From Cages to Community: The Fight for Renewable Rikers

What happens to a place built on punishment when a movement demands it be rebuilt for life?

On this episode, Dr. Lesley Joseph sits down with two frontline fighters in the battle to close Rikers Island and transform it into something radically different: a hub of renewable energy and community sustainability.

Manuel Figueroa — Member of Freedom Agenda, and a justice-impacted individual who lived through the system — brings the raw, on-the-ground truth of what it means to be caught between broken promises and political whiplash. He watched the city’s reentry programs get gutted under Mayor Eric Adams, and he knows what happens when people in power decide the “built-in forgetter” kicks in.

Michael Higgins Jr. — Land use planner at the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance and coordinator of the Renewable Rikers Coalition — walks us through the legislative machinery: the Renewable Rikers Act, Intro 881, and the decades-long fight to not just close the jails but to reimagine the island — with wastewater treatment, solar energy, and infrastructure that actually serves the communities that have been choked by pollution and incarceration for generations.

Together, they talk about the real obstacles — the developers circling, the political amnesia, the competing visions that would rather turn Rikers into a profit center than a public good. And they leave us with a challenge: What does justice actually look like when we stop treating it like an abstraction?

This is the fight to turn a site of suffering into a source of renewal. And it’s not just about New York.

Tune in and ask yourself: What’s your community’s Rikers?

Resources:
Campaign to Close Rikers Website
Renewable Rikers: Instagram & Website
Freedom Agenda: Instagram & Website
NYC-EJA: Instagram & Website

Recent Articles:
NYC press release on RIker's Island Closures
Rikers’ closure plan moves a step closer after long-awaited land transfers
Mamdani transfers vacant Rikers Island facilities, restarting dormant piece of jail’s closure plan
Former Rikers Island detainees cautiously optimistic the end of facility is near after jailhouse infirmary closure

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Connect with our Environmental Justice Lab community:
"No Sacrifice Zones" on Substack: @lesleyjoseph
Instagram: @envjusticelab
YouTube: @envjusticelab
Email: theenvironmentaljusticelab@gmail.com

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