- 8/30/20 - "
The Star Ledger"
by Margaret Schmidt
"Sweet Land of Liberty"
The in-depth stories about LSP's past and present show the essential and overdue need for the Protection Act
and counter the misinformation of Paul Fireman and his representatives
Excerpt from the end of The Star Ledger story:
...critics (Fireman's representatives according to Friends of LSP's description of "critics") of the Protection Act have focused on whether active recreation like ballfields or basketball courts would be permissible under the bill and the makeup of a proposed advisory committee.
However, the act wouldn’t prohibit active recreation from being developed and specifically notes it should be allowed, saying the DEP should continue to “increase both active and passive recreational uses.” As for the advisory committee, Friends president Pesin said he agrees with a Jersey City Council resolution that calls for the makeup to specifically include representatives of the neighborhoods next to the park.
To the bill’s supporters, what’s paramount is making sure a public treasure isn’t sold off.
“There’s always going to be somebody who thinks they have a better private use, a better commercial use for the People’s Park,” Mukherji said.
“When are we going to say enough is enough?”
The Jersey Journal’s Joshua Rosario and Teri West contributed to this report.
Margaret Schmidt, The Jersey Journal,
mschmidt@jjournal.com
Excerpts from the 8/24 Jersey Journal stories:
The stories about LSP's past and present counter Paul Fireman's lobbyists' and surrogates' malicious lies and propaganda, with his only goal of destroying LSP's Caven Point Natural Area for his multimillionaire golfers. The overwhelming majority has always opposed LSP privatization no matter what revenue was promised by greedy profiteers wanting to seize urban public land behind Lady Liberty deserved by future generations.
'Keep our eyes on the prize'
: Black voices speak out on Liberty State Park's latest controversy
All this dust-up,' Daoud David Williams said, is only coming after the owner of the Liberty National Golf Club, adjacent to the park, ratcheted up his push to take over the parks environmentally sensitive Caven Point Peninsula.
Williams sees it as an attempt to sow division between the Black community and the Friends group and to co-opt the Black Lives Matter movement, a point Friends of LSP's co-vice president Eliza Wright also made.
Also disturbing, Williams said, is that its disrespecting the very people who have been fighting for generations to ensure that privatization doesnt chip away or take wholesale bites out of the public park.
Through the years, the activists went up against powerful people in the state governors, wealthy people,' Williams said. Its a wonder the park has come this far.'
Rather than sow discord, the community needs to keep our eyes on the prize,' he said, and work together for continued improvements.
The current strife is a sign of desperation on the golf courses part, he said, and a wrong-headed attempt to turn things ugly.
We need to continue to unite around these issues, to gather ideas, support and recommendations to improve the park,' he said. Let us work on it together.'
Special report:
Whose park is it, anyway?
Fight after fight, it generally comes down to the choice of open space for all next to the most densely populated area in America or a high-value, high-prestige playground for a few that would come with a hefty cha-ching windfall for a private developer who would pay to clean up that old dump.
Fifty-three years after the last train left Jersey Centrals flagship waterfront terminal now restored and the centerpiece of the north end of Liberty State Park another developer is reprising that old song, this time pushing an ugly, misleading narrative that would turn the heroes of the park into villains and co-opt the momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement. Paul Fireman, the billionaire who brought Reebok sneakers to the U.S., wants to expand his ultra-exclusive Liberty National Golf Club into part of the adjacent park, relocating three holes onto the environmentally sensitive Caven Point Peninsula so theyd have more breathtaking backdrops for televised tournaments.
Several local people some of whom have acknowledged receiving large contributions from Fireman for their community organizations have signed on to the narrative in part or full.
And while Fireman has publicly said he is taking a break from seeking the peninsula, the well-funded effort continues to paper windshields with accusatory flyers and has set up social media accounts with doctored photos. At first, the narrative focused on initial visioning for the park, alleging that never-realized amenities like ballfields and basketball courts equaled an exclusion of minority interests and voices. Now, the focus has moved to 234 acres of still-polluted, fenced-off land known as the interior,' alleging that environmentalists somehow like it that way.
Members of the nearby community and people who have worked on Liberty State Park over the years tell a different story...
Yet those charges dont stand up to news clippings and documents held in the Jersey City Public Library that clearly show the engagement through the years of individuals and organizations in Wards A (the Greenville section), F (Lafayette) and E (Downtown).
A public hearing transcript from 1994 captures the words of
Jersey City trailblazer Addison McLeon a former Tuskegee Airman and the first African-American from Hudson County to serve in the state Assembly
telling state officials that the only minority that would be served by a golf course in the park would be the minority of people who play golf. And those who were there say charges of exclusion simply arent true.
I dont recall (minority residents) being excluded,' said Smith, who has lived in Wards A and F his whole life and was in public office from 1993 to 2010. He rattles off how constituents could have contacted his at-large council office or his neighbor Ward F Councilwoman Melissa Holloways office, or any council member; how there were many public hearings; and how those meetings were advertised in accordance with the states Sunshine law.
I dont think there was any exclusion,' he said.
What's next for Liberty State Park -- the jewel of Jersey City?
'There is always going to be somebody who thinks they have a better private use, a better commercial use for the People Park', Assembly sponsor Raj Mukherji said. When are we going to say enough is enough
