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tel/fax:
718.362.4784
Please note our new postal address when sending
contributions to the legal fund:
121 5th Avenue, PMB #150
Brooklyn, New York 11217
About DDDB
Our coalition consists of 21 community organizations and
there are 51 community organizations formally
aligned in opposition to the Ratner plan.
DDDB is a volunteer-run organization. We have over 5,000
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signers. Over 800 volunteers have registered with DDDB
to form our various teams, task-forces and committees
and we have over 150 block captains. We have a 20 person
volunteer legal team of local lawyers supplementing our
retained attorneys.
We are funded entirely by individual donations from the community at large
and through various fundraising events we and supporters have organized.
We have the financial support of well over 3,500 individual
donors.
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Actually, it's 18.6% About Basketball...
There's been
lots of discussion lately about the Nets' trading strategy and whether it's
about basketball or real estate. Both No Land Grab and Atlantic Yards
Report note that even putative Nets supporters can't help but have doubts,
pointing to this comment by
NetsDaily blogger NetIncome:We find the Nets’ policy of not signing
players for more than two years a bit rigid… and some of us are skeptical that
it’s all about Lebron. We suspect it’s about cutting back on salary commitments
just in case Brooklyn falls through and the team is put up for sale. Whenever
any business with poor growth prospects starts cutting back on long-term
commitments, selling assets, investors believe that company is “in play”,
meaning up for sale. Last Friday, in When
Ratner says it's 100% about basketball, it's time to check the b.s. meter, Atlantic Yards Report introduced the phrase "sports
entertainment corporation," originally used by Bettina Damiani of the watchdog
group Good Jobs New York in testimony before the 10/10/07 hearing of Dennis Kucinich's
Subcommittee on Domestic Policy, in this context:Although sports
entertainment corporations have an entire section of every day’s
newspaper devoted to them, the Yankees and the Mets are, we must always
remember, privately owned entertainment corporations. It’s discouraging that
officials are confusing teams with public goods like parks, water and transit
that are essential to the city’s public health and economic
vitality. Which leads one to ponder the fact that actually,
according to the KPMG report on the
economics of Atlantic Yards back in December, 2006, the Arena will only
be used 41 times a year for the Nets, with another 179 "non-NBA
activities." What might those activities be? Well, looking at this
summer's fare in another 20,000 seat arena, the Verizon Center in DC, that could
include: WWE presents Monday Night RAW LIVE ("featuring Batista, John Cena, CM
Punk, Rey Mysterio, Triple H, Edge and More"); Pop Tarts Presents American Idols
Live – 2008 Tour; Women of Faith; and George Michael's first North American tour
in 17 years.
That means in actuality, the Nets Arena is
approximately 18% about basketball, and 82% about....other
stuff. But when you're asking for hundreds of millions of dollars in
subsidies, it's probably not quite so effective to say that most of the time
you'll be featuring Pop Tarts, George Michaels and really big guys in
tights...
Posted: 7.14.08
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