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June 18, 2011
"Battle For Brooklyn" -- Go See It
The documentary "Battle For Brooklyn" is now playing at Cinema Village in Manhattan. All of these people liked the film and you probably will, too.
New York Magazine, Chris Smith on the Atlantic Yards Documentary Battle for Brooklyn
The film isn’t objective, which is fine, and appropriate: Atlantic Yards was never a fair fight. Launched during the boom years, with aggressively pro-business politicians running the city and the state, Atlantic Yards has used strategic heaps of money and a crafty marketing strategy (Brooklyn pride! Frank Gehry! Affordable housing! Jobs, jobs, jobs!) to churn relentlessly forward, even surviving the one serious threat to its existence, the great recession. What Battle for Brooklyn can only hint at, however, are the crucial political alliances that have kept Atlantic Yards alive; Mayor Bloomberg, Ratner, and the other key establishment players apparently didn’t deign to sit for interviews. That’s fitting, too, given the façade of a “public” process used to approve the massive project.
Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist, Battle for Brooklyn
Daniel Goldstein lives in a remodeled building on Pacific Street that is similar to many in New York City’s five boroughs. Priced out of the Manhattan market (I am only making a guess that this was the case for Goldstein, a graphic artist), they settle in working-class neighborhoods like Williamsburg, Long Island City and elsewhere to enjoy a roomy apartment or loft with the latest amenities. When Ratner offers the occupants of Goldstein’s building a million dollars each to move out, they take the money and run. Goldstein, a 30ish young man with a rebellious streak as pronounced as I have ever seen, decides to remain and fight. After joining Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB), he begins to spend more time organizing people than on his career. His passion for the cause (and perhaps other incompatibilities) leads to the break-up his engagement. But all is not lost. He finally hooks up with and marries Shabnam Merchant, an Indo-American woman who is as dedicated to the cause as he is.
Arrayed against them and their neighbors are an enormously powerful and ruthless bloc consisting of Ratner, his top executives, and a rogue’s gallery of politicians, including the buffoonish Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz. They portray the project’s benefit in such glowing terms that you would think that they were on some kind of social uplift mission rather than a typical real estate boondoggle. Ratner is a truly despicable figure, who naturally enough became a member of Bard College’s Board of Trustees. Leon Botstein has a particular flair for recruiting limousine liberals such as Ratner, who will be sitting alongside Stuart Resnick at board meetings. Resnick is the owner of a number of “enlightened” New Agey type products like POM juice and Fiji water that put profits over sustainable development.
orgtheory.net, battle for brooklyn: social movements, countermovements, and the urban growth machine
A couple of weeks ago I saw Battle for Brooklyn, a new documentary by Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley,* at the Chicago Underground Film Festival. The documentary tells the story of Brooklyn activists who fought against a real estate development planned in the the old Atlantic Yards site that ceased hundreds of homes through eminent domain in order to build a business complex and a new arena for the New Jersey Nets. Told from the perspective Daniel Goldstein, one of the community organizers leading the protests, the film provides a rare and in-depth look at the internal workings of a social movement, chronicling the emotional highs and lows as well as the process of tactical decision-making. It’s a fascinating film for a number of reasons, and I can’t recommend it enough.
mybrooklyn, Battle for Brooklyn
Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley’s new documentary Battle for Brooklyn unfolds right down the street from where we’ve been shooting My Brooklyn for the past four years. I had a chance to see the film last night at Cinema Village and highly recommend it to anybody interested in urban planning, land use, and the increasing use of eminent domain for private profit. By following Daniel Goldstein’s fight to stay in his apartment, and Develop Don’t Destroy‘s efforts to bring some sanity to the planning process, Battle for Brooklyn exposes the corrupt decision-making process behind the Atlantic Yards Project as well as some great public relations strategies (my favorite being a theater piece that takes place in front of Freddy’s bar before it is demolished). City Council member Tish James comes off really well against a cast of city politicians and developers the film skewers pretty squarely. Go see it while you can!
Posted by steve at June 18, 2011 1:59 PM