ACORN Protesters Storm The Beacon Tower
The anti-gentrification movement stepped it up a notch yesterday with ACORN protesters storming the open house at the Beacon Tower, Shaya Boymelgreen’s 23-story condo development at 85 Adams in Dumbo. What a shame! What a pity! We can’t live in New York City, the 50-odd protesters chanted while blanketing the sales office with flyers that…
The anti-gentrification movement stepped it up a notch yesterday with ACORN protesters storming the open house at the Beacon Tower, Shaya Boymelgreen’s 23-story condo development at 85 Adams in Dumbo. What a shame! What a pity! We can’t live in New York City, the 50-odd protesters chanted while blanketing the sales office with flyers that read, Beacon Tower developers get rich off the backs of working families.” The protesters main gripe? That luxury projects like the Beacon still receive tax breaks in a holdover from a program started in the 1970s to stimulated development. The ambushed Corcoran agents manning the open house called in the cops who removed the protesters. Prospective buyers didn’t appear to be too sympathetic to the cause. “Tell them to get jobs and go live in the projects,” said Jenny Malone, who was there checking out apartments. “People just want something for nothing.”
Activists Protest Dumbo Condos [Metro]
More coverage in the print edition.
Sorry for the typos, “thing” not “think”…
Per NYTIMES on April 3, 2006 “New York City Losing Blacks, Census Shows”.
This is real – many of my non-professional black co-workers and neighbors(regular working folk) are making their escape plans daily. Many have already left.
I guess some of you are getting what you wished for – but the problem is – the ones you really want to leave (welfare recipients, project dwellers, drug addicts, etc.) can’t afford to go and don’t have to go, so the disparity and resentment will only escalate.
Anon at 4.27, it is not what you blame it on, it is how to fix it. For those not working in big business of whatever field, if you honestly think that racsim would prevent you from working there, you are wrong and don’t understand the types of people successful businesses seek. They are looking for smart, well educated, hard working people, period.
So, if I blamed socioeconomic woes of poor minorities on one think (which is far to simplistic) I would say a lack of education and family pressure on students to work extremely hard in school. Again, this is too simplistic as many schools in poor areas are havens of violence and difficult to learn in. But, if I had to look for something to focus on and try to improve, that would be it. I would start not just with the students, but also with helping the parents, many of whom would no doubt have been dealt many hard knocks and set backs, to understand the liberating power of a good education, the self-reliance and hope it can engender.
Again, simplistic, but at its base, that is my opinion.
Ok, 3:57, you got me, I used the wrong term. I meant to address a market that was lower than luxury, but not low income. Middle income, if you will. I still think my point has merit, terminology aside.
Grandpa, well said. Reality check also said it very well, but I think the differences in this city today are more class driven than racially driven, although race is certainly a factor.
Leo, while you are correct in saying that luxury developments and revitalizing of areas such as DUMBO does create construction jobs, as well as service jobs and a few stores, that is not reason enough to keep up the tax abatements that certain developers get for luxury building. I’m sorry, but it does NOT benefit all of us, very few of us actually. These buildings can and do go up everyday with out them, bringing the same benefits you mentioned, without the corporate welfare. Those developers who are better at exploiting the loopholes in the system should not be rewarded for getting over.
The people who howl when reading about a welfare recipient’s ownership of a large screen tv should be more apopleptic about the gazillions of tax dollars given to rich corporations and developers everyday in the forms of givebacks, incentives and tax writeoffs. Unfortunately that is seen as a savvy working of the system, not the corporate welfare that it is. That benefits the owners, CEO’s and major stockholders. The only trickle down that occurs is that maybe a waiter will get a larger tip at Le Cirque.
4:20:
okay. so what shall we blame it on?
4:10:
your “real studies” comment sounds like “real bullshit” to me.
“So your argument that it’s one group pushing out another just doesn’t fly in the face of reality, even if it sometimes feels that way on the street.”
let’s see. i’ve watched certain blocks in brooklyn morph from entirely black and latino to entirely white. that’s how it feels on the street.
Probably true, but at the same time, when the secretary of state is black and a woman, the CEO of Merrill Lynch is a black man, and the multitude of other examples, you can’t keep blaming all socio-economic problems on latent, or blatant, racism.
white people, in general, engage in massive self-delusion regarding the advantages they enjoy over non-whites.
Actually, most research shows that the trend is that new residents are simply repopulating areas that had previously had a population decline. So it’s more like adding to the neighborhood than necessarily pushing people out. Real studies of the issue have found that the dynamics of how people are moving around is much more complicated and not at all reduced to one group pushing out another.
Also, this isn’t just the very wealthy versus the very poor. NYC’s population boom is in large part thanks to the continuing influx of immigrants, many of whom are not necessarily well to do. And it’s also due to lots of younger people moving in and staying in the city. These groups have much more complex economic characteristics than just very rich and very poor. So your argument that it’s one group pushing out another just doesn’t fly in the face of reality, even if it sometimes feels that way on the street.