Members of an activist group, the Queens Anti-Gentrification Project, conducted a "gentrification tour" of a Queens neighborhood on Saturday, reciting facts and figures at various tour stops to recount in stark terms that Government policy was supporting radical changes to Long Island City that was displacing long-term tenants and changing the landscape of Queens. The tour was joined by approximately 50 people.
The Queens Gentrification Tour began outside the former site of 5Pointz, a building complex that was demolished to make way for two luxury apartment buildings. With the rumble of the 7 subway train overhead, a member of the activist group described how, in the time leading up to the New York City Council approval of the rezoning for the construction project, Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Sunnyside) accepted several thousand dollars in campaign donations from the Wolkoff family, owners of the site at the time. In advance of the tour, the Queens Anti-Gentrification Project released information in a blog post about real estate industry-related campaign donations received by Councilmember Van Bramer's campaign committee. Some of those figures were recounted during the tour.
For this report, the office of Councilmember Van Bramer did not answer a request to respond to the accusations made by anti-gentrification activists that Councilmember Van Bramer served the interests of his campaign committee's real estate donors.
At various stops of the tour, members of the activist group challenged what they described as the "myth" that real estate development in New York City was driven by the free market. Instead, one activist said at one tour stop that the New York tax policy known as 421-a was responsible for encouraging luxury real estate development speculation by eliminating property taxes to allow real estate developers to construct zone-busting apartment buildings. The annual cost of the 421-a property tax abatement program was reported as $1,4 billion in a report published by The New York Times. At several tour stops, the foregone $1,4 billion in annual property taxes was denounced for the missed opportunities to make strategic investments in infrastructure or public schools.
16 comments:
Councilmember Van Bramer as I recall is a registered Democrat.
These gentrification policies require a majority of the politicians to pass and be instituted.
As I recall the City Council is almost entirely democratic.
Another disgusting foul festering swamp in great need of draining!
I am neither inferring nor saying that republicans are as pure as the wind driven snow.
However, some balance and opposition for a real debate of issues would benefit the entire population.
As Jefferson stated:
You get the government you deserve...
JVB just loves the money in his pockets always has - enough is enough -
Based on the amount of graffiti now in my area, Astoria, I'd have to guess that this is largely an illusion.
You get the government you deserve...
Or you get the best goverment the corrupt money can buy.
One good thing came out from the Trump era, there is ZERO difference between the GOP and the democrats. Some happy family.
No shit, Sherlock!
Five Pointz was a dump, glad it's gone.
Now, what does anyone expect from a corrupt, pay-to-play, REBNY sycophant like Jimmy Van Brainless, who, as a chair of the arts committee (for which he receives an additional city stipend for lunch-and-a-manicure as a stressful day), he ironically sat back and watched in virtual silence and complicity, as a 16-ton statue was evicted from Kew Gardens without ANY due process (i.e., Community Board 9 review, public referendum, Richmond Hill Historical Society approval, Van Bramer's call to action, as I wrote him repeatedly, without reply)?
And, now the statue that allegorically symbolizes Civic Virtue itself has been lopped off of its grand, working fountain pedestal and banished to Green-Wood Cemetery, a Brooklyn graveyard among the dead, still on temporary loan, when Van Bramer should have demanded the statue's conservation, preservation and reparation IMMEDIATELY!
Now, there is much opposition to the (mostly) Black slaves who built the Great Pyramids of Egypt, and more locally, even The White House——but, has anyone taken a crane to THOSE structures, just because they may be deemed controversial? Not so with Civic Virtue, where apparently ALL of the corrupt, Queens politicians have won this round (for now), as corruption and vice are even more openly practiced at Borough Hall (and beyond) right now, than when the breathtaking statue kept vigil over an otherwise, generic strip mall more commonly known as Queens Boulevard.
Take note, fellow Queens peasants: The empire of political worthlessness is finally crumbling before your very eyes. But, how much longer will it be before Queens County is nothing more than a vapid, cultural wasteland (and padded political cell), of hideous structures, Third Worldism, overcrowding, over development——and, a publicly unauthorized, taxpayer-funded payroll that keeps feeding off of the human misery that REBNY and the developers revel in, and the politicians bribed, until the entire raw sewage plant collapses altogether under the crushing weight of its own voracious greed?
Anti Gentrification Project? Let's call it what it really is...an Anti White Project.
Now, what does anyone expect from a corrupt, pay-to-play, REBNY sycophant like Jimmy Van Brainless, who, as a chair of the arts committee (for which he receives an additional city stipend for lunch-and-a-manicure as a stressful day), he ironically sat back and watched in virtual silence and complicity, as a 16-ton statue was evicted from Kew Gardens without ANY due process (i.e., Community Board 9 review, public referendum, Richmond Hill Historical Society approval, Van Bramer's call to action, as I wrote him repeatedly, without reply)?
And, now the statue that allegorically symbolizes Civic Virtue itself has been lopped off of its grand, working fountain pedestal and banished to Green-Wood Cemetery, a Brooklyn graveyard among the dead, still on temporary loan, when Van Bramer should have demanded the statue's conservation, preservation and reparation IMMEDIATELY!
Now, there is much opposition to the (mostly) Black slaves who built the Great Pyramids of Egypt, and more locally, even The White House——but, has anyone taken a crane to THOSE structures, just because they may be deemed controversial? Not so with Civic Virtue, where apparently ALL of the corrupt, Queens politicians have won this round (for now), as corruption and vice are even more openly practiced at Borough Hall (and beyond) right now, than when the breathtaking statue kept vigil over an otherwise, generic strip mall more commonly known as Queens Boulevard.
Take note, fellow Queens peasants: The empire of political worthlessness is finally crumbling before your very eyes. But, how much longer will it be before Queens County is nothing more than a vapid, cultural wasteland (and padded political cell), of hideous structures, Third Worldism, overcrowding, over development——and, a publicly unauthorized, taxpayer-funded payroll that keeps feeding off of the human misery that REBNY and the developers revel in, and the politicians bribed, until the entire raw sewage plant collapses altogether under the crushing weight of its own voracious greed?
Tony Notaro said... "Anti Gentrification Project? Let's call it what it really is...an Anti White Project."
Gee, thought I was the only one who noticed. Now black/brown/yellow is the new landed gentry. Wonder how many are here under EB-5 who have also taken advantage of 421 tax incentives. Any ideas?
Um , no that's not what it really is.
Blue collar white people don't like a lot of gentrification either.
>>Blogger Tony Notaro said...
Anti Gentrification Project? Let's call it what it really is...an Anti White Project.
Wah Wah Wah Wah...Stop fucking whining. This city is not for everyone anymore !!
Get over the removal the statue and stop double posting.
LaGuardia sent it to Queens as a dig to the borough's endemic culture of corruption and the borough promptly let it rot (as they do for anything that does not fit their little world)
Its far better in Brooklyn, a borough that is for all intents and purposes a different civilization than the 3rd World mess known as Queens.
5 Pointz was a world class art mecca drawing about 10 tour buses per weekend....butt brain. Post your Igno-rants where your fellow jerk wads will appreciate them.
5 Pointz NO MORE. YAY. No more polluting and noisy tour buses.
To third Anonymous from bottom: Stop editorializing my posts, and how dare you publicly fault me for any double printing on this thread, when I have no control over that whatsoever!
It's because of lazy, no challenge, do nothing, know nothings like you that results in why we have the corrupt-and-crooked politicians we have right now (and always) in the FIRST PLACE! We get the government that we deserve!
And, while it is true that LaGuardia sent 'Triumph of Civic Virtue' over to Queens county in 1941 (where it remained undisturbed for nearly 71 years before it was capriciously and arbitrarily evicted in the middle of the night, nearly five years ago), as a symbolic message of his OWN for all crooked-and-corrupt Queens politicians to clean up their corruption, graft and endless greed, that doesn't give ANYONE the right——LEAST of all crooked, taxpayer-funded politicians——to ignore their fiduciary and budgetary obligations to clean, repair, conserve, preserve and maintain public art that is displayed on public land and property! Among other enforceable violations, ignoring one's publicly elected duties is a violation of the public oath of office by which all (purported) public servants must be sworn in, is tantamount to public dismissal.
So, from what Ivy League university did you get YOUR law degree, shnook?—Columbia, Cornell or Yale? As for me, I earned my JD at Yale, and I am telling you that public corruption is not a free pass, nor is it absolution——it's a dereliction of public duty, and we all pay an irreparable price for such flagrant abuses of trust and failure to obey We, the People's business. Further, if more like minded people like me came out and fought for our guaranteed (but abrogated) freedoms and democracy, then the statue would still be in residence today——CORRUPT POLITICIANS BE DAMNED!
So if you're okay with public corruption and the illegal eviction of Civic Virtue, then why don't YOU get over it, and then stick your flat little head back in the sandbox (or litter box, as it were), as I do the heavy lifting. I will continue to fight a totally depraved Queens Borough Hall with every fiber and legal challenge that I've got within me to 'PUNCH BACK——TWICE AS HARD,' while you continue to punch the wind!
❝The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.❞ ― George Orwell
❝I think that our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think that we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends. I think that they are all insane. But, I am liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what is insane about it. Don't you agree?❞ —John Lennon
❝The nihilism and rage sweeping across the globe are not generated by warped ideologies or medieval religious beliefs. These destructive forces have their roots in the obliterating of social, cultural and religious traditions by modernization and the consumer society, the disastrous attempts by the United States to carry out regime change, often through coups and wars, and the utopian neoliberal ideology that has concentrated wealth in the hands of a tiny cabal of corrupt global oligarchs.❞ —Chris Hedges, The Age of Anger
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-age-of-anger/
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