By Bret Csencsitz

Our problems are manmade—therefore, they can be solved by man. Human beings
can be as big as they want. No problem of human destiny is beyond humankind.

— John F. Kennedy, speech at American University, Washington, 1963 

This week we reopen Gotham with two charity dinners, kicking off our next chapter with a commitment to our city, to our place in it, and ultimately to our little place on our planet. Inspired by Toby Ord’s The Precipice, an ode to humanity’s fullest potential that—and here’s the rub—we must survive another few millennia to achieve! In Ord’s hopeful spirit, I decided to bring back Gotham in support of two organizations that make our city a better place, organizations I personally admire so much that I ran the marathon for one in 2018 and am running it again for the other this Sunday!

Wheeling Forward

Celebrating the power of the individual to triumph, especially with community support, Wheeling Forward is an inspired organization that seeks to “help people with disabilities experience life to the fullest and enable them to see possibility where others see insurmountable obstacles.” We were proud to have the founder of Wheeling Forward, restaurateur et sommelier Yannick Benjamin (owner of Harlem’s smash hit Contento), advise our reopening accessibility efforts, including Gotham’s first upstairs bathroom in its 36 years. One small step for most…an important one for us!

GrowNYC

Longtime partner of Gotham on whose board I serve, GrowNYC celebrates New York’s power to triumph over its rocky urban history and emerge as a greener city for all. GrowNYC’s mission is to “improve New York City's quality of life through environmental programs that transform communities block by block and empower all New Yorkers to secure a clean and healthy environment for future generations.” My wife and I are proud to be running the 50th New York City Marathon with a wonderful team on behalf of GrowNYC!

Conscious Excellence

Toby Ord, an Oxford professor of ethics and founder of Giving What We Can, an organization dedicated to “effective altruism,” wrote The Precipice as part of his mission to address the “big-picture questions facing humanity.”  The book’s full title is The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity, wherein Ord addresses a number of ways in which humanity’s existence is threatened, including the threat of a global pandemic(s). The irony that it was published in 2020, so written pre-pandemic, should not be lost. If anything 2020 should inspire us to see (with 2020 vision!) the realization that we can all be an agent of change, human by human, block by block, one millennia at a time. With the goal of “conscious excellence” for Gotham 2.0, my team and I hope to do just that.

Please join us in supporting these two organizations and get your first looks at our new Gotham!

RESERVE NOW

Unable to attend?

Support GrowNYC and Wheeling Forward with your tax-deductible donation today!

Donate to Bret and Cassandra’s marathon fundraising efforts for GrowNYC!