NYC Testimony on Hart Island (10/24/19)
Photo Credit: Amy Pearl / WNYC (Hart Island visitors are not ordinarily permitted to take photographs)
A cemetery for the indigent and unclaimed is known as a potter's field, referring back to the New Testament. More than one million dead, most of them lost to family and forgotten by history, have been buried on Hart Island in layered trenches by prison inmates since 1869. Hart Island challenges us with a tangled thicket of ethical dilemmas, from mass incarceration through cadaver shortages to land use deliberations. In 2019, NYC Council took steps forward in public hearings on legislation that would expand community access to Hart Island, and address related issues of community access to burial information and resources.
Testimony of Rabbi Regina L. Sandler-Phillips, MSW, MPH
WAYS OF PEACE Community Resources
Good afternoon. I am Rabbi Regina Sandler-Phillips, executive director of WAYS OF PEACE Community Resources. I have worked as an advocate over the past twenty years to reclaim traditional, sustainable burial practices as quiet acts of justice and kindness.
I am here because the same time-honored ethical principles that call for sustainable, egalitarian, participatory Jewish burial—mipnei k’vodam shel aniyim, “for the honor of the poor”—also call for cooperative mobilization of resources in our cities of diversity, so that neighbors of all backgrounds can be buried with honor—mipnei darkhei shalom, “for these are ways of peace.”
I was privileged to visit Hart Island with family members in September 2017, and also gave testimony at the NYC Council hearings this past May. I want to express my gratitude again for the anonymous prison inmates who built monuments on Hart Island to honor those they buried; for the loving courage and tenacity of family members, friends, and community activists; and for the stewardship and accompaniment of supportive municipal representatives through decades of challenge and change.
Photo Credit: Amy Pearl / WNYC (Each marker represents 150 adult bodies or 1000 infant bodies)
The Department of Social Services is soliciting input at this hearing on a range of issues related to public burial. Like others here, I am in a position to offer insights and resources for several of them—but it is clear to me that we cannot do full justice to any of these issues within the time constraints of two and a half hours.
This is why I had intended primarily to express my support for Int. 1580, originally introduced by Council Member Deborah L. Rose as “A Local Law in relation to the creation of a task force on public burial and related issues”—with the representation of city agencies as well as non-profit leaders, family members, and community activists. In its original language,
“This bill would establish a task force to study the laws, rules, regulations, policies and procedures related to public burial, to recommend changes to these programs and to consider the feasibility of alternative programs. The task force would convene for one year and then submit a report with recommendations to the Mayor and the Council.”
However, in preparing my testimony for today, I was startled to discover that this crucial initiative seems to have been quietly replaced last month with Int. 1580-A: “A Local Law in relation to a public hearing on public burial and related issues.” In its current language,
“This bill would require a public hearing on public burial to allow the public the opportunity to discuss the laws, rules, regulations, policies and procedures related to public burial, to recommend changes to these programs and to consider the feasibility of alternative programs. Following the hearing, the Department of Social Services would submit a report with recommendations to the Mayor and the Council.”
I hope that that today’s one-time hearing has not actually been substituted for ongoing inter-agency input and coordination—since that would be a serious step backward in the process.
At the NYC City Council hearings in May, Speaker Corey Johnson declared that progress on public burial must be built up from the grassroots. Yet, at that same time, the voices of those most impacted at the grassroots—family members, community activists, and non-profit leaders with demonstrated experience in providing for indigent burial—were not heard for nearly four hours, after most elected and appointed officials had already left the room. Even the Department of Corrections officer with the most extensive experience on the ground at Hart Island was not asked to testify, but only passed discreet notes to his superiors to correct their statements as necessary.
The most integrated solutions to the challenges of Hart Island and public burial point toward the most equitable and sustainable choices facing all of us at death. But we cannot make real progress toward any of these solutions by trying to force decades of nuanced, collective experience and wisdom into a couple of high-profile, top-down public hearings. The nitty-gritty of real progress always takes place between such events.
It has taken too many years of dedicated advocacy—and even lawsuits—to get us to this crucial transition point. Please, let’s not waste this historical opportunity. If we are serious about making change, we need the coordination, oversight, transparency, and accountability of ongoing inter-agency efforts.
I hope that plans for a task force or similar coordinating body will be reaffirmed in good faith—so that we can avoid reinventing and spinning our wheels, and instead join forces in the real work of progress on public burial.
Progress can only be made when it is understood that the honor of the dead is not an isolated funeral product—or municipal event—but rather a continual process of learning and building community across all the lines that too often divide us.
Thank you for your consideration and time.
