By Victoria Merlino

A line down the block? A clump of protesters holding a “Trump 2020” banner?

Call it the AOC effect.

Queens lawmakers, including U.S. Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, joined advocates Thursday to discuss installing means of renewable energy production on Rikers Island, as the city looks ahead to the phase for the land under the set-to-close jails complex.

Astoria Councilmember Costa Constantinides, chair of the Council’s Environmental Protection Committee, led the charge for sustainable energy.

“We can make sure this land is never used for any other atrocity again,” Constantinides said. “We can make sure that it doesn’t become a playground for the rich.”

The Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform’s report, “A More Just NYC,” initially recommended the installation of solar panels and other city infrastructure on Rikers in 2017. Constantinides has become a champion for a solar power plant on the island, as well as a sewage treatment site.

Rikers Island is located within Constantinides’ district.

Constantinides spoke about “environmental racism” in the city, an idea that politicians like Constantindes and State Assemblymember Catalina Cruz touched on throughout the night to describe how the city’s lower-income neighborhoods and communities that are predominantly made up of people of color can be more exposed pollution due to their proximity to facilities like airports, power plants or wastewater treatment plants.

He gave the example of the power plants located near the Queensbridge, Ravenswood and Astoria Houses as the reason those areas have higher than average asthma rates and emergency room admissions in the borough. Renewable sources of energy on Rikers, he said, could provide the energy necessary to close power plants and wastewater treatment plants, reimagining the city’s waterfronts.

“It’s time for us to think how we can get climate justice for the same communities that were torn apart by the criminal justice system, emblematic in Rikers Island,” Constantinides said.