Please note that the dictionary definition of NIMBY does not include people who resist the displacement of neighbors by luxury real estate development.
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Last year, Marvel's "Daredevil" leaped out of the small screen via Netflix to millions of viewers worldwide. The story of a blind New York native fighting to save his neighborhood, "Daredevil" was heralded as "TV's first gentrification-fighting superhero."
By day, the title figure is Matt Murdock, a young attorney. Murdock and his partner Foggy Nelson use their newly-formed practice to defend Hell's Kitchen residents of limited means who are being forced out of their homes by a big-time developer and his associates. Unlike billionaire superhero Bruce Wayne (Batman), Murdock operates frequently in the red (pun intended). He lives in a dingy warehouse walk-up flat. He and Foggy struggle to pay their bills and their assistant Karen's wages. Their clients are the poor, the down-on-their-luck, the marginalized.
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| Murdock is blind, but he can hear and smell exceptionally well. |
Murdock's adversary is heavyweight real estate developer Wilson Fisk. A native of Hell's Kitchen, too, Fisk had a disadvantaged and dysfunctional childhood. His collaborators are heads of crime syndicates, bankers, and corrupt police and city officials. What he can't acquire through money, Fisk acquires through violence.
Unlike many superheroes, Daredevil frequently gets the crap beat out of him. One wonders how he can even walk the day after a fight--and sometimes, he can't. He's laid up for days recuperating from being battered, sliced and diced by criminals and those hired by uber-criminals like Fisk. The human persona, Murdock, fights these same elements as a lawyer, and finds the violence spilling over into the daylight neighborhood as well.
Both Murdock and Fisk like to talk about "my city,"as if each feels he somehow owns it. Murdock doesn't like the old neighbors being replaced by affluent newcomers. He hates to see affordable, rent-controlled old apartment buildings replaced by luxury condos and lofts. He wants to save his city from the corrupting influence of big money and power. On the other hand, Fisk thinks he's doing "his city" a service by removing those who can't afford the fine dining, upscale living, and cultivated tastes of the upwardly mobile.
Fisk: Are you there? Can you hear me?
Daredevil: Who is this?
Fisk: I think you know. You've been asking about me. I thought it was time we spoke.
Daredevil: Say your name.
Fisk: You first. That's what I thought. You and I have a lot in common.
Daredevil: We're nothing alike.
Fisk: That's what you'll tell yourself.
Daredevil: You're feeding off this city like a cancer.
Fisk: I want to save this city, like you... only on a scale that matters.
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| Boom! There goes the neighborhood. Fisk blows up parts of Hell's Kitchen to seize it for development. |
If Daredevil/Murdock lived in the Wedge, his attempts to stop the wrecking of old buildings and the building of thousands of high-rent units would be met with a cry of "NIMBY!" from local development supporters. NIMBY is a term accurately applied to hypocrites like the pro-fracking Exxon oil CEO who sued to stop fracking near his multi-million dollar home. NIMBYs want to stop half-way houses, Section 8 housing construction, thrift shops, but they aren't against luxury condos and trendy new apartments. The relentless cry of development boosters is a kind of NIMBY-Tourette's, the accusation hurled again and again at those who don't like the escalating wrecking and building of high-density high-rent units in the neighborhood. It's an egregious misuse of the term, designed to shut up complainants. And so far, that's what it's done.
Unlike NIMBYs, Wedge residents want more affordable housing for both renters and homeowners. But thanks to the City, the banks, the corporate media, and local developers, the Wedge is being crammed with high-priced units, units that are proving slow to fill up, with the more expensive places having the highest vacancy rates.
In a breathtaking display of hypocrisy, 10th Ward CM Lisa Bender and her supporters spout oral formulaic about "affordable housing" and "green living" while methodically destroying affordable housing and replacing it with unaffordable housing, raising rents and taxes--and sending thousands of tons of reusable buildings to the landfill. The City Planning Commission, City Council, CPED (Planning), and CM Bender have their chosen developers, Drew Levine and Danny Perkins (a.k.a. KLP Realty Holdings, D&D Realty Holdings, DDMZ REal Estate, Lotterman-Madan, 2817 Girard), whose projects are rubber-stamped without comment, no matter how far they stray from City zoning and other regulations. Yet CM Bender and her acolytes have the gall to call their detractors NIMBYs--which is the exact opposite of what those opposing her pet development projects are.
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| If you're going to call names, at least use an appropriate epithet, DIMBYs. |
Case in point: 2008 Bryant Ave. S. The existing house was sold to KLP (Levin and Perkins) immediately after being listed, before any other interested parties could react. KLP quickly came up with plans for demolishing the house and replacing it with a four-story, ten-unit apartment box. The proposal--despite its requiring significant variances from the City zoning code--breezed easily through the first steps for approval by the City, through CPED and through the Planning Commission. No notices were sent to surrounding property owners, the City's new stealth policy about neighborhood development. Last Friday, March 28th,Wedge neighbors went to the Planning Commission hearing to see what would be said about KLP's 2008 Bryant proposal, #3 on the agenda. They got there at 4:38 to find a note on the door advising them that items #1 and #3 had already been approved. When they went in, the commission members were discussing item #2. The commission gave the reason that no one was there to testify, so why not just skip over #2, and approve #3 out of order? Right.
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| Daredevil looks down on the mean streets of Marvel's Hell's Kitchen |
But most of all, we hate it when we feel that the City is not listening to us, that citizens' voices are being methodically silenced in public discourse, that local government has gotten out of the control of City voters and into the control of moneyed interests. Sound familiar? This sense that government representatives on all levels are becoming increasingly disconnected from the people they allegedly represent is a loud complaint coming from both left and right wings in the current presidential campaigns. The ones that understandably don't want this situation to change are the ones who brought us to this sad pass in the first place--the political establishment. Both parties have a lot to answer for, but in Minneapolis, the one-party town, the party that needs to start listening to the electorate is the DFL. From where I sit, the only representative who is making an effort to listen to his constituents is Keith Ellison. For City officials, especially CM Bender, there's only self-righteous, self-serving political theater.
But--returning to Hell's Kitchen--don't kid yourself. The kind of gentrification we're seeing in the Wedge has been going on in New York neighborhoods for decades. The real Hell's Kitchen--not the Marvel one--has already been given over to the gentrifiers--the luxury developments, the upscale restaurants, the fitness centers. And that's what makes "Daredevil" so poignant, yet terrifying.
What is satisfying about the Netflix "Daredevil" narrative is that we can clearly identify who's fighting whom. Fisk is a larger-than-life figure, a powerful man who talks directly with those fighting him. He reminds the officials he's bought who's boss and what will happen to them if they don't perform. He does not hide behind a corporate veil. He doesn't play a real estate shell game using a dozen LLCs and multiple surrogates. He doesn't have private meetings with city officials to hide what he's really up to. Fisk stands up for what he believes in, no matter how twisted it may seem to others.
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| Fisk in his office. Prominently visible behind him is a copy of Robert Caro's 1974 biography of NYC urban planner Robert Moses. |
At the end of the second season, Daredevil is farther than ever from his goal of saving his neighborhood. He's nearly been killed, he's lost friends, he is battered and unsure of what to do next. But the satisfying thing about him is that though he may lose his way, he never doubts his goal of protecting his neighbors and neighborhood he loves from the ravages of greed and corruption.
--T.B.
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