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August 3, 2011
Lies, Damn Lies, and Developers
The L Magazine
by Ross Barkan
Marching past the skeletal shadow of the rising Barclays Center, Carl Patterson roared that he was sick of broken promises. "We are tired of 'once upon a time,'" he yelled through a megaphone. "We want our dreams to come true now."
Patterson, a community activist in Brooklyn's 35th Council district and the self-proclaimed "Puerto Rican Al Sharpton," led a group of more than 40 protesters on a recent mid-week morning, marching near the construction site as a police car crept alongside.
People for Political and Economic Empowerment, which organized the protest, was once a vocal supporter of the Atlantic Yards development. But now the organization, which helps train and place hard-to-employ people like ex-convicts in jobs like construction, says that local construction workers aren't getting the jobs they were promised.
..."In this country, there's two ways to do things: one is through litigation, and the other is through fisticuffs," said Robert E. Cornegy, Jr., the Bedford-Stuyvestant district leader. "Hopefully, the litigation will be enough. I don't think they understand how difficult it is for people in certain communities to eat, feed their families, and do everything."
NoLandGrab: Damn, why hadn't we thought of that — fisticuffs!
Posted by eric at August 3, 2011 8:33 AM