Cassandra Taylor: Our outreach with the community has been helpful during this particular time. Those relationships that we’ve built and really nurtured with the kids, their families, local people within our neighborhood, solidifying those bonds over the pandemic really helped us deal with the overwhelming changes in demographics that are happening right now in our part of the Hudson Valley.
Jennifer Ching: Hi, I’m Jenn Ching, executive director of North Star Fund, and welcome to our podcast Meeting the Moment. We’ve been supporting grassroots organizing in the five boroughs of New York City for over 40 years. Several years ago, we started thinking about what it would look like to expand our work outside New York City. Our reasons were not about empire building, but really about demand. We had had a lot of requests to support groups who were working outside the city, and as a community-driven fund, we knew the decision would have to come from and be in partnership with community members. And so we had a process and ultimately North Star Fund decided to expand into the Hudson Valley.
This year, in 2022, we are celebrating our fifth anniversary of supporting grassroots work in the rural, suburban, and urban communities north of the city. We are still learning so much about the Hudson Valley, and we have now given grants to dozens of emerging power building groups working on a wide range of issues. Our grantees and local organizers are part of our Community Funding Committee, and they’re helping us design and build our strategy. I’m excited for you to hear our Hudson Valley program coordinator, Gabriela Quintanilla, interview one of our grantees doing some of what I would say is less conventional organizing. Gabriella herself is an organizer, and before she came to North Star Fund, she was a founding member of one of our first Hudson Valley grantees, ADELANTE Student Voices.
In this episode, she interviews the Underground Center. Underground Center is building a movement for social justice change, using a bottom-up organizing approach and empowering people to create economic and social power through mutual aid efforts and interconnectedness with the land. We’ve heard in earlier episodes how the pandemic has exposed and also deepened structural inequities. Nowhere is this more visible than in the Hudson Valley. Underground Center has a great analysis about the extractive nature of the relationship between New York City and the Hudson Valley. And these are lessons for all of us at North Star Fund too, as we navigate being a new community foundation in the region and our commitment to center the voices, needs, and leadership of local grassroots organizers. Let’s listen to how Underground Center in Hudson Valley organizers are meeting the moment.
Gabriela Quintanilla: I’m Gabriela Quintanilla, and I’m the Hudson Valley program coordinator at North Star Fund. For this episode of Meeting the Moment, we’re talking to Underground Center in Saugerties, New York. I’m interviewing Cassandra Taylor, who is the curriculum coordinator at Underground Center, and Chase Randell, who is the program director. So thank you both for being here. I want to ask you about some of what you’ve been doing since the summer of 2020, when we have seen so much hardship, but also so many possibilities. Can you share a couple of things you’re most proud of that the Underground Center has been able to do since last summer?
Cassandra Taylor: Well, thank you, Gabriela. We’re really happy to be on the podcast. Yeah, since COVID, we’ve had to, like many groups, kind of revamp our programing. We usually offer a summer internship for college students where they actually get to stay on site with us and really get an intensive training in what we do, and we had to sort of revamp that and work with students that were a little bit more local so they didn’t have to stay on site with us, but could come back and forth. The Boys and Girls Club, that’s kind of like our local hub, one of the groups that we work with quite a bit, they also stopped programing. So the way that we ran our garden program in town had to kind of be modified. Instead of working with the really young kids we work with older kids who are a little bit more responsible in experience with masking and social distancing, instead of the little bitty ones that we work with. Yeah. So we’ve, you know, had to adjust. But our programing kept going even through the pandemic.
Chase Randell: And we also took the time, where we always find ourselves so busy doing the work that we don’t have time to really share the knowledge that we’re coming up with through our collaboration with the local youth. So we took the time over the summer of 2020 to publish some e-books about our method of subsistence farming. That was a big thing that we had a chance to actually write and document what we do. So that was something that we normally wouldn’t get to do that we are proud of. We’re currently working with a student at Bard College, translating all the e-books into Spanish, so we’re going to publish that on our website and try to push that out. A few dozen folks got back to us saying they started gardens, and a lot of people were really interested in collaborating with our free food program where we make gardens on local plots of land to share with the Boys and Girls Club. So I think it had some impact.
Gabriela Quintanilla: A part of the reason we wanted to hear from you is that we were working with you before the pandemic and you’ve always talked about sustainability in the Hudson Valley and the particularly unsustainable relationship between the Hudson Valley and New York City. What about your work on sustainability before 2020 prepared you for the times we’re in now?
Cassandra Taylor: Our outreach with the community has really been helpful during this particular time. Those relationships that we’ve built and really nurtured with the kids, their families, local people within our neighborhood, solidifying those bonds over the pandemic really helped us deal with the overwhelming changes in demographics that are happening right now in our part of the Hudson Valley. It’s been a really big, big help, at least having that grounding force with the students that we help, their families, the institutions that we work with, in the middle of such upheaval right now.
Chase Randell: Yeah, I think we’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this, these kind of patterns that have repeated themselves over basically the last few hundred years in Saugerties, since the 1700s. Basically, there’s a similar trend that keeps happening where the relationship to the city and the Catskill Mountains, where we are this extractive relationship for industry and then also a site where basically there’s this economy that is built around turning this land into a playground for wealthy folks from the city. And that’s happened if you look back all the way to the 1700s, there’s these ebbs and flows of industry that comes and goes, whether it’s the blue stone industry, the fur industry, IBM, or now there’s actually almost the nonprofit industrial complex is bringing a lot of money into this region too. And everyone kind of shapes around those forces and then they leave. And the other kind of more sturdy economic force here is wealthy folks that come, and there is this kind of service industry around maintaining their properties and building their homes and all these contractors and all these things and house cleaning–my father made a living here, maintaining people’s property from the wealthy people from the city. And these trends keep continuing.
So we’ve really been working on how can we create, instead of repeating these patterns, how can we create an alternative where the folks that are caught in the middle, specifically the people we work with are poor folks in the area and Black and brown children that are kind of caught in the crossfire, and trying to figure out how can we create a more stable economic system in a relationship to land and housing and collective infrastructure that can kind of weather that storm? We can predict that this money is going to come and go. So how can we create something that is more stable? So that’s what we’ve been working on, is working with local people to build gardens and housing and different types of infrastructure that doesn’t rely on those forces, doesn’t rely on that influx of money, whether it be from industry or wealthy folks, whims.
Gabriela Quintanilla: Because those folks can change their mind at any moment, right? As we’ve seen throughout history in the Hudson Valley, they take their stuff and leave a region unstable. Can you tell me a little bit more about how you’re building housing?
Cassandra Taylor: The housing issue right now in the Hudson Valley is really, really precarious. There are a lot of unhoused folks renting and trying to buy a house is nearly impossible unless you have a lot of money. And so we always had been experimenting with alternative ways of creating housing for folks, from tiny houses to natural building, smaller homes that are almost like shed-like, you know, just really experimenting with that. And with the housing crisis, there’s been a lot of talk about affordable housing. That’s been a big thing within the area, especially in Saugerties and Kingston. But the materials and the way people want to build and the price is just–it’s still unsustainable. It’s really unbelievable to talk about how to help people on one hand, and yet the way to build and the materials that you use are still environmentally not cool and still are costing poor people a lot of money. So we’ve really been pushing ourselves with natural building and really working with using local materials, creating earthen floors or cordwood building to try and show people that natural building can be beautiful. There’s this idea that natural building is somehow something, you know, it’s like it’s a class thing. People turn up their nose and stuff. But to show people how beautiful it is–.
Gabriela Quintanilla: Or not as effective.
Cassandra Taylor: Yeah, it’s not as good or something. And it’s like, well, indigenous people have been living this way for a very long time, and it’s been beautiful and sustainable, it’s not new and it’s just as relevant, if not more so now. And to be able to provide a model of that for people and really challenge local powers that be and–we’re kind of the thorn in their side, where it’s like yeah, come join our committee to create affordable housing. And we’re like, well how is this affordable? Like what cloud are you on where you think this is affordable? And look at these materials that you’re using, it’s not sustainable.
Chase Randell: We’re taking a multi-pronged approach, which a lot of–we’re not going to give a satisfying answer, because the real change we think is it has to be broad and has to be multi-pronged. So we’re working on a few things at once. For the last 10 years, like Cassandra was saying, we’ve experimented with different types of housing, building styles, different types of housing arrangements, different types of land arrangements. And there’s actually a tradition in this area going back a long time of people turning barns into homes and living in them, and kind of handmade structures that cut across demographic and political spectrum. So there is this kind of grassroots culture already of people making handmade “vernacular buildings” they call it. So we’re trying to move out of the shadows with that and formalize that approach. So we’re doing a few things. Over the last 10 years, we’ve built about a dozen different structures that are super insulated, extremely well built for storms. We use timber framing a lot and underground structures, and we’ve really been working on making them beautiful and really well built. So by any standard, like insulation value, airflow, air quality, will be above and beyond what any kind of code would be. So we’re really working on creating this, what do you call it, like a catalog of different options that use natural materials. So, it sounds hippie-dippyish, but a big thing is like, we want to have a non-exploitive relationship to the systems that sustain us. So how can we build homes that don’t require oil shipped across–you know, a lot of “sustainable buildings” require tons of synthetic insulation. So we’re like, that’s not an option for us. So we’ve created all these different options. We’ve created this catalog of natural building that’s appropriate to the area, and we’re excited to really share that.
The other thing we’re working on is a land easement. It’s almost like subdividing the land, but not a subdivision. It’s a land easement. So even if they sell the property, it’s still their capital. They can still make money. They could still leave it to their kids. But that little piece of the property that we build a house on is protected and can’t be sold off. So that’s something we’re doing a lot of research, we’re collaborating with the Kingston Land Trust, on thinking about that question. And the last thing we’re doing with housing is just simply giving people places to live, kind of off the books where we’re housing a family right now that’s an awesome couple with a young kid. And we’re just, you know, we’re trying to cut through the excuses and the bureaucracy and just figuring out how can we house folks. And we’re also working with a local, someone who–the stars just totally aligned–someone right down the road from us was able to get a piece of property through the county auction for like twelve hundred bucks. So we’ve been working with her to build this tiny timber frame structure that she wants to turn into some kind of women, Black-owned business. So we’ve got a lot of different prongs out there to try to see what sticks.
Gabriela Quintanilla: Well, I absolutely love this holistic approach that you’ve got going on of thinking about sustainable housing options, thinking about the importance of land, and in acknowledging that this is not something that the folks that were not born with wealth or don’t have wealth, they don’t have access to land. And I think that’s very important to highlight. And how you’re also being thoughtful about the ways in which you want to move forward to make sure that folks do have access to land. When you think about the crisis that we have been in, the extended crisis because we’re almost going on to two years of this–and when I say this, I mean the pandemic–what is the biggest lesson you’re taking from this time?
Cassandra Taylor: Oh, goodness. One of the biggest lessons that I’m taking from it, as an educator, it has really changed my view, or reinforce my view, of what is important for young people to learn right here and right now. Working as a public school teacher and then also being an educator with the UGC, wearing both of those hats is more and more difficult because I do feel with the public school system, at least the way it is right now, we are doing young people a disservice. We are just in general when it comes to climate change and how it impacts us, we really need to focus on getting kids the knowledge and the tools that they need to survive these shifts, population shifts, climate changes. Populations are going to change. More folks are going to be moving and coming and going. We saw food supply and supply chains in general freeze up. Some supply chains are still having problems. That was a wake up call to some people, but not enough. So really trying to get as many young people prepared and educated as possible, that’s been one of the biggest shifts where it’s like, OK, we knew that this was important, but we thought we had a little bit more time maybe. Oh no, look, we don’t. Supply chain stops, folks are wondering about how to get food, and then the housing has really made this even more immediate.
Gabriela Quintanilla: Who is inspiring you the most these days?
Cassandra Taylor: We call them our sister group. In work across the country in California, the Sogorea Te Land Trust is an indigenous women’s collective. Always, always inspirational with the work that they are doing around Oakland with really working with the community, bringing the community together, feeding the community, teaching the community is always an inspiration, but they have really gone into high gear during this pandemic and it’s been amazing to watch. And they always push us to do more. They inspire us to go beyond where where we think we can go.
Gabriela Quintanilla: Can you say the name of them again?
Chase Randell: Yes, Sogorea Te. They’re in Oakland and it’s a a women-led collective, their focus is rematriation of land and also they do everything, like everything we want to do or are starting to do, they’re doing it. They’re organizing folks and they’re making community gardens in the middle of Oakland across demographics. They worked with this white ally, this permaculture person who had some kind of famous–famous in the permaculture world–like a greenhouse where he worked with recently released prisoners. He went to the pipeline protests and the indigenous people there were like, go back to your community and work with indigenous people in your community. So they worked, Sogorea Te worked with him and rematriated–he put the land in their name, gave it back to the original people of the land. And they were, I think they’re the first group or the second where the actual state, the government, rematriated a piece of land back to them. They’re making ceremonial structures, they’re working with youth, they’re working with elders, they’re rematriating land, they’re making community gardens. Everything we want to do. And it’s these two women that are just like, they’re so bad ass, they’re like our idols.
Cassandra Taylor: And so they just always encourage us. And they say that we give them hope because we met them and saw what they were doing. And then we took, like Chase was saying, we took that initiative and created it and are creating it within our own community. And we are hoping that others will do the same by seeing us and participating with us. So just kind of keeping that torch going.
Gabriela Quintanilla: I think that’s really awesome that you all are in contact with other organizations like this one that are across the country and learning and sharing those learnings. I just love it all.
Cassandra Taylor: Thank you.
Gabriela Quintanilla: I want to see more of that also happening across the Hudson Valley. But I always love hearing stories of how you can learn about a specific model that’s working really well in another part of the country and you don’t have to reinvent the wheel but just like share those learnings. So really wonderful. I’m sort of curious, this podcast is going to be shared with a lot of people that support North Star Fund and support you all. What would be your call to action for this episode of Meeting the Moment, your call to action to funders?
Cassandra Taylor: It’s such a tough topic here in this area because, you know, I do think so much attention goes to the city. Folks don’t really understand the unique dynamics within the Hudson Valley. And I guess I would want funders to understand this, this long, exploitive tradition that’s been within the Hudson Valley, as Chase had mentioned before. And to, as they think about reaching out and to help, to keep that in mind so that we’re not recreating the same situations, the same exploitive relationships that could then just disappear. Food and housing is really important in the Hudson Valley. We’re having a housing crisis, as I mentioned before, our food banks and stuff are low at the same time that we have a lot of people moving here, seeing the Hudson Valley as an escape from the city or as a playground or whatever it may be. But to sort of be mindful of those dynamics moving forward, it is very different from New York City and much more fragile in some ways, right?
Chase Randell: Be careful about recreating the same structures that we’re trying to transform. So we see a lot of people falling into the same patterns when it comes to a stream of money and recreating these top-down, hierarchical, hours-as-money, time-as-money oriented frameworks, even in justice circles. And I think the reason that is is that the way the money is given– I’m not sure, I never think as the mind of a funder because that idea of making changes in giving money is so hard to relate to–but just thinking about supporting, for us, we always talk about infrastructure, building infrastructure that can go beyond an organization or a certain income stream. So instead of having money evaporate into steering committees or these different groups, how can we take these funds and create permanent–or, you know, permanent in the grander sense, maybe not forever–but useful infrastructure that will last over time, that will improve the community in concrete ways over time. I don’t know how to do that exactly, I mean, we’re doing it the way we are, but in terms of how that translates to giving money, I’m not sure. But just to really be careful about recreating those same hierarchical structures that we’re seeing are kind of repeating the same patterns, even in the nonprofit form.
Gabriela Quintanilla: Yeah, thank you so much for that. Is there anything you would like to share with us that we haven’t asked you about that? That you wish I would have asked?
Cassandra Taylor: I can’t think of anything specific. We are really grateful and excited by the support and the attention that North Star has given to us. And we see that there is some understanding there about this particular place, the Hudson Valley, its connection to the city, and then how the city and the Hudson Valley kind of inform each other. And I look at that as a relationship that has potential for both sides to grow, for both sides to see each other’s impact, but also then hopefully to kind of mitigate difficulties. Chase and I have always talked about, if things are really bad and if things get really terrible, how do we help poor people within the city? The woods and nature is not just for rich people, it shouldn’t just be for rich white people. Black and brown people deserve nice spaces and open spaces and stuff too. And so I guess I would love to see work on that front. We have a pipeline going here right now for the wealthy to come here. But those who are directly impacted by climate change and a lot of the tragic stuff that’s been happening in the last two years, they don’t get to escape. They don’t have that way of coming here.
Chase Randell: The connections. They don’t have the family or the, you know, the family with the weekend house that they come to and then they buy a place.
Cassandra Taylor: Right, exactly. And so those methods are closed off to a lot of Black and brown and poor folks. And we’ve always thought about, the Underground Center does grow over time of trying to create safe spaces and accessible spaces for people of color who are in tough spots within the city.
Chase Randell: And having meaningful work. Not just bringing folks. I think that’s another thing–thinking of people as just like an ingredient you add to a place–but it’s not just demographics, it’s what’s the kind of work that’s here, what’s the kind of lifestyle that’s here? So that’s kind of where we’re really stretching our minds to think about how can we, what does that mean? I don’t like that word pipeline. But that idea, how do we create a more nourishing relationship to the city where folks can come up here and be integrated into nature and have meaningful work and build community together in the most concrete ways. We don’t have the answers to that, but we’re working on it.
Gabriela Quintanilla: Well, I think that’s just wonderful that you’re thinking a lot about how to create a pathway for those that live in New York City. That’s really great. And that brings us to a close here for this session, and I want to thank you again for having this conversation with us today. This is the Underground Center out in Saugerties, New York. And if you want to learn more about their work you can visit their website at theundergroundcenter.org. This is Gabriela Quintanilla of North Star Fund. Thanks for joining us for this conversation about meeting the moment.
Meeting the Moment is a North Star Fund podcast. Thanks so much to our magician of an audio engineer, Greg Lakhan. If you visit northstarfund.org/moment, you’ll find all the episodes, including transcripts and links related to each episode’s guest. Thanks so much for listening.