I think it's typical that real estate money monger Bruce Ratner cares little about the Brooklyn families and businesses "that he will need to evict":http://www.mcall.com/sports/all-brooklynjan18,0,932474.story?coll=all-sports-hed in order to fill his pockets further by moving the New Jersey Nets to Brooklyn. And of course our mayor and governor could give a damn about how this move would affect the people who live in this beautiful neighborhood that's full of character and great families who love living there. Bloomberg helped arrange $300,000,000 in government subsidies to put the Nets here. This from the Mayor who wanted to close down the Zoos that our children enjoy. Yeah, he cares about New Yorkers.

The plan is to steamroll over 800 homes to build some enormous monstrosity that will evict people from their homes and businesses and cause terrible traffic in an already congested area surrounding Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues. This area of Brooklyn, surrounded by Prospect Heights, Fort Greene and Boerum Hill/Park Slope has seen such tremendous growth and gentrification in recent years. It's filled with lovely townhouses, residences and businesses in converted factory spaces, and little shops and restaurants. Moving a stadium here would demolish the neighborhood character that's come from years of Brooklynites investing in the area by buying and improving the homes around Atlantic Avenue. In place of this neighborhoodliness, we'll see our neighbors turned out and traffic like we've never experienced before.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm a fan of the Nets. I just think there are better places to put up a stadium. Take the Brooklyn Navy Yards, for instance. That area of Brooklyn, separated by the moat that is the Gowanus Expressway -- that big Robert Moses project that evicted huge numbers of Brooklyn residents and separated us from accessing our waterfront -- is in great need of restoration and development. Give Ratner the right to buy up commercial land there and force him to develop waterfront parks for Brooklyn and maybe you might be doing something for New Yorkers rather than just taking from us to fill your pockets.

I don't want this stadium here to spoil my skyline and the experience of living in Brooklyn. We're here because we love where we live. Just as we overturned Bloomberg's effort to take away our children's Zoos we can fight this Golliath and stop them from ruining our neighborhood. If you want to send a message to Ratner and his political cronies that not everything or everyone is for sale and that we have a right to fight for our way of living, feel free to "sign the petition against this move to our neighborhood.":http://www.petitiononline.com/phac/petition.html I'm sure there's some vacant or unused land somewhere that they can make good use of rather than rape and destroy the land and homes that people have poured their lives into building.

* "Sign the petition against the move to the Brooklyn Atlantic Center area.":http://www.petitiononline.com/phac/petition.html
* "More news on this topic.":http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us&q=nets+brooklyn&btnG=Search+News