Parity Pipeline

Genre

Synopsis

Cities are often thought of as a collection of buildings and transit systems. But this is incorrect. Cities are people, and it is people who make a city what it is. Rikers Island is a part of New York City known globally. The name has become synonymous with degrading, miserable conditions. But few people know the history of Rikers Island, and, unfortunately, far too few know its potential future. In 2021 New York City passed the “Renewable Rikers” plan. The big idea is to turn Rikers Island from a place of interminable incarceration and injustice into a green energy and infrastructure hub that will be a kind of restorative justice. The jail is legally required to close by 2027, and this plan is, literally, a once-in-a-generation chance for New Yorkers to turn that land into a site of helping communities and not hurting them. This is an epic transformation from the past. The original “Riker” was Judge Richard Riker, a 19th century judge well-known for sending free Black people back to the south, to slavery, even if they were free and had the papers to prove it. The Riker family owned the island, which was a tiny speck of undeveloped land in the East River. In the 1920s, New York City bought the island as it needed a site for waste, and used prison labor to transport landfill waste to expand it, quadrupling its size. Then the city built a jail on it, and that jail has been in service ever since. The island’s geography consists of landfill waste from a century ago, including coal ash, which is off-gassing methane. No humans should inhabit it; yet, they still do. Renewable Rikers will fix this. 

UNTITLED RENEWABLE RIKERS WEB SERIES will sketch out this past, present, and future in six engaging episodes. Geared to audiences deeply concerned about climate, justice, sustainable living, and democracy, this series will highlight the people who forged the original destructive path, and the ones who shined a light to a plan for restoration.