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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
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Atlantic Yards: Ethics vs. Legalities
One has to wonder what Forest City Ratner's ethics are, as doing what’s right
and doing what’s legal are often two different things.
Bruce Ratner thinks of himself as liberal. His starchitect-for-hire, Frank Gehry,
describes him as "do-gooder,
liberal," a label Gehry also applies to himself. According to a NY
Sun
article, Ratner is active in "politics and charity." And the same article
quotes former Parks Commissioner Henry Stern as saying that, "[Ratner] doesn’t
show off…which is different from most people in that field. Most are pretty promotional.”
Yet just yesterday, when the Appellate Division refused to hear an appeal on a
case brought by rent-stabilized tenants being forced from their homes by Bruce
Ratner's land grab, Ratner's
mouthpieces sent out a celebratory press release. No doubt they are pleased
to be stomping on tenants' rights -- they need to in order to build their project.
But in their ecstatic press release, they did not even have the moral sense to
express concern for the tenants rejected by the court and bounced out by Ratner.
The appeal was on a lawsuit (a suit in which DDDB is not involved) that charges
that under the Urban Development Corporation Act (UDC Act), the Empire State Development
Corporation (ESDC) and Forest City Ratner are required to provide a relocation
plan for tenants they force out by eminent domain that will provide replacement
housing for those tenants. It does not appear that replacement housing is being
offered. So first they terminate rent protections by using the state to invoke
eminent domain, and then when using eminent domain they don't have the decency--the
ethics--to provide new housing for these tenants. Their “relocation” plan actually
offers little more than a real estate agent and some cash to move. And though
the court found that it does meet the requirements of the UDC Act, the relocation
services they offered were insufficient and not exactly evidence of "do-gooder
liberalism."
So sure, celebrate your legal victory Bruce Ratner, Bruce Bender and your corporation. But you've lost morally. (Not that we think that matters to you, despite your view of yourself as "liberal" and your interest in "politics and charity", and some strangely held belief that you are "different from most people" in your field.)
Posted: 1.17.08
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