The current issue
Neighborhood Map
Bay Ridge
  • Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights
Brooklyn Heights
  • Downtown, DUMBO
Carroll Gardens
  • Cobble Hill, Red Hook, Boerum Hill
Fort Greene
  • Clinton Hill, Crown Heights
North Brooklyn
  • Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick
Park Slope
  • Prospect Heights, Windsor Terrace, Greenwood Heights
GO Brooklyn
Dining Guide
Where to GO
Events calendar
Classifieds
The Brooklyn Wire
Not Just Nets
Police Blotter
Perspective
Parenting
Politics
Transit
Podcasts
Brooklyn Cyclones
Merchant news
About The Paper
RSS Feeds
CNG Boro Politics

DDDB Dialing for Dollars

By Ariella Cohen
The Brooklyn Paper

Tools

Print this story
digg
del.icio.us

Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn is reaching out and touching someone — someone’s wallet, that is.

In a bid to pay off an ever-growing mountain of legal bills, the most-vocal opponent of the Atlantic Yards megadevelopment has begun a round of fundraising calls — even calling The Brooklyn Paper for cash (we declined, thank you very much).

“We have a good opportunity here,” the earnest DDDB volunteer said last week, begining his pitch to a potential donor, the always-objective Brooklyn Paper staffer.

The volunteer discussed the need to fight the state’s decision to seize land via eminent domain and turn it over to developer Bruce Ratner. Then, he got down to business.

“So we’re building up our legal fund,” he said, “and we’re reaching out to friends and supporters…”

DDDB spokesman Daniel Goldstein said that the organization has relied on such telephone fund-raising campaigns quite a bit over the course of its three-year battle against the state-supported 16-tower, arena, hotel, office space and residential mega-project.

“It’s a direct connection with a person that is able to discuss issues,” he said, “It’s a two-way conversation.”

A two-way conversation that opens on a particular slant, that is. Like developer Bruce Ratner’s much-criticized — and anonymous — “push poll” surveys, the DDDB phone pitch doesn’t lack for spin.

But Goldstein said there’s a difference: “We say who we are and why we are calling.”

Goldstein added that DDDB called only people who provided contact information at meetings or public events, while Ratner’s “surveyors” used the phone book indiscriminately.

All Car Rent-A-Car

How indiscriminately? In one famous episode, one of Ratner’s tele-surveyors dialed diehard project opponent Patti Hagan — and a re-reading of the hilarious transcript reminded us how she made him regret the call.

©2007 The Brooklyn Paper

←Letters: Ratner’s ‘Blood Money’ fills the mailbag
→Deflated! Viagra maker pulls out of Brooklyn

Reader Feedback

Enter your comment below

By submitting this comment, you agree to the following terms:

You agree that you, and not BrooklynPaper.com or its affiliates, are fully responsible for the content that you post. You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening or sexually-oriented material or any material that may violate applicable law; doing so may lead to the removal of your post and to your being permanently banned from posting to the site. You grant to BrooklynPaper.com the royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such content in whole or in part world-wide and to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or later developed.

First name
Last name
Your neighborhood
Email address
Daytime phone

Your letter must be signed and include all of the information requested above. (Only your name and neighborhood are published with the letter.) Letters should be as brief as possible; while they may discuss any topic of interest to our readers, priority will be given to letters that relate to stories covered by The Brooklyn Paper.

Letters will be edited at the sole discretion of the editor, may be published in whole or part in any media, and upon publication become the property of The Brooklyn Paper. The earlier in the week you send your letter, the better.