Monique Denoncin,
Vinegar Hill
King betrayed
To the editor,
Black History Month in Brooklyn is not looking as proud as it once did because of some very recent and despicable historical events that occurred on Martin Luther King’s actual birthday, and for six years preceding.
Brooklyn was once home to stops on the Underground Railroad that stretched from Duffield Street to Weeksville. Black and white folks worked together to fight the enslavement of their fellow human beings, risking life and fortune to right a great wrong.
Working together as brothers and sisters, against the horrors of slavery is what forged modern Brooklyn.
Then a real-estate developer, a billionaire, came to town to make his second billion. He paid off black groups to work against white groups and caused a racial divide where none had existed before. He even made his first deal with ACORN, an excellent organization that was sick of losing battles with developers, to let them run thousands of units of affordable housing in exchange for them signing a contract to support him no matter what.
The developer got so cocky that he went farther than anybody thought another human being could. And on Jan. 15, 2010, on Martin Luther King’s actual birthday, he had a shelter for homeless families closed, locking out 80 families — in winter.
That’s sad enough, but what is worse is that the formerly great ACORN, a champion of the poor, the downtrodden, the children, as Dr. King was, has remained silent. If the group was not beholden to the developer, it would be the first group out there fighting the injustice, the insult, and the tragedy of the closed shelter.Steve de Seve,
Brooklyn Heights
• • •
To the editor,
No city or state money for schools and firehouses, but city and state money for Bruce Ratner to build, of all things, an arena? The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is reducing subway and bus service, but can give away property for an arena.
Obviously, we have a priority problem or a corruption problem.Robert Ohlerking,
Park Slope
Pen pal
To the editor,
As a loyal reader of The Brooklyn Paper, I missed your editorial, editorial cartoon and letters column in your last issue. A “Letters to the Editor” column is the only forum for ordinary readers to express our views.
Public officials are powerful, with easy access to taxpayer dollars, which are used regularly to promote their views. This is done via newsletters, news releases, press conferences, and guest opinion page columns.
In many cases, they even “write” letters to the editor on public time. Your weekly section represents a winning trifecta of health food for the mind.
Larry Penner,
Great Neck, N.Y.
