Dear friends of Stop the Chop NY/NJ,

We hope you are enjoying a peaceful and safe holiday season, and we wish you and your loved ones all the very best for the New Year. Let us all hope that 2021 brings us the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, and that the rest of this decade will usher in more positivity and less suffering for all. We know from our own personal experience, as well as your social media comments and our discussions with many of you, that extreme noise conditions create suffering. The onslaught of the tourist and commuter helicopters, which has continued during this holiday week, has often unfortunately created the opposite of a peaceful holiday. Please know we commiserate with everyone who is being negatively affected, and we are committed to our mission to ban these nonessential choppers.     

As we mentioned in our most recent newsletter. Stop the Chop NY/NJ is back with new leadership, a new website, a new petition, and a new way for you to contribute to the fight against unnecessary and dangerous helicopter traffic polluting our skies and destroying our peace of mind. We will be adding our new Board members and their bios to our website in the coming weeks, and will send out another announcement once that has been updated - stay tuned! 

In the meantime, we need your continued help in our fight against the helicopter menace!

- DONATE to help us cover our organizing costs; we are an entirely volunteer effort and your tax-deductible donation helps us with costs associated with outreach, advocacy, education and administrative fees. You can donate via our website - www.stopthechopnynj.org (If you would like to send a check, email info@stopthechopnynj.org for details). 
- Please SHARE this petition widely to ban all nonessential helicopters in our area. 
- FOLLOW and LIKE us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter@StoptheChopNYNJ
- VOLUNTEER with us! If you have time to flyer in your neighborhood, hand out postcards, offer us special skillsets, speak to your elected officials, community boards and other organizations that should be supporting our mission, please let us know. 
- ASK your Condo, Coop, or Tenants Association to join Our Coalition.

Here are some recent articles and op/eds that are must reads if you have not yet seen them (note that all relevant helicopter articles are on our website as well):

* NY State Assemblymember/ NYC Comptroller Candidate David Weprin's op-ed: 
https://www.amny.com/oped/op-ed-is-mayor-pete-the-answer-to-nycs-big-noise-problem/
"Widespread helicopter noise over the City has become more than just a nuisance – it has become a true danger to our people. Helicopter crashes, many of which are deadly, are not a distant memory for New Yorkers – we stood in fear as a helicopter crashed into a skyscraper on 7th Avenue last June, we wept when a crash in March of 2018 left 5 people dead, and we were utterly horrified when an August 2009 crash killed nine. The list of incidents goes on, and the gravity of these crashes should have been a call to action long ago for our legislators to step up and make a change. With a new presidential administration incoming, we must call on President-elect Biden and former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, who has been tapped to head the Department of Transportation, to revisit this issue...".

* The Patch - Helicopter Noise Complaints Soar...
https://patch.com/new-york/upper-east-side-nyc/helicopter-noise-complaints-soar-parts-upper-east-side
"Citywide, the trend has been even more severe: complaints across the five boroughs had risen by more than 130 percent through mid-November compared to last year, with Manhattan seeing the largest chunk of this year's complaints, according to a report by THE CITY. A map of the Upper East Side addresses where noisy helicopters were spotted shows a cluster along the east side of Central Park, between roughly 82nd and 96th streets. That's in line with recent reports about helicopters disrupting the park's tranquility, with likely culprits including private flight companies that give tourists the chance to soar overhead."

* Gotham Gazette Opinion by Julia Vitullo-Martin:
https://www.gothamgazette.com/opinion/9941-can-manhattan-borough-president-brewer-stop-chop-helicopters-nyc
"Thanks to an onslaught of out-of-town tourist helicopters and small planes flying over New York landmarks, a quiet weekend day in Central Park or Governors Island or the Brooklyn waterfront has become a thing of the past. Any revered site from the Noguchi Museum in Queens to Liberty Island south of the Battery is now subject to inundation by 85 to 95 flights starting at dawn on Saturdays and finishing at unpredictable hours, with some flying as late as midnight Sunday. And while helicopters in the old days tried to maintain heights of 1,900 feet to minimize noise, they now routinely hover at 1,000 feet, circling and swooping to maximize passenger views and photo opps. But New York has an advocate on the horizon—Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, who is now doing everything in her power to tackle this new set of low-flying, loud, polluting helicopters operating in unprecedented numbers. While first setting up a task force of elected officials from New York and New Jersey ...".

There are more articles on our website as well as links to studies on noise pollution, a direct 311 link for filing your own helicopter complaints, and much more. 

Thanks for being a part of our ever-increasing grassroots movement to ban the choppers! There is power in large numbers of people coming together with common cause 

Stay safe and well, and we look forward to connecting in 2021 in our shared advocacy!

Yours,
Melissa 

Melissa Elstein, Stop the Chop NY/NJ Coalition Organizer and Board Secretary