The YouTube channel eminentdomainrevolt is chronicling the resistance to eminent domain at Freddy's Bar & Backroom, including an appearance on Fox and Friends (!) by bar manager Donald O'Finn and video producer Steve deSeve, an interview with O'Finn.Yesterday, on the third in a four-week sequence of media events (installation of chains, guillotine), the bar held a toast to George Will, the conservative columnist who authored a column criticizing the use of eminent domain for Atlantic Yards. They also came up with some creative bilingual signage--at right and below--promising a boycott of arena naming rights sponsor Barclays.
The toast was another example of the strange bedfellows Atlantic Yards brings (see, for example Republican state Senator Marty Golden getting a drubbing for his association with ACORN).
Goldstein to stay?
At the toast, Daniel Goldstein, footprint resident and spokesman for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, expressed confidence in the AY fight and even suggested that the corruption scandal in Yonkers involving Forest City Ratner's Ridge Hill project convinced him he might not have to move.Now that sounds like some barroom bravado. Still, despite the signs that the project is moving ahead, with no formal bar (though lingering legal cases), there are enough strange things going on (including an alleged scandal that could tinge expected owner Mikhail Prokhorov) to be reminded that AY is a "never say never" project.
Thank you for covering the Fightin Freddy's Eminent Domain Revolt (which now has a facebook presence as well).
ReplyDeleteYes, the Freddy's Events have been "media events," but media events for the purpose of announcing an actual revolt against New York's eminent domain law.
The court cases all take place within the scope of that law, and the law is so dirty, and so bought by the Real Estate Royalty, that, as the Judge on Fox and Friends said we are better off bringing in the human factor to try to change the law, or inhibit its enforcement, as was the case he sited in Newark where the councilperson chained himself to a fence and stopped a project.
We can't obey this law. Property rights must be property rights. And since Kelo, in New York State, they are not.
This is a case where the medium is not the message. In other words, this is not a story about a bar doing media events. It's about the message we are delivering, which is, "Eminent Domain Theft in New York State will end on the day of the State's attempt to physically take Freddy's Bar to build the Barclays Center."
Norman, don't get too caught up in the guillotines and stuff. The message is the message. Revolt is declared. The ugly day of battle awaits. As does the sweet time of victory, for all New Yorkers, to follow.