Another Monday, another couple of additions to the running list of Atlantic Yards-inspired insanity. First, The New Yorker takes a trip to Dean Street dive Freddy's Bar, home of creative protests against such things as the closing of a nearby homeless shelter (more on that later). At Freddy's, "sipping an ale in a corner booth by the stuffed swordfish, you can almost feel the giant shoe descending from above." The "giant shoe," of course, being the Atlantic Yards project, undiverted by Freddy's bar-chaining, eminent domain-guillotining escapades.
But that's only the appetizer to today's meal of AY crazy! The main course comes from a press release we received from homeless advocacy groups planning -- better sit down for this -- to make a citizen's arrest of Bruce Ratner this Wednesday. Why?
While we would rather arrest Ratner for the moral crime of closing a desperately needed homeless shelter on Martin Luther King's birthday, and during Haiti relief efforts, we will instead be arresting him to stand charges of bribing a public official in the State of New York, where such activity is against the law. Our aim is to get the Pacific Dean Family Homeless Shelter re-opened until Spring.
Nobody is going to physically abduct Mr. Ratner. We are informing him that we expect him to surrender to a police officer, in our presence, and go with us to be charged by Attorney General Cuomo....Should Ratner elude us we will request that a warrant be issued immediately for his arrest, and that he be extradited from any place in the world that he may choose to run to.
