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February 25, 2006

Brooklyn vs. Bush

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This week's episode: Brooklyn vs. Bush Anti-Ratner anti-Bush from Brooklyn with Freddy's regulars & video art by Donald O'Finn.

Watch the show on t.v. in Brooklyn MONDAY NIGHTS and in Manhattan on WEDNESDAY NIGHTS.

BKLYN Mon at 11:30 pm on BCAT ch. 3 Time warner ch. 56 CVision ch 69, no box: 10. MANHATTAN weds 9pm MNN1/Time War 34 RCN 110 as "Tales of the New Depression"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Brooklyn vs. Bush Comedy Show reluctantly backs the Brooklyn Beer Boycott, and Says So on T.V. Monday Night in a debut, 2 part special, of local artist Donald O’Finn’s Art Show.

Brooklyn public affairs television producer Steve de Sève announced today that his show, which airs Monday night at 11:30 p.m. on BCAT 3, (Time Warner ch. 56) will be taking sides on the controversy started by Brooklyn Beer owner Steve Hindy when he announced his support for the oversized Ratner complex at the Atlantic Yards.

Brooklyn vs. Bush Comedy Show, which airs at 11:30 p.m this Monday night, is part 1 of a 2 part series that features the current art show of Donald O’Finn, the Freddy’s bartender who will be out of work if the plan Steve Hindy of Brooklyn Breweries supports goes through. O’Finn is a painter and video artist who has cultivated a unique community of writers, musicians and visual artists over the last 10 years. This community has made Freddy’s their home because of O’Finn. Many interviews on the 2 part series on O’Finn’s art show had strong opinions about the pending destruction of their community center. And two sketches, an ad for Brooklyn Beer “the beer that wants to throw you out on the streets and into the sewers,” and a longer piece about Hispanic residents being thrown into the streets and their struggle to understand Bruce Ratner’s need for a legacy at the cost of their neighborhood, will air this Monday night.

The decision for the Brooklyn vs. Bush show’s support for the Brooklyn Beer boycott comes from de Sève’s family’s personal experiences.

“Brooklyn Beer is great, but I can’t drink it for a while,” de Sève said at last week’s show’s viewing party at Freddy’s Backroom. “I have had two very bad experiences with eminent domain, and I think Brooklyn Beer’s owner Steve Hindy has not had any. Once you live through a 17 year threat to your family home, and then move to a town that is 75% underwater because of the state seizure of property, it makes things very clear.”

de Sève is from the small hamlet of Raymertown, NY, in the Berkshire Mountains. “My hometown, Raymertown, was seized by eminent domain for a reservoir. We were an agricultural community. The state took our most fertile farmland in the valley that made up most of the town, and made a reservoir for the nearby city of Troy. We not only lost most of our arable land, but several of the older farmers who lost their livelihoods and their homes died soon after the destruction of our town. It was a tragedy. And you know what? We didn’t even get access to the water. Folks back home still drink well water.”

Back when they were building highways like they were going out of style, de Sève’s grandmother’s Italian neighborhood was threatened with being torn down for a highway. The neighborhood was built on a hill, formerly called “mudslide hill,” where the Hudson River Valley met the foothills of our Berkshire Mountains. The Irish who had settled earlier in Troy to work in the collar and cuff factories and iron foundries, never figured out how to live on mudslide hill. Eventually, Italians migrated to Troy, and a man from de Sève’s grandmother’s anscestoral town of Cardinale, was looking for cheap land and saw mudslide hill. It was exactly like the hill where Cardinale had been for centuries. The people from his town had figured out centuries ago how to tame mudslides with terraces and concrete. “You gotta love Italians and their concrete.” de Sève said.

Mudslide hill soon attracted a number of families from Cardinale, who loved living together on the hill. Beautiful terraced gardens were built along with the sturdy homes, many of which were built during the Depression, if you can imagine that. It was a labor of love and of community, and the sites and smells of the gardens above the modest houses, as well as the food cooked from what the gardens produced made for a rich life for these poor immigrants.

Then, in the 1950’s the state announced plans to level the neighborhood to build a highway. Seventeen years of legal battles followed, and the neighborhood became blighted, because nobody wanted to put money into upkeep in a doomed neighborhood.

“The highway planners were told again and again that they couldn’t build a highway on mudslide hill if they wanted to. Those who acknowledged this fact were fired or transferred. The fix was in. It was in insider deal.”

The upshot? The highway was never built. BUT the neighborhood was seized anyway because the state had given out the demolition contracts on the houses! The land where the neighborhood stood is blighted to this day. And you can still see the sturdy terraces.

“It was, and is, very sad. We lost 6 old Italian women who died from broken hearts within months of the land seizure. My grandmother stayed and fought for another year. She told everybody to save the houses that were left, because no highway could be built. But intimidation tactics and the loss of her husband finally got to her and she called a family meeting and announced she had been beaten.”

“And THEN do you know what the state did?” asked de Sève. “They charged my grandmother RENT for living in her own house after the official date of the eminent domain seizure!” said de Sève. “They took it out of the small payment they gave her for her two houses, gardens, and four car garage. I think she got $8,500 for everything, after they made her pay rent for a house she helped pay to build by working in clothing factories during the Depression. She lost everything. Her neighborhood, her home, her rental income from the second house, and many of her friends. It was a rough year on an old lady who had recently lost her husband.”

de Sève started working with the local historical society at age 12, and interviewed many of the town’s remaining elderly about the loss of their homes and friends. “They were changed by this. Make no mistake about that.” The next year he was hired as the photographer for the local weekly newspaper, The Pittstown Centinal, and worked closely with the communities surrounding the Tomahannock Resevoir. “You can’t imagine what these people went through when the water reached the steeple of the old church in the valley. Although I can, because of what happened to my Grandmother and her neighbors.”

The other eminent domain tragedy that touched the de Sève family, which includes Beevis and Butthead director Mike de Sève, Filmmaker Jim de Sève who directed Tying the Knot which is now in DVD release, and Dr. Charles de Sève, who was the economist on the team that recently defeated the west side stadium in Manhattan, was the loss of their family home in Troy, NY to eminent domain in the 1970’s.

“We are against Eminent Domain in almost any situation,” said Mike de Sève, who plays George W. Bush on the show. “It kills people. And what about the American Dream? And now supporters of the oversized stadium project are telling people who live in the footprint, ‘all you’ve worked for all your lives, and the stability of your home and your neighborhood are going to be taken from you because some Billionaire who is a crony of the Governor is using the law to make your homes his. That’s deeply messed up, and completely wrong.”

Sketches in the works to educate people to the unseen dark side of eminent domain include “Ratman and Marty,” the dynamic duo in action, as they evict folks while chugging Brooklyn Beer. “How come you need more money, Ratman?” asks Marty, dressed in a “robin” costume, and sporting an enlarged Brooklyn Beer-belly, “don’t you have enough money already?” Ratman reaches for his utility belt and zaps Marty’s electric dog collar. “Oh, I get it,” Marty says, “You WANT MORE MONEY. That’s cool.”

“Art imitates life sometimes,” de Sève said. “We make a show that is educational, and contains a lot of parody. But our goals are serious. Bush and Ratner are the biggest local issue in Brooklyn. Eminent domain kills people. So does war. So does asthma from the kind of traffic increase that has prompted talk of widening Flatbush Avenue. That’s not funny.”

“A multi-billionaire is like a crack addict, child,” says a Hispanic mother in this week’s sketch called, Mother and Child. “He just needs more and more money, and he doesn’t care who he hurts. Maybe we need money, too. Or maybe we need our homes. But that don’t matter to the billionaires and the politicians. You’ll see when they show up with the police next week to give our home to Mr. Bruce Ratner.”

Although eminent domain has yet to be invoked formally in the Atlantic Yards proposal, the threat of eminent domain HAS been invoked already, and Ratner has been intimidating people in the footprint to sell out based on this threat.

“Brooklyn Beer is in with some bad company. And they favor putting Freddy’s Bar, one of their most loyal customers out of business. We at the show hope Steve Hindy will educate himself as to what eminent domain means to each of its victims, and to the families of each of its victims, and will turn around and support the people of Brooklyn instead of one greedy billionaire. After what I have personally experienced in Raymertown and in Troy, NY. it is clear to me that he will have at least a few deaths on his conscience, and we are hoping to turn him around and save him from a life of regret at his uninformed decision to support the Atlantic Yards project and it’s inhuman tactics.”

Contact:
Sabine Aronowsky, 917-370-8268 Sabine13@gmail.com http://www.brooklynvsbush.com/

Posted by amy at February 25, 2006 1:30 PM