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Residents of the Eastern District are continuing to fight the Department of Design and Construction (DDC) and the New York City Department of Parks over the Eastern Coastal Disaster Prevention Project (ESCR). They claimed that after the temporary temporary construction issue, they claimed to be illegal construction. Restraining order.

In the afterglow on the last day of December 10, they clung to the barbed wire fence-fingertips connected to the net-and begged to stop construction. Since the early morning of December 10th, activists and local residents have been trying to prevent the beleaguered flood protection plan from resuming, resulting in Harriet Hirshorn (Harriet Hirshorn) and Alice O'Malley (Alice O'Malley) two Arrested that morning. The battle continued on the second day of December 11. When the worker brought the chain saw to the tree, another arrested one. The sawdust flew into the air and the trees piled up in the park.

Locals said that their protest was not a simple act of resistance, but a matter of life and death, a battle for which they seemed willing to take risks. 

ESCR is a plan that has stalled and restarted. Several elected officials, the DDC, and the New York City Parks Department stated that the plan will protect the area from coastal flooding while also improving the area through new amenities. The mayor touted ESCR as one of the city’s most ambitious climate restoration projects, but many people who call lower Manhattan their home have a different view, believing that this work is destructive, dangerous and will eventually plunder the land.

For many years, locals and the city government have been arguing about this $1.4 billion plan to rebuild about 57 acres of coastal park from East 25th Street to Montgomery Street. The problem started in 2018, when the ESCR project was chosen instead of the less invasive project that park activists call.

The motto "Every story has two aspects" has never been more pertinent. Every official statement issued by the city promotes the proposed benefits of the renovated Park Avenue behind the construction, and a local resident felt that the air they breathed was being attacked.

"It feels violent, it feels purposeful, it feels like an attack on this community, it feels like an attack on the browns and blacks in this community," activist Emily Johnson told amNewYork Metro. 

With this in mind, the park’s advocacy organization Donghe Park Action and Thousands of People and Thousands of Trees protesters issued a temporary restraining order on December 8, halting the work of the park for the second time. However, this did not last long.

"When the temporary restraining order was issued on Wednesday, they stopped working. They stopped that day. Today, they decided to reject the temporary restraining order and resume the destruction. They attacked three different areas of the park at the same time. With a group of workers who defied the court Together. The temporary restraining order comes from the New York State Supreme Court. The city is actively rejecting the law, and they are despising," Johnson said.

On Friday, Johnson and dozens of people raised a copy of the restraining order to officials of the New York Police Department. They tried to stop the advocates from stopping their work and pressed the documents on the fence of the site. All attempts at communication were ignored. It's not just members of protest groups who say they are shocked by the building. Local resident Peter Shapiro stated that he does not consider himself a member of these two groups, but he does believe that ESCR is not the correct plan for the community.

"That's why we need a meaningful resiliency plan. I was here during Sandy and I passed it voluntarily. They changed their plan time and time again. The initial community-based plan was just to build a seawall, In fact, the idea of ​​restoring the park was not even part of their conversation," Shapiro said. "There is a cheaper and more sustainable plan."

Some residents also accused the redesign of the park as a gateway to gentrification and soaring rents. Social media has also been responding to the controversial work carried out by locals all night long. One user described this as "the saddest day of my 22 years in the East Village."

Although those who opposed the construction believed that the work violated the law, a representative of DDC had a different view.

“The city has reviewed the court’s written order, and we don’t think it will prevent us from continuing this vital disaster prevention project. The 100,000 New Yorkers living in the project area can’t wait to wait for the storm to recover. The court has made it. Decisions that benefited us-twice-we still believe that our strong legal position will enable us to provide the protection they deserve," a spokesperson told amNewYork Metro.

Construction of the Donghe Park Amphitheater will begin on December 12.