This Is War?

At the bottom of this post, if you haven't received it already, is the latest screed from Alicia Boyd, the self-annointed poobah of a ragtag group called MTOPP. If you've been following the saga you'll know that she has created an enormously antagoinist force hellbent on keeping this community from interacting with the City in one of the few ways that we can really have any hope of influence - through ULURP, the Universal Land Use Review Procedure, that allows communities a modest voice in telling the City how it wants to grow. Note the word "grow," because the City is growing, by leaps and bounds. That growth happens largely whether we want it to or not. Landowners do what they will and sell at what they can, and when they can't, they seek variances, and if those variances are in sync with a Mayor seeking to house both rich and poor, variances are usually granted. People and Community Boards can voice their opinion; but we've seen time and again that there are plenty of more powerful voices than "we the people." So be it. This City was here when we got here, by birth or by immigration, and it will be here when we leave, by death or emigration. Love it or leave it, or love AND leave it. Or stay and loathe it. The City don't care.

Two years ago, the Q and others started noting that big D development was finally setting its sights on the east to southeastern side of Prospect Park. Some of us thought it'd have arrived here earlier, and it would have too were it not for a near meltdown of the world's economy. The forward march happened nonetheless, primarily along lines of public transportation, with or without zoning changes or resolutions or anything other than money following money. Word of a giant tower looming over Prospect Park finally galvanized some support for zoning changes that would reign in height to within reason. A "text change" maybe, but City Planning said no to that. A sliver of Flatbush and Ocean downzoned perhaps? Too costly they said, especially given the fact that it would result in fewer rather than more net new units. This brought on a further conversation about how best to mitigate the effects of big D development on rents and on the character of an extraordinary place on the American map called Lefferts Gardens. Would we start to resemble other parts of Brooklyn, so made-over, not always for the better? Would huge numbers of folks be secondarily displaced by so much frantic building and buying and renting? And yes, for a proud largely African and Caribbean American neighborhood, there was the sense that once again blacks would be sent to the back of the bus. The lucky could sell and move "back" down South. The unlucky, maybe a trip north to Poughkeepsie, my favorite stand-in name for Upstate hardscrabble towns. It was this last bit, the sense of being "colonized" by forces from without, that hit hardest and hurt most to many of our neighbors. First Harlem. Then Ft. Greene and Clinton Hill and Crown Heights and (seriously?) Bed-Stuy. Soon East New York, and Brownsville. Not that anyone was saying explicitly that diversity was bad. A few more whites, some amenities, maybe a bit less crime. But they saw how it'd happened elsewhere, and that sweet spot called "diversity" quickly dwindled to the majority becoming the minority. Predictable? Maybe. But sad, and historically familiar, just the same.

Some, MTOPP in particular, would take this situation and turn it into something it is not. It is NOT a major rift in the way we as a community see ourselves and the world. Most smart, sane people recognize that we can do a lot but only so much. That the greatest need right now is for tenant organizers to educate people on their rights; the power of standing together is real when it comes to existing law. Also, policy wonks can curb developer abuses like "poor doors" and onerous application and lottery processes. And zoning. And planning. And study, the kind that tells you what's here and what could happen and why one way is better or worse than another.

The process, is to do a study in concert with the community, so the City can know the temperature of a place before upsetting equilibrium. During that process, back-and-forth needs to happen. Various voices need to be heard - not just one. But there are those who want to shut down the process before it starts. They've made pronouncements about what's REALLY going on, and spread misinformation in order to further their agenda. They even call their efforts "propaganda." Their methods include bullying and obstruction and name-calling. It's a royal bummer, dude.

The Community Board? Well, let's get real. It has very little real authority over anything. Really. It's a place to gauge sentiment, and it's made up of up to 50 people from the 100,000 or so in the district, people who can be kinda counted on to gauge what people think on an issue and render an opinion. At CB9, I know quite a few of them. They're good people. Smart. Honest. Volunteers. They want to do the right thing. They represent a wide variety of backgrounds. The majority are people of color. Quite a few are Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic Jews. There's a few regular old whites. No one seems particularly rich or lavished in patronage. Do some work, show up, be a mensch, you might get a slot.

Let me tell you what I know about them. No one I've met wants outsized development in the neighborhood. They generally understand that the City grows and that as it does there will be changes. But the consensus I've observed is that folks want to be sure that we do everything in our power to make sure that people don't get displaced, that new apartments are built for those on the lower side of the income scale to replace the many units that have disappeared from rent stabilization or become too pricey, and that we respect the rich history of the neighborhood and do our best to maintain the low-rise nature of most of the area, lest we lose the neighborhood-ness that we love so much to the canyons that define much of Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn.

In other words, we're pretty much in super-majority agreement with most of you. So why, then, all the vile accusations and email campaigns and shouting down of fellow citizens at community meetings? Why the vitriol, and accusations of racism and Uncle Tom-ism and conspiracy and collusion with developers, and words like "war" and "lies" and mean-spirited assassinations of character?

Only someone truly unhinged would turn a difference of opinion on how to achieve the above goals into war, and characterize the act of zoning as an act of violence on the neighborhood. Right now, because the Community Board itself is not standing up to the absurd notion that it has somehow acted with malice towards the community itself, it, CB9, has shown itself to be exactly what it is - a fairly representative group of neighborhood residents intent on helping, but hardly the sort of organized constitutional body capable of countering a full-on negative war of words. Right now, it's even more disorganized than ever, with new leadership and tons of new members. Even if most of us were appointed by this Borough President or the last, most of us were not close friends with either of them. We put in applications, we were deemed "worthy enough" and asked to take an oath to be honest and not vote when having conflicts of interest. I know of no developers on the Board. I know of know convicted pedophiles for that matter. I know of no psychopaths or even reality television actors. All members have but one brain and most have two arms and two legs and various lengths of hair on the head, face and elsewhere. In other words, they appear to be humans.


Last Spring, sensing the urgency to act, we sought counsel from the neighborhood, and did what is required. We sent a letter (okay, resolution if you must. It was a letter, okay?) to City Planning asking that it consider beginning a study of the neighborhood giving this that and the other concerns that had been raised at the listening sessions. The district manager, being a good writer and knowing all the people this letter was intended to reach, created the letter. We voted to approve and send it. Should it have gone back to committee? In hindsight, probably. Had we done so, it most likely would have sailed through, since nothing in it seemed odious or damning. The language was left vague on purpose. And probably should have left out any specific notions of where to place additional housing - AFFORDABLE HOUSING mind you - though it was plain to anyone that you can't build in the historic district and that Empire Boulevard is hardly the Champs Elysee, so new housing would go there, on Flatbush, on the other avenues, and on lots along the streets. This seemed like a reasonable place to start, Planning agreed, and we met a few times in small groups to start the consideration of what part of the district to look at first.

That's it. That's what happened. And now all this.

Yours truly has been doing his best to stop the juggernaut of misinformation and convince all involved to be the adults and counter the ridiculous accusations and now lawsuits that are only making it harder to talk to one another and to the City about what we need and want in this community. I guess that's the point. Keep us from talking, make us look foolish, make us turn on each other. It's heartbreaking, really.

Meanwhile, the Whirling Dervish of Sterling Street has scared everybody silly. I'm doing my best to stand up to her self-serving divisiveness, but I can only do so much. This has become a fight against gentrification. And if you ask this observer, it's VERY much about NIMBYism of the folks owning townhomes on Sterling. It's a lovely block. No one is talking about bringing bulldozers to destroy it. But we DO want to talk. They're deadset on not letting us. And as I write this, they're creating a parallel document to the one that CB9 created. Fine. We should look at it. But we shouldn't be taken hostage if we disagree. Let the Board calmly look at the issues. There are LOTS more community meetings to come. Nothing has been decided, and nothing is set in stone.

But if we do nothing, I've learned exactly what will happen. Haphazard development. Backdoor deals. Developers buying up multiple lots, using loopholes, paying for small zoning studies, building whatever they want. We won't have a chance to tell the City about our needs for height restrictions and affordable housing.

In essence, we get nothing.

In the below email from Alicia, the latest but surely not the last, you'll see the degree to which she's intent on inflaming passions. Fine. But then she goes on to basically do the study for City Planning. Most of what she writes here is pure conjecture, and I have it on authority, her conjecture is actually fabrication. Fine again. If we want to let a raving lunatic decide whether or not we're going to get ANY affordable housing, and whether we're going to get to work with the City to determine our future, then follow her lead. Having systematically alienated and horrified every potential ally that this neighborhood has, she now thinks she can dictate to City Planning how to do its study. In a recent email to me she said that she "will be the first woman of color to ever win the total downzoning of a neighborhood." Given that Planning won't even look at rezoning a whole neighborhood without considering where it can build new housing, I find that a pretty far-fetched goal. More likely, she'll succeed in wearing us all out, to the point where we all give up and just let the buildings grow where they may and at whatever height. Because they're coming. And now that MTOPP has officially pissed off everyone who could possibly help us mitigate the worst, I can guarantee you they won't be asking our advice.

In particular, I wonder whether she's even thought through the fact that the CB is just advisory when she says things like:


Tighter controls? The resolution has "controls?" All the resolution does is to start the process of the study. We don't control. We advise. There is no "ensuring" to be done. Either we work with and advise, or we scream and yell and go home empty handed.

The choice is clear to me. I hope you'll stand up for sanity, if called upon. Or at the very least, take pity on those of us trying to do right by the neighborhood in an atmosphere of utter madness.

From your new community leader, the only one with the guts and wherewithal to lead, the one and only Alicia Boyd: