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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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March 11: Two Groundbreakings to Protest Ratner's Boondoggle Ceremony
On Thursday, March 11...
Join Our Groundbreaking to Bury the Soul of Brooklyn
Then Protest Ratner's Ceremonial Groundbreaking
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Many of us are angry, no...mad, and lots have already said, "I'll be there."
THIS IS THE MOMENT to express your anger and outrage:
Take off work or take a long lunch to express all of your anger and outrage
about the abusive, destructive, and corrupt
Atlantic Yards project...
Thursday March 11 at 12:30pm
DDDB' Groundbreaking to Bury the Soul of Brooklyn
We will be joined by Bloomberg, Pataki, Spitzer, Paterson, Markowitz and Ratner.
Exact location (in the project footprint) yet to be determined...stay
tuned.
Then...
Thursday, March 11. Reportedly 1:30pm
Join us to Protest and Drown Out the Barclays/Ratner Boondoggle Ceremonial Groundbreaking
Exact location (in the project footprint) yet to be determined...stay
tuned.
ALL HANDS ON DECK
Next Thursday, March 11th, Forest City Ratner will stage a “groundbreaking
ceremony” for the money-losing Barclays Center Arena. We presume it will take
place in the Atlantic Yards project site though we do not yet know exactly where.
We also presume they will do all they can to keep Brooklynites away from the site
and limit our free speech. We are working on that.
Note there will be no groundbreaking for any "affordable housing" and
the Barclays Billion Dollar Boondoggle will not house a single Brooklynite.
The ceremony of dirt shoveling politicians will signify the start of prepping
to eventually build an arena, not the promised affordable housing Bruce Ratner
still claims he is going to build. It is a ceremony to celebrate a money-losing
arena and at least 25 years of blight and interim surface parking where a neighborhood
once stood.
It is a classic
bait and switch.
This is why we ask you to join us this Thursday first at our Groundbreaking to
Bury the Soul of Brooklyn, then to loudly protest Ratner’s/Bloomberg's/Markowitz's/Paterson's/Prokhorov's
“groundbreaking."
Mr. Ratner apparently doesn’t know Brooklyn very well.
Because by now, he ought to know that Brooklynites are mad, very mad, about his project.
We’re mad that a top-down, developer-driven, Big Brother-style project has been billed as “involving the community.”
We’re mad that our city laws have been overridden and our democratic city land
use review process has been bypassed and subverted.
We’re mad that billions of dollars that belong to taxpayers will be wasted on a folly whose prime beneficiary will be Bruce Ratner.
We’re mad that the unelected, unaccountable Empire State Development Corporation has abused eminent domain for the benefit of a private real-estate project.
We’re mad that 22 acres at the heart of Brooklyn, including city streets, private
homes and businesses, and publicly owned land are being given to Ratner in a no-bid,
no-vote deal, granting him a land monoply at the Borough's crossroads.
We’re mad that publicly owned land is being awarded to the lowest bidder, in a
faux bidding process, by the unelected, unaccountable Metropolitan Transportation
Association, the same MTA that has neglected to properly maintain the Vanderbilt
Railyards so Bruce Ratner can claim “blight.”
We’re mad that public money is being wasted on a frivolous, money-losing arena while public transportation, schools, infrastructure and social services go wanting.
We’re mad that our own elected representatives, like Tish James and Velmanette Montgomery, have been ignored by the powerbrokers in Albany and City Hall who try to hide their cronyism by saying that they know what’s best for Brooklyn.
We’re mad that for all the phony Brooklyn and Dodgers nostalgia pushed by Bruce
Ratner and his supporters, the naming rights for the arena have been sold to a
British bank with a sordid past – while Russian tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov and Bruce
Ratner pocket all the money.
We’re mad that a project that will do nothing but cause blight has been falsely sold as blight removal.
We’re mad that public streets are being closed and discredited superblock designs
are taking their place.
We’re mad that Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Paterson have continued to keep their
head in the sand about this boondoggle.
We’re mad that the ESDC railroaded through a sham environmental review, ignoring comments from thousands of citizens and telling Brooklyn residents that we’ll just have to deal with the project’s many unmitigable adverse impacts.
We’re mad that Bruce Ratner has told us that his out of scale, out of character project is what’s best for Brooklyn, when we know much better.
We’re mad that Bruce Ratner and his political supporters have exploited the housing
crisis in New York City to sell the public a project that will cause instant gentrification
(if it is ever built) and cause the displacement of thousands of lower-income
residents, while never fulfilling its affordable housing promises.
And on and on and Etc.
It is greatly important for all those who oppose Atlantic Yards and its abuses,
whether you have been involved in the fight against the project to any degree
or not at all, to come out to this protest and demonstration.
Let the political dignitaries who have allowed this corrupt project to proceed
hear and know of your opposition and anger.
Let them know that they are not getting away with this unnoticed. Let them know
that WE, the people, are angry and watching…. very closely.
If you, too, are mad about this miscarriage of justice and abuse of our
political system, taxpayer dollars, about this irresponsible, unsustainable boondoggle,
about this Land Grab, join us this Thursday from 12:30 onward to express your
anger.
Bring your signs, slogans, posters, effigies and noisemakers—drum, horn, trumpet,
kazoo, a pot, a whistle—make some noise, and let Bruce Ratner and his political
cronies know that Brooklyn is mad as hell, and we’re not taking it sitting down
or quietly.
(More to come as details emerge about the event. Please check back at www.dddb.net/upcoming
for more details on precise locations for the two groundbreakings.)
Posted: 3.04.10
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