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Red Alert! Red Alert! (Photo: rykerstribe, flickr)
LISTEN UP!
Please come to the meeting tonight or send our messages or write about people coming to the meeting of the combined Quality of Life and Financial District subcommittee
Real Estate Board of New York asking the city to prohibit Occupy Wall Street-style use of public space.
In fact, the Real Estate Board of New York is reportedly preparing to ask the city to endorse universally applicable rules prohibiting future Occupy Wall Street-style use of public space, along with the automatic right to close all spaces at night.
The Board’s ranks consist of 12,000 owners, builders, brokers, managers, banks, insurance companies, pension funds, real estate investment trusts, utilities, attorneys, architects, marketing professionals and many other individuals and institutions involved in New York realty.
Combined Quality of Life and Financial District Committees: TONIGHT 6:00 PM
Location: New York State Assembly Hearing Room
250 Broadway, 19th Floor
Agenda: 1) Occupy Wall Street protest in Zuccotti Park – Discussion and possible resolution
*Please note change of location
AAAAAND we’re going to take a stab at live blogging. I have a mole going to the meeting who will try to smuggle out dispatches from the belly of the beast. Let’s hope our intrepid undercover does not have his/her cover blown:
7:25 PM EST
A neighborhood woman says OWS protesters have been considerate to her kid.
A resident, Alan Shulkin, lives in community. union organizer supports OWS but understands drumming a problem.
policing the drumming is an issue problem
7:35 PM EST
A mother says she brings her kids down to Libery Plaza, but seems a bit weary, “It’s been 38 days.” Says that the drumming is the problem.
Another neighbor, a man, says “good neighbor policy is a farce.” And that the laws should be enforced.
[please note, update times reflect when I typed this not when words were spoken. There is a butterfingers relay lag]
A speaker, his name may be Stephen Abrahamson ?
7:37 PM EST
Says that protestors aren’t
occupying Wall Street but because it’s near Ground Zero they are occupying Ground Zero!
7:40 PM EST
A young black woman, says she is a drummer and the the drumming is being unfairly scapegoated.
She says that the jackhammmer drilling is worse than the drumming could ever be.
She also says that the neighborhood is primarily commercial not residential she says.
Goes O/T talking about black slave laborers.
This tangent could backfire.
7:43 PM EST
Community Board 1 has a good solution. It supports OWS (yeah), but thinks OWS should commit itself to a good neighbor policy.
7:45 PM EST
Two young people from OWS get up and point out that they are Occupying on behalf of everybody, not just themselves.
A gentleman from 120 Cedar Street supports OWS and says that the real noise problem is the jackhammers drilling all the time.
7″47 PM EST
Mr. Cedar Street wants to put pressure on the City to allow porta potties.
Another woman says she lives in area and the real problem is the police. They won’t let her pass through on her bike to get home. She supports OWS.
Yet another WASPY patrician looking woman says that she has been made a prisoner in her own apt, but not by OWS, by the police. She thinks they are overreacting. She supports OWS
7:50 PM EST
71 year old woman says police barricades are endangering her life, not OWS.
Local merchant complains about the barricades too. Say the barricades are disrupting business not OWS.
7:51 PM EST
Young woman gets up, says that she has grown up in NY all her life, that the City has always been loud and dirty and folks should just get used to it
7:53 PM EST
A young black woman educates the room about the history of Exchange Place in Lower Manhattan. Says that’s where slaves were bought and sold. She says that blood wells up from the very earth there.
7:55 PM EST
The last speaker is an OWS occupier.
He says he doesn’t want to disrespect those who live here. “We hope we can work this out”
Sounds to this Firepup like the bongo drums may have a time place and manner restriction coming their way, but hey, maybe that will also mean porta potties?
I think this meeting blew up in the faces of its organizers, since it appears that most of the residential and small business neighbor support OWS.
8:03 PM EST
Committeman John Fratto? Says we should have resolution supporting OWS.
Our kids will graduate in June with no jobs and lots of debts. The Occupiers are fighting for all of us
8:05 PM EST
A woman Board Member says that OWS may be an inconvenience, but it’s important
8:07 PM EST
Financial District Committeemember asks “what’s your endgame?”
One of the OWS woman says” it’s not about endgame but about coming together.”
Committeemember presses “what’s your solutions?”.
8:23 PM EST
Sorry for the interruption, it’s windy out here on the Island of Long and my power and Internet went out for a while, but I’m back with a great new piece of info:
The General Assembly of OWS offered the following resolution:
New York City General Assembly Good Neighbor Policy
“After respectful and good faith dialogue with members of the local
community which has been rebuilding since trauma of 9/11;
OWS hereby announces the following good neighbor policy:
1) OWS has zero tolerance for drugs or alcohol anywhere in Liberty Park.
2) OWS has zero tolerance for verbal abuse or violence to anybody
3) OWS has zero tolerance for for abuse of personal or public property
4) OWS will limit drumming on the site to two hours per day between the
hours of eleven AM and five PM only
5) OWS encourages all participants to respect health and sanitary
regulations and will direct all participants to respectfully utilize
appropriate off site sanitary facilities
6) OWS will display signage and have community relations and security monitors in Liberty Plaza in order to ensure awareness of and
respect for our guidelines and our good neighbor policy”
from OWS presented to Community Board One.
so called friendly amendments offered by cb members
When we get a list of the amendments I will further update. But the meeting is over and it looks like OWs may have headed off a disaster. This is only a committee meeting and nothing is final until the entire Community Board meets next week, but so far so good!
[typos repaired]
43 Comments
Thanks for highlighting this, Cynthia. Hope enough FDLers and their friends who live in the NYC area can make the meeting.
Happen to know if anybody from OWS is aware of this and plans to attend? What about Lawyer’s Guild and ACLU?
You know The Donald, bad combover and all, is behind this one
I don’t know what kind of influence this board has but one thing they can’t do is pass legislation prohibiting the use of public spaces.
It’s a private space. The “park” was the office tower’s public space give back in order to be allowed to build higher than the height restrictions
@BusterBNYC:
#OWS If you are threatened to remove tarps, PAINT MESSAGES ON THEM IN WHITE. Turn them into banners. Manipulate police as they do law.
Rudy is that you in disguise?
Good idea.
I have to hand it to OWS. Couldn’t have picked worst weather conditions to brave it out in, except for deep winter winds. And yet it’s grown. (Riffing on Galieo “And yet it moves.”) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eppur_si_muove
So it’s a privately-owned public-use air-rights-swap space?
These should be illegal. Simply because they provide a loophole for #OWS doesn’t mean they aren’t another oligarchs’ toy: “public” space traded for penthouses in the sky that block out the people’s sun and light.
Real Estate People may be changing their republican conservative, market-based tune. Many have been struggling to make a living. Though they may be loathe to admit it, they too are the 99 percent. They are beginning to understand that.
It ain’t like the Koch Bros and the Rockefellers and that goddamn crook Rudy would attend these meetings.
lol!
the public has a permanent 24/7 right of use in exchange for the state’s decision NOT to exercise eminent domain.
Sheesh.
Gee, one of the one percent wants to control the 99 percent cuz he wants to claim it impedes his abilities to continue to rape the 99 percent.
Sadly, they may get away with this – I am too far from NY to join you. Please keep up the good fight and we will continue doing what we can in the badger state.
thanks for live blogging this cynthia — tweeted and recommended!
I must have missed the part of the First Amendment that says it only applies during daylight hours. We are well and truly down the rabbit hole if they are even trying to get this shit put into effect. And, re Zuccotti Park, it would seem to me that the hybrid nature of the space, the consideration accepted for it, could easily be deemed to make it more public than private in nature.
The real estate people in the one percent are doing fine – the others think they are part of the 1 percent, but actually are part of the 99.
The real estate tycoons/gazillionairs have no use for the small fry that might take a penny or two from their income with their stinkin’ little real estate businesses.
I don’t think we will see any real change in real estate business nor the folks that stay in it. The ones that struggle will just have to get out of it – which will directly benefit the 1 percent realtors that are left.
This is a very good and valid point: the consideration accepted for it, could easily be deemed to make it more public than private in nature.
Its hard to read now, dur chimpfurher proclaimed the whole document toilet tissue and I believe obscured that part with some of the brown stuff he flung at the rest of us when he was using the Constitution as if it were koch brothers asswipe.
Gotcherself a link on that?
REers in NYC have (drum roll) only ever made it on NYCG handouts. How could they possibly change their spots now.
Never worked in that biz, but suspect like Wall St I did work in, that NYCRE just gets more govt handouts when times get tough, after huge handouts when time ain’t tough. Just another welfare scheme to loot the poor & middle class.
The commentary coming from the meeting reflects a mostly sympathetic POV wrt OWS in the park.
Indicates that the fat cats are not themselves in attendance at the meeting. And that their agents are not able to sway opinion in favor of their fat cat bosses.
It appears that the agents are symapthetic to the cause of OWS.
As the Occupy sites grow, they should double as homeless encampments. That’s a base of several million, shafted by the 1%.
– Balkingpoints / www
I’m not sure (IANAL) but the Bill of Rights applies only to govt. Does it apply only to USG or duz it also apply to S&L govts too? Glenzilla, plz chime in.
Or whatever, since no govt in U.S. shows slightest inclination anymore of paying any attention to cheap words written on paper.
To quote a venerable source: Are there no prisons? Are there no work houses?
I base my hypothesis on anecdotal evidence from Florida Realtors.
You know more about NY Real Estate People.
I am wondering why those running the meeting can’t seem to gain any traction at the meeting in maligning OWS.
One of my most memorable travel experiences was my 1994 trip to Tokyo, where I found large communities of homeless sleeping in subway stations at nights. I was so naive then that I was shocked.
Would hardly be shocked by anything anymore, more’s the pity.
This is the Real Estae Board of Community Board 1.
BTE CB1 is the same group that overturned the decision to try KSM in federal Court in Manhattan. Do NOT underestimate their clout
See my comment about Tokyo above. Have been wondering how to bring the spotlight back onto the really abandonded humans in the U.S. Thinking tent shelters of OWS might be able to include them. They are truly the most needy of all of us.
Spot on. It’s a public park until such a time as the owners decide to exercise their rights to it and begin paying taxes and upkeep on it. Until then, it’s a park. I’m not defending the business people, just pointing out that they can’t pass legislation. If they want to reclaim that land, I’m sure there is a clause spelling out how to do so in their contract with the city but they can’t just decide that some people can’t use it or the rules that apply to that particular park are going to be different than in other parks.
WRT homeless, during my years of living in midtown Manhattan, thought about them a lot, mostly aimlessly.
Attended one lecture which revealed that research showed homeless were either temporary, meaning highly economically stretched families who could not accommodate another stress even temporarily, or drug/otherwise addicted (think PTSD, etc) segment of the most unfortunate of the U.S. pop. Why is it that the U.S., “richest” empire ever to grace the face of the earth, cannot find a few sheckels to care for these people.
When I wrote about welfare reform on Wall St in 1994, I calculated it as 1.8% of USG expenditures and wondered why, since it was a decimal point error, it was even on the radar screen.
In 2011 we see the answer: cruelty for the sake of cruelty alone.
Your comment about Tokyo has been rendered below.
MyFDL requires an altered state of consciousness and time.
Because in Conservolibertarianland, heaven forbid anybody get something for free!
Let’s hope OWS, begun in September of 2011, as another and different ’9/11′, engenders a new ‘birth of freedom’ (Lincoln, November 1863) and reverses the ill-will and cruelty wrought by the first 9/11.
yes, he may, but read the threads, he is a crank that rarely has anything supportive to post about anyone.
If he is disagreeing, it is a distinct possibility that it is his nature.
But don’t take my word for it – watch the posts as you read the threads.
Most of the Bill of Rights, with only a few exceptions, are deemed to have been extended as to state and local govts by the 14th Amendment.
Margaret, as I typed, cruel beyond belief. I just can’t grasp why people purporting to be human can possibly advance such behavior.
I can understand the 1% entirely, bc it is all for them. But what I can’t get my arms around is why everyone else wants to bash the most unfortunate among us.
Does that mean everyone responsible for the first 9/11 and the aftermath in Afghanistan and Iraq get of scott free? Americans are capable of forgiving, but I can’t speak for the people of the two other countries.
Kurt Vonnegut would say they’re packing bad chemicals.
Um, yes. At least during your & my lifetimes.
Not happy about it. Just being realistic.
Great job, General Assembly of OWS. The elders of Woodstock Nation would ratify your guidelines.
Referring again to Kurt Vonnegut, he suggested the kids’ game olly-olly-oxy-free apply to former Nazis in hiding. Magically, they would all be forgiven and allowed to be free. We could to the same with the perps of the madness if they agreed to start acting civilized.
Except for the zero tolerance for drugs, of course.
Thanks for the description of the meeting. Wonderful! Very moving responses. Blaming the police!
Cynthia,
I went to bed early with a headache, but I have to hand it to you for your clever way of covering that meeting.
I want to thank you for this and WOW what a good report!
It’s not a private space. It’s a public space that happens to sit on privately-owned land. And the public access rights were not a ‘give back’; Brookfield Properties or their predecessor earned the density bonuses (that allowed their development to exceed zoning code height/density limits) by providing public spaces at the foot of the new building. (There’s nothing generous or secondary about the provision of public space as the ‘give back’ term implies; Brookfield had to provide the public space up-front — ahead of being granted the bonus floors.)
There is no “until such a time as the owners decide to exercise their rights to it”: Brookfield swapped their right to control access and regulate use for the higher revenue streams from the extra floors delivered by the density bonuses. They’re not somehow failing to exercise some power over OWS. They already gave away the power to evict OWS when they swapped profit for public use. The whole point of public use, and for that matter public space, is that a private third-party entity can’t dicate another’s behavior.
Brookfield made the public use-for-extra floors of their own free will. They benefited substantially from the deal. Now they want to welch on that deal. They got the profits — but now they want to re-take control and determine what happens in a public space. There’s fine print that attempts to undo the core exchange by setting forth duties, etc.
Ask yourself: if public use can be regulated by the party that signed a contract the public legal access, in the wake of that agreement — then surely the reverse would be equally agreeable and logically sound. By Brookfield’s own logic, Mayor Bloomberg / NYC / OWS should be able to dictate the monthly rents, leasing terms and specific uses of the stories built by Brookfield Properties under the density bonuses.
Unless the space qualifies as a true public space, one in which the free exercise of civil liberties can be conducted unmolested, then Brookfield has no pure or absolute profit for the ill-gotten density bonuses.
This is the rhetorical framing that’ll win the day. How can Brookfield regulate what they gave away or sold? Why do they benefit from another heads-they-win, tails-we-lose rip-off?