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How can/will Brooklyn Speaks, Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn and other community groups work better together? Various agendas risk undermining the unity needed to make the best of this difficult situation.
How will issues that have been perceived as race-sensitive or class-sensitive be better addressed as we move forward? Our ability to succeed in our endeavors requires more community education and a more inclusive outreach approach. We are all older and wiser than we were in 2003, so we can avoid, blunt, stop and reverse the divisions promoted by Forrest City Ratner and, by implication, various government entities that have supported FCR.
Humility required
There have been three phases of community advocacy on Atlantic Yards since the project was announced in 2003. The first phase involved the developer dividing the community into supporters and opponents and pitting them against each other. The second phase involved project opposition splitting into two groups with different priorities (one focused on challenging the project's use of eminent domain, and another seeking a political solution to reform project governance), with each group questioning the other's strategy.
We're in the third phase now, when all advocates--supporters and opponents--are forced to confront the practical realities of what Atlantic Yards has become and where it's going. We have an opportunity to come together to deal with the questions of how the promises of jobs and housing made by Atlantic Yards will ever be realized, and how we will manage through the extended construction that will exist on the site for years or decades.
Whether you supported or opposed the project in 2004, you probably aren't happy with its situation in 2011. But because of all of the past antagonism among advocates, it will take great humility for all participants to recognize the critical need to come together, and put their past (and maybe future) agendas behind them.
If one accepts that today the arena exists, there are few issues left on which advocates could disagree. All parties support the creation of affordable housing and local jobs. Nobody wants to see surface parking lots go on for decades. Everyone has an interest in preserving the diversity of these neighborhoods, and an equal stake in their livability.
Our own pride enabled the developer to divide us before. If we've learned that lesson now, we can unite and win together.