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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC and we continue our 10-part end-of-year gratitude series with 10 heroes of community well-being for 2020. We are bringing on 10 heroes or leaders of community groups who may not make the headlines but who have helped make life livable in this year of so much grief and so much need and so much thirsting for justice and equality. There are many more groups out there doing great work, but these 10 have been brought to our attention, some by listeners, some by colleagues or friends.

We are sharing these 10 stories to represent all the ways some of us are serving the many of us in need of help. Next Wednesday, we'll have a WNYC Zoom event to honor three groups contributing to community well-being this year. It's a new annual award that I'm honored that the station has established in my name, called the Lehrer Prize for Community Well-Being to bring more attention to some of the people doing important work at the community level in our area.

You can get a reservation to join us on Zoom for the Wednesday night 7:00 PM event at wnyc.org/lehrerprize. With us now is Denean Ferguson. She's the co-chair of Queens Recovery & Resiliency, and special projects director at the Arverne Church of God. She's been working with her community through challenges and tragedies from Superstorm Sandy to COVID-19. Denean, thanks so much for your work. Thanks so much for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Denean Ferguson: Thank you, Brian. I appreciate having me here.

Brian: I know your house was severely damaged by Superstorm Sandy but in preparation for this interview, we asked you about your current work on storm resiliency and you said, "You want to talk about a storm? There's a pandemic going on." So, how has your work on resiliency shifted in 2020?

Denean: [chuckles] Well, absolutely. I think what happened is we're in, where I am, Far Rockaway, Queens, or the Rockaway Peninsula is obviously impacted by water and Superstorm Sandy, but the pandemic is another disaster that hit the Rockaways. Again, it's because this community in the eastern part of the peninsula is a lower-income community with hordes of negative health indices, already pre-existing conditions. Yes, COVID-19 gave us a wallop and so folk were launched into needing meals and trying to remain connected, services, internet, food, survival, like basic survival.

Even in the midst of that, when I was sending out notices that, "Hey, we're still in hurricane mode," just really focused on trying to stay alive. A lot of family members, even in my own world, my pastor passed away. He was on ministry work, and then took a month to get his body sent from Jamaica, West Indies, and then a funeral that could only be done via Zoom. All these ailments resulting from COVID-19 are what we've been focused on, getting PPE, a new term that everybody knows, Personal Protective Equipment, face mask and hand sanitizer, getting that for folks, getting people fed meals.

We have a project that we're working on now, seniors that are disconnected. Even the governor just asked everyone at a certain age to stay home if you're older. We have folks that are staying home, but then they're not connected with the internet, so that's something a lot of advocating that we're doing around that. We're trying to seek some funds to sponsor. We have a proposal that we're getting ready to put before Robin Hood to help purchase technology equipment for some of these seniors and some of the youth so that they can have internet access to be connected. Now, it's no longer an option. You have to have it. It's like a utility. It's like water. It's like light. We need the internet in order to be able to remain connected [crosstalk].

Brian: The Rockaways I know are politically and racially diverse. On one end, you have Breezy Point, an enclave of mostly white retired police officers and firefighters and others and leans republican. Daily positivity in the COVID was among the highest in the city, around 11% in that area from the stats that I've seen. On the other end is Far Rockaway, where you said you're from and that's a majority Black and brown neighborhood, and COVID cases are still extremely high in that area but lower, around 6%. In an area of the Rockaways that's always been divided, has the virus underscored that reality or brought it to light in new ways?

Denean: I mean, for me, and for those of us that consider ourselves boots on the ground that are physically locally attached to the community, it's not a nuance. It's not anything that's like, "Oh, wow, look at this. Imagine that." It's like we know it already and this is a lot of our fights that we take to the powers that be that come with these bandaids to try to fix things later or after the fact, or they're running around crazy and they want to go do some survey or some analysis.

We already know what the problems are. Enable us that are here locally to assist in fixing those problems, instead of going to whatever was pre- what you were doing before. Especially now, we're talking about racial equity. So, we want to make racial equity discussion more than a discussion. We want it to become an action and change and doing things differently. The coalition that I'm part of, the Far Rockaway Arvene nonprofit coalition and the committee, the Queens Recovery & Resiliency is engaged in having these discussions with the New York City Emergency Management with the Department of Mental Health, around being credible messengers on the street, and addressing these problems around COVID, the different determinants of the sicknesses, the exacerbated sicknesses that our community is seeing, that we have a fix or pulp isn't a good thing.

Give us the capacity to address it, and stop singing the old song, "Oh, there's no money in the well," but then you find money to do things that are not beneficial to the community. Actually, the statistics that you have, the current statistic, really doesn't tell the tale. Belle Harbor folks are more actively, I would say, testing now, so the rate may seem higher, but when you look at the death, especially in the early days, when we had 600, 700 people, 800 people a day dying in New York State, those numbers were hitting downtown Far Rockaway or the eastern part of the peninsula much harder than the western part.

I would say that the folks on this end are a lot more reticent now and apprehensive about testing, about the whole vaccine issue. We need to be launching a concerted effort to give proper messaging, proper information to this indigent community about the vaccination, about the things that can save their lives, about healthy decisions, and things of that nature to be able to make an impact in this community. We just need the city agencies to partner with us, in fact, to be able to see a difference and an improvement.

Brian: How can listeners who might want to help get involved with your group either as volunteers or to make donations?

Denean: Well, we have a website, thefranc.org. That's an acronym for Far Rockaway Arvene Nonprofit Coalition, so thefranc.org. They can go to the website. We have a New York City Civic Corps person, Tiffany Long, who's doing an excellent job in assisting us. She just came on board. We have her until June with helping to do distributions, to get things out. So, you can send an email to farrockawaynonprofit@gmail.com, and get in touch with us that way if you want to volunteer, if you want to meet with the group or meet with our committee and see what other ways, whatever other resources that you may already have, that are available, that you'd like to hear some of our innovative ideas that we have to address this disaster, this situation. We definitely welcome that. So, farrockawaynonprofit@gmail.com. It's an email, or the website is thefranc.org.

Brian: Awesome. Denean Ferguson, co-chair of Queens Recovery & Resiliency and special projects director at the Arvene Church of God, thank you for your contribution to community well-being, and thanks so much for coming on with us today.

Denean: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Brian: The Brian Lehrer Show is produced by Lisa Allison, MaryEileen Croke, Zoe Azulay, Amina Srna and Carl Boisrond. Zack Gottehrer-Cohen works on our daily podcast. Our interns are Dan Girma and Erica Scalisie this fall. Megan Ryan is the head of live media. We thank Milton Ruiz for his work at the audio controls this week. Have a great weekend, everyone. I'm Brian Lehrer.

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