“Liberty Park is sacred public land because it is behind the Statue of Liberty and because it is scarce open space. The urban people need Liberty Park for the quality of our lives. People come here for recreation, for picnics, for playgrounds, for running, jogging, bicycling, kite-flying, relaxing, reflecting on our lives, reflecting on our community. The park is a peaceful haven, an oasis, a refuge, a sanctuary, and an escape for the urban people; it’s where we come to rejuvenate our lives and with such injustice and wars and discrimination and problems in this world – people need to get away from the concrete & densely populated area just to come revive our souls. This park is so close to people’s hearts and souls.” –Sam Pesin
I couldn’t have said it any better. Liberty State Park is the most beautiful place in Jersey City; it’s where all of us go to “revive our souls.” In the eight years I’ve lived here and the countless hours I’ve spent in our urban oasis, I never knew that Liberty State Park was under a constant battle against commercialization and privatization. It’s been a battle to stay a “free and green” park for the community.
I met Sam Pesin, son of Morris Pesin, the founder and father of Liberty State Park a few months ago at a local event. He was educating people about the problems the park has been facing. Sam Pesin has dedicated his life to the park and raising awareness on the threats it is currently facing. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Sam, he is a fighter.
We met recently at Liberty State Park where he gave me a tour and outlined the dangers the park is up against. Sam’s story is extremely important. We need to do what it takes to keep our beautiful Liberty State Park, the sanctuary that it is to so many. Please read the following story and share it with your friends and social networks. November 1st there will be an event “Bike Ride and Bands against Privatization” at LSP. Details at the end of this article.
Save Liberty State Park. #SaveLSP
What’s your name? Sam Pesin.
What do you do? I’m president of the all-volunteer Friends of Liberty State Park and I’m a preschool teacher which I’ve done for 40 years and currently, I’m teaching at the Garden Preschool Cooperative near Hamilton Park.
Can you tell me about the Friends of Liberty State Park? The Friends of LSP started in 1988 in order to protect and improve Liberty State Park. There have been many battles against commercialization and privatization and the Friends have been on the frontlines of these battles. Before the Friends, my father, Morris Pesin, the “father” of the park and Audrey Zapp, the “godmother” of the park, led many battles along with Ted Conrad, the local preservationist.
People have always wanted a free and green park. The Friends of LSP have about 700 members and we have about 1,500 people on our email list. We’ve been representing the broad public consensus on the park as a non-commercialized urban open space. What I feel my key role has been is to act as a Paul Revere to let our members, the public and the media know about threats to the park. The overwhelming majority has always wanted Liberty Park to be a free park behind the Statue of Liberty and not a commercialized or a privatized-public space. The people have wanted a free and green People’s Park, no matter what revenue was promised from leased out land. Commercialization and privatization plans are an attack on the urban people’s quality of life and an attack on the spirit, purpose and meaning of Liberty State Park. A beautiful open space park is the best tribute and the best neighbor to these great symbols of democracy, Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.
What’s the current situation?
The park’s future needs a massive grassroots movement as its future is threatened by privatization/commercialization plans which are expected to be pushed forward this Fall from Gov Christie’s Dept. of Environmental Protection. They paid for a development plan search, have a wrong-headed “Sustainable Parks” goal of LSP making money from more privatization (parks are created with taxpayer money to serve the Public Good and the Public Interest) – and got a law passed which ties LSP planning and plan implementation with the NJ Sports and Exposition Authority. The Voice of the People will be crucial and the help of Mayor Fulop and our County legislators, and people, groups and elected officials around NJ will be vital.
Plans that I’ve heard of are a hotel and hotels should be built on Jersey City land, a private marina at park’s tranquil south end and the most dangerous one, a commercial concert venue facility. One-off festivals like All Points West rock festival are great or middle of the week concerts, mostly free on a temporary “summerstage” may be fine but if a concert entity got a longterm lease for a facility, there would be summer weekend concerts and public access would be restricted due to traffic jams and concert go-ers would confiscate free parking spaces on the already crowded weekends. LSP should be a park and not a commercial concert venue.
LSP brings in a million and a half dollars – out of a two-million dollar operational budget for the year, not counting salaries – from the marina and the two restaurants and the ferry concession for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and from special events.LSP also gets an annual allocation from state budget, and its Corporate Business Tax share and possible more Natural Resource Damage Awards will bring in capital improvement funds.
Can you tell me a little bit more about your father and mother and their involvement in the park and Jersey City? My father was a lifelong activist, his gravestone says, “The Father of Liberty State Park and fighter for just causes”. He fought against discrimination and worked to desegregate Palisades Amusement Park and to enact fair employment practice laws. He met my mother at a community meeting at the Jewish Community center opposing Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. My parents were both very progressive people and down-to-earth, caring, loving people who wanted a better world. One early fight my dad led was when the Hudson Tubes which preceded the PATH, wanted to bypass Jersey City and have the trains go from New York just to Newark. My dad successfully fought against that plan to save Jersey City’s economic future.
My father’s park vision started in 1957, when he and my mother took my sister Judy at 5 years old and me at 7 years old from Jersey City’s Greenville section to The Statue of Liberty and with traffic and parking and missing a boat, the trip took two and a half hours. On Liberty Island, my dad looked towards Jersey City and saw a desolate, shameful, eyesore shoreline and he saw how close Jersey City was. So his immediate thought was—there should be a beautiful park behind Lady Liberty and there should be access from NJ to The Statue of Liberty.
After a year of talking to friends, he went to the Jersey Journal in June 1958 and asked the editor, “How can we publicize this idea of transforming the waterfront wasteland into a beautiful park? The editor said, “Why don’t you take a boat with a reporter to show how close The Statue of Liberty is? My dad called my mom and said, “Ethel, should I go on a boat on this drizzly, foggy day? and my mother always joked that she replied, Morris, is your insurance paid up? So he went on his legendary 8 minute canoe ride to dramatize the closeness of the junkstrewn Jersey City shoreline to the statue and that launched his crusade, his 19-year campaign to establish Liberty State Park. In 1962, my father and Ted Conrad, an internationally known model maker and preservationist, formed The Statue of Liberty Causeway and Park Association, a coalition of religious civic and business leaders to support the idea of the park here and the concept of a walkway/causeway from Jersey City to the Statue. The causeway didn’t go anywhere, but eventually people could get the ferry from here.
So then the campaign was on and many people got involved with that association. Ted made a cool model of the park which was just a lot of trees, some cars ,plus the statue and Ellis Island. They took that model around Hudson County and to Trenton to win support for LSP. 1965 was a milestone year in the campaign because when President Johnson came to Ellis Island to declare it part of the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island National Monument he said, “Behind me, in Jersey City, will rise a beautiful public park.” Also in 1965, Jersey City donated 156 acres to the state to form the core part of Liberty State Park.
In the late sixties Audrey Zapp, a local environmentalist, got involved as a LSP champion and advocated for state Green Acres (program) funding to help fund the first phase of the park. After LSP opened on Flag Day, 1976, as New Jersey’s Bicentennial Gift to America, my father and Audrey as Public Advisory Commissioners, co-led many grassroots battles against commercialization and they were victorious in an age before cellphones and computers.
When the park was one year-old, Governor Bryne wanted to take the whole park for an amusement park and four years later it was an amusement park, luxury housing and shopping in Liberty Park. A summary of park battles is on our website (http://www.folsp.org/history/history_of_battles.pdf
So the park opened in 1976 and then what? The park opened as 36 acres which included that initial picnic area and this lawn with its inspiring views. People came out that first summer to see free concerts on this lawn, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, [a] military band, and a jazz band and still today the Jersey City Division of Cultural Affairs carries on the wonderful tradition of Summerfest concerts. It’s the longest running free concert series in New Jersey.
Tell me about the other battles the park faced? In 1986, my dad and Audrey stopped a 25,000 seat commercial amphitheater and then in 1991, Audrey and my dad stopped a plan for a 225 acre golf course. After he passed away in July 1992, I got very much involved and that’s when the internal Developmental Corporation pushed a 150 acre golf course. In that crossroads battle, the Friends of LSP with our main ally the New York/New Jersey Baykeeper, and a statewide coalition fought hard and 600 people came to that golf course hearing in August 1994. In April 1995, Governor Whitman listened to the people and she rejected the golf course and said, the Interior of the park will be a natural area. In 2001, 600 people came to a public hearing against a commercial water park plan and again Governor Whitman again listened and said No. The next successful battle was to terminate the Developmental Corporation which was terminated in 2003 by Gov. Jim McGreevey. And then there was a 2001 and 2003 battle against new incarnations of a commercial concert venue.
Are you continuing your father’s legacy? I myself and all people who care about this park, who believe in this vision of a free park are carrying on that legacy and that vision, so it’s all the people. Now [that] I am president of the Friends of Liberty State Park and I’m very involved and certainly do feel very close to the park..cause my dad was the father of the park, but I am one of many people in this community and in this state who love this park and want to see it as just a free, open space park to give as a legacy to future generations…
My father was also a reformer councilman in the West Side ward from 1969 to 1977. He was elected as an independent beating the machine candidate in 1969 (as Steve Fulop won twice as an independent councilman) and my father mounted a large doghouse on his car (with speakers inside it as he rode around campaigning) and his slogan was “JC needs a watchdog” and for his second term he ran on the slate of the reform candidate Dr. Paul Jordan. From 1977 to his passing in 1992 he was the volunteer head of the Jersey City City Spirit Program, with him and a secretary doing concerts and art shows around Jersey City and in Liberty State Park and that office evolved into the Division of Cultural Affairs.
Was your father born and raised in Jersey City? Yeah. He spent his whole life here, and my mom whom I haven’t really mentioned—she was more behind the scenes, a constant advocate for Liberty Park. When my dad died, she was appointed to serve on the Public Advisory Commission which she did and was an outspoken person against the golf course and waterpark.
Did she grow up in Jersey City? She got to Jersey City when she was eight and lived on Jersey Ave. She taught piano and was the playwright Jerry Herman’s (Hello Dolly, La Cage Aux Folles) first piano teacher. My parents owned a popular children’s clothing store – for infants through preteens – in Jersey City, at McGinley Square for 37 years up to 1974.
Did you grow up in this park? My father would keep me updated on the progress over the years. When we were coming back from the Statue of Liberty in 1957, one of my earliest life memories was in the Holland Tunnel, with my father yelling and screaming because he was so angry that it took so long getting to the Statue and once there, he looked west to see Jersey City’s dilapidated waterfront. So I do remember that anger, but it was great that he took that anger and did something [positive].
After college, I was away for 20 years, teaching in Oregon and then Austin and Boston, but I spent every summer vacation in Jersey City. I was 26 when the park opened. I enjoyed the park but didn’t realize what a sacred public space it is, until driving through it after my father died.
Were you born and raised in Jersey City? Yeah.
How do you feel Jersey City has changed in the past couple of years? It’s mind-boggling -the development of the waterfront, it’s great, people are moving here. I know the mayor is working to get improvements all throughout our city and many people tell me that families decide to move here because of Liberty Park or they decide to stay here because of Liberty Park. So LSP really is important to the vitality and the attractiveness of Jersey City. I love Jersey City, it has such a rich history and I feel it has a great future.
The Friends, other than fighting battles, have funded over 800 trees in the park and will continue to do so to bring more shade here and habitat and beauty. Also we have a weekly gardening program -people can find it on our website—where people with no experience can garden, almost every Saturday all year from 9am to noon and corporations can arrange to do community service during the week.
Do you feel like you and your family have been fighting all your lives for the park? Right. The essence of Liberty Park history is that the people have fought for a free park behind the Statue of Liberty and so far the people have mostly prevailed. The park doesn’t have the protection that Central Park does in the sense that developers know they could not get away with nonsense and development plans in Central Park, but Liberty Park is still seen as open, fair game, like “Oh look at Liberty Park, it’s an untapped goldmine”. Where people see precious open green space, some developers see wasted space and they have dollar signs in their eyes and they just want to take advantage of this park.
So what can Jersey City residents do to help fight for the park? So right now we’re waiting for the Department of Environmental Protection to reveal their plans. So I do urge people to go to the Friends’ website and hit subscribe so they can get our email updates on what’s going on and we’re also on social media linked from our homepage. I urge people to spread the word and get involved and stand up and raise their voices for the park’s future.
Tell me about the event coming up November 1st… We’re having a “Bike Ride and Bands Against Privatization” Solidarity Protest. The facebook invitation is at http://bit.ly/BIKERIDEBANDS
I hope you may be able to come that day… The bands are amazing – The Milwaukees, Karyn Kuhl Band, DEVI, and Sensational Country Blues Wonders…There will also be cool big kite displays.
Any last words? I think you’ll like a quote from my father… This quote makes me think of you as you live by this philosophy and you are a leader in uplifting culture and arts in Jersey City and inspiring people to care about Jersey City… The excerpt is from a radio interview with Morris Pesin on Father O’Brien’s show in July, 1986 at time of 100th birthday of Lady Liberty and 10th birthday of Liberty State Park
“If there is no city spirit, there can be no importance of anything in the city. The idea is to lift the people to become active in their city, to love their city, to have pride in their city, to volunteer to better their city, to have people interested in the life of a city. Unless there is art, unless there is culture, then a city is not a city. The arts are good for industry, for business, for people to want to live in a city – to uplift people’s lives.”
November 1rst: Bike and Ride Protest https://www.facebook.com/events/1504242589887514/
Sam Pesin
Lynn – I’m blown away by your awesome, really great, piece and photos I had tears in my eyes reading it. It’s the best concise summary ever written about Liberty State Park and my family, so wonderfully, warmly and caringly written on the past and present of LSP, and the past and current threats to its future and I appreciate your very kind thoughts about me.Thanks too for letting your readers know about our Sunday Bike Ride and Bands Against Privatization event at LSP!