Gotta love the gumption!
She writes all the copy herself, in the third person no less. Then she's spotted by locals plastering the neighborhood with her own propaganda. Ms. Alicia Boyd was accused of criminal wrongdoing, assault, but the Q never saw much sense in that lawsuit. Lots of people are pissed at her, but the incident in question was pretty minor as ruckus goes. She did LOOK like she was going to clock someone, and she most certainly did resist arrest, knocking over a table and kicking officers as they tried to escort her out of the meeting room over on Nostrand. In another incident that was excused, she assaulted a BBG worker on Washington. Rage against the machine indeed.
What is truly unreal about her campaign to prevent ANY rezoning in the neighborhood - good, bad or indifferent - is that she's fighting
her own neighbors in a manner that prevents even the most basic, civil discourse. There are many reasons the neighborhood, and the City, need to consider ways to increase housing stock and develop more rent stabilized affordable housing. But we'll never get there with her histrionics. I've watched with dismay as one local resident after another tries to calm her down long enough to get to the place where we could actually sit down with the City and plan our future. Trying to appease her is a lost cause. How could it be otherwise? Ms. Boyd is creating a cult of personality around herself. If you read her delusional self-aggrandizing copy, you'll see she's loving every minute of it.
Take a look at the picture of her supporters. Do they think so little of you as a neighbor with intelligence and conscience, that they will go to any length to prevent your opinion from being registered? Apparently so.
It's all fine, really. They have none of the power they think they have to prevent gentrification. That's always been the wedge they use to try to convince us they are on the side of the "little guy," when in fact nearly to a number they're all homeowners who've made a million or so dollars off gentrification, the "racism discount" that allowed them to buy homes in the first place. I should know; I'm one of them.
And then there are the well-meaning other million-dollar home owners who will tell you they are for unbridled landmarking and creating a "human scale city." Hey, I like humans as much as the next guy. You know how I like to treat those humans? Let me give you a quick list.
A) I don't call them Uncle Toms or "fat white fucks" and create petitions calling them racists
B) I don't use the dog whistles of anti-Semitism to appeal to those already seething over perceived Jewish takeover of Crown Heights
C) I allow them to discuss and vote in the spirit of democracy
D) I don't waste their valuable time, especially that of neighbors who volunteer to work towards an equitable future
E) I don't claim moral high ground in a complex debate on class and race and neighborhood character
F) I don't use my "healing" non-profit to raise money for my political and legal battles
G) I don't call my neighborhood "all black" when it clearly is not (seen the subway platforms lately?)
H) I don't ignore the very real need for new housing among lower income working people
And most importantly perhaps, because I do like a brave "I don't give a fuck" activist, I'd love for MTOPP or Concerned Citizens to hear themselves as they fight ANY new development, even as it's happening all around them at market rates only. A "human scale City" might sound nice. But guess what? Humans need a place to live. And increasingly, "human scale" refers only to those humans who already have a comfortable and massively lucrative home of their own
Jane Jacobs was racist and naive, but she had some great points and fought the excesses of an all-powerful city planner. But Jane Jacobs lived in a very different time, when the primary goal was to keep jobs and manufacturing and yes, middle-class whites, right here in the City as they were pouring out for the suburbs. The exact opposite is true today, except replace the word manufacturing with tech and small business entrepreneurship. Her strongest arguments were about public safety for gods sakes! Wonder how she'd have dealt with the crack wars of the '90s. Or what she'd think of the desolate and mostly vacant Empire Boulevard near the Park.
Jane Jacobs is dead. We live in different times. And we need different solutions. Instead, we get the Kim Jong Il of Lefferts Gardens. Did I tell you about the time she bullied the Brooklyn Museum into accepting a "settlement" for having the audacity to host a real estate conference, wherein she would be the keynote speaker along with increasingly out-of-touch ex-planner Tom Angotti? Truly, we have spawned a movement. The word "bowel" might appropriately proceed it.
Speaking of which, the other day a person took a dump between two parked cars in front of my house. Somehow human poo just smells worse and is more slippery and long-lasting than the canine variety. Dropping the kids off at the curb, I guess you could say.