The Eminent Domain

FUREE (Families United for Racial and Economic Equality) is having our 6th annual Convention on May 17th, at PS 67 at 51 St. Edwards Street, from noon to 5 p.m. Lunch will be served from noon to 1 p.m. At 1, we will be ushering all of the community tenants into the auditorium to hold our District leaders and elected officials accountable and have them answer all the questions the community has about the development in Downtown Brooklyn, the problems they are having in their public housing developments, and the lack of services in their community.

Some parts of our community are lacking are a supermarket, laundromat, pharmacy, restaurants, grocery store, retail store, Check Cashing, and fish market. The community also wants the renovated community center to be opened to the people currently living there and, want to be a part of planning of the programs that will be offered there as well.

The community wants the vacant apartments in the Ingersoll and Walt Whitman Houses filled. The Community also wants the condominiums that are springing up around the community to be affordable to the people of the community as well folks earning income ranging from $16,000 to $35,000.
Once the Convention program wraps up in the auditorium, the community members in attendance, FUREE and the Sarah McKinney High School Band will be marching around Downtown Brooklyn!
I had a lot of fun planning the Convention. I got the chance to speak with and invite elected officials like Congressman Ed Towns, State Senator Velmanette Montgomery, State Assemblyman Hakim Jeffries, State Assemblyman Karim Camara, State Assemblyman Joseph Lentol, Council Member Letitia James, Council Member Charles Barron, Councilmember David Yassky, and Mr. Tino Hernandez (Chairman of NYCHA).

In the planning of the Convention, we had a lot of footwork ahead of us. We are putting up flyers all over the neighborhood, door knocking throughout the community and making many phone banking calls to the people in the community to get them to come out and hear their elected officials but also to have their elected officials hear them.

We plan on having at least 500 people at the Convention this year since we had 300 people last year. We are giving out drawstring bags with packets, which will have a lot of information for the people, a FUREE pin so that they can show support, a pen that says FUREE so that we’re always in their creative writing minds and more goodies, just for signing up and coming out. We also had fun making the flyers posters, and FUREE flags because we get a lot of volunteers. We sat around a large table making these and having a lot of fun learning more about each other. At the Convention we will wear our FUREE T-shirts, which come in red, black and white.

The Convention is a very powerful learning session and forum to show that the community cares and wants to be involved in the decisions made about their lives. It iis a space where the community can hold the elected official accountable for their words and actions. It’s important to be able to have these accountability sessions because none of the elected officials come knocking on the community’s doors to give them any answers about what’s going on.

FUREE’s annual Convention is where not only can these sessions can take place, but where these sessions give the community back it’s voice, it’s power to make change and the energy needed to keep on fighting for the rights on the community members.
Everyone is invited to come out and be heard.

Hello my peoples. My name is Eric Pugh and I am a resident of Ingersoll houses. It’s located in the heart of Brooklyn right downtown. Downtown Brooklyn, a place where you get all your affordable shopping goods. “My Downtown,” is what I used to call it when I was young. Downtown used to be a very beautiful area.

Well, at least it used to be before the rezoning. Now where there was a neighborhood super market, local drug store, laundramats, your favorite discount store and your friendly neighborhood grocery store there stands nothing but a vacant lot.

My community was ripped away from me. It not only has an effect on me but to the residents of my community. Like our elderly. It was more convenient for our elderly to shop right across the street from where they live. Now that our stores are torn down they now have to walk three blocks up a hill just to get a little bit of shopping goods. So now not only do they have to go further than what they were used to, they also have to deal with the pain of heavy pushing or lifting. It’s just too much labor for them. My neighborhood only has one store now, on Myrtle Avenue and Prince Street, and they charge much more than they should.

So now our residents have to walk three long blocks just to get one item and to me, that’s just crazy. It’s as if downtown had its very own Katrina and the only difference it that, instead of water we are drowning from developers and this is a current that’s just to hard to swim with. The effect that was left on “My Downtown” is just heart breaking. How can you take away what yesterday owned and destroy the giving promises of tomorrow?

With so much cooking in downtown Brooklyn it’s hard to know where to begin, but the current tug-of-war over the future of Admirals’ Row speaks volumes about the cognitive dissonance Brooklyn is going through, painfully.

Here’s what’s going on, as explained well in the Daily News: The Navy Yard Development Corporation is looking to develop a supermarket on the site of 10 decrepit mansions that once housed top officers of the Navy. Historic preservationists have sought, without success, to get the structures landmarked. Now the National Guard, which owns the buildings, has issued a report concluding that the buildings could be restored — at a price of nearly $20 million in all.

Now, we’re all familiar with the usual development scenario in New York City, as we’ll amply cover it on this site: Big developer proposes a project, government greases the way with rezoning and subsidies, neighbors rally to block the project. At first blush that looks like what we’ve got here. But. Brooklynites are struggling right now with the deep contradictions of the current path of downtown development, and it’ll make the Admiral’s Row saga a fascinating one to follow.

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