Lower East Side, Manhattan, New York.

ArtForum

He’s looting the city, that’s all. That’s what it is.

The he that is mentioned in that great article titled “Robber Mayor” is of course Bill de Blasio, and what he and his taxpayer funded shysters accomplished is probably the most devastatingly unaccountable act of wanton destruction that has ever been done to a massive public space under the farcical ruse of greenwashing climate crisis mitigation; that is the bulldozing and “reconstruction” of John Lindsay Park, otherwise  known as East River Park.

While there was an original plan to improve the park to keep the water level from overflowing that caused major damage to NYCHA buildings across the FDR drive that was done in coordination of the community concern by placing berns against the highway’s path, The Blaz abruptly threw that plan in the garbage and memory holed it, then his minion city planners at the Dept Design and Construction came up with an entirely new plan that warranted the leveling of 1,000 trees and construction of a 10 ft platform of where the current park stands at a cost of 1.45 billion dollars. As expected, this did not go over well with the residents and community activists who have been adamantly demanding to stick with the original, less destructive and  less expensive plan. 

Compounding this situation even further was East River Park activists were trying to get FOIL documents to see who was behind the new project and what they received was full of redactions just like every other FOIL de Blasio and his crack team of narrative control minions released in the last 8 years.

When the day came to announce the NYC’s new East River Coastal Resiliency plan in April on his variety show press briefing, The Blaz read from his dais of cheat sheets and his honeypot fauxgressive council crony Carlina Rivera read from her laptop all the wonderful improvements the new plan was going to bring to the community that used the park, even though it will not be ready for over a half decade, which was another sticking point for residents and activists. After many months of protests by activist groups East River Park Action and 1000 People for 1,000 Trees, they managed to get a stay on the demolition in November, but it was instantly overturned by a city judge with close ties to the Blaz and his Brooklyn Machine political allies.

Shockingly, right when the contractors and the chainsaws started chopping the first of the parks trees, a state appeals judge ruled another stay maintaining the legal suspension of the demolition. At least it was supposed to, because despite the best efforts of the protestors and their attorney Arthur Schwartz, the contractor boss of the resiliency demolition took the court order and threw it on the ground like it was garbage right in front of the protesters and the cops.

Following this act of city-enabled impunity, the contractors illegally continued their path of annihilation. With the NYPD providing protection along the way while dismissing the Save East River Park demonstrators, the people they swore to serve. Acting as sentinels for the city’s and the climate change plan’s anonymous cabal. 

While the demolition was scheduled for 7 to 3 in the afternoon, eyewitness reports by the determined activists saw demolition activity at 3 in the morning and even work happening on the weekend, a clear indication that The Blaz wanted this park razed in a hurry, by all means necessary. Fortunately for him that most of the local corporate news stations were virtually ignoring it save for FOX New York.

While still massacring the park in violation of the TRO, the most brazen incrimination reached it’s nadir when the Coast Resiliency contractors with assistance by the NYPD sentinels put up fences to keep the East River Park Action protesters away from the parks ampitheater bandshell and then they ludicrously enveloped the blockaded area with crime scene tape. Even though the contractors they were protecting were the ones committing the actual crimes.

Considering the legal temporary restraining order, Bill de Blasio not only gave the ESCR plan’s contractors the impunity to slaughter dozens of trees but he also enable the NYPD to take extrajudicial action to enable that contractor to disobey the TRO and protect them from the protesters demands and documents they were still trying to shove in their faces. In his 8 years of blatant brazen corruption, this was probably the most gangsta shit he’s ever done and this was only a week after he rewarded his indebted law firm’s developer client a new tower building to go on top of their blood bank. It’s also just as autocratic as his fascist vaccine extortion mandate. What The Blaz did by exploiting and weaponizing the NYPD to do the bidding of the anonymous cabal behind the ESCR mission was even a bigger misuse of his police force when he was using the NYPD Executive Protection Unit to chauffeur his family and allies around town.

Despite this corruption and destruction happening in plain sight, another state judge ruled to let de Blasio’s destruction of John Lindsay Park to continue, basically setting a precedent for the next mayor, being Adams, to overrule a court order by autocratic fiat and annihilate more trees as he sees fit under the false rubric of the climate crisis.

Even though the annihilation of East River Park has settled down after the non-stop week long massacre, evidence of what a crime scene The Blaz left behind are everywhere. Like the military brig fences that have blocked joggers and cyclists from using the park (which they actually just repaved with asphalt this summer!), making obvious the Blaz doesn’t want any lookie loos peering at the Cloverfield-like carnage his ESCR contractors did to the trees and green spaces.

 

Getting to see the East River Park crime scenes was extremely difficult, just like the Blaz and the shadow cabal directing this new “climate resiliency” plan wanted. The only way a curious observer could get evidence of the city’s ecocide was via the FDR drive and from the Williamsburg Bridge pedestrian and bike paths.

 

 

Immediately noticeable was the dance circle, with just traces of the art that once stood there. Now it’s surrounded by the carcasses of the 50-80 year-old trees and what looks like tons of piles of mulch.

Couldn’t help noticing that these piles of sawdust is not far away from where the Save East River Park protest groups have been gathering since the ESCR cabal’s contractors and de Blasio’s NYPD put up the meshed fences up. What’s interesting is that why aren’t these piles covered up with tarp? It isn’t like this contractor committed unsafe construction site violations before right??

Actually that contractor did and it was a big one if you lived and had a child going to school in Middle Village, Queens. Little more than 3 years ago, CAC Industries were employed by the city to fix sewer infrastructure in the area and left piles of lead contaminated soil extracted from the construction unprotected for weeks in a lot they owned which was across the street from a middle school and left it uncovered for 5 months. To really convey how dangerous this soil was, CAC actually tried to take it to a garbage dump first and the dump didn’t want it! Eventually CAC removed it, but all they got for their criminal negligence was a slap on the wrist from de Blasio’s clammy hand and here they are again being careless chainsaw mercenaries for the city’s shitty infrastructure plans and leaving their shit lying around exposed again. 

Another spot where The Blaz failed to cover the heinous optics of the park’s annihilation was by the amphitheater bandshell. which can easily be witnessed by crossing the pedestrian/bike overpass by Collyers Rock Park (where it’s about to have it’s annual Christmas Tree Mulch Fest, which carries a grimly ironic pall right after de Blasio’s 24/7 week long massacre mulchfest)

The reason why this access to the East River Park was still available is because de Blasio’s beloved NYC Ferry has a pier stop there. Which is fucking hysterical considering that for all the urgency to platform this park by hook and crook to prepare it for flood mitigation you think that he would suspend that ferry stop, especially since there is only way out. But not when it comes to one of the vainglorious Mayor’s pet favorite projects, even if it’s another wasteful boondoggle catering to mostly wealthy city commuters and tourists.

But thanks to his oafishness, even ferry commuters can see the carnage wrought by de Blasio’s selling out of the city’s once beloved historic institutions.

Considering the demolition of the seating, it resembles as if the amphitheater was hit by a suicide bomber. What makes this even more of a travesty is the fact that the city actually allocated nearly 5 million dollars to fund the preservation of this theater only 5 months ago, which will supposedly include a roof. It’s going to be quite a miracle of physics and alchemy to restore the bandshell after the destruction the Blaz and the ESCR cabal ordered.

 

The police tape around the trees have seem to have lost their elasticity. But the NYPD is still hanging around to make sure the “resiliency” project doesn’t get disrupted ever again.

Which means the NYPD will be assisting the ESCR cabal’s contractors for as long as the East River Action demonstrators stick around and as the rest of the park gets destroyed. They will surely be here even when the landfill and the thousand new saplings arrived a half decade from now and probably when those saplings will finally reach maturity after two decades. Which is why now is a good time to see the cabal that’s behind this brazen political patronage land grab.

Meet HRA Advisors. The agents of the city de Blasio enabled to take over all your public spaces.

So now it’s quite clear from the massive revolving door The Blaz set up with HRA and several of the agencies he and they tainted with their presence why they he was so desperate to lie, obstruct, obscure and in a hurry to destroy to get the first phase of the “resiliency” project started. Mostly to cover his and his HRA government insider hires tracks in his final criminal act as Mayor of New York City. 

Even more dismaying is that incoming Mayor Eric Adams has just hired the odious Maria Torres-Springer to a deputy mayor position for get this, economic development, showing that unaccountable destruction of parks and gardens for predatory developers and avaricious private equity firms will be commonplace.

But that’s how The Blaz has been running this show for 8 years. Like a fucking sociopath serial killer who believes everything he does is righteous and fair, almost like Dexter Morgan or even Walter “Heisenberg” White.  His illegal destruction of East River Park exposed this and like those aforementioned fictional psychos he gives zero shits about it. What’s even more warped is that this sick mother fucker de Blasio actually funded three public parks days after his East River Park chainsaw massacre by giving 40 million dollars to restore a section of Prospect Park where he was hiding from the press and the public last summer (and where he ordered the NYPD to land a chopper there to pick him up), another 11 million for a historic stone house that already looked well maintained in Gowanus and 75 (!!!!) million dollars for a 27 acre park at a riverside inlet in hyper gentrified upper class Williamsburg (this coming after the City Council cronies approval of de Blasio’s developer overlord pals Walentas nearby River Ring luxury public housing towers).

The correlation between what de Blasio chose to preserve with what he chose to destroy with impunity is striking and in both cases he blatantly, stupidly and wastefully overspent. Nearly 1.2 billion for the Brooklyn parks and 1.3 for the destruction of East River Park. Surely in his deranged mind, he thinks this absolves him for his criminal actions as well as his favored advisors and their clients who stand to profit from the East River Park’s remodeling. Surely because of his broke ass, The Blaz and his tax boondoggle wife might have some personal financial stake in this as well.

After all this and 8 years of political corruption recidivism, this ratfucker de Blasio is going to run for governor surely with plans to destroy upstate parks and green spaces as well and he’s got the establishment Democrat party and corporate news media bolstering and coddling him as well. By then, NYC will officially have their new mayor in Eric Adams as the de Blasio chainsaw massacre, now legitimized by the courts, will continue its ecocidal path, leaving communities and children in the Lower East Side and the East Village without a place to relax, exercise, party and play for probably a decade (maybe forever if the new park will be privatized).

The Blaz has set the precedent for destruction by autocratic fiat and corporate profits. All your local parks will not be spared.

You will know this by the trail of dead.