Jean Rice (Interview 2)

Lewis: [00:00:02] Good morning!
 
Rice: Good morning, sis! The cookies are excellent.
 
Lewis: Oh, I'm so glad. So, let's start with your name and the date, today.
 
Rice: Today's date? OK. Well, my name is Jean with a J., J.E.A.N. Rice like the rice we eat, R.I.C.E. Today's date is October—Friday, October the thirteenth.
 
Lewis: Uh-oh—are we worried?
 
Rice: [00:00:29] Well, I'm not superstitious, but my—one of Lynn and my best friends, Mr., and Mrs. Art Trotman, are scheduled to travel to Florida this weekend. They usually stay in Florida during the winter and in Rhode Island during the summer. So, this weekend they are slated to go back to Florida. So, I'm a little anxious about that. I'm going to call them later.
 
Lewis: [00:00:54] All right, good. Well, this is our second in a series of many—to come—interviews about you, Jean, about Picture the Homeless.  
 
Rice: Warren Prince.  
 
Lewis: [00:01:08] Warren Prince... And so, since you shared with us last time that you—what moved you to come to Picture the Homeless was Bloomberg trying to end the Better Bottle Bill, I thought we could talk a little bit about that, about the Canners campaign and what your life was like as a canner. So maybe we could start there. What is it like to be a canner?
 
Rice: [00:01:35] Well, first of all, the description of the people that pick up recyclable containers, the word canner, doesn't do that work, to me in my humble perspective, to me the word canner does not justify the labor—how labor intensive that is and how it fits into the current socio-economic climate, on a global scale.
 
Rice: [00:02:14] So, I took it upon myself to refer to all the of people I know, and myself, who retrieve recyclable containers as ecological engineers, not canners. Because to me, those two words, ecological engineer, describes the work and the impact that the work has on the society at large, more accurately than a word canner. To me, the word canner—perceived by the population at large, usually has a negative connotation, like the word homeless.
 
Rice: [00:02:58] But if you describe yourself while you're picking up recyclable containers as an ecological engineer, people are more inclined to be more sensitive and more impartial to what that entails. Now, often when people say, ”Hey, can man!” And I go, “Excuse me, sir, or ma’am, please don't call me that. I prefer that you call what I'm doing ecological engineering.” And they go, “How so?”
 
Rice: [00:03:31] And then I explain to them that as populations increase globally, as our technology makes us more dependent on fossil fuel—that's running out rapidly… When the search for these fossil fuels to fuel our industry makes us do processes like mountaintop removal to get coal, like—like disturbing the sea for off sea drilling for oil, how the pollutants really impact everyone, and how people, when they pick up recyclable containers, are putting this fossil fuel that has been extracted back into use again, to diminish the need or necessity to keep raping Mother Earth.
 
Rice: [00:04:33] So, in that sense, these people are more than canners, these people are ecological engineers, and what they're doing when you see them picking up these cans is more than just putting a nickel in their pocket. They're helping Mother Earth survive and diminishing the need for these companies to keep polluting our atmosphere and killing workers! I mean, look at the rate of coal workers—coal miners, that die of black lung. This is all in the pursuit of fossil fuel! Look, all the times that the oil rigs explode, and the oil spills and the damage that they cause to the ecology, all in the pursuit of fossil fuel.
 
BREAK
 
Lewis: [00:05:25] Talk to me a little bit more about the work of the canners. What do you do after you get the bottles?
 
Rice: [00:05:32] Well another reason why my two cousins—who I miss immensely, [laughs] and I used to—it used to humor us, but at the same time, it would teach... A lot of people when they first start becoming— on the road to becoming an ecological engineer and they… Then they are a canner, because they just pick up everything that looks like a can or a bottle.
 
Rice: [00:05:54] But it's more intricate than that. For instance, supermarkets are looking for an excuse not to accept your receptacles. So, if you mix a Budweiser product with a Coors product with a Heineken product, with an El Corona product, they'll go, “Oh! You've got to sort this out. I'm not taking this like this.”
 
Rice: [00:06:21] When the retailer submits the recyclables that they took in and paid the redeemer for, the distributor dispatches trucks to pick up these recyclable containers. Then the retailer is reimbursed, at a little over the five cents that the canner, or ecological engineer got, for handling costs. But! These drivers are instructed not to pick up—and don't pay for, what they call a mixed bag.
 
Rice: [00:07:02] So, after picking up these recyclable containers, that part of the labor, now you have to know how to sort them, before you submit them for redemption—to get your money. So, you have to sort by two criteria—by brand and size. Which means, I have to—hypothetically me, I have to sort Budweiser beer cans from Coors beer cans. I have to sort Pepsi soda cans from Coca-Cola.
 
Lewis: Are these cans and bottles that you have to do this for?
 
Rice: [00:07:49] Well, Prince who I told you never took a cart, he never picked up glass. Glass was too heavy… To him, glass was too heavy, and you didn't get any more value. Same nickel, but more burdensome.
 
Rice: [00:08:07] So, what I learned from Warren Prince was how to take the plastic containers that used to be just soda—the containers, two liters, three liters, Sprite, Coca-Cola—but now I'll get to that later. Water bottles are now also part of the plastic recyclable intake. But Warren Prince showed me how you could take the plastic container, step on it, compress it, put it in that bag, and that way you can increase the amount that you could hold—that one bag could hold. This is very creative! Because then when you get to the place where you redeeming it at, all you can do is use your lungs, and blow back through the recyclable container of plastic that you just stepped on, and guess what? Like a balloon, it inflates again.
 
Rice: [00:09:12] So, [smiles] when I see a rookie, [laughs] he got all these… It looks like a big bag of plastic water bottles, or soda containers. But they're not de-flated. He has what the po—this big bag! It might be three dollars, in that whole big bag. [Smiles] Where if he just, when he picked them up, stepped on them… Guess what, that bag could hold like ten dollars. But these are insights that lead to productivity. How you get the most out of your labor, your human capital. How do you get the most of that? You don't work hard, you work smart.
 
Lewis: [00:10:02] So, you had mentioned that Prince would start around eight in the morning. Then you mentioned later, about working all night. Did you guys work day and night? Or was there a  reason, or did something happen, where y'all started working at night?
 
Rice: [00:10:19] Well, because I was the rookie [laughs] Prince would work, like I said start… His day coincided with the time that the ferry started at Battery Park. That was his starting point. But I left off—from there, Prince had for years cultivated a relationship with all the custodians around NYU. And when he'd get up to West 4th Street, he would go around that whole NYU complex and get the recyclable containers. Fascinating thing—if he was a little slow getting from Battery Park to West 4th Street…  And when the custodians around the NYU complex—there's several buildings—when they didn't see him—who they nicknamed—they called Warren Prince “can man”, when they didn’t see can man out there, they would put the garbage out first, and bring the recyclables out later.
 
Rice: [00:11:30] And his competitors, mostly [laughs] the Asian old women, they would be so mad at the custodians for holding these recyclable containers for my cousin—can man, Warren Prince. But then… He had cultivated this relationship with the custodians around these five or six buildings around West 4th Street, NYU complex. That usually—sometimes, his load from Battery Park… And when we left there, we wouldn't even proceed uptown. We would get the train at West 4th Street and go out to Far Rockaway, and cash in at the Key Food out there at Beach 116th.
 
Lewis: Okay. And then what would you do?
 
Rice: [00:12:31] Then Prince would go home. Prince—when I first met Warren Prince, he never worked at night. He would be at home watching the sporting events. Eugene started in the evening. And because I was sharing Warren Prince's route _and _Eugene's route, to make my quota, to meet what I spend every day on cigarettes, beer, etc., etc. Oftentimes, I worked the morning shift with Prince, took a break. and then went back out with Eugene and worked the night shift too.
 
Rice: [00:13:11] So, I got to know the whole recycle [pauses] potential better. I knew when in the morning was a good time to use my time and when in the evening was the best productive to use my time. So, this—in college they teach you about time management? Well guess what? These so-called canners—ecological engineers—they could teach a lot of college students about how to manage time.
 
Lewis: [00:13:48] So, you mentioned your mail cart. Where did you keep your mail cart when you weren't canning, or being an ecological engineer?
 
Rice: You don't see many people now with the mail carts. So, right near Grand Central Station about two blocks north, I would say 44th Street somewhere… Anyway, there's a post office. And a lot of the postal workers come to work through that corridor, 42nd Street, Grand Central—they get the train, the Post Office is like two, three blocks away. So, I got to know a few of them, and they would see me with a lot of bags at first and they said, “Look, come by my place at eight-thirty, I'm going to give you a cart that'll make your work easier. But you got the promise that when you're not using it, put it back where I give it to you at.”
 
Rice: [00:14:43] So, empty is easy! When it's empty, you go to any post office. The mail cart got it right on it—property of U.S. Postal... So, you're not stealing it. You're appropriating it—and you always return it. You're not keeping it for your use, you're not trying to sell it to put money in your pocket... You're utilizing it! So, technically that keeps you from getting prosecuted by the federal government for stealing federal property. So, anyway, when my cart was empty, I would just go to the nearest post office and put it outside by the mailbox. When it's full, and I'm waiting for—to redeem the next day, I—like I alluded to earlier, but I guess it's worth re-emphasizing, I would sleep on top of it.
 
Lewis: [00:15:37] Where would you find…
 
Rice: I would take… I would go where there was security.
 
Lewis: Like what?
 
Rice: [00:15:45] Like in front of Grand Central Station, where there's always a police presence. I wouldn't go hide in some obscure alley or nothing. No no no. I would go right in front of Grand Central Station. I would take me, two, unused pieces of cardboard. And then I will put them on top of my recycle load. And then, I would get… I usually tried to get there before my friend Henry would—Henry the shoeshine guy would get off, my bedding would be stored with him. So, I would take… Then after I put the cardboard, separate—put the cardboard on top of the cans. I would go take my blankets, and I'd get on top of the cardboard and pull the blankets up over me.
 
Rice: [00:16:38] And when security came in the morning, because Grand Central closes from two to five… So, when security come in the morning to open the door again at five, they would shake—they would shake me—they would shake the cart. And then I would get up, go get my coffee and stuff, before I’d push my cart to fifty-second to forty-second, ten blocks, ten blocks up and about five blocks west, to this place formerly known as We Can.
 
Lewis: [00:17:13] Mm-hmmm. All right thank you Jean. When did… When did it start to change where canners didn't have as many redemption centers in Manhattan? And what was that like—how did that affect the ecological engineers and the canners, and folks that depended on those places?
 
Rice: [00:17:38] Well, God bless his soul… When Dinkins was the Mayor, two things about his tenure that affected my life. Number one, he got it instituted—the Civilian Complaint Review Board against a lot of political pressure. Once the Civilian Complaint Review Board was in place, homeless people on the street were still subjected to, too much discriminatory, selective enforcement, too much police abuse. But it's still diminished somewhat after the establishment of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, number one. That's the number one thing I remember about Dinkins’s tenure.
 
Rice: [00:18:31] Number two, during Dinkins tenure, he was sensitive to economic justice. He [pauses] had an alliance with this Jewish philanthropist named Guy—I don't remember his last name. But Guy started out being curious. He would follow canners around to see how they went about doing their work. And then he got Dinkins to agree to a—to provide a space that wasn't being used on 52nd Street, a lot. And then he raised enough money, Guy did, to procure a used trailer. He put that used trailer at the [pauses] east most part of the lot, the eastern corner of the lot. He had in there… He got corporations to donate computers… Set up a computer bank inside the trailer...
 
Rice: [00:20:00] Then through Dinkins, input, and alliance... He allied himself with various City and State politicians, to the point that instead of the cumbersome process that the supermarkets presented at the redemption end of a ecological engineer canner's day, We Can provided this kind of service. You went into the parking lot. There was a person there to assist you in sorting, by size and brand. Once that happened, they provided bags—you would take a black magic marker and you would put the amount in the bag. You would write that amount on the outside of the bag.
 
Rice: [00:21:00] Then, you went from that part of the parking lot to the other part of the parking lot where the trailer computer apparatus was. And we had a counter, who would count—and the plant foreman would stand there monitoring it. Then he would give you a voucher, a ticket, with a number on it. You took that ticket and got on line right outside the window of the trailer. And then the person who had computer skills inside the trailer, would print out a [pauses]—no you got a receipt then the guy in the trailer would give you a voucher with what that amount translated to in dollars and cents. You could take that voucher to any State authorized check cashing facility and redeem and get cash.
 
Rice: [00:22:06] Sadly, when Dinkins was no longer our Mayor, that process no longer exists. It's long been my dream to re-institute that process, because in all due fairness to the supermarkets and retailers—their primary business is not redemption. They sell food stuffs. So, most of their usable space is dedicated to inventory! One of my first jobs, at fourteen years old, was working in a grocery store for Mr. Beanstock, so I know something about storage. Now, you don't wait till you sell out of a product halfway through that, if it's a fast-going article, you put your order in. So, you always need storage space.
 
Rice: [00:23:03] So, as I said before, these distributors, they only come out once a week. Or to some stores, twice a month—to pick up these recyclable materials that the retailer has already paid the redeemer for. So, there's a premium on storage space. So, supermarkets have a dilemma! I mean, how much space can you relegate to recyclable containers and risk not having enough space for inventory?  
 
Rice: [00:23:41] But We Can was created for the sole purpose of recyclable container redemption. So, all of their storage space went to counting, paying the redeemers, and holding on to the supply until the distributor sent the truck out to retrieve it. And the tie in with the political end, where you could take a voucher, printed out by a computer, to any check cashing facility—state licensed, and get your money. I think that was a concept worthy of replication.
 
Rice: [00:24:30] And one of my dreams, and I've shared it with my sister Lynn Lewis, is to establish, on some of these empty lots that Picture the Homeless has counted, similar—a facility to the one that I worked for, for over two years with Guy.
 
Lewis: [00:24:50] So, Jean, can you please tell me how many years you worked as an ecological engineer?
 
Rice: Roughly, about a decade and a half.
 
Lewis: Okay.
 
Rice: [00:25:05] It's really ironic how these pieces came together. Because, right after my Aunt was tragically murdered, I had this seven-room apartment—that… Was awful being by myself. But two of my long-lost cousins, showed up in my block. Eugene Gadson, from Charleston, South Carolina. Warren Prince, from Boston, Massachusetts. [Laughs] And they were both involved in canning, i.e., ecological engineering, and they got me involved.
 
Rice: [00:25:50] First, they took me on their route. One day I would go with Warren Prince. He started at Battery Park, his route, Battery Park... And then when the ferry stopped running over to Ellis Island from Battery Park, Warren Prince with his little bowlegs would walk up Broadway—make his way up Broadway and Sixth Avenue to Madison Square Garden and from Madison Square Garden, he would make his way to this place then, called We Can, that's no longer in existence.
 
Rice: [00:25:42] But We Can was a nonprofit organization that I later got to work for... During the Dinkins administration, We Can was subsidized by the city, and they had a lot on fifty-something street. But anyway, that was Warren Prince's route. He would start every morning, coincide his timing with the time that the ferry at Battery Park started to transport people.
 
Lewis: What time was that?
 
Rice: [00:27:10] I don't remember exactly, but I know it must have been like eight or nine, I know it was before ten.
 
Lewis: Okay.
 
Rice: But he would get up at six o'clock in the morning and prepare himself!
 
Lewis: What did he have to do to prepare himself?
 
Rice: [00:27:23] He made sure that he had enough bags to hold the cans and bottles. Warren Prince—it's like leadership—him and Eugene had a different style. Eugene never moved without a shopping cart and Prince never used a shopping cart. You're always amazed how he could tie three bags together over one shoulder, three bags together over the other shoulder.
 
Lewis: Wow.
 
Rice: [00:28:03] I mean if you could just see a picture of Warren Prince... I'm five [foot] eight [inches], he's shorter than me, and he carried those bags so long that, that—his legs were already bowlegged but [laughter] because of carrying that, his legs became more bowed, from carrying three bags on one shoulder, three bags over the other shoulder, repeatedly. So, I was privileged [laughs] to get back to your question, to work one day with him—Battery Park, straight up Eighth Avenue, sometimes going over to Sixth and back to Eighth. To… We got to Penn Station. Then when we got to Penn Station, we take a break. And then we would proceed, continuing up Broadway to fifty something street, and watching the time all the time, meticulously—to get to this place called We Can, before they close.
 
Rice: [00:29:14] And then, Eugene Gadson would start his route from 14th Street and Sixth Avenue, and then he would go to all the housing—there's a couple housing complexes on the west side, like around Ninth Avenue. I don't know the name of the projects, but anyway, he would go there, and he knew when the housing people did their recycles. He knew that the black bin—garbage bin had trash, and the blue bin had recyclable containers. He knew when the custodians would fill up the blue bins. He knew when Sanitation emptied the blue bins, and he would get there between the time that the custodians/maintenance filled the blue bins, but prior to the time that Sanitation came and emptied them.
 
Rice: [00:30:23] So, a lot of times I would get tired. And I'll say, “Eugene, let's take a break!” He'd go, [imitates voice] “Take a break after! We got to catch these two bins!” So—so, most of the time when people see canners, i.e., ecological engineers they think that they just lackadaisically walk down the street. A lot of amateurs do—walk down the street and go from garbage can to garbage can but through people like Prince and Eugene, we laugh at those ecological engineers, and we call them rookies, or novice. Because the real ecological engineers operate in a much more disciplined way. They have timetables. For instance, on the East Side's recycle day is not the same as the West Side's recycle day. So hypothetically, if you're walking on the west side on a day that the east side is putting out recyclable containers, you missed the boat!
 
Lewis: [00:31:29] Right. Do you—do you remember… Could you tell me any times that [pauses] either stores where you guys tried to redeem, or police, or just bystanders would make your jobs harder?
 
Rice: [00:31:51] Retailers were always a problem on the redemption end of this work. I mean if John Doe and Jane Doe public could imagine that most of the time the recycle—output happens late night, early morning. For instance, what time does restaurants close? Always in the evening, late evening. What time do concerts occur? Most of the time, after work, late evening! Well, sporting events and concerts, those are where the bulk of recyclable containers occur.
 
Rice: [00:32:44] So, if you can imagine, a homeless person having the discipline and the wherewithal to start at say, eight o'clock in the evening, and go around Madison Square Garden and catch the people coming into the hockey game, drinking beer, disposing of the beer cans, afterwards—waiting for the people that clean up Madison Square Garden to put those recyclables out, and beating Sanitation to them. And then—you're talking most of these concerts and sporting events happen like between eight, nine o'clock at night. So, you're talking like, eleven… What time do the restaurants close? Like around midnight. So, I'm just trying to paint a picture of… These people are up all night.
 
Rice: [00:33:42] Now, after procuring—or acquiring, this whole load of recyclable containers, they have to guard them diligently. So, I used to sleep on top of mine, in a mail cart. And if somebody took my—my—the fruits of my labor, they had to move me first.
 
Rice: [00:34:05] So, for security reason, I slept on… But the point is, waiting for the retailer to open in the morning, so I could eat breakfast... So, at that time, I could have ten dollars… If I wanted to take a break, I could go to one of these SRO's, pay ten dollars, I could go in and wash up, lay down in a cubicle… So, things like that. The homeless element of ecological engineers, they depend on that.
 
Rice: [00:34:42] And it is so frustrating and so unjust—after that, eight o'clock in the morning comes, and now you take your load that you picked up that night, the night before—and you push that to the nearest supermarket—Associated, Pathmark, Food Emporium, one of them. You get there, and the store manager comes out and says, “Oh! Move that junk from in front of my store. You're blocking my paying customers.” Number one, so, you comply, and you move it to the side. Then you go back to the same guy, and you say, “But sir, when, when can I redeem these recyclables?” He goes, “You have to wait until my delivery boy delivers groceries to all of paying customers, before we have time to deal with you and your garbage. I'm going to send a guy out to count it for you, because I don't want you in my store, smelling like that.”
 
Rice: [00:35:51] That kind of—treatment… That's the reward—how you're demeaned, humiliated, after you put in that hard nights labor. Now mind you, our brothers, or sisters that work for the Sanitation department, they go through the same garbage. They smell the same way! But Sanitation workers are not humiliated, dehumanized the way that ecological engineers, i.e., candles are, although they smell the same and do the same labor!
 
Rice: [00:36:33] However! Here's the big difference! Guess what? The recyclable containers that the Sanitation department gets, either goes into a city incinerator, or a barge—to be transported to a neighboring Sates landfill for which New York City taxpayers paying for the transportation to use the other States landfill. And guess what?! When erosion due to climate occurs—guess what? The emissions from that landfill, goes into the air—toxic waste. Isn't it much more in the common good of the global population for those same recyclable containers to be put back into the process and made into more recyclable containers—again, renewable energy? That's why I think that the term ecological engineer, is more accurate than canning.
 
Lewis: Alright, cool. Thank you, Jean.
 
BREAK
 
Lewis: [00:37:54] Jean, you were one of the founders of the Picture the Homeless canning campaign. And so, could you talk to me a little bit about what the campaign was about, and how it went and who was involved and what you think we achieved, or didn't achieve?
 
Rice: [00:38:14] Well, previously I mentioned in this interview about the process of ecological engineering—retrieving and redeem—retrieving and redeeming recyclable containers. So, as I mentioned—the Dinkins Administration… Well after Mayor Dinkins left, Giuliani came in. And under Giuliani we had criminalization of homeless New Yorkers, through these Quality-of-Life offenses. So previously unmonitored social behavior was criminalized under Giuliani.
 
Rice: [00:39:08] And then, after Giuliani left, Bloomberg came, and in addition to the criminalization of homelessness and redeemers/canners, who are disproportionately people of color and disproportionately homeless
 
Rice: [00:39:31] We had the economic exploitation under Bloomberg, Wherein, Bloomberg—pure business, profit motive driven—he called all the Department heads in when he was elected Mayor, and he wanted to know what departments were in the red—meaning deficits, and what departments were in the blue, meaning surplus.
 
Rice: [00:39:59] The Department of Sanitation was one of the ones in the red—deficit. And one of the primary causes of that was the cost of—getting rid of—disposing of, glass, plastic, and paper bulk. So, Bloomberg's solution was—if we take away the incentive, the nickel that these people get when redeeming, we'll rescind the Better Bottle Bill. That will save sanitation money. That was his solution.
 
Rice: [00:40:43] At that time, as I said earlier, my first cousin Warren Prince used to go around the NYU complex. Well one of the evenings, as he went around the Southernmost part of Washington Square Park and that part of the NYU complex, he passed by Judson Memorial Church.
 
Rice: [00:41:10] Coincidentally, the co-founder of Picture the Homeless, Mr. Anthony Williams, was standing outside taking a smoke break—outside Judson Memorial Church. So, he saw my cousin Warren Prince coming down the street, with the six bags [laughs] of cans, threw over his shoulder and Anthony goes, "Hey can man! Let me ask you a question. What do you think about the Mayor's proposal to rescind the Bottle Bill, and you guys not getting the nickel no more?" 
 
Rice: [00:41:48] So, my… That caught my cousin's interest. He put his six bags down, [laughs] and he said, "I think it's a bad policy." And they talked for about a half hour, and then Anthony Williams told my cousin that if he would come back next Wednesday, to a meeting, whatever cans that he had, he would let him store the cans for an hour or two, while he attended this meeting. 
 
Rice: [00:42:22] At that time, I was room-mates with Warren Prince. We had moved… I had lost my apartment in Manhattan, and we had moved to Halsey Street, in with Prince’s uncle by marriage. And we shared living space in Brooklyn, at Halsey Street, right off of the subway station, Kingston, and Throop.
 
Rice: [00:42:46] So, my cousin Warren Prince came home that evening and told me about this exciting group that he met, that was fighting for us to keep our nickels in our pocket and that during his conversation with our co-founder Mr. Anthony Williams, he happened to mention that his cousin Jean Rice, yours truly, had taken some college courses in the area of public administration and criminal justice administration and he thought that this new organization, Picture the Homeless, could use some of that expertise in their campaign for social, economic and criminal justice.
 
Rice: [00:42:35] So, Warren—Warren impressed Anthony, and he said, "Well you gotta get your cousin to one of our meetings." So, for [smiles] three weeks in a row, my first Cousin Warren Prince came home and bugged me about this organization called Picture the Homeless. Finally, to shut him up, I agreed to go to one of these meetings.
 
Rice: [00:44:05] And we left our apartment, mid-day on a Wednesday. We met Mr. Anthony Williams, who just had got paid [smiles], who took us to the bar, and introduced me to Black and Tans, prior to the general meeting that occurred every Wednesday at that time, in the gymnasium of Judson Memorial Church. [Laughs]
 
Rice: [00:45:43] But I got drafted onto that committee, and although I don't see Emily as much as I see Gina and Lynn, but I'm sure wherever she is, she carries some of my spirit, as I carry some of hers. So, that's how I got introduced to Picture the Homeless, through the attempt to abolish the Better Bottle Bill by then Mayor Bloomberg. Had he never ventured into that negative policy making venture, I might not have never met Picture the Homeless.
 
Lewis: [00:46:30] Thank you Jean. And so, that was the civil rights committee. What were the circumstances around the formation of the canner's committee? 
 
Rice: [00:46:41] Well, as I stated… The attempt by this Mayor to abandon the portion of the Better Bottle Bill that required that every retailer redeem—at minimum, at minimum, two-hundred-forty units—that comes out to twelve dollars. Minimum requirement! And then if you had a big load, like a convention or something happening, you just gave whatever supermarket you sought to redeem at, two days’ notice, and then the amount that they take is unlimited. The law! Picture the Homeless didn't make the law. The ecological engineering community/canners didn't make the law.
 
Rice: [00:47:42] City Council of New York City passed the Better Bottle Bill. However, it had a state component. Much like the Fourteenth Amendment has in the City Charter, a City provision, and the State Constitution has the same Fourteenth Amendment assurance—due process, equal protection of the law… So, the Better Bottle Bill was two tiered also. I don't know why our former Mayor didn't know that you cannot repeal a State law, by City ordinance. State law supersedes City. So eventually, when he—he meaning Bloomberg, was embarking upon—this, this… This abolishing this process of redeeming recyclable containers. 
 
Rice: [00:48:55] So, Giuliani and Bloomberg never gave the ecological engineering community space, like Dinkins did, as a... I think that's what you call a tax abatement? We never got that, after Dinkins left. So, We Can went out of business. So now, the ecological engineering community had to depend on the retailers—to redeem their recyclable containers. In the flux, independent operators like A.B. whatever that was—they popped up. But it was like—sporadic, it wasn't institutionalized. So, they went out of business.
 
Rice: [00:49:58] But—but to cut through all that, what hap—the end result was that—during that time, Picture the Homeless organized to make sure that two things happened. That the Better Bottle Bill was not terminated. So, we wanted the Better Bottle Bill to stay in place—point one. Point two, we wanted to streamline, streamline, and institutionalize the redeeming end of the retrieval apparatus—process, for people that worked so hard to pick up these recyclable containers.
 
Rice: [00:50:57] So, around those two objectives, Picture the Homeless provided—the space, the leadership, and the technology to mount a campaign around those two objectives. I don't know if we would ever achieve that without an organization like Picture the Homeless. Through that—campaign, I truly learned that those who society at large might call, “the least amongst us”, the marginalized, the criminalized… We don't have to be apathetic. We've got power, if we just use it. Picture the Homeless taught me that, because look what happened!
 
Rice: [00:51:49] When adverse weather conditions came, and I’m—me and my two cousins were still part of the recyclable container canning community. So, we firsthand saw, you know, dead wintertime, feet frozen beyond—below thirty-two degrees… Hands, below thirty-two degrees. 
 
Rice: [00:53:16] We stand outside a retail establishment, such as Associated or Food Emporium—and the management of these retail establishments saw that—the weather, as an ally, "Make them stand out there long enough, they'll get cold enough, they'll go away!" And from our perspective, we said, “We put this much into it, we may as well endure it.” But anyway, often times they would just leave it to the delivery boy that they hired, to count our recyclable containers. And the delivery boy would write a receipt or go to the cashier and tell them how much we had—but unbearable sometimes, especially in the Wintertime. So, and still there was this effort by Bloomberg to rescind the Better Bottle Bill.  
 
Rice: [00:53:24] So, sometimes we would get impatient standing outside, and we would stop a cop—and we would go, “Hey! If we were disruptive and abusive, the manager would call the police to make us leave.” So, now the managers refusing to uphold the Better Bottle Bill and we should show the cop a copy, and the cop would tell us, much to our dismay—that, “The NYPD could not enforce the Better Bottle Bill.” So, my cousins and I [pauses] talked after work. “Well, who is responsible for enforcing this?! If the City Council made it a law, somebody must have the authority to enforce the law!”
 
Rice: [00:54:17] So, we found out that at the State level, the Attorney General of the State… So, we held another meeting and then part of the meeting, we designated part of the meeting to—Economic Justice. So, we formed a semi-committee, called the Economic Justice committee. In that—in that setting, I was privileged to meet Brother Charley Heck, Gregory, Red, Charles from Saint Mary’s Church. God was bringing all this together, through this movement—these powerful brothers! Charles at Saint Mary's, one of Kooperkamp's most devout disciples. [Laughs] Oh, what a dynamic guy!
 
Rice: [00:55:19] But—from interacting with them, we communicated to the State Attorney General, [laughs] then Eliot Spitzer, and with the aid of people like Reverend Earl Kooperkamp—that kind of… We met with Charlie Rangel's staff. They didn't want no redemption centers, he said, "My constituents don't want that here!" And "We can't make the supermarkets…” But anyway—State Attorney General Spitzer, he delegated two people from his staff, to come to our humble office, on 116th Street [laughs], right over Cuchifrito’s, and meet with Picture the Homeless delegation!
 
Rice: [00:56:11] And to me, [smiles] with this textbook knowledge about public administration and criminal justice administration and I swallowed and institutionalized some of the negative about, “the homeless, the marginalized and people who didn't deserve help…” And I was appalled… That these people had the power to cause the State Attorney General, the highest-ranking law enforcement official in the state of New York, to send two members of his staff to talk to us about the dilemma around recycling containers—blew my mind!
 
Rice: [00:56:53] But, I said—if we got that much power over this issue, we can use that power in other issues. I learned—that was a learning experience. And then! They reported—these people, they went back and reported to the Attorney General. Then they met with us again. This time we had complaints! 
 
Rice: [00:57:19] The first time they met with us, they said, “Okay, prove this.” So, they gave us a quota... My beloved organization gave us the space, where we printed out forms… Gregory and Red outside of Pathmark on 125th Street, Eugene, and Warren Prince—up and down around Madison Square Garden… We collected these complaints.
 
Rice: [00:57:52] Then when we had the quota—over the quota—contacted State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer again. “We got the quota.” He sent—the same two people—with a lawyer this time [laughs], three of them! From the State Attorney General Office, collected our complaints. Then they said, “You'll hear from us.”
 
Rice: [00:58:18] So, we were saying after the meeting [smiles] when we debriefed, “Just another politician, blowing smoke up our butt, we ain't gonna hear from this guy. Why would the top cop of the state be interested in the plight of people that walk around picking up recyclable containers?!”
 
Rice: [00:58:37] Two weeks later—much to our surprise, State Attorney General Spitzer had called three major supermarkets to a table for a conference—wherein… He sent us a synopsis of the meeting, and he admonished these executives from Associated, from Pathmark, from Food Emporium, that, “If they didn't change their policy about how they redeem these recyclable containers, they would be fined a thousand dollars a day, per person!” And he would see to it, “Because nobody in New York is above the law.”
 
Rice: [00:59:26] I was blown away! So was brother Gregory, [laughs] Red, we were all surprised at our own power. And I think my leaders at Picture the homeless, Lynn Lewis—I don't think that she even imagined that that would happen like that. 
 
Rice: [00:59:46] But anyway, as a result… You know, we made jobs for this company called Tomra… Because we saw how this mandate, when it struck at the pockets—the profit, of these major supermarkets, they changed their policy. [Smiles] They hired a company called Tomra, to put reverse vending machines outside of their facility—establishment, where they were programmed, these machines were programmed, to count every recyclable material—container, that was inserted, and to issue receipts. And then this receipt was taken to the cashier at these retail establishments, and the cashier was mandated to give whatever monetary value the receipt showed.
 
Rice: [01:00:52] That was an improvement. It wasn’t as great as the We Can process where every State authorized check cashing place, could take it. It wasn't that flexible. You had to cash it at the same place that gave you the ticket. But it was an improvement over what happened after Dinkins was replaced by Bloomberg and Giuliani. And then as a bonus! The culmination of our effort to reaffirm the New York City/New York State Better Bottle Bill—plastic containers got added which [smiling] increased the revenue—because prior to that, water bottles was exempt from redemption.
 
Lewis: Alright, thank you Jean.