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"We talk about people and we talk about children": Carl Kruger's "Brooklyn" aria

This week AYR will look back at the 8/23/06 hearing on the Atlantic Yards Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS), drawing on the official transcript.

As I write today, a lot of people at the hearing invoked Brooklyn. However, no one did it quite like Carl Kruger, who conjured up an aria of Brooklyn buzzwords: communities, children, neighborhoods, jobs, and housing.

SENATOR CARL KRUGER: My name is Carl Kruger. I'm the State Senator representing the Southern Tier of Brooklyn and I think that tonight "Brooklyn" is the operative word. We're not talking about the Nets Arena. We're not talking about Forest City Ratner. We're talking about Brooklyn, we're talking about communities, we're talking about Brooklyn first. And what better setting for us to talk about Brooklyn than to talk about job creation; to talk about union jobs --

(Audience participation.)

SENATOR CARL KRUGER: -- building a union project; What better way can we talk about Brooklyn than talking about affordable housing; What better way can we talk about Brooklyn than bringing an arena and a first-class team it the doorstep of what is truly the capital of the world, our borough, Brooklyn;

(Audience participation.)

SENATOR CARL KRUGER: How better tonight can we talk about Brooklyn than to talk about development. When we talk about development, we talk about neighborhoods; We talk about sustaining the old while we build on the new; We talk about creating communities where communities existed; We talk about change; and We talk about growth; We talk about a borough and we talk about a city; We talk about people and we talk about children; We talk about what it means to each and every one of us and what we hold near and dear. So today, as this Commission deliberates the very process for which this hearing is taking place, it must look at the Atlantic Yards project in the vacuum of what it really is, it's putting Brooklyn first --

(Audience participation.)

-- and jobs and housing and communities and neighborhoods and children.

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