Is taking your home in order to build a WalMart in the public good? I don't think so!

On June 5, 2004 the Housing Authority of the City of Alameda sent termination notices to 238 Section 8 Housing Assistance Program recipients. A member of the Campaign For Renter's Rights was one of those tenants and the CRR and the tenants waged a six week, direct action struggle to keep 238 families in their homes, forcing the feds to cough up almost one million dollars.  During the course of the battle the group demanded the city take in to eminent domain a huge section 8 apartment complex that was owned by absentee slumlords out of Florida but with properties all over the country.  The city of Alameda refused.  The liberals on the council cried crocodile tears whining about how painful it was but the "money wasn't there."
Atlantic Yards; just a cozy neigborhood?

Yesterday, November 24th and five years later, the state of New York's highest court ruled that the state can "seize private land for use by private developers..." *  But there's private property, a la WalMart, and there's private property, your home.  This is a defeat for those that tried to prevent the state of New York from seizing a 22 acre site in downtown Brooklyn including an individual still living in his condo on it.  Developers are rubbing their grubby little hands with glee. MaryAnne Gilmartin, executive VP of Forest City Ratner, the developers that want the land, says the developer is "pleased and excited." Their project, Atlantic Yards will be able go forward.

The judges that made this decision determined that it is constitutional for the state to seize people's homes or small business using Eminent Domain and hand it over to big developers in order to "improve blighted conditions." And how will this developer improve "blighted conditions"? He wants to build a center with office towers, apartments (that he'll collect rent on no doubt, or possibly sell to another slumlord who will live off of people's rent money) and, get this, a new $900 million arena for the New Jersey Nets.

This comes on the heels of the first case of this nature that readers might remember. In that decision the city of New London Connecticut seized private property for a research center to be built for Pfizer, the multi-national drug giant.  A women named Susan Kelo, sued the city and lost.  The city could take her house using eminent domain when it is for the "public good."

The state taking section 8 apartments in Alameda under eminent domain would have been for the "public good."  But  which public and how we define good is the issue.  Propping up capitalism is "good" from the bankers, developers, speculators and other social parasites point of view.  And they are "the public" as far as they are concerned because without their ability to profit, society would collapse.  This is their view of the world regardless of all the misery and death it causes.

There's more.

One of the reasons the money grubbers are so elated is the timing of the decision. They can now start construction before December 31st, a crucial date for them.  As the Wall Street Journal puts it, the developer must issue its bonds by that date "..to comply with a previous court ruling that limited the ability of privately owned sports team to qualify for tax-exempt bonds to pay for arenas from which they will derive the bulk of the financial benefits."  Isn't freedom swell?  If they don't get these tax exempt bonds, the developers say, the project won't move forward, "because the bond debt will be too expensive." And whose the developer?  Why, it's Bruce Ratner, owner of the Nets whose home will be the new $900 arena.
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Whose gonna live here?


So this whole deal will be very much in his "public good" as well as for all the hangers on: public officials, judges and other wasters who live off the Labor of working people.

The owners of this blog believe we can change this situation.  We want to join with others who want to change it.  Send an e mail to us and subscribe to Facts For Working People; we want to have a conference not too far in to the future and hope many of our readers would attend and participate.  If you want to get involved and are in LA, Chicago or the San Francisco Bay Area, contact us.    The near collapse of the system has brought about a major shift in consciousness. Bankers and slumlords like Ratner are hated, the mood is changing as the heroic struggles of students here in California and around the world against the savage cuts in public education show.

Remember, class anger is healthy. Don't mourn, organize.

* Wall Street Journal, 11-25-09