Newsletter Volume 3 • Number 44
Greenwich youth take the lead for our planet
While some elected Greenwich elders debate the semantics of a climate emergency, its youth are already knee-deep in solutions. For this next generation, the question isn’t if we act, it’s how soon we can make a difference.
The Compost Crew: Turning scraps into soil—and a movement
For Mariam Fahimi, a GHS junior, it started with a transatlantic flight and a gnawing sense of guilt. Fahimi came home thinking not about the sights she’d seen, but the carbon she’d burned. She and her family had already been composting, but now she wanted to do more. So she teamed up with childhood friends Noah Chass and Addison Towle, also at GHS, and launched the Greenwich Composting Project.
The pitch is simple: you save the food scraps, they do the rest. If you live within three miles of their base on Burning Tree Road, one of the founders will drop off a free kitchen scrap container and pick it up every Friday.
“I wanted to make it as easy as possible,” Fahimi says, but that commitment came at a cost. The team had to take out a loan to buy the containers. They’ve nearly paid it off by selling nutrient-rich compost.
Make no mistake, this is real labor: hauling bins uphill, turning heavy piles, and monitoring heat levels. Quality is everything. They test for pests, monitor temperatures to kill pathogens, and even trial the soil by growing radishes.
“It’s so gratifying to see the impact,” Fahimi says. Their website tracks greenhouse gas reduction and landfill diversion in real time. But the real reward? Watching neighbors rethink waste. “One told me she doesn’t throw out food anymore,” Fahimi says. “She even missed composting while in Portugal.”
Want in? Meet the team behind the Greenwich Composting Project at this Saturday’s Live Like Luke event. You can donate to their wish list or sign up as a participant.
The teens turning talk into trees
GHS sophomores Mark Zolotarevsky, Chase Karson, Owen Kwon, and Ryan Mathews had an epiphany. Our everyday choices, what we buy and how we get around, leave a mark. They launched the Greenwich Eco-Alliance to restore their neighborhoods, one tree at a time.
Their first goal is to plant native species in Old Greenwich and Riverside. But trees don’t grow on trees—they’re expensive! Partnering with Friends of Binney Park, they raised $3,000, and last week got their hands dirty planting 18 American holly trees near Perrot Library, also pulling out invasive species.
“The damage to our climate is going to hit us the hardest,” Karson says. “Our parents and grandparents won’t feel the impact like we will.”
You can catch the Greenwich Eco-Alliance at Saturday’s Live Like Luke event, follow them on Instagram, or chip in on GoFundMe to help launch their fall project.
One 7th grader’s mission to swap, not waste
Why toss your old clothes in a donation bin and hope for the best when you can make sure they land exactly where they’re needed? That was Serena Finkelstein’s thinking when she launched SWOP, short for Share With Other People.
Finkelstein decided to collect gently used clothes, toys, and games, then host pop-up events right at local workplaces. Employees can browse, take what they need for themselves or a family member. “My family works in manufacturing,” she says. “I’ve seen firsthand how hard people work and how many live paycheck to paycheck. I wanted to support them while also reducing waste.”
Earlier this month, Finkelstein received a Sustainability Award for her efforts. To donate, find SWOP on Instagram or email them.
Innovation doesn’t wait for a diploma
Rajsi Choudhary, an 8th grader at Eastern Middle School, is already racking up awards and a $30,000 college scholarship for breakthrough research: an orange peel-based hydrogel that thermally regulates water release to help crop stay hydrated during heat stress. “With rising water scarcity, I wanted to find a way to make every drop count,” Choudhary says. “By making farming more sustainable for our earth, we’re not just conserving water, we’re protecting future food security.”
Reid Rodgers, a senior at Greenwich Country Day School, examined jellyfish. His research found that rising ocean temperatures supercharge jellyfish growth and survival, threatening to upend marine ecosystems and devastate fisheries worldwide. “I hope my research sheds light on the less visible impacts of climate change,” Rodgers says, “and keeps our future from looking so gelatinous.”
A summer job for a greener Greenwich
If you have a teen who wants to contribute, there’s also this. For more than 40 years The Greenwich Youth Conservation Program (GYCP), a summer employment program administered by the Departments of Human Services and Parks and Recreation, has offered teens a first job opportunityto learn teamwork and practical skills through two-week work sessions digging, planting and maintaining Greenwich parks and properties.
Youth rising
While federal leaders are rolling back environmental protections, and local leaders are questioning climate science, these Greenwich teens are rolling up their sleeves. The future isn’t waiting, and neither are they.
Holocaust Remembrance Day: A warning for our time
On November 14, 2001, The New York Times published a searing self-examination of its Holocaust coverage by former executive editor Max Frankel. The piece, “Turning Away From The Holocaust,” opened with a stark admission.
“There was failure: none greater than the staggering, staining failure of The New York Times to depict Hitler’s methodical extermination of the Jews of Europe as a horror beyond all other horrors in World War II.”
How could it have happened? Today, April 24, Jews around the world mark Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, honoring the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis—men, women, and children killed simply for being Jewish.
The Holocaust didn’t begin with gas chambers. It began with words. State propaganda labeled Jews as vermin, parasites, traitors. They were scapegoated for economic woes, accused of global conspiracies.
Sound familiar? Today, antisemitism is rising again alongside hate against others. Haitians accused of eating pets, migrants branded as criminals. Once more, lies and fear are weaponized to justify cruelty.
Frankel showed how The Times buried coverage deep in its pages, rarely naming Jews. Publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, himself Jewish, feared seeming “too Jewish” in an antisemitic America. He prioritized assimilation and government alignment over truth.
Frankel’s point is that when powerful institutions minimize injustice or bury truth, the public cannot grasp its scale.
So we must ask too. Are today’s institutions—media, law firms, universities—pulling punches? More concerned with appeasing the powerful than protecting the vulnerable?
This is why Holocaust remembrance matters not just to Jews, but to all of us. It’s a warning against silence, complicity, and cowardice.
Because it can happen again.
Some of it is happening again.
And that is why we must never forget.
What we’re reading
Greenwich pushes back on school budget cuts
After the Republican members of the Board of Estimate and Taxation (BET) voted to slash school funding, Greenwich’s town legislature, the Representative Town Meeting, had a message: Not so fast. With deep concerns about the impact on students and classrooms, the RTM took the rare step of voting on a resolution urging the BET to reopen the budget and reconsider. The measure required a two-thirds majority—and it passed. Read about it here.
Meanwhile, schools superintendent Toni Jones is calling out what she says is a campaign of distortion. In a letter to parents, Jones pushed back on false claims circulating from Republican BET members. “Misinformation continues to be shared despite the mountain of data available,” she wrote, “while certain facts are consistently ignored.” Read the story here.
Action Calendar
April 25. Take a stand.
Take a stand against racism with the YWCA and keynote speaker Ramin Ganeshram, Executive Director of the Westport Museum. Greenwich Town Hall, noon. Register here.
April 26. Clean up.
The annual Live Like Luke beach cleanup in tribute to Luke Myers takes place from 9:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. at Greenwich Point Park. Register here.
April 28. Honor.
Join Lt. Governor Susan Bysiewicz in this ceremony to honor veterans of the Korean War. Town Hall Meeting Room,4:00 p.m.
April 30. Apply.
The Greenwich Registrars of Voters has opened registration for their 2025 Election Academy. Deadline April 30. Learn more and apply here.
May 6. Learn.
Community conversation with State Attorney General William Tong. YWCA Greenwich, 6:30 p.m. RSVP here.
| Volume 3, Number 44 • April 24, 2025 |
| Paid for by the Greenwich Democratic Town Committee. |
| Greenwich Democratic Town Committee P.O. Box 126 Greenwich, CT 06836 |