Thank you newspapers for writing about the protests (and not writing about the how happy other neighborhoods are that are designated)
Thank you clubhouse for encouraging Queens to be the laughing stock of NYC by convincing a trusting public to support something good for you and bad for them (and keeping your constituents from hearing about your votes as you support other communities in landmark designation.)
Thank you preservation community for putting your narrow agendas ahead of developing a city-wide grass roots movement or public education on the benefits of community preservation (and being totally inept in any support you might have to offer.)
I guess the problem many of us have with this process is that the folks at SSG are letting others do their fighting for them.
They keep their head low. They know they are in the running with a 'secret handshake.’ So very on the QT and proper. Can’t let the great unwashed admitted into the privileged club and become overly familiar with the process now, can we?
The institutionalized anti-preservation rant in the newspapers? The clubhouse fear of losing control over a community? The novelty of developers no longer controlling the direction of a community’s, well, development? Political agendas, as the pro-immigrant tunnel vision that so characterizes Queens?
None of this is addressed.
It seems that the next community that faces preservation and landmark designation will have to face the same problems and fight these same battles all over again.
Why?
I guess the most grating thing about all this is that communities that are already designated as landmarks could have stepped in and done a lot to dispel those anti-landmark arguments. They didn’t.
City wide organizations could have accepted that it was their failure in developing and sustaining a public education program which gave a climate for these anti-preservation seeds to grow. They don’t seem be interested in learning from this experience.
Yet these are the same groups that always seem to have a hand out for donations or a request for yet another tiresome letter of support.
3 comments:
Thank you newspapers for writing about the protests (and not writing about the how happy other neighborhoods are that are designated)
Thank you clubhouse for encouraging Queens to be the laughing stock of NYC by convincing a trusting public to support something good for you and bad for them (and keeping your constituents from hearing about your votes as you support other communities in landmark designation.)
Thank you preservation community for putting your narrow agendas ahead of developing a city-wide grass roots movement or public education on the benefits of community preservation (and being totally inept in any support you might have to offer.)
Who's leading the protest....... General Meikeljohn and her troops?
Are any of you feeble "preservationists" going to be countering this attack with a similar demonstration?
I think not! Good speeches are all you will muster!
I guess the problem many of us have with this process is that the folks at SSG are letting others do their fighting for them.
They keep their head low. They know they are in the running with a 'secret handshake.’ So very on the QT and proper. Can’t let the great unwashed admitted into the privileged club and become overly familiar with the process now, can we?
The institutionalized anti-preservation rant in the newspapers? The clubhouse fear of losing control over a community? The novelty of developers no longer controlling the direction of a community’s, well, development? Political agendas, as the pro-immigrant tunnel vision that so characterizes Queens?
None of this is addressed.
It seems that the next community that faces preservation and landmark designation will have to face the same problems and fight these same battles all over again.
Why?
I guess the most grating thing about all this is that communities that are already designated as landmarks could have stepped in and done a lot to dispel those anti-landmark arguments. They didn’t.
City wide organizations could have accepted that it was their failure in developing and sustaining a public education program which gave a climate for these anti-preservation seeds to grow. They don’t seem be interested in learning from this experience.
Yet these are the same groups that always seem to have a hand out for donations or a request for yet another tiresome letter of support.
What is to be done?
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