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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
subscribers to our email newsletter, and 7,000 petition
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.
More about
DDDB...
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Reality Check
In his "opinion"
column in Sunday's New York Daily News, ever-so-subtly entitled "Death
Throes for Arena Foes," Errol Louis continues to demonstrate his contempt for
anyone who dares oppose the "wisdom" of government actions and the desires of
big-money interests when it comes to pushing forward Bruce Ranter's "Atlantic
Yards" project. Mr. Louis also continues to demonstrate his contempt for the
facts.
The eminent domain appeal that will be argued
this Tuesday asks for something much simpler than Louis allows: the right
to a fair trial based on an examination of the facts – once the plaintiffs have
been given the right to discovery of information solely within the control of
the defendants, Forest City Ratner Companies and New York State's Empire State
Development Corporation. Of course, the defendants are trying to prevent that
discovery, because discovery is likely to further demonstrate the degree to which
the "Atlantic Yards" project has been cobbled in back rooms and out of public
view, and the degree to which the project's public benefit pales versus the overwhelming
private benefit that will accrue to Ratner. The plaintiffs' stance is, and
has always been, that the purported public benefit is merely a "pretext" for New
York State to seize homes and businesses, in order to transfer them to Ratner
for his benefit.
Of course, Louis accepts the "pretext" at face value, while ignoring or willfully
dismissing a raft of compelling allegations made by the plaintiffs.
Despite Louis's wishful thinking, the eleven plaintiffs in the case of Goldstein
vs. Pataki have not wavered for one moment in their conviction that the
use of eminent domain for Ratner's benefit is a clear abuse of the Constitution
– and light years from what our founding fathers intended.
In dismissively (and calculatingly) referring to the Atlantic Yards opposition
as "Daniel Goldstein's anti-project group," and by painting the plaintiffs as
"holdouts" rather than rightful property owners and tenants seeking nothing more
than the right to remain in their own homes or businesses, Louis employs Rovian
tactics and talk-radio-hot-air propaganda, while willfully ignoring the four-year-long
community-wide battle waged by thousands and thousands of Brooklynites against Ratner's
boondoggle. He also conveniently ignores a pending
state lawsuit, filed by 26 community, civic and good- government organizations,
that is challenging – among many other things – the claim that the segment of
Prospect Heights carefully chosen by Ratner for his mega-development is "blighted."
Most troubling about Louis's "opinion" is that he actually argues that the exercise
of Constitutional rights should not be a matter of right, but rather contingent
upon one's tenure at a particular address or the whim of alleged popular opinion. One
can only imagine that, in Louis's conception of the Constitution as the tool
of a tyrannical majority, a newly naturalized American citizen would have a different,
lesser set of rights than someone born in the United States. Perhaps it's time
that Louis check his reality.
Fortunately, no such yardstick exists when applying the Constitution. As in the
civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, or in cases of freedom of the press,
the Constitution has often been safeguarded by a few brave individuals with the
courage to stand alone against claims of differing public opinion. Thousands
of people in our community cannot join the lawsuit challenging this abuse of eminent
domain because their homes are not being threatened by eminent domain, but we
can and do proudly stand behind the eleven plaintiffs who continue to fight for
their rights to keep the valuable property that Ratner so dearly covets.
.................
The Atlantic Yards Report deconstructs Louis's "opinions" here,
and NoLandGrab comments on Louis's errors here.
Posted: 10.07.07
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