I mentioned an insurance conundrum a couple weeks ago, and it hasn't worked itself out; now I'm at the "calling all ships" stage -- please give a gander below.
*Also a new turn in the story: structural racism!* Brokers have told us that getting a new insurance policy in NYC is especially hard right now, not only because of COVID, but also because of all the Black Lives Matter activity here. They said told that the Mechanical Gardens' visible support for and engagement with the BLM movement makes us unappealing to insurers. Carriers consider BLM and, I quote, "the whole George Floyd thing" to be a "touchy" and "hot button issue" (these are actual quotes from brokers! wtf!) and thus our involvement makes us an unattractive risk to take on. In other words, our denial from the insurance industry is a manifestation of systemic, structural racism, and it's erecting an unjust barrier to bike equity.
*The short story:* We're on the threshold of a deal for space with a powerful city agency, the EDC, but we can't proceed b/c we don't have insurance. And we can't get insurance b/d we're in NYC and seem like a risk.
*The solution we're seeking right now* is for another organization to add the Mechanical Gardens as an "additional named insured" to their current general commercial liability insurance policy; in that capacity, we would be able to add the EDC as a temporary insured party for the two-week pilot we're trying with them. An alternative: for an organization to just temporarily add both the Mechanical Gardens and the EDC to their policy in the manner the EDC stipulates in their contract for the duration of this 2wk program. If your coverage goes up, we'd pay the difference.
*SO: *Any ideas, and/or any takers?
*The longer story: *Right now the Mechanical Gardens has hit a wall, right at the threshold of an amazing opportunity. We've been negotiating with the New York City Economic Development Corporation, a hugely powerful quasi-public agency in NYC, for space to stage this https://www.awesomefoundation.org/en/projects/145159-mechanical-gardens-bike-co-op. The EDC is offering us space to pilot the program: two weeks to train volunteers to build 50 bikes (donated new from Kent), that the EDC will then send to hospital workers at at the front lines of COVID-19. For this pilot, we're hiring a group of BIPOC LGBTQ youths from a local ride club as apprentice mechanics, teaching them basic wrenching skills that will prepare them for resilient bike industry jobs and for community resiliency actions. The program will be sensational, and address a complexity of social justice goals all at once.
*But: we're in a bind.* Our nonprofit fiscal sponsor, the Alliance for Global Justice, no longer provides insurance for our operation, but the EDC needs us to have insurance, and needs to be temporarily added to the policy themselves, as stipulated in the draft agreement they sent over. We are hitting a brick wall trying to procure local coverage for ourselves.
This all is time-critical, because our program with the EDC cannot go forward unless we have the ability to show them insurance and add them as a named party on the policy. Nonprofits are shying away, insurers are effectively blacklisting us, commercial shops are punting, and we're running low on options. This could be a tremendous opportunity to contribute valuably and substantively to the movement for black equity and social justice in NYC, and to further help universalize bike riding for all New Yorkers. Halp.
I'm available and eager to talk about any solutions we might have: 914-500-9890
xo
Josh Josh Bisker 914-500-9890 New York Mechanical Gardens Bike Co-op http://bikecoop.nyc/ 596 Acres http://596acres.org/ Bindlestiff Family Cirkus http://bindlestiff.org/