Top Ten Brooklyn Stories of Last Decade?
Rich Calder of The Post takes a stab at defining the ten biggest Brooklyn stories of the last decade. It seems like a decent list to us, though we would have put the rezonings of Downtown Brooklyn and Williamsburg higher on the list. What about you? What’s missing or shouldn’t have made the cut? 1….
Rich Calder of The Post takes a stab at defining the ten biggest Brooklyn stories of the last decade. It seems like a decent list to us, though we would have put the rezonings of Downtown Brooklyn and Williamsburg higher on the list. What about you? What’s missing or shouldn’t have made the cut?
1. Atlantic Yards
2. The Fight (Sitt vs. Bloomberg) for Coney Island’s Future
3. Cyclones Arrive at Keyspan Park
4. Condos Added to Brooklyn Bridge Park Plan
5. Astroland Closes
6. Rezoning of Downtown Brooklyn and Williamsburg
7. Marty Markowitz Becomes Borough President
8. Clarence Norman Busted for Selling Judgeships
9. Ikea Comes to Red Hook
10. Opening of Brooklyn Cruise Terminal
Calder’s Honorable Mentions on the jump…
Brooklyn’s Top 10 Stories of the Decade [NY Post]
Honorable mention:
– Feds call for Superfund designation of Gowanus Canal;
– Jehovah Witnesses begin selling properties in Heights and DUMBO;
– Walentas continues transformation of DUMBO;
– Hasids and Hipsters fight over bike lanes in W’burg.
Photo by loop_oh
for what it’s worth, I never once saw a cop on duty in Brooklyn until Dinkins came along.
Also, you can hide homicides. Google search Paul Mento who was found naked in a bathtub and had duct tape wrapped around his head…M.E. Ruled it a suicide.
There are a couple of other ruled accidental deaths and ruled suicides in the 68th precinct that reek of murder/homicide whatever you want to call it
If it’s any consolation, Montrose, nine years ago as a blonde white woman I had a hard time getting cabs to take me to Bed Stuy too. So it wasn’t just you.
No one ever said street crime was a legitimate outlet for anything. Never. What was said was by way of explaining what was happening in the Black community. If you don’t understand the root cause of the anger, you cannot begin to address it. But tolerate crime? Sharpton’s Tawana Brawley idiocy aside, no legitmate African American leader ever claimed crime was a legitimate outlet. What they asked for was an understanding of why it was happening.
Denton;
OK,here we go again 😉
I actually give Sharpton and Jackson more credit than you might suppose. I give Sharpton alot of credit for his recent work in education reform.
However,I don’t subscribe to the root cause theory at all, for two reasons:
-it is simply unacceptable in my book to tell folks that street crime is a legitimate outlet for the hardships and injustices they face.
-more importantly, it is a disabling message. In my mind, to tell folks that they have been dealt a raw hand, and that a legitimate reaction to such a hand is crime, is to make them a dis-abled victim, leading to a dead-end life.
Again, I’m not denying the very real hardships and injustices folks faced. I’m acknowledging the work these leaders did to remove these injustices. However,I think it is to their eternal dis-credit that they tolerated crime in this matter. That was the whole point of Moynihan’s book about Dinkins and his crowd (Defining Deviancy Down).
fsrq — I went and looked at the charts at the bottom of the article you linked. I think the best characterization is in between your and your characterizatin of mine — there were declines in all categories in years 2-4 under Dinkins and sharper declines under Rudy. Beyond the murder rate, there were some substantial drops in several categories of violent crime between yeaers 1 and 4 of DD, as well as big drops under RG. I think it is wrong to attribute either all or none of the decline to either mayor during their respective periods of governance. Crack epidemic went into remission nationwide in Giuliani era, but I do not say that to suggest Rudy was ineffective any more than I suggest that DD deserves 100% credit for the drop on his watch. Many factors at play here.
btw benson, I disagree with what you are saying about ‘their leadership’. People who you have mentioned in the past, i.e., Sharpton, Jackson, etc., have fought very hard to eliminate some of those root causes.
benson, I’d argue that the ‘root cause’ argument is valid. Systemic racism, crap schools, police brutality, all play a part. The improvement in at least some of them has helped. Or do you think educational opportunities are exactly the same in 1980 as they are today?
“No, not all those poor folks. They’re just a monolithic mass of crime-breeding drug-infested pj dwellers. They couldn’t possibly get any of the credit.”
Denton;
You raise a valid point. However, if they don’t get any credit, I would suggest that the fault runs with their leadership who, for years and years, were running around saying that they were NOT people who could affect their condition. Rather, they were saying that they were victims of poverty, and that the resultant crime was just a consequence of this condition. Remember the whole “root cause” crowd??? In that debate , who was treating the folks in these areas as a monolithic mass?
absolutely right, denton. Communities change- people want better lives for themselves and don’t see politicians doing much to help them get it. CH and Bed-Stuy are prime examples of that DIY attitude.