The Newtown Pentacle

Willets Point.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The Roman Army would arrive outside your city walls, then flood your fields with salt water, kill all your men, and rape all your women. The Romans would then declare peace as having broken out. So too, does the NYC EDC declare peace when they’ve set their sights on your corner of NYC. Just ask the people who work, and the one person who lives, in Willets Point. The City has had its crosshairs set on this part of Queens since the post WW2 period. There are no sewers in Willets Point, sanitary or storm. The City doesn’t pave the roads, nor approve permits for utility companies to service phone or electrical connections. Fire hydrants lie on their sides, utility poles bend and tilt, and despite all this – the businesses here continue on and on.

Peace has broken out in the Iron Triangle, or at least a Roman peace.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

For those of you who were willing to accept the bag of polished stones the EDC offered LIC regarding the Amazon campus, or who are willing to drink their Kool Aid on the subject of the Sunnyside Yards – here is your fairness, your equity, your “tale of two cities.” Here is why I’d like to see the NYC EDC investigated on RICO charges.

Here is peace, Queens style.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

That Economic Development Corporation think tank over in the City has gone out of its way to annihilate anywhere between a thousand and two thousand blue collar jobs here in Queens. They’ve been sued in Federal Court repeatedly for their double dealing, most recently for allegedly funding fake pro development groups calling for the creation of a shopping mall and “affordable” housing, and have threatened to use eminent domain powers to force businesses into shuttering their doors and sell their personal property. This so called “public benefit corporation” with its shady staff of Real Estate Industrial Complex insiders is the same crew of loathsome sentience who are driving the “Deck the Sunnyside Yards” train.

Look at your future, Sunnyside; and Astoria, and Woodside, and LIC. Peace is about to break out for us as well.

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Buy a book!

“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.

Events!

The Third Annual, All Day, 100% Toxic, Newtown Creekathon. April 28th.

The Creekathon will start at Hunter’s Point South in LIC, and end at the Kingsland Wildflowers rooftop in Greenpoint. It will swing through the neighborhoods of LIC, Blissville, Maspeth, Ridgewood, East Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint, visiting the numerous bridges that traverse the Creek. While we encourage folks to join us for the full adventure, attendees are welcome to join and depart as they wish. A full route map and logistics are forthcoming.This is an all day event. Your guides on this 12+ mile trek will be Mitch Waxman and Will Elkins of the Newtown Creek Alliance, and some of their amazing friends will likely show up along the way.

Click here to attend.