January 12, 2010
Freddy’s is fighting and they’re doing it on Fox News, baby
A couple of friends of mine were on Fox News yesterday morning, to talk about their fight to save Freddy’s, a hugely loved local bar in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn – as well as many homes and businesses - from being snatched in a landmark eminent domain ruling.
Basically, the New York supreme court has decided that billionaire developer Bruce Ratner can seize property in the 22 acres of the “Atlantic Yards” footprint in order to build an arena and some tower housing that is deeply unwanted by the people of the neighbourhood. It is now enshrined in law that it is fair game for the state to seize property from small businesses, homeowners and renters, if the billionaire or corporation who wants to seize their properties can pay higher real estate taxes to the state. This is an outrageous abuse of the idea of eminent domain which was originally designed to be used ‘for the public good’.
The community has fought against this for 6 years now, and the last appeal against this use of eminent domain was decided last month in favour of the billionaire. Two days before Christmas, Forest City Ratner initiated proceedings to seize the homes and businesses in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.
The message is: if you are a homeowner in the United States of America, anyone who wants to seize your property is now enabled by law to do that, so long as he is richer than you. That is now enshrined in law, in a decision handed down by the highest court of the land.
Freddy’s is more than a bar. It’s a community, a true neighbourhood sanctuary, and a fantastic music venue. It is expected that the site that Freddy’s sits on will fit a few SUVs in the parking lot that is planned for it. Handcuffs have been installed in the bar, and there are more than enough people willing to chain themselves to the bar and go to jail to defy the bailiffs if and when they arrive at Freddy’s door.
The fifth amendment to the United States Bill of Rights
prohibits the federal government from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
Well, they got their due process of law, but it is bad bad law indeed. More legal challenges are on the way.
UPDATE: I have now amended this post to reflect the fact that this decision was originally handed down by the United States supreme court, which means that it can happen legally anywhere in the US. It has been challenged in the state of New York in this case, but the ruling apparently (and I am not a lawyer or an American citizen) stands countrywide.
UPDATE again: George Will wrote this op-ed column in the Washington Post about the ruling and “the twisted meaning of ‘blight’”. Read it.
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Ah, urban renewal. Wait, we don’t call it that anymore. It’s economic development or some such. Goosing a stagnant economy (cough!) is the new public-spirited cover for land grabs.
If Studs Terkel were still alive and if Freddy’s were in Chicago, I bet Studs would be on the front lines.
As much as I hate the fact that such a fight needs to take place, I love it that people are willing to fight to save a bar. This situation illustrates what is best and worst about the US.
I too admire the fighting spirit of Prospect Heights residents and business patrons, but I am not optimistic. The tsunami of urban history is not on their side, and it will take judicial backbone to stem this particular wave train.
They’ve been fighting this for 6 years, they’ve kept it off for this much time. This latest eminent domain ruling was a big surprise all round. And I mean, all round.
The longer they can drag it out, the better.
Hell, I’m not optimistic about anything. I’m a glass half empty kinda feller.
The key definition in all this is of the term ‘blighted’. The neighbourhood of Prospect Heights has been deemed to be ‘blighted’. Anyone who lives in Prospect Heights or is familiar with the neighbourhood will know this to be bizarre in extremis. A radical expansion of the definition of the term ‘blighted’ has taken place so that private property can be seized in this way.
And this can happen anywhere in the United States. If some guy can show that he can pay higher real estate taxes on your property than you can, he can with legitimacy of the supreme court of the US, lobby the state to seize your property on his behalf.
Cindy, you’re like one of those film noir private dicks who’s on the side of the true and the good even though he believes in nothing. (Me, too.)
My stomach aches just reading about this. I’m with Sheila that the tsunami of urban history is not on their side, but I admire their dedication.
There have been many cases over the last few years around the country and in NYC itself, many have been hotly contested and some have been over turned (often too late to save the neighborhood). So there is the local fight (might be too late for us) and the larger one (basic right to property)…
Courts have been stretching the definition of ‘blight’ ever since that catchphrase took hold, applying it increasingly to any structure or structures that are not brandspankingshinynew moneymakers for developers with clout.
That’s why I’m thinking it’s going to take judicial cojones to turn this around.
I bet Ratner lined up some nice publicly-subsidized tax bennies for his project.
Ah, the public weal.
I must add that Ross lives directly across the road from the landgrab site, and is a longstanding regular at Freddy’s.
yes the bankrupt state of ny is forking over a billion or so in tax breaks so that I can live across the street from a white elephant.
It’s disgusting. I guess some people call it progress or economic development.
What it all adds up to is a bunch of neighborhoods that all look the same. Another Starbucks, a Subway, maybe a Chili’s. Sure, this one might end up with a arena as the anchor instead of a Wal-Mart, but what’s the difference?
Good luck.
The damn thing is: I am no foe of neighborhood change, and I am no sentimentalist when it comes to genuine urban decay.
But I’ve lived in Chicago, and I know what clout smells like.
Oh this story is so much more colourful even than all this. For instance:
A Russian oligarch has invested heavily in the Nets, the struggling New Jersey team that Ratner has lined up to import into the arena.
There is legal talk, raised in the senate, that the bonds that were issued a month or so ago, to raise capital for Ratner’s project, were actually issued illegally. This is still an open question, and it is fiendishly complicated legally, but it has been considered real enough for a NY senator to raise at senate level.
The original architect on the project was Frank Gehry, and the project was approved partly on the basis of such a famous architect building a whole swathe of Brooklyn, which was a lifelong goal of his, apparently. Gehry has since bailed out of the project like a governor out of a whorehouse at twilight.
The image of Frank Gehry hightailing it out the back door with the seat of his longjohns flapping in the breeze is one that will delight me all my days.
Glad to be of service, ma’am.
Everything about this “development” is disgusting and has reeked of corruption since day one.
This is out-and-out racketeering if ever there were such a thing. Ross is right when he speaks of the larger issues and the precedents set.
Tammany Hall-style politics on a grand scale.
A side note here: cases like this are also intriguing because of the odd position it puts Republicans in. The way they typically act as champions of “investment” and the entrepreneurial spirit–while also banking on populist ignorance as a means of manipulating masses–has them struggling to figure out how to press the brake and the accelerator at the same time. But, they can just get Palin to comment on it, since she has no qualms about saying opposite things with the same fits-all smile and jaunty cock of the head.
Lucy, thanks for posting the link to the George Will piece. One of those instances wherein Will nails it.
Oh and if anyone has any money in Barclays bank, you’d probably be better off taking it out and putting it somewhere else. Anywhere else, really. Barclays has bought the naming rights to this fiasco, and they’ve bankrolled it.
Other things you can do:
Become a fan of Freddy’s very recently made Eminent Domain Revolt Facebook group or friend Fightin Freddy on Facebook… which will really be a lameass response to a horrible situation so once you think about that, you will probably also need to donate to DDDB (Develop, Don’t Destroy Brooklyn) which is still fighting the legal fight against this monster. Donations are tax deductible.
Okay, I’m an old curmudgeon, but I’m annoyed that this post is staying at the top of the page. I know it’s important to you, Lucy, and to others–it’s important to me, too. But I feel like the site has been hijacked by one member’s passion.
Cindy, I can appreciate how it it must seem. My understanding, derived from my possession of mid-level admin powers, is that Lucy made a request of Deron, and he applied ‘stickiness’ to her post; however, I believe that the post has retained its stickiness far beyond what she had hoped for. In fact, if I weren’t crippled by the limitations of my only moderately smart phone, I’d have gone and tried to unstick Lucy’s post some hours ago. I’m quite sure she never intended it to dominate the site so completely.
Well, I asked Deron and Andrew to keep the ‘small news items’ aspect of Clusterflock more reduced than usual today, so that this post does not get buried, at least during business hours. And Deron responded by suggesting keeping it at the head of the page for the day. He’ll probably let it sink, shortly.
I actually came back around here to thank Deron for highlighting this post for the day, that I appreciate it greatly, and I’ve been glad to see all the feedback on the post.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh. Thank you.
I’m sure Deron would have let it sink if I’d not beaten him to it by ducking into the Eagle Ridge Inn, pretending to be a guest, commandeering their business center, and hijacking a computer.
Unstuck!
My heart is with you.
And my heart gave a little pitter patter just reading that Gaelic. It’s been so long since I’ve used it.
The people in that community are amazing. They have been fighting billionaires, the state of New York and the force and sway of sheer capital for years now in this fight. It’s really heartening.
Steve De Seve, who is the guy with the bizarre facial hair arrangement on the right in the youtube clip, makes – or used to make – a community tv show called ‘Fux News’; he and his femme, Sabine, make documentaries and film activism of the sort that you will not surely ever see on Fox.
Donald O’Finn, the goatee’d man on the left, is the manager of Freddy’s. When he first got Freddy’s, it was a local bar for the cops in the precinct across the road. It has turned into a wildly different place in the years since.
Donald is a video artist and erstwhile painter; his video pieces are showing all day and all night, installed on a tv screen above the bar, and in the backroom, above the stage where the bands play. He calls his work ‘TV Dreams’: the dreams a tv would have, when it sleeps… he uses incredible archive footage from television and film and edits it into mesmerising and strange new worlds.
For these two men to find their way onto Fox News is so odd and bizarre and kind of magical in its own way; except of course that it will always be as the ‘Well here’s a funny little cute thing’ section of the show. Nonetheless, they were marvellous.
This fight existed long before Fox News, or the Huff Post, or the Voice, or the NY Post got involved in reporting it. They’re fighting a crazy New York fight, a crazy American fight.
Mise freisin, Kelsey.
Lucy, please accept my apology–I don’t know what’s wrong with me today. And thank you, Sheila. I didn’t mean to cause a problem.
Well this is clearly the bit of the evening where we all have to sing a song. Anyone want to start us off there now, Rick for instance? Go on there now, Rick. Good man.
Okay, then folks, join in as you want…
It’s a long way to Tipperary…
Okay I didn’t see the end of this vid until just now. My apologies.
Cindy, you know I’m always up for a little impersonation, especially if it goes toward an illicit end.
Oh that’s great, Rick! I never heard the verses in this song until now, that’s cool… I had some story about this song, I can’t remember it right now. You’ve raised the roof with that one, thanks.
… it’s a long waaaay tooo go (without yer mother) it’s a…
On reviewing, I thought the reference to Tipperary a metaphor for the rightful goal after the fight. I don’t know WTF this vid is doing. I hope the spirit of what I meant is more obvious than my poor selection of links to convey that thought. Still I sang along and will still sing with you in your fight.
XOR
I think you chose well, Rick. Straight to the heart.
It’s a long way to Tipperary
It’s a long way to go
It’s a long way to Tipperary
To the sweetest bar I know…
One of these days Lucy, we’ll sing a song together, yes? And Ross will play for us.
Oh YEAH.
[...] Nathan Colquhoun posted Freddy’s is fighting and they’re doing it on Fox News, baby. [...]
Well, the story’s in the New Yorker.