Opening today at the Cinema Village in New York, “Battle for Brooklyn” chronicles a struggle that resonates strongly with me. It pits a community group against real estate developer Bruce Resnick who intended to remove home-owners and businesses from the very spot upon which he sought to build an enormous complex. Resnick eventually used eminent domain to push through his project, just as Columbia University has done in Manhattanville, a neighborhood in West Harlem. About four years ago I moved into new offices as part of the university’s initial expansion into this area. Both Resnick and Columbia University have powerful connections in state and local government that allows them to steamroll over opposition and both like to see themselves as bastions of liberal culture and friends of the Black community.
“Battle for Brooklyn” holds Resnick’s pretensions up to close scrutiny. The documentary is directed by Suki Hawley and Michael Galinsky, the same pair responsible for “Horns and Halos”, a documentary about the battle mounted by Soft Skull Press’s Sander Hicks to publish J.H. Hatfield’s scorched earth biography of George Bush after White House pressure convinced St. Martin’s Press to bail out. Sander, who would eventually become a 9/11 truther, is obviously the kind of Quixotic figure that Hawley and Galinsky are drawn to since “Battle for Brooklyn” features Daniel Goldstein in the role of David to Ratner’s Goliath. Unfortunately, in this instance Goliath prevailed. full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/battle-for-brooklyn/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
