battle for brooklyn: social movements, countermovements, and the urban growth machine
A couple of weeks ago I saw Battle for Brooklyn, a new documentary by Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley,* at the Chicago Underground Film Festival. The documentary tells the story of Brooklyn activists who fought against a real estate development planned in the the old Atlantic Yards site that ceased hundreds of homes through eminent domain in order to build a business complex and a new arena for the New Jersey Nets. Told from the perspective Daniel Goldstein, one of the community organizers leading the protests, the film provides a rare and in-depth look at the internal workings of a social movement, chronicling the emotional highs and lows as well as the process of tactical decision-making. It’s a fascinating film for a number of reasons, and I can’t recommend it enough. 
One of the impressive qualities of the film is how vividly it portrays the structural constraints of mobilizing a successful movement. The anti-development movement was extremely well organized and tactically savvy, and yet you never get the sense that they will win this battle. The first reason was, despite their own considerable resources – the movement was primarily led by middle class residents – the activists faced a formidable countermovement. Although the film reveals the countermovement was actually funded by Forest City Ratner – the developer of the project – and was therefore effectively an astroturf organization, the countermovement activists were able to successfully frame the project as a form of employment stimulus and to inject race as a divisive issue. (Very few jobs were ever created from the project despite this persuasive framing.) A political environment of underemployment and economic uncertainty made this frame especially resonant to Brooklyn residents whose homes would not be touched by the project.
The other reason the movement struggled to achieve their goals is because they were up against a united and powerful elite. One thing that we know from social movement theory is that movements are much more likely to succeed when they face a divided elite. In this case, NYC business and political elites formed a strong front and pushed through the necessary measures to ensure the real estate could be declared “blighted” and eligible for eminent domain. The film provides as good an illustration of “growth machine” politics that I’ve ever seen. In fact, this may be the main lesson from the movie. As Galinsky remarked in the post-screening Q&A, the core message of the movie isn’t to declare that eminent domain is a bad policy, but rather to show how webs of power – in this case embodied in a multiplex network linking a city’s politicians, business elite, and media – influence, and potentially stunt, the democratic process.
The film is showing right now in NYC. Don’t miss your chance to see it!
*The filmmakers are actually the brother and sister-in-law of my colleague Adam Galinsky, which is how I came to be at the Chicago premiere.
George Ratner is a disgusting man – as are NY elites.
Andrew
June 17, 2011 at 10:58 pm
It is very interesting to hear your take on this, Brayden. I lived in Brooklyn near the site of the development for two years. In fact, the masthead on my blog is a photograph of restoration of the Williamsburg Savings Bank Tower.
What amazed me about the protest movement was exactly what Brayden pointed out, how extremely organized they were. So much so that I was called out on one of their blogs for for inadvertently mistaking the location of the development. I mean, I was not a very serious blogger, the blog couldn’t have had a readership greater than 20 people at the time, and I was not connected in any way to any personal networks that would have alerted someone to the blog. In other words, they were constantly searching the internet and putting down any perceived publicity. After being called out, I subsequently wrote about the complicity of the NYC Planning Department in trying to rebrand the area as part of “Downtown Brooklyn” and not, as would be more correct, Prospect Heights. It was growth machine politics at its greatest.
I would disagree with you about one aspect having seen some of the debates play out in Brooklyn. The counter movement was not solely an astroturf organization wholly supported by Forest City Ratner. There was a serious debate about the development of more housing in Brooklyn and the promises that Forest City Ratner made to ACORN, who was leading the affordable housing organizing, at the time. Although it was pretty obvious that Forest City Ratner was never going to follow through completely on its promises, the affordable-housing movement calculated that they would get more out of this project than they would from continued condo development and low-density “sweat equity” redevelopment of brownstones preferred by anti-development movement activists.
In fact, one of the first posts of the Atlantic Yards Report, the definitive information clearinghouse by movement advocates written by Norman Oder (and treasure trove for SRO messaging research), was about this very issue. The article breaks down the debate between “equity advocates” and “livability advocates.” Of course a fair question of the movement is “livable for who?” The rising property values meant that middle-class anti-development activists stood to reap a substantial finanical gain as gentrification and subsequent super gentrification approaching from the north. That same low-density development and increasing property meant that gentrification was encroaching on the nearby, largely black, neighborhoods of Crown Heights and Bed-Stuy that led many incumbents to make a choice between paying a premium to live in their neighborhoods or move (see here and here).
I’m not saying that affordable housing advocates weren’t co-opted or that the opponents to development did not have excellent reasons for doing so. But, as geographer David Ley highlights (also here), I think that the class tension of the “livable city” movement arising from New Left movements in the 1970s, and the important cultural dimensions of class conflict, are often glossed over under the broad (though appropriate) rubric of growth-machine politics.
mike
June 18, 2011 at 3:10 am
Worth reading about a lot of this stuff: NIcole Marwell’s Bargaining for Brooklyn.
http://www.amazon.com/Bargaining-Brooklyn-Community-Organizations-Entrepreneurial/dp/0226509079
shakha
June 18, 2011 at 6:25 am
Mike’s right in saying that the pro-project movement was not simply astroturf. The perceived breadth of the movement was a product of astroturf–essentially empty groups like “Brooklyn Endeavor Experience” and “Faith in Action” have done almost nothing–but BUILD (however fledgling) and ACORN (not fledgling) were responding to legitimate community aspirations and needs.
The question–one I’ve written about before and will be writing about more, in my blog and (eventually) book–is whether they were able to drive a fair bargain.
The film, as I wrote in my review in Dissent, does scant the larger context in Brooklyn.
http://dissentmagazine.org/online.php?id=495
Regarding the Atlantic Yards opposition, Mike wrote: “In other words, they were constantly searching the internet and putting down any perceived publicity.”
This is a small shading on his point, but I think it’s not quite as organized as that. It’s easy to set up a Google alert. Google delivers requested content. Then you can comment. The web site No Land Grab is an example of an information clearinghouse; nearly everything related to the project gets processed and commented on. (In my blog, I do some of that, but focus more on original reporting and more extensive commentary.)
I’d argue that the achievement of Daniel Goldstein and the organized Atlantic Yards opposition was less door to door organizing–which was considerable, though in a limited area–than the use of cyberspace. You can see some of that in the film, as Goldstein has prepared alternate press releases in response to the expected eminent domain decision.
Norman Oder
June 18, 2011 at 10:55 am
Wonderful reading material in the comments. Thanks Mike, Shamus, and Norman.
brayden king
June 20, 2011 at 10:48 pm