{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/rf5k93307k/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["John Kelly IV Oral History"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/010/original/Aviary_QPLlogo_192x192.png?1578574261","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSummary of Full Interview\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Kelly IV is a co-founder of Eastern Queens Greenway, a volunteer organization that aims to create a family-safe route from Flushing Meadows Corona Park to Fort Totten for bicycling, running, and walking. John shares his memories of growing up in Flushing north of Kissena Park during the 1980s and 1990s. He remembers the neighborhood being more walkable then compared to present day (2024). John recalls that he and his friend used to roller skate or ride bicycles back and forth from Kissena Park through Peck Park to Creedmoor (Alley Pond Park).\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eJohn explains that he became involved in street-safety activism circa 2007 after he had finished college, moved to Manhattan, and began riding a bicycle to travel around the city. John describes the types of groups and organized activities that cyclists engaged in to push back against abusive and aggressive drivers as well as a prevailing \"car culture\" in which activities other than driving are no longer tolerated on streets. John, who moved back to eastern Queens, discusses his decade-long efforts to create a greenway connecting Flushing Meadows Corona Park and Fort Totten, including his time as a member of Queens Community Board 11. John details his hard-fought victories such as implementing protected bike lanes in eastern Queens (one along Northern Boulevard and another along the west side of Alley Pond Park), but he also details the financial limitations and the immense systemic resistance within local and state government that prevent further change and maintain a car-focused culture in New York City.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCC BY-NC-SA Contact digitalarchives@queenslibrary.org for research and reproduction requests.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Source Metadata URI"]},"value":{"en":["http://digitalarchives.queenslibrary.org/search/browse/43415"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2024-03-23 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Type"]},"value":{"en":["Audio"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["John Kelly IV (Interviewee)","Ben Turner (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Coverage"]},"value":{"en":["1983-2024 (temporal)","Flushing and Bayside, Queens, NY; Manhattan, NY (spatial)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSummary of Full Interview\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Kelly IV is a co-founder of Eastern Queens Greenway, a volunteer organization that aims to create a family-safe route from Flushing Meadows Corona Park to Fort Totten for bicycling, running, and walking. John shares his memories of growing up in Flushing north of Kissena Park during the 1980s and 1990s. He remembers the neighborhood being more walkable then compared to present day (2024). John recalls that he and his friend used to roller skate or ride bicycles back and forth from Kissena Park through Peck Park to Creedmoor (Alley Pond Park).\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eJohn explains that he became involved in street-safety activism circa 2007 after he had finished college, moved to Manhattan, and began riding a bicycle to travel around the city. John describes the types of groups and organized activities that cyclists engaged in to push back against abusive and aggressive drivers as well as a prevailing \"car culture\" in which activities other than driving are no longer tolerated on streets. John, who moved back to eastern Queens, discusses his decade-long efforts to create a greenway connecting Flushing Meadows Corona Park and Fort Totten, including his time as a member of Queens Community Board 11. John details his hard-fought victories such as implementing protected bike lanes in eastern Queens (one along Northern Boulevard and another along the west side of Alley Pond Park), but he also details the financial limitations and the immense systemic resistance within local and state government that prevent further change and maintain a car-focused culture in New York City.\u003c/p\u003e"]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCC BY-NC-SA Contact digitalarchives@queenslibrary.org for research and reproduction requests.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Queens Public Library"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Queens Public Library"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/010/original/Aviary_QPLlogo_192x192.png?1578574261","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/247/062/small/kelly_john_20240323_portrait_resized.jpg?1722367801","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - kelly_john_20240323_radioedit.mp3"]},"duration":3951.07265,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/247/062/small/kelly_john_20240323_portrait_resized.jpg?1722367801","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-queenslibrary.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/247/062/original/kelly_john_20240323_radioedit.mp3?1722367643","type":"Audio","format":"audio/mpeg","duration":3951.07265,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Full Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Okay, we're recording.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=0.0,3.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: [crosstalk] Sorry. [laughter]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3.0,5.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: It's alright. This is Ben Turner interviewing John Kelly IV for the Queen Memory Project. The date is March 23rd, 2024, and we are at John's home in Queens. Thanks for agreeing to do this interview. John, I'm going to start with some questions about your early life. First of all, when and where were you born?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=5.0,28.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Sure. So I was born here in Eastern Queens in Booth Memorial in 1983.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=28.0,36.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: And where did you grow up and what was the neighborhood like?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=36.0,39.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Yep. So I grew up in Flushing, so very close to Booth Memorial, not too far from where we are right now. The neighborhood is mainly single family houses, actually quite large houses for the area. When I was growing up there, actually pretty much most of the history of Flushing, it's been a lot of different immigrant communities coming through. So that was no different when I was there, when I was growing up, it was mainly a lot of Chinese families moving into the neighborhood. I know that since then it shifted to being more Korean families moving in. Of course, just a lot of people from different areas, but it was a lot more walkable at the time. So we sort of interacted with more people on the block. When I was a kid, we used to play street hockey in the middle of the street, so we would take over the street for that. My parents bought the house there for, I think it was $60,000 before I was born and they wanted to buy it very close to a church so that they could just sort of walk to church and that we can go to Catholic school there. And they're a few blocks away from Mary's Nativity, but I went to school there for half a year and really didn't like it. So then went to a different school and then we sort of left that church too.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=39.0,115.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Okay, great. What else can you say about your childhood?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=115.0,121.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Yeah, so I was an only child, so I had a lot of attention from my parents. In the neighborhood, I had some friends there, but we went to a school that was slightly further away, went to St. Kevin's, so most of my friends were a little bit further, so I couldn't really walk or sort of see them from that. When I got older I was able to eventually bike over to where they were. So I had some friends from St. Kevin's. Where I lived, I was a few blocks north of Kissena Park, which meant that I would be able to sort of bike or rollerblade - which was really cool at the time, but a little less so now - to Kissena Park and then go over the series of parks to Peck Park. And one of my friends, Brian, lived just two blocks away from Peck Park, so then he can come up to Peck Park and we would meet up there and then we would go the entire length all the way to functionally what's Creedmoor [hospital], which was sort of the end of the greenway as we had it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=121.0,173.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: And then we would come back to Kissena Park and then we would go back to Creedmoor and then back to Kissena Park and just back and forth on this little section of greenway that was sort of relatively safe to go on. And I spent a lot of time with him doing that. We were doing roller blades and then eventually biking with that, and we had other friends, but for the most part, other people were a little bit further away from the greenway, so we had to drive to see them, which was fine, but then it was entirely reliant on either my parents or their parents. So there's a lot of pieces to sort of growing up that sort of worked really well, or in the pieces that didn't work well, I think influence especially the work that we're talking about today.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=173.0,221.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Great. You mentioned that the streets were more walkable when you were younger. What do you mean by that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=221.0,227.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: So the infrastructure hasn't changed much. There's a few pieces that I can point to that are slight upgrades, a few traffic lights here and there, but for the most part the infrastructure is the same. The cars are different, the cars are substantially bigger. People are a lot more comfortable blocking crosswalks. People are a lot more comfortable driving a lot faster. The cars are a lot bigger, there's more of them, there's more congestion. So even walking from where my parents' house is to Kissena Park, which is only a few blocks away, it's just a much worse walk than it used to be. And cycling around is definitely harder. So when I was a kid and doing it, we would mainly stick to the greenway, but you had to get to it and we had to sort of cross intersections, but really didn't have issues with drivers.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=227.0,276.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: But it seems like people are getting a lot more aggressive and the cars getting bigger. It's not something that I would feel comfortable letting my daughter do even when she's a little bit older, unless we made some sort of bigger changes to the infrastructure. But yeah, we used to, I remember as a kid we used to sort of walk everywhere. We would walk over to the subway or the railroad, we take the train to Manhattan and we walk through Manhattan, as much as by all means the driving conditions weren't good for pedestrians then, especially with all the pollution coming from the cars, that has sort of gotten better. But yeah, the culture was a little bit different. I can't imagine trying to play street hockey anymore, which is something we used to do all the time and just without adults at all.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=276.0,317.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Was that more commonplace then, would you say?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=317.0,318.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Oh, a hundred percent definitely. There's actually around the block from where I live now, there's some teenage girls that play basketball in the street, which is really cool, but that's incredibly rare where when I was a kid it was just commonplace. You would play, I didn't play stickball, some of my friends played stickball, but it was like rollerblading around. Street hockey was pretty popular. People had tons of basketball hoops out, in the middle of the street, you do stuff. It was very common for people to just close the block down when they felt like it. For 4th of July we used to close the block down a lot and do big fireworks displays and stuff, but without permits, without police, without, it was just like what the block did, and we had sort of a strong community, that sort of worked. And you would walk around, you say hi to people, you sort of knew the people on your block. More recently with the block that I'm living in now, but especially where my parents live, which is where I grew up, a lot more of the houses have been bought and they're rented out immediately and a lot of times cut up. So somebody will just rent a room for two or three months and then leave. So it's really hard to build that sense of community for a lot of those reasons.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=318.0,385.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Right. Can you tell me about your family?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=385.0,389.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Sure. So I was a single family. I was a single child to my mother and father. My mother Grace was born in Brooklyn and raised there for most of her life and then pretty much moved in with my father when she got married. So there was no real time in between that. She had two siblings, a brother and a sister. All three of them just had one child each. So I have two cousins on that side. She was in the Sheepshead Bay community. Her sister still lives not too far from that, and her brother moved away, moved to Long Island and then eventually pretty far away. My father grew up in a few different places, but a lot of it's in Queens. His father and his mother were actually both married to different people and then sort of fell in love with each other. So they both got divorces and then got married to each other, which was relatively uncommon for the time.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=389.0,443.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: So he had a sister, a half-sister from another marriage. I think they struggled a little bit more financially than my mother did, not because my mother's family made a lot of money, but they had more family around, so there's more of a support structure. So they had a house where they had three stories and they had sort of three different sort of families within that. It was my mother's family and then one set of grandparents on the second story and the other set of grandparents on the third story. So it was just a lot more family around and there's a lot of other family members who lived in the neighborhood. So my mom, when she was very young, used to leave school during lunch and then walk to her grandmother or to her aunt's house who made pizza every day. So it was a very different type of community.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=443.0,486.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: My dad, since they moved around a little bit and they didn't have as much family around, just didn't have that opportunity. So his mother had a daughter from a previous marriage and he had two brothers. So there was functionally three kids for the most part when his stepsister moved in, in a relatively small place. So him and his two brothers shared one room and they were very rambunctious and I think his parents struggled with that a little bit. So I think that sort of influenced a little bit of who he was. His side of the family had a lot more struggles in a lot of different ways. So some of his uncles had more dealings with crime and things like that. One of his uncles was a really hard alcoholic and one time got so drunk that he came back home and told his wife, \"Hey, you need to call the doctor, I'm going to die.\" And she turns to him and says, \"That's best for the family. I think that would be good,\" and leaves and doesn't call the doctor and leaves him to die and he doesn't die. And then eventually goes and joins Alcoholics Anonymous and then does that successfully for years and becomes a speaker and talked around, went around the world to telling his story to other people, to encourage them to join Alcoholics Anonymous and move on from this.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=486.0,572.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Was this your great-uncle?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=572.0,573.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: This would be, yes, I think, yeah, my dad's uncle. That'd be your great-uncle?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=573.0,577.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Your great-uncle. Yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=577.0,578.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Yeah, so his side of the family I think had a little more struggles with that, which I think sort of influenced both of their personalities.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=578.0,586.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Oh, interesting. Growing up, were your parents involved in community activism? Did you have any models for that kind of activity?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=586.0,599.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: So, sort of. So, not really. My mom, so she was a stay-at-home mom for a lot of her time and then eventually joined the school and did a lot of work in the school. My father joined the electrical union. His father passed away when he was a teenager, and that sort of took a lot of financial strain on the household and of course in addition to emotional, so he just, I think they were on, I forget the story exactly, it wasn't breadline, I think it was something of getting some government service. And it was like his mom who was just standing next to somebody and she used to talk to everybody and the guy was like, \"Oh, there's a lot of jobs for electricians.\" And that's how he became an electrician. So he went into the local, so Local 3, the IBEW [International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers], and became an electrician and then did a lot of, and very truly believed in the union.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=599.0,651.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: So he wasn't officially an organizer and that wasn't his job that he would go and organize people, but he was somebody that very much believed in it and talked it up and sort of got people together and give speeches on it and worked for politicians that - volunteered for politicians - that were pro-union and did a lot of that type of work. So there was a lot, as a group of people, we can make a change. So I know it's not the activism that we're talking about here, but it's definitely still, I remember as a very young kid, he would be walking around the neighborhood getting signatures for politicians and he would bring me with him and I did not want to go because, what kid wants to knock on doors?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=651.0,690.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: [laughs] I can't imagine a kid not wanting to do that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=690.0,691.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: [laughs] But he was a construction worker and he was a very big burly guy and if he's knocking on your door, you're probably not going to answer. So as he would bring me around, he would get a lot more people opening the door and then he would get a lot more signatures. So I remember that from a relatively early age, but really more of him just talking about how we don't have to just follow the system because the system is just designed by other people who have their own motives. I don't know if that's the phrasing he would use to it, but at the end of the day, I think that that's a lot of the early, I felt from an early age that there was a lot of this idea of you are just as smart as anybody else, so don't let them tell you what to do or push you around.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=691.0,742.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Great. How did you get involved in activism? And what age did you start?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=742.0,751.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Definitely, definitely. So not really when I was younger. So I do remember one time, it wasn't really activism, but it was sort of like we had to do a project to receive confirmation in the church, you had to do a volunteer project. And everybody in the class, their volunteer project to receive confirmation was they were going to throw a party and then the money they would give to a charity, but the only people they knew for the party was each other. So they just threw a party for themselves [laughs] and they gave money to a charity. And I'm like, this is really stupid and sort of seems to not have the point of it. So I painted mailboxes instead. But I remember in college interacting with a lot of other people and recognizing that there was more pathways to it, but also that there was a lot of ways to rethink my norms.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=751.0,812.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: And we did some sort of fundraising type stuff there and some cleanup type stuff, but nothing that I would say was real activism. But there was definitely a lot of conversation and interaction with people that sort of opened my mind to think about stuff differently. And then after that, I came back to New York - I went to college upstate - came back to New York, and then just found some not great jobs to sort of work and got sort of caught up in them, and some jobs that were okay, and just sort of bumbled around for a few years. And then eventually I had a friend of mine who I was a roommate of. I had two friends who I became roommates of in College Point, and I was working out on Long Island, but really close on the Queens border from Long Island. And that was working really well. And then both of them decided to sort of move out and I couldn't have this spot to myself. So I had another friend who had an apartment in Manhattan and he was like, \"Hey, I have a room here, do you want to rent it with me? It's really cheap.\" And it was super cheap. It was also super tiny and had cockroaches and bedbugs and mice and pigeons in the apartment. It was a real mess. But during that time, it -","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=812.0,890.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: There has to be a catch if it's cheap in Manhattan.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=890.0,892.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Exactly. Exactly. It was right next to the 59th Street Bridge. It was on 59th Street, and we overlooked the bridge. He did. He had a window. I didn't have a window in the room, or, pretty much. But while I was there in Manhattan, because I just sort of wanted to live in Manhattan, I didn't have any friends that lived there. And my roommate, who was a really nice guy, just drank a lot and I sort of drank a lot with him, but it just wasn't really something that you could hang your hat on. It wasn't a great experience. And going out and drinking isn't really making friends to the same degree. That's where I started activism because I needed to get around the city and I went to different events and I was like, get on email lists and I would try to get around. And you can use the train and I did a lot, but I started biking around and then with biking around, I sort of found other people that were cyclists and when you're biking around, you interact with people a lot more, definitely more than when you're driving, but even more than when you're at the subway.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=892.0,949.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: And I just found it was sort of a nice community where you stop at a stoplight and you talk to somebody for two minutes. And so then from there, just got more into cycling and sort of that. And then saw a lot of the oppression against cyclists at the time and then sort of found stuff to hang out with other cyclists and sort of get into activism in that way.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=949.0,970.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: What kind of work were you doing at that time?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=970.0,974.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: I was doing human resources work at both times. At the beginning of it, I was working for a company out on Long Island that did retail work, so I was doing HR benefit analytics for them. And then a little bit later, while I was still in Manhattan, I worked for a university doing also HR benefits for them. So benefit analytical work, but at a very low level. So making photocopies. I remember at the second job they were talking about here, they had microfilm and they wanted to know if they should digitize it. And one of my products was to count all of it. And I'm like, \"I could just count a little bit and measure that and then just extrapolate after everything else.\" And they're like, \"No. Count every individual one.\" It was like 15,000. It was absurd. So analytical work, but not the type of analytics that I wanted to be doing.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=974.0,1027.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Sounds very tedious.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1027.0,1029.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Definitely. [laughs] And maybe that was part of it too. I needed to sort of release some stuff by sort of cycling around the city, which this was the time that functionally there were no bike lanes in Manhattan.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1029.0,1041.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: When was this roughly?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1041.0,1043.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: This would've been about 2007-ish, 2008-ish, something like that. Maybe slightly later, but yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1043.0,1054.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Why do you think street safety activism is so important?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1054.0,1057.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: So definitely there [in Manhattan], there was a lot of, we're fighting for every inch of the road space, but not for infrastructure at the time - we sort of moved towards infrastructure - but just for if you're going to get run over. So I had multiple people try to hit me with their car and be successful. I had a lot of people that were just idiots who weren't paying attention hit me with their car also. And luckily no major damage. I'm a relatively big guy, which I think of helped. A lot of times you can sort of move out of the way enough to not really get hit with a lot of damage with it. So I never ended up in the hospital, but it was just a lot of that. A lot of people rolling down their windows and yelling at you. When we did eventually have some bike lanes, people just parked in there constantly.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1057.0,1105.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: It was just sort of a situation where you knew that people weren't making it, that cyclists were getting run over and killed. And I don't really know the numbers now, I don't know if anyone has the analytics on it, but it felt like back then the people that were getting run over and killed were people that were more like me at times when I was there. So somebody who was just very aggressive in their car who wanted to kill you or somebody that was drunk or whatever. And now it seems more of just sort of either somebody isn't paying attention when they're on their cell phone or late at night or things like that. So I think there was a little more of a feel of people are out to get you and I saw people out to get me. They physically tried to run me over.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1105.0,1153.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Now I think I still get some of the abuse on the street. There's a lot less of it and I don't think there's that intention to kill you or maim you. I think it's still someone -","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1153.0,1164.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: [unclear]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1164.0,1165.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/45","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Yeah, right? [laughs] Killing or maiming you because the driver's on their cell phone is still bad, but it is a little bit of a different feel. And I think there was a little bit of this, you felt more like you were in the trenches. More of it's an us versus them because they're literally trying to come and kill you. And I feel like currently at meetings it feels like that more because when we're arguing for infrastructure, it is a little bit of an us versus them because they don't want the infrastructure that's going to help us, but that's still a little bit of a different tone versus somebody who's in a car who's trying to drive you over, trying to run you over.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1165.0,1202.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/46","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: And this was not before cell phones, but definitely before everyone had cell phone cameras out all the time. So if somebody ran you over it was just your fault because they're the one that survives and they get to tell the cops whatever they want. So there was a lot of that. And there's also a lot more police harassment. So when you were going through, the police were very much getting in your way, very much being very dangerous to you. So again, it's a lot of different forces sort of congealed this idea of we need to come together because we're really being pushed around and beat up.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1202.0,1245.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/47","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: What kind of activities have you been engaged with to further street safety?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1245.0,1250.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/48","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Yeah, so back earlier at the time there was a lot of just getting a group of cyclists to go through the city itself was sort of an act of defiance and had a lot of police harassment and had a lot of drivers that were very negative. And some of them, not while I was there, but some of them ran over cyclists that were in groups purposefully because they didn't like to be delayed. We definitely dealt with a lot of drivers that were aggressive and yelling, but I never had anybody while I was in a group drive through the group. So yeah, there was a lot of that. There was a lot of trying to interact with the public while we were sort of cycling. So back then people still hailed cabs by putting their hand up, which I know now seems weird with Uber and all of that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1250.0,1298.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/49","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: But one of the things that we would do would just be cycling around and when people raised their hand for the cab, we would give them a high five and it would be surprising, but it was just sort of funny that people liked it. We [would] ride around with relatively loud music, so you would hear low music and sort of it coming up. And then we were relatively young and on bikes and just had music and people just thought that was fun. So I know that it's not like strapping ourselves to a bulldozer or something like that, but there was a lot of we need to just go out and change culture.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1298.0,1334.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/50","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Were these critical mass rides, is that what you would call those?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1334.0,1336.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/51","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Sometimes. Some of them were critical mass, so that was one of the pieces of it. So critical mass in New York City was at Washington Square Park, no sorry, Union Square Park the last Friday of the month at six o'clock if I remember correctly. And those were unorganized unled rides, but there was just a lot of people that wanted to change things and you sort of meet people through that every so often. We would have people come in from different parts of the country, different parts of the world. And since critical mass was this idea that a lot of people had, they would sort of find a critical mass ride and interact with cool people from other parts of the world and they talk to them and stuff like that. So it was sort of sharing ideas, understanding culture, understanding which things worked and which things didn't work.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1336.0,1381.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/52","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: There was definitely meetings. There was some bike repair shop, free bike repair workshops, that we were around. One of my friends had run the World Naked Bike Ride from New York, so got a lot of naked people on bikes to go through the city. And I think people of course have different ideas of nudity, but it just sort of breaks the norm to say everybody else is driving and we're going to be doing something different and we're going to do something fun and exciting. And that itself was sort of activism and especially since there was a lot of police suppression of a lot of these things, it was sort of pushing against them too. So there was definitely that part of it. There was a lot of times to get loud, to go to events and be loud and do a bike stand where you hold your bike over your head, which is a big visual thing.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1381.0,1434.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/53","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: There's definitely things about going to community board meetings and sometimes advocating for infrastructure, sometimes just sort of standing up against some of the stupidity and sort of calling people out for it. Some people in the group would make videos of stuff to show the stupidity of things going on. And this was before YouTube, so it's relatively early stuff but like where to post it? There's supporting other groups, so sometimes other activist organizations that were doing stuff that we could bring bikes around to help them with throughout the time. So it was sort of like a hodgepodge of stuff, but it was really just a rejection of the norm and trying to show other people that we don't have to follow this norm. There's always a big Halloween ride and people wear costumes and bike around for Halloween, and it wasn't specifically like we're going to bike today to get this bike lane, but it was definitely, we are rejecting the idea of car culture and showing people that you can do something fun and different and that's still cool.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1434.0,1503.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/54","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: You used the term \"car culture\" and that may be a term that not all people are familiar with. What do you mean by that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1503.0,1511.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/55","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Definitely, definitely. So sometimes people call it, not the dashboard, yeah, the dashboard perspective. Where in America there's been so much propaganda from the auto industry going back to early days of cars. So a lot of people in our community know the term jaywalk was a propaganda term that the auto industry created to make fun of people who were in the streets, by calling them jays or idiots in sort of the terminology. New York City had a very vibrant culture of people being in the streets selling things. So they had hand carts, they would bring around apples or mollusks or whatever and sell them in the street.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1511.0,1552.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/56","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Playing street hockey.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1552.0,1553.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/57","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Playing street hockey too. Exactly, exactly right. So there's been so much use of the streets before cars were even invented for these different things. And the auto industry came by and really created this big propaganda push to say the only people in the streets should be cars. And a lot of that was because their cars kept on killing people and they wanted to divert the blame from the cars that are killing people to, well, how dare people exist in the space that we want for cars, which was never really for cars. And you even see in our neighborhood, a lot of these streets were not designed for cars.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1553.0,1585.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/58","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: So yes, there's been a ton of propaganda push from the auto industries, from the gasoline industries, from all of this. And even today, if you look at car commercials, so much of them are about trying to pump adrenaline into your bones. I think it was BMW that they tune their engines not for the best performance but for the best sound. So there's a lot of this sort of image about cars that it goes even further than just the way the car looks, and people buy into that. One of the things that personally I really hate is that in all these car commercials, wherever they're going in this, they just sort of drive up and then get out right in front of it and it's like, you don't have to worry about parking? [laughs]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1585.0,1626.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/59","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: So yeah, there's a lot of this idea of - we hear this at meetings constantly, even in New York City - everyone has a car here, we don't need bike lanes, everyone has a car. And it's like New York City has one of the least percentage of people that has cars of any city in the United States. I lived in New York of course as a kid not having a car because kids can't own cars. But even as an adult, for years I lived here in Eastern Queens without a car with my wife who doesn't drive or bike at all and we survived and we walked and we took buses and it was still great. So there's a lot of this car culture that's also related to class culture. It's also related to racism because a lot of the people who are non-white are people who are more biking in some of these communities. There's a lot of this, we have a car means we rich, white, usually older people have a car so then that's the only infrastructure we should build because that's the only people who matter in their perspectives.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1626.0,1683.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/60","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Right. So you've talked about some of your earlier activism around these bike rides and it sounds like less formal aspects of activism.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1683.0,1697.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/61","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: So there definitely were some formal groups to that, but even with them it was sort of, I hate to say that there's no hierarchy because I think even in groups that don't have a formal hierarchy there's an informal hierarchy, people who've been around the longest or people who were the loudest. But in a lot of these groups there was no formal hierarchy and there's very little informal hierarchy. So it was people would come together and be, so one person that I knew wanted to do a tour of urban gardens and then just did, and that was it, right? And people took bikes and went to urban gardens and it was really cool. So there was another thing of we're going to do, it was going, so in New York City there's something they call public private partnerships, which is a very weird sticky legal thing where for certain perks, buildings or property owners will give space for semi-public use.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1697.0,1759.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/62","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: So they get to pay less taxes, they get to build higher buildings or whatever. So it's just sort of a scam for them to be able to do what they want by saying something is public when it's not really public. But because of that there are certain rules around it that they can't just do whatever they want in that space, it has to be somewhat open to the public. And they put stuff there so the public doesn't use it. So it's either there's a wall around it, there's an opening but it's not really inviting, or there's a lot of big stairs around it or they put fountains in it. So somebody wanted to do, let's go swimming in the fountains. And it's a public space so you should be able to swim in the fountains 'cause you're public. So they did bike ride to swim in the fountains and the security guards, they don't know these laws, they come and yell at you.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1759.0,1799.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/63","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: And it's like, no offense because security guards are low-paid people, so we don't want to, they weren't the enemy, but it's like, no, I'm allowed to swim in this fountain. So there was a lot of stuff like that that was, I don't want to say it's structured or unstructured, but it was turning things on its head a little bit. And there's also stuff of, we think that people are considering either a bike lane project, or back then some of them were bike lanes, but then there was just other stuff of the discussion, should Citi Bike be allowed in the city? The bike share. And that was a contentious thing and there was a lot of, how do we push together the message to allow Citi Bike into the city, or bike share, stuff like that. So we would get together and have these discussions.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1799.0,1846.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/64","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: But there are some groups like Transportation Alternatives that have a paid staff and they have a hierarchy and they have certain policies that they agreed on. And that's more sort of structured activism. There's still a lot of stuff that we did that was very not that, that still had goals. More recently, a lot of the stuff that I've been doing let's say over the past decade has been, I don't know if we call it more structured, but I would say probably more focused on certain goals. So the Eastern Queens Greenway has really been the push, and that's been a single path all the way from Fort Totten that's supposed to go all the way to Coney Island. That was Robert Moses's original plan for it. We're sort of trying to fix the area that's from Flushing Meadow to Fort Totten and create a single family-friendly path.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1846.0,1898.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/65","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: And the middle section of it is what I used to bike with my friend Brian when I was a kid, sort of ping ponging back and forth on it. And since then one of my other friends had talked about why don't we just sort of build the rest of it? And I just sort of felt like if that would've existed when I was a kid, I could have gone further with Brian. So we could have, instead of ping ponging a small section a hundred times, we could have done a larger section 20 times or whatever and that would've just been a lot better for us. So the past 10 years has been really focusing on that specific project and projects sort of related to it. So the Northern Boulevard bike lane, a lot of the work has been with the community boards or sometimes really against the community boards for this type of stuff.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1898.0,1941.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/66","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: And we've definitely done some other types of activism too and supporting people that are doing very good activism. So there's Sammy's Law, which is very popular right now, which is trying to get New York [State] to allow New York City to make their own speed limits versus Albany making it for them. The speed cameras, that was another contentious one. And a lot of these are either organized by Transportation Alternatives, or at least related to them, or Families for Safe Streets, which is very closely related to Transportation Alternatives. So I feel like we are sort of trying to run our own projects and then also now there's a little more of a larger community that is running projects that we can connect to a little bit and try to support.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1941.0,1985.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/67","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: And just to clarify for people who might not be familiar, Eastern Queens Greenway, the purpose is to build a greenway, and you mentioned between Fort Totten and Coney Island, or to enhance that part that is in Eastern Queens.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=1985.0,2001.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/68","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Exactly, exactly.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2001.0,2002.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/69","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: What do you mean by greenway?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2002.0,2004.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/70","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Sure, no, definitely, definitely. So yes, the Eastern Queens Greenway was a group a few friends and I started about a decade ago and the entire route is supposed to go from Fort Totten to Coney Island, but we are sort of just trying to do this section. The route that Robert Moses decided was that entire thing. We're just doing the section from Flushing Meadow to Fort Totten and the thing that we're saying is there should be one family-safe path through the park.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2004.0,2028.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/71","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Family-safe meaning like an off-street path.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2028.0,2031.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/72","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Exactly.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2031.0,2031.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/73","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: People can walk or cycle, or roller blade or whatever.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2031.0,2036.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/74","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Exactly. Yeah. So along the route in Eastern Queens, there used to be a Flushing Creek, and because of that the water table is functionally at the land level. The creek doesn't really exist anymore, but there's parks over there and some lakes and stuff like that because you can't really build on top of it. The water table is so high. So the idea is that we can sort of have one path that goes throughout all of the parks because you can't build there anyway. And the path would be asphalt is sort of the goal to it. We want it relatively wide. We're going to want a 15 foot path or something along those lines and in the middle of the park. So it's sort of separated from traffic and definitely no cars on it. And then it would be encouraging people to bike or to roller blade or to walk their dog or to have a baby carriage or do whatever that's not really focusing on a car.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2036.0,2088.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/75","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: And then sort of have this full path, which if we did the Flushing Meadow to Fort Totten, the path there and back is about 23 miles. So if you sort of want to run a marathon and don't mind going there and coming back to the same spot, you can functionally do that on this path if we can get it built. So it's been sort of doing a lot of work to do sections of it. As much as a lot of the work that I was doing earlier is about bike lanes, this path we were really trying to do a greenway where everyone's sort of invited to it, provided you don't bring your car or motorcycle for that matter. But unfortunately the idea of a greenway means asphalt or concrete and getting some of the money for that has been challenging. So parts of it we're just doing as bike lanes with sidewalks next to them, which is really not the goal.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2088.0,2142.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/76","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: So Alley Pond Park, the west side of Alley Pond Park, we really wanted a full greenway there either through the park, which is probably not going to work just due to the structure of the park right now, or next to it. And instead we have sort of a bike lane across the street from a sidewalk. So it's not really the goal, but if we can build the connection and sort of move it in the right direction, similar with Northern Boulevard, we have a sidewalk with a bike lane next to it and we'd rather a really nice greenway, but getting any funding for these projects is really challenging. So much so that I sort of feel that we never should have done this activism and that we should have just gotten hedge fund jobs and paid off politicians. [laughter] At the end of the day, it seems like the only people that get stuff done in New York are people that are willing to grease the wheels and that just really sucks.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2142.0,2192.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/77","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: That's not what our democracy should be about. So it's been an interesting journey from that side for these projects. Some of the bike lane projects we try to put forth are contentious. A lot of people around here sort of feel that they drive, so why should anyone else have space on the streets? This was the car culture we were talking about earlier. But the greenway stuff really isn't contentious. Pretty much nobody is saying that we shouldn't have a nice path in the park that kids can bike on. And they're not that expensive. If you think about Kissena Corridor Park is one of the parks that we have some funding for and there's a trail there right now that's like wood chips and then we just need it paved. That's not the biggest engineering thing for a country that put people on the moon. [laughter]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2192.0,2243.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/78","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: And even that, it's been so long and there's some money towards it, but we don't have a design yet, let alone breaking ground and stuff, budget overruns. And it's been really challenging. I will say that we're not the first greenway in Queens by any means. The West Side Greenway is the most popular greenway in New York City, in all of America, on the west side of Manhattan, which I will say was designed and set up by people who had jobs doing that. Unlike us, we just do this as volunteers. So there were other greenways around, but I really think that our activism, especially as a volunteer organization, got other groups more involved in starting to get greenways and now there's a greenway coalition. There's a lot more people that are interested in building greenways in New York City. So I do hope some of the work that we had to slog through for decades makes it easier for other people to get their greenways built a lot quicker and easier.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2243.0,2301.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/79","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Right. So in 2017 you joined CB [Community Board] 11. I joined the same year. What led you to do that and what can you say about your experience?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2301.0,2314.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/80","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Definitely, definitely. So when I was doing activism earlier in my career, there was definitely multiple groups across New York City trying to do activism, but there was a lot of - there was mainly that I saw two major groups. One was Transportation Alternatives and one was Time's Up. And Time's Up was a lot more of the activity, yelling and trying to get in people's faces about some of the stuff like calling out politicians when they were doing the wrong thing. And Transportation Alternatives was a lot more of working with politicians and trying to be positive to when they're doing the right thing. And thats sort of push and pull dynamic I think worked incredibly well. And then Time's Up sort of got ground into the dirt because of a lot of police pressure against them. And then Transportation was the one that was left. And the dynamic doesn't work as well with just one group there. But interacting more with Transportation Alternatives, I did see bike lanes don't go in unless somebody within the system is pushing for them. And the [New York City] Department of Transportation gives a huge amount of power to community boards in [a] way that pretty much no other organization in New York City does. Legally, they don't have to. And you don't see the cops going to the community boards to ask where do you want us to do policing, or the fire department to say what type of firetruck should we have. But DoT [New York City Department of Transportation] just really does, and I sort of learned that from Transportation Alternatives. And I had a friend in Transportation Alternatives, and it was called the East Side Committee that was the east side of Manhattan, and he was the only person in the group that we had that didn't bike. So he just walked around and took the subways all over the place and he just didn't have any interest in biking.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2314.0,2423.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/81","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: But he's like, \"This sucks that I can't walk around and people are jerks to me when they're driving their cars and it's sort of an aggressive environment.\" So he joined the group of, everyone else was a cyclist, and he lived on the east side of Manhattan and his community board was just terrible. And he's like, \"I'm going to go and fix this.\" And he goes and joins his community board and he's one person who's not a cyclist. And when people would say something that was just absurd lies about cyclists or whatever, he would just use a fact and just sort of say, \"That doesn't make any sense,\" or whatever. And he got that community board to go from blocking the Second Avenue bike lane throughout their entire area to eventually supporting it, which was absurd. That wasn't his goal at all. But he just sort of stopped the stupidity by just having a reasonable thing that he got brought into. So he wasn't a cycling advocate, but he did get the bike lane through just because he just kept on knocking down the stupid arguments. And I'm like, that's really cool. So can I do the same thing? So yeah, so joined CB 11 and honestly-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2423.0,2485.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/82","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: I should clarify what I'm talking about here is Community Board 11, which are the representative bodies of community districts in New York City.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2485.0,2497.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/83","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Representatives - the correct way to put it, but probably pushing it a little far - [laughs] so yes, the community boards, you might consider them the lowest level of government to some degree. So that's a volunteer position. There's fifty of them-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2497.0,2509.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/84","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Non-elected. Appointed.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2509.0,2510.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/85","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Exactly. Appointed sort of by the Borough President and sorted of by the City Council member, which means you sort of have to be friends with one of those two people to get on, which is a really crummy process. A group that hasn't existed for very long. I don't remember the date where CB's were started, but it's only a few decades ago. It's not like - it hasn't been in the charter of New York City for the entire time. Definitely a group that's highly conservative. Definitely a group, in general on average are highly conservative. Groups that on average are substantially older than the population. Groups that on average are substantially whiter and wealthier than the populations that they're supposed to represent. So there's been a lot of data out there that shows these groups aren't representational, but the whole point of them is to represent the community. So it's highly problematic from the beginning. So we went into the group and it's so much easier having more than one person. So as we went in together, it's not like you had the lone voice there, which I know other people who joined community boards and just really struggled being the lone positive voice against everything. With the group I feel that we were able to make a lot of difference to some degree. We definitely had some projects approved that absolutely never would've gotten approved otherwise, right? Northern Boulevard never would've happened if it wasn't for us. Alley Edge-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2510.0,2588.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/86","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: The Northern Boulevard bike lane.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2588.0,2590.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/87","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Exactly, exactly. Projected bike lane on Northern Boulevard.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2590.0,2594.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/88","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: That's the one that runs between Cross Island Parkway and Douglaston Parkway I believe.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2594.0,2600.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/89","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Yeah, functionally. But yeah, so that was one of the projects that wasn't something we were picking up. And then a cyclist was run over and killed there. And actually an older male cyclist who's mainly a driver, I think he was, not a bodyguard, but someone who drove for a living and who was an older white guy. So someone who the community board associates with a lot more. Not a young cyclist, somebody who knows how to use the streets. And he was run over and killed by a driver over there. And that was one of the stuff that we were like, \"Hey, there should be real safe infrastructure here.\" So you and I and others put in a really big fight for that and after a lot of effort won that and they implemented it. And then the community board tried to rip it out afterwards and they so far have not ripped it out.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2600.0,2646.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/90","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: It's been there for years, which has been good. It's not the best bike lane in the world. I don't think anyone really likes the way the infrastructure is there, but it exists and people use it. Alley Edge is another one that's on the west side of Alley Pond Park. So it's again a protected bike lane. Both of these are bi-directional bike lanes, so both either north and south or east and west are on the same side of the street, which really helps use the street space more effectively. That was another one that we pushed for very heavily and got, and that sort of connects part of the Eastern Queens Greenway, which has been good, [unclear] bike lanes. There's some other ones. 53rd was another one that we had sort of pushed really heavily-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2646.0,2686.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/91","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: 53rd Avenue.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2686.0,2687.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/92","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Yeah, thank you. At 53rd Avenue and the DoT did a design that's not exactly what we were looking for. And if they would've done our design, they wouldn't have had so much grief. A lot of people have hated that bike lane and specifically almost every house on multiple blocks has red signs saying, what was it? \"We don't like bike lanes,\" or it was some negative bike lane phrase on it, \"No bike lanes,\" maybe. So there's a huge amount of outcry against that and which just makes all of our efforts a lot harder to do because DoT refused to use the width of a traffic lane that Philadelphia uses. They wanted a traffic lane that was wider and because of that, they removed parking for half of the street, the northern half. And that got people really unhappy.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2687.0,2733.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/93","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Unfortunately not a very popular idea in these parts. Losing parking spots to a bike lane.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2733.0,2741.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/94","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: It really isn't. And that's been sort of the crux of a lot of the opposition against us. There's definitely some racism to it. There's some nostalgia of, there weren't cyclists when I was a kid, which is just very absurdly untrue. There's more cyclists when these people who are 90 years old were kids. But most of it really comes down to the parking, which, so my house over here is right next to a laundromat and usually people are going to the laundromat. Not so much today because of the weather, but I can almost never park the car in front of my house. But it's a shared good. Other people park their car there to use the laundromat, something that I never use 'cause I can do laundry in my own house. So I don't cry. I don't try to get the laundromat burned to the ground. Somebody else is using that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2741.0,2789.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/95","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: And if that matter ever came before a community board, they would probably try to block it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2789.0,2793.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/96","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Seriously.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2793.0,2793.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/97","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: It would take up a lot of parking.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2793.0,2796.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/98","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Exactly. Exactly.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2796.0,2797.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/99","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: No laundromat here.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2797.0,2799.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/100","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: That is a lot of their mentality. It's interesting because I feel a lot of the people join the community board and stay in the community board. They want it sort of like a club, like a Lions Club or a Masons or something like that, that these are their friends and they want to hang out there. And it's like, if you want to hang out with your friends and go drinking or whatever, go ahead, have fun. But this is the one group that's supposed to be taking care of the community. And I think that's really problematic that so many people blocking that and making sure that new people can't join the community board and making it very hard for them and trying to push people off and doing all of that and being incredibly negative. You and I have had lots of insults hurled at us from community board members.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2799.0,2846.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/101","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: They don't like that we are trying to make the streets safer because they feel that that's a threat to their mentality of how the streets should exist. How dare somebody else, especially somebody that they don't know. And the thing about it, I know that you weren't born in New York, but I was here my entire life. They always try to make you an outsider. And I'm like, I couldn't be more of an insider with this. I was literally born like a stone's throw away from here. I have friends in this neighborhood my entire life, but they still tried to make me an outsider, which is just sort of, I think really shows their mentality. So the community board years were not fun. And we got some good stuff done, but the amount of effort to go through, not only trying to outsmart them at the meetings and talk around them and partner with other groups and try to get people to the meetings and that exhaustion, but just the emotional exhaustion of knowing that everyone around you hates you and you know you're doing the right thing.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2846.0,2910.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/102","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Because I don't know many people that would out and out say it's good for children to die needlessly, but that's what they're supporting. They're supporting a culture that is okay for killing children. There was a rally on Friday specifically about the number of kids that were killed on the streets by drivers in Queens and they have a quote that I haven't fact checked, but they said that half of the kids killed by drivers in New York City are in Queens. And I have a daughter and I don't want her to be killed. I know other people who their children have been killed by drivers on streets that were a few blocks away from my house. It feels like when everyone else is sort of saying that you're stupid, everyone on the community board is sort of saying, \"You're stupid and you're wrong,\" it is hard to hold true, to be like, \"No, all of you 50 people are stupid and wrong about this.\" I know the facts, I know the situation and I know it's very easy to make a situation where kids are not going to get killed anymore. And trying to convince them of that is just really challenging.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2910.0,2983.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/103","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Do you have a particular accomplishment or accomplishments that you're especially proud of?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2983.0,2989.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/104","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Not really, because the thing about it is that we have had wins and it's been hard to sort of recognize that because of the amount of work that we sort of put into it. But we've worked on Eastern Queens Greenway for a decade now and we have a little bit of money dedicated to some projects that have not even broken ground yet, that don't even have designs ready for them yet. The bike lane projects that we've worked on through the community board and even beforehand when I was in different parts of the city, so Second Avenue bike lane, which is a really nice bike lane relative to nothing, which is what was there before. And I had a little part of a little bit of that. By no means was that one of my projects, but it's something I worked on sort of earlier.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=2989.0,3038.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/105","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Looking at that, looking at Northern Boulevard, looking at Alley Edge, looking at 53rd, I can say that I was part of those to some different degrees depending on what project that was. And I feel, and maybe you feel differently, I don't think Northern Boulevard would've happened without me. Second Avenue would've, but Northern Boulevard I don't think would've. So it's good that I did that, but the amount of effort that it takes, just to me, I don't want to forget that. I don't want to have this nostalgic look back of like, \"Oh yeah, I fought hard and I got a win.\" No, the amount of toll that it takes is problematic and I really feel like there's something to the like, why should it be this hard to do it? Maybe with bike lanes you want to say people don't like to lose their parking or whatever, even though Northern Boulevard no one lost parking. But why should it be so hard to do this greenway thing? And I sort of feel that systems create stability when it's the thing that they want to do.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3038.0,3114.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/106","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: And we're in a situation where the system wants to be stable to be car focused, and that really sucks. But there's a reason that it's so hard to make any change on the streets. And I think there's also something where this system of the New York City government does not want people interacting with it. And it's not just that it's incompetent or people are lazy or there's bureaucratic or any of the easy excuses, but when you see some of the things like, this wasn't my project, but one of our good friends was working on creating a very, very small section of greenway on the south side of Creedmoor and sort of got everyone involved in it, the Creedmoor campus was willing to give up space and he got it approved by both houses in New York State, which is where he needed that. And it got vetoed by two different Governors.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3114.0,3166.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/107","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: And it's like, but why? He's a nicer guy than I am. He has more connections than I do. He's been fighting for this for harder than the project that I fought for. He has more political friends than I do. His project has absolutely nobody who's opposing it at all. It would really create, a lot of the stuff that we're doing I think is important, but specifically his very small section would open up a community that has very, very little parkland to a huge amount of parkland. So it would be a huge benefit to so many people. A lot of the kids in that community go to the high schools on the other side of it, so a lot of kids will be able to bike to their high schools. It would take some stress off the buses. It was just, there's thousands of benefits to it and yet it keeps on failing. And it's like, well, there has to be a reason to this. He's a smart guy. If anyone could do it, it's him. And if it can't, then there's a reason that it's not happening. And I think that's the piece that in some aspect, I can't be happy with our wins because that's the win that we don't have, of that piece that's probably bigger than [we're] ever going to be able to fix.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3166.0,3239.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/108","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Is there anything you would do differently?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3239.0,3243.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/109","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: I don't know if I would do any of it. I also don't know what I would do if I didn't do it. I am not the type that would just be like, well, I'm going to spend my time making money so I can go to a beach or something like that. So I don't know who I would be or what I would be if I didn't do it. But at the same point, it's despite having wins, and I don't want to just say me by any means, but you and me and a few of our other friends, a group of functionally five-ish people give or take, pretty much did all the bike lanes in any part of Eastern Queens over the past few decades or past decade, let's say.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3243.0,3285.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/110","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: You look at the map and versus almost any other part of the city, we've had more bike lanes put in than most other parts with a few relatively small exceptions. Manhattan had momentum going before it. Western queens and western Brooklyn have had some momentum with that. But even a lot of western Queens bike lanes aren't protected like ours are, right? We have done a lot and we made a big difference. But at the same point, that other piece that's blocking all of this is really the bigger issue. So I don't want to be too harsh on it, but a few years ago there was a really big push of we shouldn't be using plastic straws anymore because there was a video of a turtle that has straws stuck up its nose. And yeah, plastic straws aren't great and there's a lot of trash in the environment, but it was sort of the easy fix where the bigger thing is we shouldn't be having petrol in every one of our products.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3285.0,3343.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/111","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Things shouldn't be as disposable. We have to have better waste management policies. There's a lot of that type of stuff. And the straws was the easy answer. I almost sort of feel like our bike lanes have been an easy answer, which is absurd, 'cuz they're so hard. But at the same point, we're not getting to that thing. But also I think the thing is so well guarded that we never can, so I dunno, I don't know if I can go back in time to say, just forget it and watch Game of Thrones or something like that and spend time just relaxing, which I don't think would've worked, but maybe that would've been a better answer. I don't know if there's an answer of something like political contribution reform or doing something about anti-corruption in politics, but I sort of feel like those people end up in sort of similar spots to where we are too, of being burnt out and not making that change.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3343.0,3396.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/112","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: I just sort of joke about be a hedge fund guy and sort of do that and spend your money buying off politicians, but politicians are really cheap to buy off. So I don't know, maybe if we would've been hedge fund guys, because I knew a lot of hedge fund guys. The guy I lived with in Manhattan, my first apartment, they had the really crummy one, he was a hedge fund guy and he made a ton of money, and I dunno, five grand to a politician here and there. Maybe we could have gotten Greenway done and then also even some other stuff with finance reform or something like that. So I don't know that I have the answer to go back in time and change, but right now I can see the monster a lot better, and that's a piece that I feel like, I don't think, I want to phrase this really well, that it makes more sense where, you know the John F. Kennedy quote of, \"We allow a peaceful revolution because we don't want a violent revolution.\"","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3396.0,3463.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/113","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: I think there's sort of something to that here. I'm not advocating for violent revolution because we don't have enough bike lanes. Some of my friends would, but I'm definitely not sort of pushing that. But I think that there is a bigger piece of, there's something that's sort of breaking, and I think that it's not, the thing that is the reason that we can't have bike lanes is also the thing where a lot of my friends are unemployed right now. I have a lot of friends who do HR analytics and I got a master's degree in it. And there aren't many master's degree in HR analytics. There's like, we might've been the first one in the world to do that. There's like, I've heard a few other people say there's maybe about five of them, but there's almost none of them. A lot of my friends are incredibly smart, are better talking than I am, have very strong careers in HR, and so many of them can't find jobs or have these miserable jobs. And I think that there is this sort of something that's going on under the surface that's sort of, the exact same thing that they can't find a job is the reason our community boards are so racist. And same reason that people have this dashboard perspective. There's a certain corruption going on that academics a hundred years from now will be able to write about really well and we can't really entirely see it because we're sort of swimming in it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3463.0,3534.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/114","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Right. What advice would you give young or would be activists?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3534.0,3542.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/115","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: So there's a lot of fun that people have in activism about going to a rally and meeting other people and making a really pretty sign or a witty sign or something like that, or yelling at somebody who's doing the wrong thing in power. And that's not always something that's going to change things, but there's nothing wrong with having fun either. So if it's the way to get a group together, that's really good, and get the group together. I know a lot of people that get stuck in just doing that sort of fun stuff and they don't go to the community board meetings or they only go there to make a big scene, which I'm not saying it's bad, but I think there should be some recognition of, I want to go with my friends and just yell about someone who's corrupt. And that's totally cool and sort of recognize that, but also recognize that yelling about someone who's corrupt doesn't necessarily change it. And sometimes you have to take different tactics, and that's something that I really feel if I could have understood better when I was younger of what is the tactic to my goal, it would've been able to do sort of stuff differently and also would've given me some space to be like, I'm just going to have fun today and just make a fun sign. And that's totally cool too. I definitely found one of the hardest things in our community is that we try to police each other more than the opposition.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3542.0,3632.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/116","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Try to police each other?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3632.0,3632.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/117","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Exactly. So one activist saying, \"Well, the activism you're doing isn't good, mine is better.\" And instead of having those sort of infights, and I've seen that rip apart so much of what's going on, partially because it's human dynamics to sort of fight with each other, and then I think partially because the opposition.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3632.0,3648.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/118","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Probably especially among activists, who have strong opinions.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3648.0,3652.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/119","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Absolutely. Absolutely right. And people should have conversations about it, but a lot of times it gets to the emotional side and I try very hard to take a role of, I'm not going to criticize any other activist doing anything that's sort of moving in the same direction whether I agree with it or not. But if you're trying to move something in our direction, you're very close to where I am, even if I very strongly disagree with the way you're doing it. And I've definitely not been successful for that for my entire career. I'm still not always successful with it. But that was the thing that I really tried to learn the most of, saying that I can talk to somebody and try to create strategies and tactics with them and try to have discussions with it. But really criticizing somebody with that type of stuff is something that I know that I've gotten too wrapped up in and I know that other activists around me have.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3652.0,3702.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/120","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: And I think that that's the thing that hurts us the most other than sort of the opposition. The sort of corruption of racism or city government or whatever the issues of police violence and things like that on our community, PSYOP [psychological operations] type stuff where people try to break apart different groups, which unfortunately there's a lot of history of. I was just talking to somebody recently about how, I haven't seen it in the U.S. although who knows, but in Britain, a lot of the cops would infiltrate activist groups and then have sex with some of the women there and get them pregnant and then just leave the activist group. And there's a whole group of women that have children for people that they thought were other activists, but were really just cops pretending to do it. There's a lot of things like that that sort of go on in this. And I've seen, not that specific thing in New York, but I've seen a lot of other stuff in New York that is also pretty detrimental. So sort of really understanding that. So I have had some friends in the activist community who got really wrapped into drugs, and I don't judge other people if you're doing drugs, but that's a way that you're going to sort of lose out because either [you're] going to drop out of the community or the opposition is going to have power over you. And that's what, it just really sucks.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3702.0,3788.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/121","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Thank you very much. Is there anything else you want say?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3788.0,3794.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/122","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: The only last piece of it is that I don't want to say that you have to join the negative thing to change the negative thing because I don't think that that's true. If you want to change the way the U.S. military works, you don't have to work in the U.S. military and specifically if you join it, you're probably not going to be able to change it. So I don't want to put too fine of a point on that, but I do think there is a point of understanding how a system works and knowing where the pressure is. And this was a little bit of what we did with the community boards, right? The system was, let's [unclear] community boards because community boards are super conservative and then we don't have to do anything. And then we got in the community board and then we sort of broke that and now that system doesn't work as well.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3794.0,3844.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/123","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: And things happened and we got some changes to it. And I think that, really understanding the systems like that, of this is the time I want to work with the system, this is the time I want to work against the system. There's a quote of, \"There's a time to put on a suit and you can make more change inside at times, and then there's times that you don't.\" And just really trying to think that through of, [the] focus is I want to make this change. And then I figure out the best strategy to it, where it's like maybe it is getting a sign, maybe it is making a video of telling the truth about something, maybe it is joining a community board or joining an organization or joining the opposition or going undercover or whatever. And I think that that's something that we sort of miss a lot of time in the activist community.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3844.0,3891.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/124","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: We just sort of say, okay, well this is the group that does protests, and we were just like, let's go make signs together. And that's cool, but you have to sort of have the different tactic for what's going on and you can move between tactics and you could also have different people doing different tactics that sort of play off of each other. And I think that there's a lot more strength we can have if we had a few dedicated people that are doing some of this stuff together or pushing and pulling a little bit more. So, yeah. Cool. But thanks for doing the interview. I'm glad that you can help me give this message out to everybody. And of course, thanks for all the work you've done, the community board, I definitely could not have stuck around for as long as I did without having you there. Also being another very reasonable person trying to make a difference in the world.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3891.0,3940.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/125","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ben Turner: Well, thank you John. Thanks for joining me today for this interview.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3940.0,3943.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062/transcript/68746/annotation/126","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"John Kelly IV: Totally happy to.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/132369/file/247062#t=3943.0,3951.07265"}]}]}]}