 |
 |
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
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...
|
|
|
|
 |
ARCHIVES:
By Date|
By Category|
Text Search
|
Ratner's New Messaging and South Brooklyn Political Friends
Hard at work on spin (whild apparently too busy to provide the public with a
rendering of its project) Forest City Ratner's publicity team has come up with
their latest lyin' messaging. It was unveiled at last week's Community Board "informational"
meeting on Atlantic Yards by Ratner Executive and Atlantic Yards chief MaryAnne
Gilmartin. She opened that meeting with this:
“Today, undeterred by an anemic economy and a relentless
campaign of a few to delay the benefits to many, Forest City stands
committed to building the project as quickly as the market will allow.”
Then came yesterday's ESDC public hearing. From a WNYC
report from the ESDC hearing:
[Sal] ZARZANA [an official with the carpenters union]: It's amazing that for six
years that a few are taking over the rights of many.
As reported
on the Atlantic Yards Report, at yesterday's ESDC hearing
Assemblyman Alan Maisel showed he had gotten the Ratner memo too:
Assemblyman Alan Maisel declared that "a small group of people
should not be deciding what happens to our borough..."
Let's just make this clear again. The "few" are Bruce Ratner and his
execs like Gilmartin, the unelected, unaccountable, unattentive Board of the ESDC,
three-men-in-a room, and Bruce Bender's small gang of South Brooklyn political
club friends.
The opponents of Atlantic Yards are the many. For example, DDDB has well over
4,000 individual donors alone, 800 volunteers and 7,000 subscribers to our e-newsletter
and has widespread support across Brooklyn and New York City.
Alan Maisel got 3,262
votes in his last primary (2008).
But it is not surprising that Assemblyman Maisel of South Brooklyn
would come out to shill for Ratner. After all in 2008, when Maisel ran for re-election,
Forest City Ratner Chairman and CEO Bruce Ratner, Forest City Ratner President
and COO Joanne Minieri and FCR Executive VP, Government and Public Affairs Bruce
Bender all gave $2,000 a piece to Maisel. And Bruce Ratner's wife Dr. Pamela Lipkin
gave Maisel $3,000. (See
filing.)
And why is Bruce Ratner able, only, to get South Brooklyn political support for
his failing boondoggle project? Because of Bruce Bender.
From the New York Observer
in 2006:
Mind Bender
We had been wondering why so many politicos from the deep south of Brooklyn
had endorsed Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project. State Senators Carl
Kruger and Martin Golden and City Council Members Lew Fidler and Mike Nelson
all wrote letters of support last summer to the M.T.A. We wondered, are these
guys all for it because their constituents are going to get some of the jobs
targeted to "the community" that the arena complex is supposed to
help? Or do they just happen to have a lot of Nets fans living there? Then we
hit upon a map
for the 59th Assembly district, which is governed by the Thomas Jefferson
Club, the Democratic clubhouse whence Bruce Bender sprang. Bender worked for
Ed Koch, Peter Vallone and now Forest City Ratner, as the executive vice president
for community and government affairs. He does all the outreach to politicos
from, among other places, the deep south of Brooklyn. The 59th A.D. includes
Canarsie, Mill Basin, Bergen Beach and Flatlands--exactly the neighborhoods
that Messers. Kruger, Golden, Fidler and Nelson represent. Bender is, in other
words, quite the homeboy -Matthew Schuerman
Though perhaps Bender's power is waning as only Golden showed up yesterday, presumably
Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz (whose staffer read a prepared testimony) and Maisel
replaced Kruger and Fidler.
Posted: 7.30.09
|
|
|
|
