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October 6, 2006
Hot Brooklyn primaries yield mixed results
People's Weekly World
By Daniel Rubin
A major battle over economic and political direction was fought in last month’s Democratic primaries in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Nearly 2 million people live in central and downtown Brooklyn. Seventy percent are African Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, Latinos, Asians and Arabs, overwhelmingly working-class and many poverty-stricken. Looming large in the primaries were these questions: Will Wall Street, the big developers, Gov. Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg and city planners push the poorest, including both nationally oppressed and whites, out of this area to the city’s outskirts and beyond, through huge multi-use developments, like the Atlantic Yards project, that drive up rents and property taxes? Will they replace small manufacturing, retail and commercial uses with luxury-oriented development and big box retailers? Will such “urban removal” cause a political shift rightward, replacing progressive African Americans and their allies with representatives of the growing upper middle income and wealthy, predominantly white, population? Or will an economic development policy be put in place that fosters demographics and politics that strengthen democratic and progressive trends?
Posted by lumi at October 6, 2006 6:27 AM