Prince Harry, Meghan Markle visit
New York’s World Trade Center
REUTERS
Pr ince Har r y and
Meghan Markle got a
bird’s-eye view of the
New York skyline as they
kicked off their trip to the
city with a visit to the observatory
at One World Trade
Center on Sept. 23.
The royal couple was in town
to attend Saturday’s Global
Citizen Live event at Central
Park to encourage equal access
to COVID-19 vaccines. It was
their fi rst joint outing since
the birth of their daughter Lilibet
‘Lili’ Diana Mountbatten-
Windsor in June.
The Duke and Duchess of
Sussex were accompanied by
New York Governor Kathy
Hochul, New York City Mayor
Bill de Blasio, his wife, Chirlane
McCray, and their son, Dante
de Blasio.
The 37-year-old prince and
Meghan, 40, also paid their
respects at the nearby September
11 memorial and stopped
by the adjoining museum.
The couple stepped down
from royal duties in early 2020
and are living in California
with their two children.
In May, they marked the
second birthday of their son
Archie by calling for donations
to help provide COVID-19
vaccines to the world’s most
vulnerable.
Saturday’s concert, featuring
performances from Coldplay,
Jennifer Lopez, Lizzo and other
artists, was part of a 24-hour
broadcast from cities around
the world to “defend the planet
and defeat poverty.”
ANDREW KELLY
Britain’s Prince Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, wave as they visit One World
Trade Center in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., September 23, 2021.
Activists chain themselves at City Hall
to protest East River resiliency project
BY DEAN MOSES
Activists took the term tree huggers
quite literally on Sept. 28.
Fuming over the East Side
Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) Project, a
planned construction designed to create
fl ood protection through Lower Manhattan’s
East River Park, demonstrators took
their long-standing grievances to a new
level by chaining themselves to a tree in
front of City Hall on Sept 28.
In a desperate plea to prevent bulldozers
from breaking ground at their beloved
park, the dramatic action demanded City
Council Speaker Corey Johnson hold an
oversight hearing on the planned coastal
resiliency project.
Two activists JK Canepa and Jmac sat
interlocked around a tree in City Hall Park
on Broadway and Warren Street as fellow
demonstrators held up a banner reading
“Corey Schedule the oversight hearing on
ESCR now!”
Canepa, a resident of Lower Manhattan,
said she is directly impacted by the ESCR
project. She and her fellow protesters
Jmac (left) JK Canepa are bond together around a City Hall park tree.
charged that an equitable plan proposed
by environmentalists and the community
in regard to fl ood protection was ignored
by the de Blasio Administration, which
dismissed their plan in pursuit of ESCR.
“We need an oversight hearing immediately
scheduled by our Speaker, Corey
PHOTO BY DEAN MOSES
Johnson. We need to have him have a hearing
to look at the plan that Mayor de Blasio
has placed on us to completely destroy our
fl ood zone barrier in East River Park,” Canpea
said. “De Blasio and his administration
summarily dismissed the plan and put in
another plan that would mean at least fi ve
years of excavating the entire park all the
way down two feet below and killing every
one of the thousand trees and then building
a wall of fi ll, and we don’t know where the
fi ll is coming from.”
For years, members of East River Park
Action and other activists have held rallies,
marches, and reached out to elected
offi cials to what they say has been no avail.
“We’ve tried almost everything that one
could try. We’ve had a court case; we’ve
tried our city council person and asked her
to speak up for us. We’ve done just about
everything we could,” Canpea said. “What
else can we do but put our bodies on the
line?”
The chained demonstrators believed this
peaceful act of disobedience would fi nally
get the city’s attention.
“I think that the people who have the
power to make big decisions like this in this
city seem to have a really easy time forgetting
who is going to be affected fi rst by climate
crisis, and I hope that they will start to consider
that the people who are going to be
most affected by this are the ones who are
raising their voices now,” Jmac said.
Schneps Mediia September 30, 2021 3