AY: A Hearing on Terrorism Threat Followed by a March
Will Atlantic Yards be a terrorist target? If so, what have the state and Forest City Ratner done to ensure public safety in and around the sprawling development? Such were the questions raised by speakers yesterday at a Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn press conference held in advance of the third annual Walk Don’t Destroy rally….
Will Atlantic Yards be a terrorist target? If so, what have the state and Forest City Ratner done to ensure public safety in and around the sprawling development? Such were the questions raised by speakers yesterday at a Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn press conference held in advance of the third annual Walk Don’t Destroy rally. Atlantic Yards opponents have been making noise about the development’s possible security concerns following news that Newark’s $375 million Prudential Center arena, which is set to open in a couple of weeks, has only recently been deemed vulnerable to a potential terrorist attack. Newark officials say the arena isn’t far enough from traffic to protect it from terrorist attacks and they’re now playing catch-up—securing surrounding streets with concrete barriers and planning to close a section of one street on event nights—to guard against attacks.
Speakers yesterday said that like Newark’s arena, Forest City Ratner’s Nets arena could pose very real security threats to the development’s thousands of residential units as well as people living in surrounding communities. We’re here to call for safety, said DDDB’s Daniel Goldstein, noting that the Environmental Impact Statement for Atlantic Yards claimed a terror attack is not a reasonable worst-case scenario. Councilwoman Letitia James and Jim Vogel of the Council for Brooklyn Neighborhoods joined Goldstein in demanding a state hearing on Atlantic Yards terrorism security issues. James said the Brooklyn arena was much more of a terrorist target than the Prudential Center, and that the state and Forest City Ratner had refused to disclose to elected officials how they were planning to safeguard against attacks. And Vogel said it was imperative to avoid reactive planning: Newark’s Prudential arena is a wake-up call…We need answers.
Small photo from No Land Grab‘s Flickr photo set
you literally watched the entire march…do you have nothing better to do than to watch a bunch of failed white people who are so self centered they take their sundays and evenings to make change. Gosh darn it!
i like white people. Some of them are even my friends.
The times wrote the article fool.
And the fact that you see nothing class based (not racist) in that is ridiculous.
The same people who are “loitering” as he puts it, are the same people he is pretending to build housing and hoops for.
DUH
12:10, I did my research: I literally watched the entire march pass me by, which took about 90 seconds. The turnout was low and, yes, most of the people were white.
So what????????
Again…check the voting in this country. Good luck trying to motivate people to get out and do things.
Know your own your truth. What I continually can understand on this site is, why can we not “know our own truth.”
The people who viciously and yes it is viciously attack people for trying to fight for their rights, this I can not understand. yes, you have your truth and other’s theirs. Clearly no one will convince anyone of anything, not on this forum for sure.
Let’s be realistic, we are all giving and feeding propaganda the one who says the oppostion has “failed” is clearly taking no time to understand what they are saying – for if they had “failed,” why would that invoke such vitriolic posting, such anger?
Like wise when provoked surely the opponents can become just as vicious, but to act as though the people who are taking their time, and effort and undeniable hard work, to fight something they believe in, do they deserve such uncensored hatred from the posters on this blog? I mean really do they?
Rallies, fundraising events, donations from local vendors, fliers, press releases etc, do not happen on their own. FCR folks get salaries in teh 6 digits to do the same thing. Whether you BELIEVE in the same thing is irrelevant. We claim to value America for certain freedoms, and yet when exercised, in this borough, there is someone always on here ready to send out the most evil, self loathing vibes.
You can love the project, I personally don’t because I know far far too much and have seen far far to much to believe that it will be anything but a glorified site for more luxury housing. However I have plenty of friends who believe it will be a real benefit. Yet we are still friends because we still have human respect.
There is never any agreement on here to agree to disagree and even listen, just a bunch of rightfully so very angry people on both sides…showing only the ugliest side of this borough and of human beings. No one on here is willing to admit that they don’t know from a hole in the wall, the people they criticize, no more than they know anything really about Britney Spears.
But to say someone has “failed” is just a circumvented way of actually saying they succeeded, otherwise, you might be outside exercising, or taking note of something that supposedly “really mattered?” no?
*Of course* AY opponents use whatever argument is available to push the case. That’s all you can do when big, powerful, anti-democratic players are arrayed against you.
Ratner got together with Pataki, Bloomberg, and Silver to put this thing through, while in public his spokesmen made every conceivable (and often fallacious) argument about why this project (just as it is — as huge as Trump’s on the Westside) is great for Brooklyn. Please — think about that — this project is massive on the scale of Trump’s project the Westide. Do you really think that’s good for Prospect Heights? Do you really think there’s no reasonable limit to density?
This project is going forward with scarcely a semblance of a democratic process — more so than any other large development project in NYC. I think the consequence of that is going to be reflected in what kind of project we get — too dense, with courtyards instead of a park, a superblock design that’s deadening and cuts off Prospect Hgts from Fort Greene instead of linking them together, etc., etc.
22 acres in the heart of Brooklyn are going to be developed in a manner which every student of urban design and living knows is the wrong way to go. It’s really very sad.
“Do some research before you spew your once again predictable posts about white people and low turn out.”
12:10, I did my research: I literally watched the entire march pass me by, which took about 90 seconds. The turnout was low and, yes, most of the people were white.
To further your rhetorical question about how many people vote, I’d say a LOT more than attended this rally. Even if DDDB’s claim of 200 is accurate, that’s far below the percentage of any election turnout. Pathetic no matter how you slice it.
But this will soon end. The rejection of the eminent domain appeal will be here before long.
Flavor of the day. Could DDDB come up with a reason that they are against Atlantic Yards and stick with it?
12:21 I read the article. There’s nothing in there that shocks me or that seems racist. Its a well known fact that the mall was designed in such a way to deter loitering. So what.
Well I guess they could have bused people in from other neighborhoods, and given out candy and empty promises to lure people there, that seems to work for Ratner.
Darn!