTNERS
Frequently asked questions
What is Earth Convergence and its role in the project?
Why are Indigenous stewards part of this process?
How many people are you recruiting?
When are the sessions?
Do I get paid to participate?
What language will the sessions be in?
Can I volunteer to help facilitate?
How do I know if I’m eligible to join the project?
WHY THIS, WHY NOW?
Developers, real estate interests, and governments plan in 50- to 100-year horizons.
Community organizers are usually working in 1-2 year windows, at most, 5-to-
10-year stretches. That gap in timescale is part of how communities lose ground.
At the same time, the water is rising. Storms and flooding are intensifying.
The land we live, gather, and build community on is already changing, and the decisions
being made now about what comes next are largely happening without the people who
will be most affected.
We want to close that gap by starting the long-timeline conversation early, and by
making sure the people rooted in this place, past and present, help shape it.