SOME WARRIOR LETTERS TO EDITORS!!!

WARRIOR KATE YOURKE'S RESPONSE TO NYT'S "City Backs Makeover for Decayiong Brooklyn Waterfront." May 3, 2005

The rezoning of the Williamsburg and Greenpoint waterfront will reshape
one of the City’s most unique and spirited neighborhoods into a bedroom
community for those whose backs are to the working class borough of
Brooklyn, their sights fixed on the dazzling lights of Manhattan.
While containing some concessions to community concerns, this rezoning
allows developers to reap tremendous profits on formerly industrial
property purchased cheap and allowed to crumble while awaiting the
City’s gift of this rezoning. Rewarding these developers for their
speculation troubles none in the City Council as they celebrate
themselves for approving this "historic"plan, historic for attempting in
some small way to respond to the real needs of their constituents with
affordable housing incentives and funds to retain manufacturing and
industrial jobs.
Displacement is rampant in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, as it is in many
parts of this city. Backhoes clog the streets of Williamsburg as
developers smell a new demographic on its way. This ethnically diverse,
tight knit community has seen these forces massing for decades. We
organized and tried to prepare even as we fought redlining, firehouse
closings, incinerators, superfund sites, transfer stations, the largest
urban oil spill in the world, the largest sewage treatment plant in the
Northeast, power plants, and a radioactive waste transfer and storage
facility which doubles as a toxic, hazardous and flammable waste storage
site. We are still fighting, as the land under our feet is sold for
luxury living.
Mayor Bloomberg is quoted in your article as saying "This rezoning will
insure that the reuse of this priceless but derelict waterfront will be
for the purposes of housing and recreation and not for such
inappropriate uses as waste transfer stations and power plants." This is
the rock opposing our hard place, between which our community squeezes
its previously modest existence. Gentrification is seen as a natural and
appropriate solution for our environmental problems. We are manipulated,
threatened with further environmental degradation if we oppose the
market forces of residential real estate.
15 years ago we began a community based planning process, hosting
hands-on planning workshops throughout this diverse neighborhood. I
fondly remember long afternoons spent discussing the present and
planning the future with factory workers, recent immigrants, civil
servants, students, artists, seniors, professors, activists, housewives,
PWA’s, Polish, Hasid, Hipster, Latino, Italian, the tremendous surprise
was the prevailing consensus. The character of the neighborhood must
extend to the waterfront. The mixed-use quality must be preserved;
people must be able to work within their community. The waterfront must
be accessible. And the neighborhood must be a beacon, a catalyst, an
incubator for the development of technology and services to address the
kind of environmental problems we suffer from.
The material from these workshops was refined and processed into the
City Council-approved (and award-winning) Williamsburg and Greenpoint
197(a) plans, which were supposed to govern future development in these
communities. They do speak for this community. They do not include
hi-rise luxury developments, or power plants, on our waterfront.
When someone in the Big City flushes their toilet, it comes here. When
they throw something in the garbage, diesel trucks will drive it here,
and drive it around, and drive it somewhere else. When they turn on
their air conditioner or the bright lights of Broadway, the power plants
here spew. We have been the service entrance, the back door, the noxious
underside of Big City glamour. Now that glamour is all around us,
filling in all the empty spaces, crowding out the sky. Will we need to
make the sewage treatment plant even larger? More power plants to run
all these new air conditioners? More cars, more garbage, not to mention
life in a construction site for a decade or more? (And how about that
fire station?)
Development in New York City must address the environmental impacts of
building materials, processes, and practices. There are no more
communities available to burden and underserve. Expansion has its cost,
and if in the neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Greenpoint we cannot
resolve this rock with this hard place we will be crushed. Development
in a community already overburdened with severe environmental problems
requires thoughtful solutions and real planning, not just rezoning and
the brutality of market forces. Starting here, especially here, let us
look to the future when building; employing state-of-the-art energy
efficiency technology, intelligent waste water systems, reused and
recycled materials, alternative heating and cooling technologies like
geothermal and wind ventilation, etc. The utilities savings will give
new depth to the term affordable housing. The factories for producing
specialized materials could be nurtured here in our mixed-use
neighborhood, eliminating the environmental impact of long haul trucking
while providing environmentally sound jobs for the good people of
Brooklyn. Here is the chance to leverage out from between the rock and
the hard place and to gather the momentum of this moment, rather than
allowing blind market forces to create yet more environmental problems
along with their unforgivable tidal wave of gentrification and
displacement.
Kate Yourke
Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Elana Levin, Community Organizer & Williamsburg Warrior

Elana Levin, 25, has a passion for organizing -- organizing people to empower their lives through collective action against powerful, often impersonal, interests. By day she works as a union labor organizer. But just about every moment of this energetic, creative and politically engaged individual’s spare time in 2005 – nights, weekends, lunch breaks even -- has been spent on other NYC issues. For over a year she has been spending an ever increasing amount of time as a Williamsburg Warrior opposing the Bloomberg Administration’s rezoning plans for Williamsburg / Greenpoint. The plan, opponents believe, threatens to eradicate skilled jobs, reduce quality of life, and force life long residents from the very neighborhoods they have nurtured and built for much if not all of their lives.
Gothamist recently spoke with Elana to discuss efforts by a broad partnership of arts and activism groups -- The Creative Industries Coalition -- against the Bloomberg Plan and for an alternative plan the local community itself has proposed.
You’re involved with efforts to fight the City’s rezoning plans in Williamsburg / Greenpoint. Why are you opposing the plan?
It’s incorrect to say we are opposed to the City’s plan. We ARE the city. It is the Mayor’s plan that is opposed to the city! The mayor’s cronies are on a rampage to turn radical, unique, magical New York into a luxury bedroom community of chain stores and conformity.
Ten years ago this community asked the Department of City Planning to rezone our formerly industrial waterfront. Community members, with the help of urban planning experts, drew up a plan for what would make for a livable and workable Brooklyn. The plan was visionary but economically sound. So what did the Mayor do? He threw it in the trash. The administration refuses to acknowledge our right to decide what happens to the place we live. It is undemocratic and it’s just plain shortsighted urban planning.
At the heart of it is a question of values. The people here value their neighbors, diversity and the long-term sustainability of the local economy. The developers value quick profit and will vampirically suck the life out of NYC, turning it into a bedroom community and playground for the super rich.
Could you give us an overview of what some of the central points of contention are with the Bloomberg plan?
These are the main issues as set out by the North Brooklyn Alliance (an omnibus group of 40+ community organizations ranging from Neighbors Against Garbage to the local Catholic diocese):
• No guaranteed affordable housing -- incentives are not guarantees -- and no anti-harassment protections for current residents. Can you say landlords gone wild?!
• No net increase in public park space -- the city says we are supposed to have a living room’s worth of parkland per person, but in the Bloomberg plan each Williamsburg resident gets a bathtub plus toilet’s worth of space.
• Functionally privatizing the waterfront by making it a front yard to the luxury condos. The developers will put up riverside walkways from each building to the water. This encourages restricting access to the waterfront to daylight hours.
• Twenty-two high-rise luxury residential towers will be built, some as tall as 40-stories high. That’s higher than the Williamsburg Bridge and not at all compatible with the low-rise and low-density makeup of the existing neighborhoods. These will be a wall of tall buildings dividing the community.
• The population of the district will increase by 25% (40,000 new higher-income residents) without adequate infrastructure, like, say, reopening the firehouse Bloomberg closed. Their transportation plan amounts to widening the stairwell at the Bedford Avenue L train by 3 feet. I mean I already almost fall into the train tracks from overcrowding during my commute! Private water taxis will be made available to waterfront residents.
• It puts around 4,000 skilled industrial jobs at risk (furniture making, set construction etc.) plus more creative economy jobs when artists get forced out.You claim 4000 local jobs will be eradicated in the affected neighborhoods? How was this figure arrived at?
Over 4,000 jobs in more than 250 companies that will be put at risk by the rezoning. You see the land would be rezoned "MX" meaning Mixed Use. That sounds great but developers can charge much more per square foot of residential space than they can per square foot of industrial space. The leases of these businesses won’t be renewed by their landlords. That way, landlords can price gouge apartment tenants and kick the manufacturers out.
This number of jobs was agreed on by the industrial retention advocates, namely Neighbors Against Garbage’s tireless 2004 door-to-door survey over the past eight months of over 80 companies on the Northside and New York Industrial Retention Network, NAG, and GMDC's outreach activities in Greenpoint and Williamsburg
How does that figure square with estimates that the plan will bring 40,000 + people into the neighborhoods in question? Wouldn’t common sense dictate that such an increase in population density would bring in additional demand for goods and services that would more than make up for losses in the industrial sector?
It’s a question of the quality of jobs. The jobs we have now are good paying, skilled jobs doing art handling, lighting fabrication, metal work etc. These jobs would be replaced by low paying "service industry" jobs, which in this case means Starbucks. The chain stores that would invade are not an adequate replacement for skilled trades jobs and creative jobs.
New York used to be a city where things were made. Its slowly becoming a place where people live, work on Wall Street and buy Gap t-shirts. That’s bad because it increases the gap between rich and poor. The poor work at the Starbucks and the rich work in real estate but what happens to the middle class when the manufacturing jobs leave? What happens to the creative class? The world-renowned galleries here would close under Bloomberg’s plan. There goes our local tourism and there goes one more of the things that make New York, New York.
The local community has proposed an alternative plan. Could you tell us how this plan proposes to redress some of the perceived injustices of the City’s plan?
A leading urban planning group, the Municipal Arts Society shows that our plan is economically viable. The Community Plan:
• Guarantees 40% affordable housing on the waterfront (not off site so the area becomes racially segregated). It is defined as housing affordable to the average income of long-time neighborhood residents, around $27,000 a year.
• Significantly increases parks and open spaces (so we won’t have one of the highest asthma rates in the country anymore) .
• Creates public access and waterfront promenade, developed comprehensively (it’s the people’s waterfront after all).
• Imposes height restrictions and maintains the neighborhood character that makes Williamsburg so desirable to live in and do commerce in in the first place.
• Preserves a mixed-use neighborhood and creates appropriate job development
• Protects thousands of jobs in small business (and keeping the height down is part of that)
Our plan is a holistic plan. You can’t afford even "affordable housing" without a job. The restaurants and boutiques here, business that rely on our area’s charm would loose their draw if the neighborhood looked like Battery Park City. The parks are necessary for public health. We need all of our community’s concerns addressed or else the pieces fall apart.
This past Saturday you helped organize a "Paula Revere" rally, featuring a colonial clad woman on a galloping horse crying out "The Developers are Coming! The Developers are coming!" Do you see such street theater as an effective political tactic?
Street theater works in two ways. First is, you produce your own news. A big, confusing, abstract issue like the Williamsburg one is hard to handle as a story. Street theater turns a whole mess of information into an event and turns it into a spectacle too cool looking for people to ignore.
Secondly, street theater also gets people to participate who wouldn’t have been involved otherwise. How many arts collectives knew what Inclusionary Zoning was before the Williamsburg Warriors started dressing up like 70’s cult flick "The Warriors" and spreading the word? Now if you walk down Bedford and ask if people know about the invasion of the skyscrapers most everyone answers "yes".
I’ve been having a Paul Revere year. Now is the time to call the Minutemen and Minutewomen of NYC and the whole world to action against their aggressors. I believe in street theater. I’m one of the founders of a political street theater group called Greene Dragon. We did our own Paula Revere’s Ride to warn NYC that "the Republican’s are coming! The Republican’s are coming!" during the GOP invasion of NYC (i.e. the Republican National Convention).
Ever think about the Boston Tea Party as America’s first great act of street theater? Guys dressed up as Indians dumping tea off a ship. They knew that the importers would just import more tea, that wasn’t the point. The point was rousing people to action.
Has it been difficult to mobilize the community to get involved in the fight against the plan?
It’s complicated. The Latino population has long been mobilized; they have kickass groups like Mobilization Against Displacement, El Puente and Save Our Southside (they even booted City Planning off the podium at a hearing! BADASS!)
The people who’ve been fighting this fight for over 10 years are tired. Rightfully so. They’ve been doing civil disobedience to get our firehouse reopened, the People’s Firehouse Engine 212 has been in and out of action since the 1970’s… People get burned out. I think the injection of new blood that the Creative Industries Coalition provides is essential to the continuing struggle. I think it showed people that they weren’t alone in caring about their community and that young people could pick up the torch of their groundbreaking work.
The challenge with young people is that many don’t know what a Community Board is let alone who their Councilman is. So the issue becomes mostly about education and empowerment Once you explain that -- like Beka from Not An Alternative says, "what’s happening here in Williamsburg is like the negative effects of globalism but on a local scale" -- those kids get it.
For the less overtly political people we say "Williamsburg rocks, lets make sure it stays that way" and Eve and Siri of the Warriors have done an astounding job mobilizing the "party kids" that way. Then you have to explain to people that the things they do can make a difference. People are so disempowered by the political system, but on the local level, where so many of us share the same progressive values… if we all work together we can achieve things.
What other methods are you employing in your battle?
We combine street tactics like costumed rallies with inside bargaining and lobbying. You need to do the rabble rousing in order to get the meetings and you need to get the meetings in order to influence the policy.
Most importantly, we helped to mobilize over 200 people to come to the City Council hearing on April 4th. We made all the local news outlets. There were so many people that they wouldn’t let us all in! We held a rally out front and community members gave over 8 hours of testimony. It was the most diverse crew ever -- the Latino Community, the Polish-American Community, the bohemian community all there, together! For so many, especially the hipsters this was their first time ever at the City Council let alone they first time they testified before the council. That is an important experience for anyone and very empowering.
I’ve also been registering voters to vote in the Democratic primary. Its not that I love the Democrats; its that being a registered Democrat is the only way you can vote in NYC. See, we have a close primary system where you must be in a political party to vote in the primary election. Whoever wins the Democratic Primary in NYC wins the general election (the mayor’s race being the exception). So many young people let their understandable contempt for the party establishment keep them from doing the main thing they can do to change that establishment -- vote!
Democracy for NYC, Howard Dean’s group does great education and outreach work on this issue.
From a practical standpoint, what will need to happen for the Community to achieve its desired goals?
The City Council Sub-committee on Zoning and Franchises voted yesterday. There are 4 members on the sub-committee, including Tony Avella (chair of the sub-committee, though he just got removed for political reasons), David Yassky (our local council-person), and Gifford Miller (the chair of the overall city council). In sub-committee, they will review and make changes to the 9 sections of the Bloomberg plan. Check www.northbrooklynalliance.org and www.communityplan.org for updates.
Then the Committee on Land Use alters the plan. The Chair of the committee is Melinda Katz. It will move through this stage quickly but here is where the changes we demand should be made.
Then, the overall City Council votes on the city plan. There are 51 members from all 5 boroughs, and the chair is Speaker Gifford Miller.
We want the committees to change the Bloomberg plan radically enough that it resembles the Community Plan. If adequate changes are made then zoning will pass and there will be dancing in the streets. If they don’t make adequate changes then we will push the City Council to have a "no" vote. If it gets a "no" vote the plan gets scrapped and we get to start anew.
The next time around, the Dept. of City Planning should actually read our Community Plan before acting unilaterally. The waterfront is only going to get developed once. We need to take the time to get it right the first time or else we are stuck with it.
What’s been your greatest frustration as a community organizer?
Aside from the general frustrations all organizers face, public apathy, people claiming helplessness or "I support you but I won’t do anything about it". When all someone does is be a passive consumer of commercial culture you lose your alliances with your neighbors and the people of the world at large. You stop feeling the need to fight for their rights; you even stop caring about your own rights< p>
People in America are too isolated. Most people don't even know their neighbors anymore. But in NYC where we all live on top of each other, literally, it should be much easier connecting folks to one another. I guess that’s just one of my things -- connecting people and issues; to get people connected to each other so we can advocate and WIN things like affordable housing for different income brackets, more parks so people aren't sick from the pollution, better jobs, etc."
Aside from all that my frustration is with the political machine that makes getting any change in NYC so damn hard. Everyone should read that Harpers article by Christopher Ketcham, "Meet The New Boss: Man Vs. Machine Politics in Brooklyn."
Do you ever have moments when you feel like your efforts are just so much spitting into the wind? That the City will force through the current plan no matter what the community does?
Parks Commissioner/eminent domain demagogue Robert Moses once had a plan to put a freeway through Washington Square Park. He was at the peak of his power, yet it was defeated almost single-handedly by community activist turned Urbanist Guru Jane Jacobs along with the support of the tenacious people of Greenwich Village,
Look, I’m not delusional but people have won before. Simply by getting all these people from distinct micro-cultures here united we will be a stronger community in the future. In the fight to get Williamsburg a better rezoning plan we've gotten hipsters and artists who had been largely apolitical together with young anti-globalization or anti-Bush activists AND the area's Latino, Polish and Italian communities.
We know each other now. We see the commonalities in our concerns. The next time the powers that be try to mess with us, we will be even better prepared to kick their asses…
So there have been certainly been some positive moments…
Last Sunday I had one of the greatest "this is why we live in Brooklyn" moments ever. To bring attention to the rezoning fight and reconnect the community here to OUR waterfront we held a parade and street party. It started at Grand Street park (currently the only water access point in Williamsburg). Families were making kites and people were getting into their costumes. We started marching down Bedford ave, lead by the marching band of city magic, the soundtrack of what makes New York unique, The Hungry Marching Band and their baton twirlers as people in flower costumes "fought" against people in dressed up as evil skyscrapers.
I was doing my usual job, handing out flyers and as we walked, random people joined in. We turned and entered this plot of land on the waterfront and I saw people carrying gardening supplies and art supplies and flags onto the lot and Brooklyn’s official marching band of the revolution, The Rude Mechanical Orchestra started to play. That’s when I had that "this is why we live in Brooklyn moment". That sentiment is a lot of what motivates me to spend all my free time working on these issues. This is what we have to protect.
The Creative Industries Coalition was formed specifically to address the rezoning plan. Do you foresee this alliance expanding its mission to address other social issues?
I foresee the Creative Industries Coalition continuing. We are engaging in long-term movement building here in Williamsburg. That was our main intent. 1/3rd of the city’s garbage is processed through Greenpoint. That’s why asthma and lupus are so high there. But it is no mystery why some communities don’t get garbage dumped on them -- they are organized!
How are you feeding your soul when not engaged in your political activities? Any time left over to actually put food in your mouth?
It’s interesting because I have the day job that I love and worked hard to get and it’s a "fighting for justice" job that empowers people to fight against "the bosses" And then I do my extra-curricular activism -- right now the Williamsburg stuff. So this really is my life right now.
But I always make sure to do the amazing things that are unique to NYC like Coney Island (which I just learned is also threatened by developers) and the free outdoor movie screenings in summer. I go to see the Hungry March Band or Rude Mechanical Orchestra a lot. I go to Rubulad and Jeff Stark list type events as much as possible. I like to go to the Rec Center and lift heavy objects over my head repeatedly while listening to The Stooges on my walkman. Actually I am a huge music geek of High Fidelity proportions. The Rolling Stones are my favorite band ever. And The Kinks.
When I actually get food into my mouth its usually at my friends’ art collective’s BBQs at The Bunker. Phil is the best cook ever.
Have you found any inspiration in past or present New Yorkers?
My favorite New Yorker alive right now might be Norman Siegel, candidate for Public Advocate, lawyer of the people, and former Executive Director the NYCLU. We need to support his campaign. Oh and I love Reverend Billy!
My favorite fictional New Yorker is probably Peter Parker, Spider Man. "with great power also must come great responsibility" quoth great New Yorker Stan Lee. He wrote that as a caption on a story panel in first issue of Spider Man comics. Profound.
You're in a time machine that can take you back in time. What day in NYC history would you go back to?
We didn’t exactly have a Paris, May ‘68 here but that would have been my favorite if it happened. Maybe the Great Transit Strike of 1966?
But you know, I think I was in NYC during some of the greatest days in its history. Take the protest at the RNC. That’s something future generations will say "what did you do during the RNC 2004?" and I’ll have a damn good answer: "In colonial meets glam-rock attire re-enacting Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River to reclaim NYC from the British. Except we were aboard the Staten Island Ferry staging a battle to Reclaim NYC from the Republicans"
If you could change just one thing about New York City, what would it be?
If I could change one thing about New York I would change the way money from developers corrupts and controls all local politics. It feeds the local political machines and lines the pockets of the developers who want to steal our homes away. We need a real democracy.
Interview by Raphie Frank

ON SUNDAY MARCH 20TH THE NEW YORK TIMES WROTE A BLASPHEMOUS PIECE ABOUT THE CULTURE OF WILLIAMSBURG CLAIMING THAT THE KIDS WHO'VE SETTLED HERE OVER THE LAST DECADE WERE ALL VERY EXITED ABOUT THE CITY'S REZONING PLAN. THE PEOPLE THEY INTERVIEWED WERE IN THE REALESTATE BUISINESS.

HERE ARE SOME LETTERS TO THE EDITOR FROM OUR FELLOW WARRIORS:

"Williamsburg Reinvented" by Anna Bahney (Real Estate, March 20)
assumes a slavish emulation of Manhattan on the part of the North
Brooklyn neighborhoods of Greenpoint and Williamsburg. Neither a
neutral nor organic process, development is being foisted on the
community by the combined efforts of the city, state and federal
governments. Both Community Board 1 and Borough President Marty
Markowitz oppose the Bloomberg Administration's use of the 2012
Olympics as a rationale to build twenty-two 40-story towers along the
waterfront without adequate affordable housing, no increase in per
capita parkland and no real improvement in public transportation.
Even without this massive project, the pace of development threatens
to price out tens of thousands of working- and middle-class residents
who go unmentioned in the article, transforming Williamsburg and
Greenpoint into another Battery Park City.
Pete Kane

To the Editor,
I have been mulling over a response to the article in
the last Sunday Times. Ms Bahney did not address the
resistance to the proposed flood of unaffordable
housing to the significant number of people in the
Williamsburg community that do not make $60,000 to
$150,000 per year. The is a large group of people that
settled in this community with the promise of
inexpensive rentals near the mighty island of
Manhattan. Many of these people came to the
neighborhood to work the occasional job in the city
and have a few days a week to pursue their artistic
endeavors. Those that came came long before the
corporate hipsters with the inclination to claim the
neighborhood as theirs. Many of the earliest artists
and musicians that I know are now even in their
forties and fifties. These people came into a
community and embraced its indigenous residents and
worked together with them to restore existing
structures and coexist with everyone in the
neighborhood peacefully. Many a time taking verbal and
physical blows from characters such as the the guy
that mumbles explicatives about the Rollings Stones
while carrying a box cutter to cut down band flyers
from poles or the man who would chant at the top of
his lungs that he was Jesus swinging fists at any
passerby. Like it or not these where and are our
neighbors, friends and equals. The last thing this
neighborhood needs is dot com rental agencies,
overpaid architects, and a few greedy greedy large
building owners drawing a line back down the middle of
a community that is successful reinventing itself. It
is sad to see most of the five Borroughs continue to
have people who don't live in those communities make
decisions that will not benefit those places. All of
the proposed big building projects seem like they are
geared toward gating a community of those that have
money from those that that want an affordable holistic
community in all its diversity.
Jef "Wolfy" Scharf

Dear Ms. Bahney and Editor to the Real Estate section:

I’m highly incensed at your one-sided, and very disturbing article last week about Williamsburg. This week, you published only one letter countering the disgusting plans for the neighborhood I call “home”. How many letters exactly were not printed? I know that there are many, many people against the changes that are already happening here.

Five years ago, there were no real estate agents in the City who would take me seriously or would rent to me because of my income. I had been looking into all sorts of neighborhoods for almost a year. Finally, I asked my father to speak in Polish to a local real estate agent, and I was quickly able to make my home here.

Shortly, I will be forced to move. Thanks to your romanticizing of the 'hamlet' and all of the things that you exploited- getting coffee, walking the dog, running into people you know. You are contributing to the cronyism of the likes of Bloomberg and Doctoroff with the “reinvention” of this area, and at the cost of ruining the neighborhood as it exists now.

For people like me, all the simple things you wrote about will all be missed, including the sky. The charm of the Williamsburg area lies in the fact that there are no buildings higher than four stories to block the sun and sky. It makes me cringe that Starbucks and Banana Republic are very much a possibility for the near future. Rents have been rivaling Manhattan prices for some time, and I can only expect that they will go up. It is truly a market for the rich- how sadly predictable, and how disappointing.

Here’s a message to all of you corporate-type wannabes: you are not cool, and you never will be, so why don’t you all go back to the big island where everyone has a lot of money and every street corner looks the same? Thank you.

-Kim Piotrowski (Greenpoint)

P.S. I'd really like to know who the employers are of these “20-30 Somethings” who are making "60-150k" a year. And to all those who have sold their buildings to make way for corporate greed, SHAME ON YOU!

THIS ONE GOT PRINTED:

HERE IS A WARRIOR RESPONSE TO THE EARLIER NY POST ARTICLE WHICH WAS ALSO TOTALLY OFF BASE ABOUT THE CULTURE OF WILLIAMSBURG:

3.22.05
James Trimarco
91 S. 6th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211

Dear Ms. Vitullo-Martin,
This letter is in response to your editorial in the March 14 edition of the New York Post. As a long-time resident of Williamsburg, I appreciate your thinking of my neighborhood and writing about it with an intelligent command of planning issues. I understand your arguments about the costs of affordable housing and am open to debate on that topic. I also know that the waterfront is not what it could be and needs development; but I want development that preserves the diverse social fabric of the neighborhood today.
The general tone of your article suggests a lack of understanding about North Brooklyn. In fact, I would guess that you have not visited here in recent years. For instance, you open the piece with the assertion that “Greenpoint-Williamsburg has been in decline for so long that only the oldest New Yorkers can remember when it thrived.” But Ms. Vitullo-Martin, Williamsburg’s rise is the talk of the town. Just take a walk down Bedford or Driggs Avenue, anywhere between Grand Street and about North 11th, and you will be in for a glimpse of one of the most vibrant, commercially successful, and most welcoming neighborhoods in the city. Most of the real estate here has doubled in value in the past few years.
The reason why we are insisting on 40% affordable isn’t because of an unrealistic allegiance in inclusionary zoning. It is because we want our neighborhood developed, not destroyed. So many neighborhoods in New York City—Manhattan in particular—have become highly exclusive enclaves where no affordable rents, groceries, bars, restaurants or practically anything else exist. Some of these neighborhoods are losing the diversity of age and ethnic background which we in Williamsburg enjoy today. A flood of rich people will change the market and force unaffordable Manhattanization down our throats in our own neighborhood.
Your reasoning shows training in urban planning, but it does not show a good understanding of North Brooklyn as it exists today. Williamsburg is not in decline; on the contrary most of us here prefer it to Manhattan. Come and visit, and I think you’ll see why. If you understood the neighborhood better you might think twice about advocating a planning policy that would bring about the destruction of its current social fabric.
Sincerely,
James Trimarco
PhD Program in Anthropology
City University of New York

HERE'S A LETTER WARRIOR FRIEND DRAYTON WROTE ABOUT THE WHOLE SITCH!!!

We Who Are About to Lose Our Homes Beseech You
A few weeks ago, I suddenly discovered that my neighborhood was in danger of being destroyed. I had had no idea. I was going through my life, completely oblivious, and then there it was, clear as day. I moved into the Williamsburg area a few months ago, and had just begun to settle into my new home. For the first time in many years of moving around the country, I felt at peace in my surroundings, in a neighborhood that was eager to have me. I thought that I had found a place of my own, I thought that I was part of a community, until I discovered that my community was about to be torn apart.
Under a zoning plan currently awaiting a vote in the City Council, the entire waterfront of Williamsburg and Greenpoint will be rezoned to allow for the construction of more than twenty high rise, luxury towers. Both Williamsburg and Greenpoint are working class, family oriented, lower to middle income neighborhoods with an appealing and old fashioned low rise skyline. Towering at upwards of four hundred feet, these new buildings would be up to eight times as tall as the current residential buildings of our neighborhood. With the construction of these luxury dwellings, property values would skyrocket across the neighborhood; local businesses are already being pushed out in expectation of the rezoning, and area residents face the constant fear that their buildings will be sold and demolished.
I cannot tell you how frustrating these past few weeks have been, as I have begun to understand the full implication of the danger that Williamsburg is facing. This neighborhood, from the East River to the Canal, from the Northern Waterfront to the J Train, is something very special and very beautiful, that rare model of a viable, functional neighborhood. Urban developers and city leaders talk about creating integrated communities, yet when they are confronted with a thriving success such as Williamsburg, their only responses is to plot its destruction. Once this neighborhood is gone, we won't see the likes of it again. The Original Penn Station, the Los Angeles Streetcar System, Gene Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, and a Little Town in the Big City that once was Williamsburg, a fully actualized, cooperative community. We are that Shining City on a Hill, or at least we were, for a moment, and while I refuse to believe that it's too late, if this re-zoning isn't significantly curbed, our neighborhood will simply disappear.
I’m part of a neighborhood organization that is fighting to save our community. We meet once a week and we plan events to raise awareness of the dangers we are facing and the validity of what we are working to save. Our meetings are creative and productive, but they tend to ignore the basic issue: the City doesn’t want what we’re selling. There's a white elephant in the room at every meeting, and it's that City Hall has a plan for our neighborhood -- or at least its real estate -- and it doesn't include the current residents. No matter how strenuously we appeal to their sense of humanity, no matter how forcefully we appeal to their appreciation of community, no matter how eloquently we express the poetry of our self-built (something), our words fall on deaf ears: their only poetry is the urban ziggurat, eighty stories of steel, glass and flying transverses. They have dreams of Hong Kong and Shanghai, and we're selling them on a model of sustainability and person to person connectedness. They have no sense of community, of gardens and sunlight, of something you can feel in your soul as being beautiful and true. If it were enough to show them the value of our community, we would have already won.
The problem is that Mayor Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, Dianne Reyna, Amanda Burden et al have a vision for our area; you can see it in the re-zoning, you can see in the conversion of the L to an automated line, you can see it in the stonewalling that we've been given and the removal of Anthony Avella from the zoning board. Every moment that the community makes a clear, concise presentation of our needs, every moment that we efficiently and eloquently defend our Community Plan, they simply close another door, they simply discount us, not simply as citizens of the City, but as human beings.
They have a dream of a new Garden of Babylon sprouting up on New York's Eastern Shore, of a city that straddles two rivers, a nouveau riche utopia of eighty story high rise residences and marble food courts, all being served by an robot train and a free water taxi. As someone who once had the same dream (call it the myth of an American Tokyo), I can tell you that they have no capacity to see the genius of an area that is ramshackled and tarnished, that has been built by a divergent community and crafted into something that is not only functional but inspiring. We are an affront to the Megalopolis that is across the river, and The City is seeking to revoke the basic tennent that all residents of the Outer Buroughs have heretofore been able to claim, that we can love the city without having to live in it, that we can benefit from Manhattan without adopting its peculiar brand of isolation and alienation.
We're fighting for our homes here, in a city that has shown without fail that it will bulldoze whatever it wants in order to build a better highway or a bigger building. With very few exceptions -- and the modern day existence of Greenwhich Village is the most inspiring -- this city has been shaped and reshaped by a handful of powerful men who took it upon themselves to mold New York to their own fanciful and often misguided dreams. Too often we fail to realize the power of what we have until it is lost. Imagine Manhattan without Greenwhich Village or Little Italy; imagine America without its Heartland and amber waves of grain.
I am calling upon the residents of New York, of all of the Buroughs that make up our beautiful patchwork city, to stand up and come forward and implore City Hall and the City Council to respect the integrity of Williamsburg. What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, but what is happening in Williamsburg will soon spread to the rest of New York. We are all fighting for our neighborhood identities and personal communities, we are all fighting for the right that is owed to all New Yorkers, the right to move into your ideal neighborhood and say at last, “I will never move again”.
To find out more:
www.communityplan.org
www.williamsburgwarriors.com
www.northbrooklynalliance.com
posted by drayton at 8:26 PM | 0 comments