Brooklyn Speaks Has Spoken....Will Anyone Listen?

So i donned my foul weather gear (literally) and trotted over to Lafayette Presbyterian Church. Tisch James was rightfully greeted with a standing ovation. She set a good tone by making it clear that she supported the lawsuit filed by DDDB and others - but was welcome by and applauded Brooklyn Speak's efforts. A living embodiment of the Ben Franklin's American Revolution quip "If we do not all hang together we shall certainly all hang separately". There were other speakers with a milder point of view - Yassky, and Jefferies both of whom have hardened their stances in face the affronts that Ratner has already engaged in - Barclay's naming fiasco and the 'traffic' solutions that will clog Park Slope with traffic.

Another speaker, a minister, evoked images of the American Revolution - and made the poignant observation that the parking lots in question would be built for construction workers. An odd characteristic of project that's supposed to provide local jobs.

If everything the Brooklyn Speaks coalition asked for was agreed to by the developer there would be much less to protest about this project -but some of the sticking points would remain - eminent domain abuse, a corrupt process that got us to this point in the first place.

But will the developer listen? Will the governor? will the Mayor (I think we can answer that one - no, maybe and no). Despite a broad coalition including respected institutions like MAS, there has been no hint, at least publicly, that any elected official with any influence to alter this project is willing to do so.

So unless the chaps at Brooklyn Speaks know something I don't, I really don't see how a strategy of engaging in dialog will solve the problem that got us here in the first place - the developer intentionally tried to circumvent the law and public process - in short, dialog to push this project through.

We have no indication of good will from Forest City- in fact Ratner has a 20+ year record - a pattern repeated with MetroTech, the Atlantic Mall, and AY of ignoring community input, of making promises it had no intention of keeping, and of deliberately shutting out community influence.

Opponents of this project have discovered via simply reading the hastily pushed through documents of this project, of public record and in some cases, freedom of information act requests that this developer has created fake community groups in which to talk with, and specifically lobbied key state and city officials do to everything in its power to avoid dialog and community boards. It doesn't take a fertile imagination to speculate that, with discovery granted in lawsuit, we would find out considerably more. As James pointed out sunshine is a good disinfectant - and I imagine that, if the corrupt process that got us here was exposed Ratner could no longer do what he has been doing - engaging in a 'fake' community dialog with paid for by Ratner 'community' groups, engaging in 'fake' non-scalebacks and other political theater.

In short Brooklyn Speaks is acting on the assumption that Forest City/Ratner will change the core essence of its up til now successful business strategy. While large scale public outcry might change the hearts of some politicians, it's clear by now the traditional outlets for that, like the mainstream dailies, are in Ratner's court. But even if the developer did promise something, we know by now Ratner's promises and rhetoric aren't worth the paper they are written on. So from Ratner's standpoint, he has two choices- he can get bogged down in discussions with Brooklyn Speaks that will, by definition result in less profit for him, or he can do everything in his power to speed up this process including creating 'realities on the ground' and maximize his profit. Given his track record, its naive to assume he'll do the former

That is why I throw my lot behind DDDB. While I support Brooklyn Speak's efforts on outreach (amazingly many Brooklynites are still not aware of the scope of this project and many people statewide don't know of the enormous outlays involved)we have gotten to the point of filing lawsuits specifically because the developer was bent on keeping the community public planners and out of this project because they knew it goes against nearly every established community and urban planning principle.