Off The Hook - 1990-10-11

[00:04.090 --> 00:05.350]  [SPEAKER_15]: ...fears for being held.
[00:05.670 --> 00:09.530]  [SPEAKER_15]: The natives wore red and white ribbons symbolizing peace and determination.
[00:09.950 --> 00:16.750]  [SPEAKER_15]: From the base, they went to the Mohawk territory of Kahnawake, where a big dinner was served and the Mohawk national anthem was sung.
[00:17.130 --> 00:20.130]  [SPEAKER_15]: For WBAI News, I'm Paul DiRienzo.
[00:21.430 --> 00:28.990]  [SPEAKER_11]: In court news, a former trader for ex-junk bond king Michael Milken says his boss never asked him to manipulate the price of a company's stock.
[00:29.130 --> 00:32.210]  [SPEAKER_11]: The testimony came today at a pre-sentencing hearing in New York.
[00:32.210 --> 00:35.950]  [SPEAKER_11]: The government accuses Milken of stock manipulation in a fee-driven scheme.
[00:36.270 --> 00:41.430]  [SPEAKER_11]: Milken pleaded guilty in April to a half-dozen felonies, including conspiracy and securities fraud.
[00:42.250 --> 00:52.170]  [SPEAKER_11]: In Los Angeles, former Lincoln Savings and Lone head Charles Keating, having exhausted his options at the state court level, asked a federal court today to reduce his $5 million bail.
[00:52.450 --> 01:04.050]  [SPEAKER_11]: In court documents, Keating's attorneys argue that the financier's current bail is in violation of his constitutional rights and noted that two co-defendants charged with identical crimes receive bail 50 times lower than Keating's.
[01:04.250 --> 01:13.330]  [SPEAKER_11]: Keating has been held in Los Angeles County Jail since September 18th, when his bail was set by Superior Court Judge Gary Klausner, who said Keating might flee.
[01:13.890 --> 01:20.390]  [SPEAKER_11]: Keating, the former operator of the failed Lincoln Savings and Loan in Irvine, just three years ago estimated his wealth at nearly $40 million.
[01:20.970 --> 01:26.070]  [SPEAKER_11]: However, he now claims he has $5.2 million in debt and therefore cannot post the bail.
[01:27.510 --> 01:38.130]  [SPEAKER_11]: And here in New York, a Brooklyn judge declared a mistrial today in the Bensonhurst racial slaying case after a female juror was dismissed when she accused the father of the victim of trying to stare her down.
[01:38.470 --> 01:49.810]  [SPEAKER_11]: State Supreme Court Justice Thaddeus Owens, citing the state constitution, declared the mistrial about 5.45 this afternoon, telling the defense and prosecution attorneys, you must have 12 jurors, this trial cannot be done.
[01:49.810 --> 02:02.050]  [SPEAKER_11]: Owens set a new trial date of January 17th for Charles Stressler, accused of supplying bats to a mob of angry whites who surrounded Yusuf Hawkins and three of his friends on a street in the mostly white neighborhood of Bensonhurst.
[02:02.410 --> 02:10.770]  [SPEAKER_11]: Stressler will be tried with the eighth and last defendant in the case, Stephen Carreri, who faces assault charges and is the only defendant not charged with murder.
[02:11.270 --> 02:13.070]  [SPEAKER_11]: Said Owens, I have no choice.
[02:13.230 --> 02:15.290]  [SPEAKER_11]: That's what the Constitution says.
[02:17.030 --> 02:27.070]  [SPEAKER_11]: And in other court news, a neo-Nazi skinhead convicted of the murder of an Ethiopian student testified in the trial of Tom Metzger today as the leader of the white Aryan resistance.
[02:27.370 --> 02:32.450]  [SPEAKER_11]: Metzger has been sued for his role in allegedly inciting a group of skinheads to carry out the murder.
[02:32.750 --> 02:35.050]  [SPEAKER_11]: Robert Smith has more from Portland, Oregon.
[02:35.970 --> 02:44.490]  [SPEAKER_05]: The $10 million case against Metzger depends on drawing a link between Metzger and the three skinheads who beat Muligeta Serra to death in November 1988.
[02:44.490 --> 02:50.390]  [SPEAKER_05]: One of those skinheads, Ken Miske, said today that no one had control over his group of skinheads.
[02:50.870 --> 02:55.270]  [SPEAKER_05]: Miske, also known as Ken Death, appeared in court with shoulder-length blonde hair.
[02:55.530 --> 02:58.290]  [SPEAKER_05]: He is currently serving a sentence for the death of Serra.
[02:58.770 --> 03:02.670]  [SPEAKER_05]: Miske said, though, that his group of skinhead friends weren't a formal organization.
[03:02.950 --> 03:05.170]  [SPEAKER_05]: What type of group was this?
[03:05.270 --> 03:06.150]  [SPEAKER_05]: How was it organized?
[03:06.430 --> 03:07.130]  [SPEAKER_05]: Did you have a president?
[03:07.130 --> 03:09.190]  [SPEAKER_04]: No, it was nothing like that.
[03:09.430 --> 03:16.450]  [SPEAKER_04]: It was just a bunch of skinheads in Portland that viewed the same ideas, had their own trip going.
[03:17.390 --> 03:18.550]  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, they'd just hang out.
[03:18.750 --> 03:20.050]  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, everybody was just hanging out together.
[03:21.250 --> 03:22.930]  [SPEAKER_05]: Hanging flyers up and whatever.
[03:23.350 --> 03:28.730]  [SPEAKER_05]: Morris Dees, the lawyer for Serra family, questioned Miske extensively about his link to Tom Metzger.
[03:28.930 --> 03:36.450]  [SPEAKER_05]: In confrontational exchanges, Miske admitted that he had gotten a letter from John Metzger, Tom's son, and that he had met with an agent of the Metzgers.
[03:37.030 --> 03:41.570]  [SPEAKER_05]: Miske denied, though, that that agent provided any training or any direct orders from Metzger.
[03:41.850 --> 03:46.530]  [SPEAKER_05]: The most surprising part of the testimony was when Miske talked about the night Serra was killed.
[03:46.750 --> 03:53.070]  [SPEAKER_05]: None of the skinheads had testified about that murder before, since they all pled guilty to the crime and to racial intimidation.
[03:53.390 --> 03:59.890]  [SPEAKER_05]: Miske claimed today that he killed Serra in self-defense, and that he admitted to a racial motive just to get a better plea.
[03:59.890 --> 04:08.550]  [SPEAKER_03]: With all the threats I was getting from the federal prosecutors and whatnot, I just decided to take a 20-year minimum.
[04:09.990 --> 04:13.990]  [SPEAKER_03]: I didn't want to say that I killed Serra because it was raised, but that was part of the plea.
[04:14.530 --> 04:20.490]  [SPEAKER_05]: Morris Dees continued to point out how Miske's story differed from his deposition and from the other skinhead story.
[04:20.790 --> 04:24.730]  [SPEAKER_05]: Miske said that all the others were lying, mentioning some sort of plot between them.
[04:24.730 --> 04:28.250]  [SPEAKER_05]: Metzger, who is representing himself, cross-examined Miske.
[04:28.490 --> 04:35.410]  [SPEAKER_05]: Under somewhat leading questions, Miske said that the supposed agent of Metzger was also distributing Ku Klux Klan propaganda.
[04:35.710 --> 04:39.350]  [SPEAKER_05]: Miske also said that Metzger had not ordered or encouraged violence.
[04:39.690 --> 04:41.750]  [SPEAKER_05]: The cross-examination is scheduled to continue.
[04:42.010 --> 04:44.290]  [SPEAKER_05]: For Pacifica, this is Robert Smith in Portland.
[04:44.950 --> 04:54.110]  [SPEAKER_11]: More than 12 years ago, white South African journalist Donald Woods, whose life and work against apartheid inspired the movie Cry Freedom, was forced to flee his home country.
[04:54.110 --> 04:57.290]  [SPEAKER_11]: This August, he returned to South Africa for a six-week visit.
[04:57.590 --> 05:03.270]  [SPEAKER_11]: In New York today, Donald Woods discussed the depth of reform in that country and the problems that lie ahead.
[05:03.710 --> 05:05.010]  [SPEAKER_11]: Devika Dial has more.
[05:05.730 --> 05:09.690]  [SPEAKER_00]: Donald Woods says he is optimistic about the political future of South Africa.
[05:10.030 --> 05:14.390]  [SPEAKER_00]: He envisions its new constitution will be similar to that of the United States.
[05:14.610 --> 05:19.990]  [SPEAKER_00]: But he warns that dismantling apartheid will not solve all of South Africa's problems.
[05:19.990 --> 05:24.330]  [SPEAKER_13]: What's going against them is, for a start, demographics.
[05:24.910 --> 05:31.750]  [SPEAKER_13]: By the turn of the century, there will be 60 million South Africans, of whom 54 million will be black.
[05:33.170 --> 05:44.790]  [SPEAKER_13]: Two-thirds of those, unless something very dramatic happens in the next 10 years, are going to be recipients of inferior education, terrible housing conditions.
[05:46.430 --> 05:50.170]  [SPEAKER_13]: And they need something like 340,000 new jobs a year.
[05:50.730 --> 05:53.150]  [SPEAKER_13]: They're currently running at about 2,000 to 3,000.
[05:53.490 --> 05:55.190]  [SPEAKER_13]: The economy is in a mess.
[05:55.910 --> 06:01.090]  [SPEAKER_13]: For years, the country has relied on gold, diamonds, and mineral wealth.
[06:01.090 --> 06:09.770]  [SPEAKER_13]: It seems to me we South Africans have for too long relied on mineral wealth and forgotten that the real wealth of country is its people.
[06:10.670 --> 06:12.930]  [SPEAKER_13]: And we're going to have to discover that pretty quickly, I think.
[06:13.830 --> 06:23.390]  [SPEAKER_13]: The other huge problems looming have to do with the resolution of details of liberty.
[06:23.850 --> 06:31.450]  [SPEAKER_00]: Woods compares the political process South Africa has to go through to set up a political framework with the drafting of the American Constitution.
[06:32.230 --> 06:38.690]  [SPEAKER_00]: He expressed the hope that South Africa's leadership will display the same genius that America's forefathers have.
[06:39.490 --> 06:44.030]  [SPEAKER_00]: Woods also attempted to explain the violence currently plaguing South African townships.
[06:44.150 --> 06:48.450]  [SPEAKER_00]: For him, the issues underlying the violence are too complex to be branded tribal.
[06:50.130 --> 06:56.230]  [SPEAKER_13]: The township violence that's been going on is so often represented as tribal.
[06:58.030 --> 07:06.570]  [SPEAKER_13]: And there's a grain of truth in that frequently the clashes have been between people who speak Kosa, people who speak Zulu.
[07:06.770 --> 07:07.770]  [SPEAKER_13]: But it's very misleading.
[07:08.230 --> 07:16.630]  [SPEAKER_13]: In South Africa, because people from this region are in that compound and people from that region are in this compound, it's reported as tribal conflict.
[07:18.290 --> 07:21.770]  [SPEAKER_13]: So they're very tenuous links between what language they speak.
[07:21.830 --> 07:28.690]  [SPEAKER_13]: And in any case, most South Africans, or many South Africans would know that Kosa, Zulu, Swazi, Di Bele are basically one language anyway.
[07:29.650 --> 07:35.130]  [SPEAKER_13]: And tribalism as such has not been a major feature of black South African politics for over 80 years.
[07:36.350 --> 07:41.390]  [SPEAKER_13]: There are those who are trying to tribalize it, but I don't think they'll succeed in the long run.
[07:42.430 --> 07:49.030]  [SPEAKER_13]: Also, there are elements of violence which frequently cannot be pigeonholed and categorized.
[07:50.330 --> 08:00.530]  [SPEAKER_13]: You know, we live in a world where leaders or aspiring leaders feel they have to give a one-liner explanation for the most complex things.
[08:01.570 --> 08:06.590]  [SPEAKER_13]: Inevitably, people are trying to say, well, the violence in South Africa is because of this or that or that.
[08:06.870 --> 08:13.890]  [SPEAKER_13]: Now, after six weeks there, I'm not sure that anyone knows entirely what every aspect of that violence is about.
[08:14.370 --> 08:17.630]  [SPEAKER_00]: For WBAI News, I'm Devika Dehal.
[08:18.490 --> 08:24.570]  [SPEAKER_11]: And finally tonight, the Mexican poet and essayist Octavio Paz has won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
[08:24.570 --> 08:29.150]  [SPEAKER_11]: He said the honor was important for Spanish literature and came as a total surprise.
[08:29.510 --> 08:39.790]  [SPEAKER_11]: The 76-year-old Paz is perhaps best known for the book The Labyrinth of Solitude, in which he offers a controversial and often startling analysis of modern Mexico and the Mexican personality.
[08:40.050 --> 08:44.430]  [SPEAKER_11]: I am very grateful to the committee, Paz said when reached by telephone at a New York hotel.
[08:44.630 --> 08:51.770]  [SPEAKER_11]: He was in the United States to deliver a lecture next week at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where an exhibit of Mexican art is being shown.
[08:51.770 --> 08:57.690]  [SPEAKER_11]: The Academy said that in choosing Paz, it was honoring a writer of Spanish with a wide international perspective.
[08:58.110 --> 09:04.710]  [SPEAKER_11]: Paz said, I was always interested in international culture, and I think writers must be a bridge from one culture to another.
[09:08.220 --> 09:12.100]  [SPEAKER_11]: And that's some of the news for Thursday, October 11, 1990.
[09:12.540 --> 09:14.720]  [SPEAKER_11]: The news is engineered by Anthony Sloan.
[09:14.900 --> 09:20.340]  [SPEAKER_11]: It was produced with Jenny Bourne, Devika Dehal, Robert Knight, Robert Hennelly, and Alan Lipke.
[09:20.340 --> 09:26.300]  [SPEAKER_11]: I'm Amy Goodman in New York, with Don Rush in Washington, for WBAI Listener Supported News.
[09:29.850 --> 09:31.170]  [SPEAKER_09]: Hi, I'm Edward Asner.
[09:31.390 --> 09:32.810]  [SPEAKER_09]: Do you believe in freedom of speech?
[09:32.990 --> 09:33.470]  [SPEAKER_09]: I do.
[09:33.810 --> 09:40.290]  [SPEAKER_09]: That's why I support Free Speech Radio, listener-sponsored WBAI New York, 99.5 on your FM dial.
[09:49.770 --> 10:08.350]  [SPEAKER_07]: This Saturday, October 13, at 12 noon, a newly formed grassroots organization, the Citizens Planning Board, is holding a demonstration on the site of the proposed 2,000-acre Breslin Development Project, slated to include New York's largest mall, an industrial park,
[10:08.710 --> 10:14.590]  [SPEAKER_07]: high-density housing, and more in Long Island's last stand of unprotected pine barrens.
[10:14.590 --> 10:20.230]  [SPEAKER_07]: This site is directly above our state-designated sole-source drinking water aquifer.
[10:20.750 --> 10:25.970]  [SPEAKER_07]: Take the Long Island Expressway to exit 68 North, the William Floyd Parkway.
[10:26.190 --> 10:30.430]  [SPEAKER_07]: Go one-half mile north on the William Floyd to the demonstration site.
[10:30.670 --> 10:39.550]  [SPEAKER_07]: For more information, contact the Citizens Planning Board at 928-6391 or 473-1039.
[10:39.550 --> 10:47.370]  [SPEAKER_07]: Those numbers again, 928-6391 or 473-1039.
[10:47.470 --> 10:51.850]  [SPEAKER_07]: That's this Saturday, October 13th, at 12 noon.
[10:52.770 --> 10:55.550]  [SPEAKER_07]: And those are area code 516.
[11:00.030 --> 11:07.150]  [SPEAKER_16]: And again, that demonstration is taking place this Saturday, 12 noon, exit 68 on the Long Island Expressway.
[11:07.770 --> 11:12.370]  [SPEAKER_16]: And just one of many chapters unfolding in the environmental world.
[11:12.770 --> 11:17.870]  [SPEAKER_16]: Good evening, this is Emmanuel Goldstein filling in for Andrew Phillips on investigations.
[11:21.210 --> 11:24.130]  [SPEAKER_16]: And there's an awful lot of people sleeping out there.
[11:24.550 --> 11:26.070]  [SPEAKER_16]: Too many people sleeping.
[11:27.430 --> 11:32.150]  [SPEAKER_16]: Hopefully tonight we can wake some of you up with some environmental news.
[11:32.490 --> 11:33.130]  [SPEAKER_16]: Stay with us.
[11:35.830 --> 11:58.910]  [SPEAKER_02]: Seashell and stone Surf rushes forward to feel the shingle with the gazz of foam For the gold Over the landscape The mouth of life Mine unfolds
[12:02.430 --> 12:19.470]  [SPEAKER_02]: Smooth and ground and brown See how the sunshine creeps over thistle and down Hill up and hop,
[12:25.720 --> 13:11.080]  [SPEAKER_02]: I feel a lump, see a bump, hear a bulb over sow Hollow and valley and shadow and dimple and hill Glisten and glimmer and shimmer and sparkle and still Sunlight is warming the land before your eyes And the sunrise is on your side And the sunshine is on your time.
[13:18.330 --> 13:22.290]  [SPEAKER_02]: Lady of stone, you are alone.
[13:26.240 --> 13:30.240]  [SPEAKER_02]: Lady of stone, you are alone.
[13:32.240 --> 13:40.840]  [SPEAKER_16]: Well, you know, the fact is, with every passing day, the environment seems to become less and less.
[13:40.840 --> 13:46.420]  [SPEAKER_16]: I was standing outside tonight, and I'm not going to tell you where, because 10,000 people will want to go there if I tell you where.
[13:46.820 --> 13:51.300]  [SPEAKER_16]: But I was standing outside, and I could smell the leaves.
[13:51.340 --> 13:52.980]  [SPEAKER_16]: I could smell flowers.
[13:53.480 --> 13:55.140]  [SPEAKER_16]: I could smell the night air.
[13:56.220 --> 13:58.380]  [SPEAKER_16]: When was the last time you were able to do that?
[13:59.420 --> 14:04.200]  [SPEAKER_16]: It doesn't seem like maybe you were able to do that a lot more in the past than you are now.
[14:04.200 --> 14:11.380]  [SPEAKER_16]: Now, I'd like to know, are those people that have been around for longer periods of time, how have things changed?
[14:11.560 --> 14:19.960]  [SPEAKER_16]: You know, I'm not all that old a person, but I remember things changing so tremendously in the last decade.
[14:21.740 --> 14:23.220]  [SPEAKER_16]: Incredible changes.
[14:24.730 --> 14:30.320]  [SPEAKER_16]: And there are people who want to change even more.
[14:30.900 --> 14:39.360]  [SPEAKER_16]: They want to do what is known as development, but which I prefer to call destruction.
[14:40.880 --> 14:54.920]  [SPEAKER_16]: We're going to be talking tonight with four environmentalists from Long Island who are fighting a proposed super-mega-monstrous mall that is slated to be built out there.
[14:55.840 --> 15:02.640]  [SPEAKER_16]: And we'll be talking about the future of environmental activism and what you can do.
[15:04.860 --> 15:06.160]  [SPEAKER_16]: But first, a bit of humor.
[15:07.580 --> 15:09.060]  [SPEAKER_16]: I went to McDonald's tonight.
[15:09.280 --> 15:17.920]  [SPEAKER_16]: After I went to that nice open area where I could smell the trees and everything, I felt the need for as radical a departure from that as possible.
[15:17.920 --> 15:18.960]  [SPEAKER_16]: So I went to McDonald's.
[15:19.020 --> 15:23.940]  [SPEAKER_16]: And lo and behold, inside McDonald's, they have these little pamphlets now.
[15:25.720 --> 15:27.480]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I picked up two of them.
[15:28.880 --> 15:31.840]  [SPEAKER_16]: One is called Our Rainforest Policy.
[15:32.640 --> 15:34.480]  [SPEAKER_16]: And the other is called Ozone.
[15:35.240 --> 15:40.880]  [SPEAKER_16]: So, uh, gather around the radio and listen to McDonald's positions on these environmental issues.
[15:41.220 --> 15:46.360]  [SPEAKER_16]: Okay, first of all, tropical rainforests play an important role in the Earth's ecology.
[15:46.900 --> 15:50.620]  [SPEAKER_16]: And their destruction threatens the delicate environmental balance of our planet.
[15:51.020 --> 15:52.200]  [SPEAKER_16]: Not to mention our profits.
[15:52.600 --> 16:03.460]  [SPEAKER_16]: For the record, and this is all in capital letters here, Nowhere in the world does McDonald's purchase beef raised on rainforest or recently deforested rainforest land.
[16:04.420 --> 16:08.640]  [SPEAKER_16]: In fact, McDonald's has a strict corporate policy against using rainforest beef.
[16:09.000 --> 16:16.540]  [SPEAKER_16]: It is, this is in quotes, It is McDonald's policy to use only locally produced and processed beef in every country where we have restaurants.
[16:16.540 --> 16:23.220]  [SPEAKER_16]: In those isolated areas where domestic beef is not available, it is imported from approved McDonald's suppliers from other countries.
[16:23.220 --> 16:30.960]  [SPEAKER_16]: In all cases, however, McDonald's does not, has not, and will not permit the destruction of tropical rainforests for our beef supply.
[16:31.360 --> 16:34.320]  [SPEAKER_16]: This policy is strictly enforced and closely monitored.
[16:34.820 --> 16:43.320]  [SPEAKER_16]: Any McDonald's supplier who is found to deviate from this policy, or cannot prove compliance with it, will be immediately discontinued.
[16:43.320 --> 16:47.800]  [SPEAKER_16]: In the U.S., we use only 100% pure U.S.
[16:48.300 --> 16:48.660]  [SPEAKER_16]: domestic beef.
[16:48.920 --> 16:52.960]  [SPEAKER_16]: In Canada, we use only 100% pure Canadian beef.
[16:53.200 --> 16:59.500]  [SPEAKER_16]: And in Europe, we use only European economic community grown and approved beef.
[17:00.200 --> 17:08.560]  [SPEAKER_16]: McDonald's will continue to monitor its beef suppliers and adopt policies and practices aimed at protecting the global environment on which we all depend.
[17:09.860 --> 17:12.900]  [SPEAKER_16]: And this was printed on recycled paper.
[17:13.820 --> 17:17.160]  [SPEAKER_16]: And, you know, gosh darn it all, those folks from McDonald's are just something else.
[17:17.920 --> 17:20.320]  [SPEAKER_16]: And, uh, what they say on ozone...
[17:20.320 --> 17:21.840]  [SPEAKER_16]: This is pamphlet number 8.
[17:21.900 --> 17:23.060]  [SPEAKER_16]: That was pamphlet number 5.
[17:23.920 --> 17:28.200]  [SPEAKER_16]: And the other pamphlets have to do with why Big Macs and fish fillets are good for you.
[17:29.000 --> 17:29.440]  [SPEAKER_16]: Ozone.
[17:29.600 --> 17:39.740]  [SPEAKER_16]: Several years ago, scientists agreed that fully halogenated chlorofluorocarbons, CFCs, were contributing to the depletion of the Earth's protective ozone layer.
[17:39.740 --> 17:49.660]  [SPEAKER_16]: McDonald's was the first in our industry to require our packaging suppliers to phase out the use of these CFCs as blowing agents for our polystyrene foam packaging.
[17:50.480 --> 17:55.100]  [SPEAKER_16]: The phase-out of fully halogenated CFCs was completed in 1988.
[17:55.560 --> 17:59.880]  [SPEAKER_16]: Today, our foam packaging is made with alternative blowing agents.
[18:00.160 --> 18:12.440]  [SPEAKER_16]: Our move to these alternative blowing agents has been supported by leading environmental organizations, and the EPA has called this move part of the solution to stratospheric ozone depletion.
[18:12.440 --> 18:16.660]  [SPEAKER_16]: As new solutions continue to present themselves, McDonald's will continue to study them.
[18:17.180 --> 18:20.540]  [SPEAKER_16]: After all, good packaging does a whole lot more...
[18:21.500 --> 18:22.920]  [SPEAKER_16]: than just whole things.
[18:24.060 --> 18:24.580]  [SPEAKER_16]: Boy.
[18:25.580 --> 18:27.100]  [SPEAKER_16]: Get you right here, you know?
[18:28.240 --> 18:34.660]  [SPEAKER_16]: You picture the folks around the corporate tables of McDonald's just thinking of ways to help the environment even more.
[18:34.660 --> 18:46.020]  [SPEAKER_16]: However, I don't know, I don't mean to sound like a pessimist or a non-believer or something, but I think a lot of pressure is responsible for these little pieces of recycled paper that they're distributing.
[18:47.740 --> 18:53.540]  [SPEAKER_16]: And such pressure has to be applied everywhere that we see weaknesses.
[18:54.840 --> 19:02.420]  [SPEAKER_16]: And finally, from today's New York Times, University officials from 22 lands give environment pledge.
[19:03.540 --> 19:20.700]  [SPEAKER_16]: Dateline Paris, underlining the urgent need to move toward an environmentally sustainable future, a group of university presidents from around the world have pledged to greatly increase the amount their schools teach about environmental issues, and urged other universities to do the same.
[19:20.700 --> 19:35.980]  [SPEAKER_16]: Meeting at a conference in Tellur, France, the university officials said this week that they would increase research on the environment, create programs to produce expertise in environmental management, and integrate environmental issues throughout their curriculum.
[19:36.720 --> 19:49.280]  [SPEAKER_16]: They said they would also encourage programs to make faculty members more knowledgeable about environmental issues, so that, for example, literature or political science professors could also discuss environmental matters in their classrooms.
[19:49.280 --> 19:51.720]  [SPEAKER_16]: In other words, it applies to everybody.
[19:52.720 --> 20:03.260]  [SPEAKER_16]: In their declaration, officials from 22 countries in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia said, We human beings have become a danger to ourselves.
[20:03.260 --> 20:05.160]  [SPEAKER_16]: We must act in time.
[20:05.600 --> 20:06.920]  [SPEAKER_16]: What's wrong with Australia?
[20:07.700 --> 20:08.860]  [SPEAKER_16]: They're absent there.
[20:09.860 --> 20:26.500]  [SPEAKER_16]: Continuing, Although differences in regional perspectives and academic traditions necessarily create a diversity in our teaching and research, the declaration continued, we share and aspire to common goals in developing the intellectual capital for an environmentally sustainable future.
[20:26.740 --> 20:31.740]  [SPEAKER_16]: The conference was organized by Gene Meyer, president of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.
[20:32.060 --> 20:36.580]  [SPEAKER_16]: Tufts has sought to set an example for other universities in teaching about the environment.
[20:36.880 --> 20:53.220]  [SPEAKER_16]: It has an environmental literacy institute to train faculty members to integrate environmental issues into their curriculum, and it has incorporated discussions of environmental concerns in its drama classes, engineering school, medical school, veterinary school,
[20:53.420 --> 20:55.000]  [SPEAKER_16]: and school of diplomacy.
[20:56.060 --> 20:58.360]  [SPEAKER_16]: So, uh, a bit of good news there.
[21:00.340 --> 21:05.200]  [SPEAKER_16]: More people who become aware the more we have the chance of doing something about it.
[21:05.260 --> 21:09.700]  [SPEAKER_16]: Now, to get to the specific issue at hand, Dateline.
[21:11.040 --> 21:35.500]  [SPEAKER_16]: About 60, 70, 80 miles east of New York City, we have what is the last holdout, the, uh, the last bit of open space that protects our our drinking water, that provides a bit of, uh, scenic relief from the, uh, strip malls, but that particular area is being threatened.
[21:35.840 --> 21:40.720]  [SPEAKER_16]: That particular area has always been threatened, but now the, the threat seems almost imminent.
[21:41.320 --> 21:47.460]  [SPEAKER_16]: And as a result of this, several environmental groups are getting together and holding a demonstration on Saturday.
[21:48.140 --> 21:57.480]  [SPEAKER_16]: And, uh, hopefully that is only the beginning of what ultimately will be a battle of the people, I guess.
[21:57.880 --> 22:19.700]  [SPEAKER_16]: We have with us, uh, Dick Amper from the Pine Barren Society, Dan Morris from the Open Space Council, uh, Nancy Oku of a member of the Citizens Planning Board and a Manhattan Environmental Educator and Rich DiDonato, member of the newly formed Citizens Planning Board and a concerned citizen out in Suffolk County.
[22:20.320 --> 22:28.100]  [SPEAKER_16]: And, uh, this obviously is something that affects, um, people not just in Long Island, but, uh, in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, all over.
[22:28.380 --> 22:30.900]  [SPEAKER_16]: And something we should pay very strict attention to.
[22:31.200 --> 22:34.600]  [SPEAKER_16]: Let's start off with, uh, Dick Amper from, uh, the Pine Barren Society.
[22:34.720 --> 22:35.380]  [SPEAKER_16]: Dick, are you with us?
[22:35.660 --> 22:36.360]  [SPEAKER_10]: I am, indeed.
[22:36.360 --> 22:41.700]  [SPEAKER_10]: I was, uh, very much appreciative of your comments about, uh, McDonald's, uh, public relations literature.
[22:41.920 --> 22:43.100]  [SPEAKER_10]: It shouldn't be too discouraging.
[22:43.400 --> 22:48.520]  [SPEAKER_10]: Uh, there's an acknowledgement that, uh, McDonald's has a bad environmental reputation that they really can't survive with.
[22:48.520 --> 22:54.520]  [SPEAKER_10]: And, uh, while they seem to have latched on to their competitor, Wendy's, uh, question, where's the beef?
[22:54.720 --> 22:58.740]  [SPEAKER_10]: What they haven't latched on to at the moment is, what's the beef?
[22:59.140 --> 23:12.300]  [SPEAKER_10]: And the beef is that they're simply not responsive to the increased awareness on the part of their customers, the public as a whole, that we need to do something about the environment that more of the same is not going to do anything for us.
[23:12.580 --> 23:18.180]  [SPEAKER_10]: That's what we're encountering just 55 miles from Manhattan in Long Island's Pine Barrens.
[23:18.180 --> 23:21.200]  [SPEAKER_10]: There used to be 250,000 acres of them.
[23:21.560 --> 23:24.860]  [SPEAKER_10]: 150,000 of them have been paved over to date.
[23:25.140 --> 23:27.300]  [SPEAKER_10]: We just have 100,000 left.
[23:27.780 --> 23:36.660]  [SPEAKER_10]: And at the very gateway to the Pine Barrens, there is the first of 238 projects.
[23:37.040 --> 23:44.600]  [SPEAKER_10]: Developments from strip shopping centers that we cannot rent to condominiums that we cannot sell.
[23:45.060 --> 23:49.480]  [SPEAKER_10]: All of it above a special groundwater protection area at the gateway to the Pine Barrens.
[23:49.580 --> 24:00.060]  [SPEAKER_10]: The biggest of the 238 is a project that Wilbur Breslin calls one man's dream, and we think it's the tri-state region's nightmare.
[24:00.580 --> 24:08.240]  [SPEAKER_10]: He calls it Brookhaven Town Center at North Shore Properties, and we call it Willie World.
[24:08.240 --> 24:32.480]  [SPEAKER_10]: And just like the fictional or the comic Project Wally world that was supposed to entertain and provide some economic attraction, we think it is a potential dinosaur on the environment that threatens both our economic well-being and our environmental well-being.
[24:32.540 --> 24:51.120]  [SPEAKER_10]: It threatens our drinking water, it threatens the rare an endangered species that make the Pine Barrens their home, and it certainly threatens the high taxes and the declining economy that has wrecked most of our urbanized area, and which is wiping out the western portion of Long Island even as we speak.
[24:51.240 --> 24:53.140]  [SPEAKER_10]: So all of these groups have banded together.
[24:53.140 --> 25:12.740]  [SPEAKER_10]: We can't find anybody outside the building community that thinks this is a good idea, and we need the help of everybody in this tri-state area this coming Saturday, and in the weeks that will follow as the efforts to approve this project go forward, there is a war that we're all aware of to preserve our environment,
[25:12.760 --> 25:18.240]  [SPEAKER_10]: and the battle line is drawn at the gateway to the Pine Barrens this weekend.
[25:18.600 --> 25:23.640]  [SPEAKER_16]: Okay, well we're going to get back to your specific role in all this, but let me just ask one question.
[25:23.880 --> 25:28.420]  [SPEAKER_16]: You say there are 237 projects planned for this particular area?
[25:28.580 --> 25:49.440]  [SPEAKER_10]: Well, we only have 100,000 acres left, 50,000 of them are in private hands, and I must tell you we're shocked to report that there are 238 separate projects that would blanket 44,000 of the 50,000 acres that are still in private hands, and what government has done for too long is they've said,
[25:49.580 --> 26:09.100]  [SPEAKER_10]: this one little housing project won't hurt a thing, or this strip shopping center won't hurt anything at all by itself, without considering the hundreds upon hundreds of projects that in fact will certainly do devastation to our drinking water supply and to the greatest diversity of plants and animals that live in the state of New York.
[26:09.260 --> 26:27.900]  [SPEAKER_10]: So we've demanded through the largest lawsuit in the history of the state that all of these cumulative impacts be considered before any further project is advanced, and the biggest and the most important of these is willy world, as we call it, and it's not needed,
[26:27.900 --> 26:38.120]  [SPEAKER_10]: and a very, very serious threat to Long Island, on the one hand, but to the future of environment in our nation, if this is allowed to be approved on the other.
[26:38.720 --> 26:42.620]  [SPEAKER_16]: Okay, with that, let's move over to Dan Morris of the Open Space Council.
[26:42.780 --> 26:47.160]  [SPEAKER_16]: Dan, your group is battling this particular project specifically, is that correct?
[26:47.500 --> 26:48.560]  [SPEAKER_06]: That's correct, yes.
[26:49.660 --> 26:55.460]  [SPEAKER_16]: What are you doing to stop the project, and how long have you been involved in trying to stop this project?
[26:55.960 --> 27:14.180]  [SPEAKER_06]: Well, Mr. Breslin presented his, or made public, more or less, his plans for over 2,000 acres in Pine Barrens and the Yapank Ridge, Middle Island area, in February of 1989, and we have been involved since then, in one form or another, communicating with the town,
[27:15.060 --> 27:22.420]  [SPEAKER_06]: trying to get the best plan for the area for Brookhaven Town and the rest of Long Island.
[27:22.580 --> 27:31.060]  [SPEAKER_16]: Now, when you say 2,000 acres, just to put this into perspective, what is that, how does that compare to, to other malls, other projects in the past?
[27:32.380 --> 27:55.280]  [SPEAKER_06]: Well, the, other malls, the mall that's part of his project is, will cover 100, approximately 125 acres of Pine Barrens, leaving 25 acres from the 150 acres he owns in that area, but this is just part of his holdings.
[27:55.880 --> 28:09.500]  [SPEAKER_06]: Other malls in the area are, the South Shore Mall is approximately 89 acres of developed area, and I believe the Smith Haven Mall is a little bit less than that.
[28:09.620 --> 28:12.580]  [SPEAKER_16]: So would this, in fact, be the biggest mall in Long Island?
[28:12.740 --> 28:24.780]  [SPEAKER_06]: This, depending, I think, on how you measure it, it is the biggest mall definitely in Suffolk County, and it would be first or second right up there with Roosevelt Mall in Nassau County.
[28:25.780 --> 28:34.520]  [SPEAKER_16]: I'm just curious how this is justified when the area that they want to build this mall is so sparsely populated.
[28:34.600 --> 28:37.220]  [SPEAKER_16]: How can it possibly support a mall of that size?
[28:37.420 --> 29:03.940]  [SPEAKER_06]: That is one of the questions that the Open Space Council has asked in the past, and is still asking, and in the environmental impact statement, Mr. Breslin presented a report that said that, that was done in 1988, that said that there was a, not that there was a need for the mall,
[29:04.160 --> 29:10.620]  [SPEAKER_06]: but that the mall would face no opposition in the retail market in the area.
[29:10.840 --> 29:14.960]  [SPEAKER_06]: That is different than a showing a need for the project.
[29:14.960 --> 29:37.140]  [SPEAKER_06]: It just means that he will be able to put his stores in there and, I believe, suck the economic life out of areas like Patchogue and Riverhead and other, Port Jefferson, other smaller downtown business districts that we've been trying very hard to preserve in the,
[29:37.200 --> 29:41.000]  [SPEAKER_06]: on the east end for the last 20 years.
[29:41.840 --> 29:48.920]  [SPEAKER_16]: Okay, let's move to Nancy Oku, a member of the Citizens Planning Board, Manhattan Environmental Educator.
[29:49.800 --> 29:52.400]  [SPEAKER_16]: Nancy, can you tell us something about the Citizens Planning Board?
[29:52.400 --> 29:54.500]  [SPEAKER_16]: I understand this is a new group that's just been formed.
[29:54.940 --> 30:17.160]  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, we just formed a couple of weeks ago, actually, when a group of citizens who are just a diverse group of people from shop owners to housewives, the elderly people who are concerned about how this mall is going to affect their taxes, because we're probably going to pay for all the facilities that are needed to help put this mall in,
[30:17.720 --> 30:34.500]  [SPEAKER_01]: have just kind of come together at kind of the eleventh hour to try to hear, have our voices heard in the planning process, because we really feel that the Brookhaven Town Board has not been very responsive to public input on this project.
[30:34.900 --> 30:50.940]  [SPEAKER_01]: And many people, you know, that we're finding out have just never even heard of the scope of this project, that it's really a foot in the door for Mr. Breslin to really build this 2,000-acre project with high-density housing.
[30:51.280 --> 30:58.700]  [SPEAKER_01]: I think he plans to put a monorail in, an industrial park, and that's pretty frightening to most people who live out here.
[30:59.160 --> 31:02.200]  [SPEAKER_16]: A monorail in Long Island, that is, that's pretty frightening.
[31:02.700 --> 31:05.820]  [SPEAKER_01]: Monorail, you know, it's probably not going to serve a very large area.
[31:06.920 --> 31:20.360]  [SPEAKER_01]: So it really is Willy World, and we hope that it doesn't become another Disneyland, like in Florida, that has really done a very bad job at impacting the environment there, and that has not really served the needs of the community.
[31:20.980 --> 31:38.220]  [SPEAKER_01]: So we're just a group of people who have kind of come together with our little voices, and we want to really try to help see that kind of correct planning, not just for this project, but for all of this area of Long Island.
[31:38.340 --> 31:42.560]  [SPEAKER_01]: We're from not just Brookhaven, but Huntington, Westbury.
[31:42.800 --> 31:52.940]  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, people are coming from all over, because we're really feeling that city planning is, the process is not being responsive to the needs of local people.
[31:53.240 --> 32:12.660]  [SPEAKER_01]: Plus, not just locally, I think one of my concerns is that planning now must take into consideration the entire world, because what we do here in development, tearing down trees, is going to affect, you know, the entire ecosystem of the world, not just our little area anymore.
[32:13.100 --> 32:15.520]  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think that's one of the reasons we have formed.
[32:16.840 --> 32:20.120]  [SPEAKER_16]: Rich DiDonato, you're also a member of the Citizens Planning Board.
[32:20.380 --> 32:23.300]  [SPEAKER_16]: Can you tell us something about what's going to be happening on Saturday?
[32:23.300 --> 32:41.000]  [SPEAKER_08]: Well, Emmanuel, Saturday we are meeting on the proposed site of the Breslin Mall, and that is at the gateway to the Pine Barrens, like Dick Ampers said, for people who would like to join us on Saturday.
[32:44.320 --> 33:05.140]  [SPEAKER_08]: October 13th, at 12 noon, they should take the Long Island Expressway to exit 68, and that's William Floyd Parkway, go north on William Floyd Parkway, approximately one-half mile, and they will see us and the banners and the crowds, thongs of people, I would imagine,
[33:05.620 --> 33:08.480]  [SPEAKER_08]: everyone getting together to voice their opinion.
[33:08.500 --> 33:10.060]  [SPEAKER_08]: I think we'll have some good press coverage.
[33:10.060 --> 33:10.820]  [SPEAKER_08]: It should be interesting.
[33:10.960 --> 33:24.640]  [SPEAKER_08]: I would also like to say quickly that the Citizens Planning Board takes all responsibility for this particular event on Saturday, even though we have the, I would imagine, support of the other groups out here on Long Island.
[33:24.940 --> 33:29.160]  [SPEAKER_08]: The Citizens Planning Board are the actual organizers of this particular event.
[33:29.320 --> 33:54.900]  [SPEAKER_08]: Also, on Monday, Monday the 15th of October, just two days later, the Citizens Planning Board will confront the Brookhaven Town Planning Board in their chamber, up behind their large desks and up in their big cushion chairs, where they reign supreme with their authoritarian air about them.
[33:55.160 --> 34:15.840]  [SPEAKER_08]: And the little meek citizens will be down on the ground level, you know, addressing their questions and protests, up to the Brookhaven Town Planning Board asking all kinds of, shall we say, embarrassing, pressing, unanswered questions as to the legality of many aspects of this project,
[34:16.080 --> 34:23.140]  [SPEAKER_08]: the lack of impact studies environmentally, economically to the area.
[34:23.400 --> 34:25.620]  [SPEAKER_08]: Dick Amper can tell you a lot more about that.
[34:25.920 --> 34:44.340]  [SPEAKER_08]: And so I would like to invite everyone in within the reaches of Radioland here to, if they want to have some real input and some excitement on Monday, the 15th, to take exit 64.
[34:45.820 --> 34:47.740]  [SPEAKER_08]: Manuel, is that 64-112?
[34:48.280 --> 34:50.120]  [SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, 64 is 112.
[34:50.560 --> 35:07.100]  [SPEAKER_08]: 64 off Long Island Expressway, and to go north on Route 112 until they get to the, not too far, about a mile or two, to 32-33, Route 112, and that's the Brookhaven Town offices.
[35:07.420 --> 35:24.240]  [SPEAKER_08]: Again, that's exit 64 on the expressway, north, one or two miles, to the Brookhaven Town offices, 32-33, Route 112, anytime after 1.30 on Monday the 15th.
[35:24.280 --> 35:30.620]  [SPEAKER_08]: Why don't you ask Dick Amper why Monday the 15th is so important as far as this Willy World project is, okay?
[35:30.900 --> 35:32.420]  [SPEAKER_10]: Well, I think you just answered that question.
[35:32.720 --> 35:35.800]  [SPEAKER_10]: I appreciate it, Rich and Emmanuel.
[35:36.060 --> 35:45.000]  [SPEAKER_10]: The importance of this is we're going to demonstrate to everyone that we are concerned about this project on Saturday, and then we're going to actually take this message to our government.
[35:45.080 --> 35:47.640]  [SPEAKER_10]: We don't expect builders to stop building.
[35:47.800 --> 35:49.140]  [SPEAKER_10]: That's what they've been doing.
[35:49.140 --> 35:53.980]  [SPEAKER_10]: That's how they ruined the western part of Long Island and so much of the city areas.
[35:54.500 --> 36:02.140]  [SPEAKER_10]: So many New Yorkers flocked to the East End because it represents the really last vestiges of our precious natural heritage.
[36:02.140 --> 36:11.560]  [SPEAKER_10]: We've got our beaches and our parkland and our waterways, and it really is the retreat that reminds us where we all came from.
[36:11.800 --> 36:21.540]  [SPEAKER_10]: What we need to do is go to the people who are ostensibly supposed to represent us, the folks in government who have let us down in a surprising way, and let them know that we're not going to tolerate that anymore.
[36:21.560 --> 36:23.440]  [SPEAKER_10]: The Citizens Planning Board is just that.
[36:23.680 --> 36:40.320]  [SPEAKER_10]: Citizens that are trying to do the planning that the government planners have failed to do or execute over the last 20 years that have driven our taxes up and our property values down, and more importantly, have threatened something as basic as drinking water and the habitat of rare and endangered species that count on us to protect them.
[36:40.540 --> 36:49.400]  [SPEAKER_10]: So by going to the planning board meeting on Monday afternoon, we are allowed to go back to government and turn things around and say, you know, when you have an opinion, we'll give it to you.
[36:49.460 --> 36:50.220]  [SPEAKER_10]: You're elected officials.
[36:50.240 --> 36:51.180]  [SPEAKER_10]: You represent us.
[36:51.320 --> 36:53.400]  [SPEAKER_10]: There's so much arrogance in government.
[36:53.400 --> 36:54.640]  [SPEAKER_10]: There's so much ignorance in government.
[36:54.800 --> 36:57.240]  [SPEAKER_10]: There's so much self-serving behavior in government.
[36:57.400 --> 36:57.680]  [SPEAKER_10]: Exactly.
[36:58.200 --> 37:05.860]  [SPEAKER_10]: That what we really need to do is stand up and really retake control of our own destiny by saying, we are in charge of our government.
[37:05.860 --> 37:11.980]  [SPEAKER_10]: If you want to stay around here and represent us in the next decade, you've got to start learning from the mistakes of the past.
[37:12.120 --> 37:19.160]  [SPEAKER_10]: So we want to go to Brookhaven Town Hall and say, this is not one man's project that you're here to rubber stamp.
[37:19.420 --> 37:28.100]  [SPEAKER_10]: You need to answer the key questions being raised by a citizen's planning board that was only created because of the government planning board wasn't doing its job.
[37:28.300 --> 37:36.720]  [SPEAKER_10]: That the Pine Barren Society has been raising for four years with you the need to conduct a cumulative environmental impact statement for the area.
[37:36.860 --> 37:47.200]  [SPEAKER_10]: And that the Open Space Council has been haranguing them about for a decade that if we don't protect open space, we'll have no reason to live here or come here to visit any longer.
[37:47.440 --> 37:58.240]  [SPEAKER_10]: So there are lots of ways that people can get involved and actually make a difference, to pick up their paper the next day and say, you know what, we have forced their hands, we've confronted them.
[37:58.740 --> 38:07.740]  [SPEAKER_10]: The Open Space Council has done it in the past, the Pine Barren Society is doing it today with its lawsuit, and the Citizens Planning Board means to get results.
[38:08.080 --> 38:24.080]  [SPEAKER_10]: And so for those of us who have been in the past merely frustrated by the unresponsiveness of government with respect to environmental matters, here's a real opportunity to change things in the 90s the way we were so successful in changing them in the 60s.
[38:24.080 --> 38:25.900]  [SPEAKER_10]: Dick, what specifically happens on Monday?
[38:26.100 --> 38:38.280]  [SPEAKER_10]: On Monday, the Planning Board of Brookhaven is darn near likely, if not certain, to approve the biggest project that's ever come in front of them or any other East End town.
[38:38.300 --> 38:41.540]  [SPEAKER_10]: And they'd like to do that behind closed doors.
[38:41.540 --> 38:51.000]  [SPEAKER_10]: And they would really like to have nobody comment, nobody appear, to have them, when they're done their basic public meeting, get together and say, we're in favor of this, right?
[38:51.460 --> 38:51.940]  [SPEAKER_10]: Approved?
[38:52.240 --> 38:55.860]  [SPEAKER_10]: Slap that rubber stamp down on the document and let that project go forward.
[38:56.020 --> 39:05.640]  [SPEAKER_08]: I understand that two or three of the, say, seven or eight members on that planning board are actually builders, real estate people themselves.
[39:06.020 --> 39:07.500]  [SPEAKER_10]: Well, you know, the thing about it is that's right.
[39:07.700 --> 39:19.640]  [SPEAKER_10]: Too often what has happened is that this has become a little good old boys network where the architects and the lawyers and the planners and the builders get together and they come to their friends.
[39:19.780 --> 39:21.400]  [SPEAKER_10]: They help their friends get into government.
[39:21.400 --> 39:23.580]  [SPEAKER_10]: They encourage them while they're in government.
[39:23.780 --> 39:25.600]  [SPEAKER_10]: They all do favors for one another.
[39:25.740 --> 39:31.940]  [SPEAKER_10]: And then when it comes time to an approval, it's not an objective or a legitimate professional process at all.
[39:32.100 --> 39:34.180]  [SPEAKER_10]: And so that's what's happened in Brookhaven.
[39:34.260 --> 39:36.640]  [SPEAKER_10]: We've got folks who are involved in real estate.
[39:36.640 --> 39:42.500]  [SPEAKER_10]: We've got folks who are involved in development themselves or their families involved in building projects.
[39:42.620 --> 39:50.560]  [SPEAKER_10]: And as a result, we don't really have fair-minded citizens passing judgment on the social, the economic, and the environmental impacts of these projects.
[39:50.700 --> 39:58.160]  [SPEAKER_10]: So the government needs to hear from the public, whether they're in Brookhaven town or any place else in the tri-state area.
[39:58.440 --> 40:05.500]  [SPEAKER_16]: Well, Dick, speaking of fair-minded citizens, how would you say this affects people living outside of Long Island?
[40:05.640 --> 40:08.240]  [SPEAKER_16]: Because there are a lot of people listening tonight in the Manhattan area.
[40:08.440 --> 40:10.400]  [SPEAKER_16]: Should they be concerned with this as well?
[40:10.540 --> 40:11.420]  [SPEAKER_10]: Well, it affects all of us.
[40:11.600 --> 40:12.860]  [SPEAKER_10]: It clearly affects all of us.
[40:12.960 --> 40:31.540]  [SPEAKER_10]: What has happened in the country as a whole is that the areas with the greatest density, with the greatest threat of overdevelopment, the areas where the greatest economic incentives exist, are the ones that fall prey or fall victim to environmental destruction in the hands of selfish interests first.
[40:31.780 --> 40:35.340]  [SPEAKER_10]: So someplace or other, the battle line has to be drawn.
[40:35.580 --> 40:48.800]  [SPEAKER_10]: In addition, so many of the people who live in Manhattan proper and in the tri-state area generally, people even as far away as the Midwest and the West Coast flock to the east end of Long Island because of what it represents.
[40:49.160 --> 40:50.800]  [SPEAKER_10]: We've got a harbor in New York.
[40:50.940 --> 40:52.340]  [SPEAKER_10]: We live on the coastline.
[40:52.460 --> 40:59.680]  [SPEAKER_10]: We go to the north and we find woodland and rivers, all of them threatened by overdevelopment.
[40:59.840 --> 41:15.700]  [SPEAKER_10]: Out here, just 50 miles from New York City, where many of us spend our summers or where those of us who live on Long Island spend our year year-round, we've got a greater diversity of plant and animal species, as I said, than any other place in the state of New York.
[41:16.200 --> 41:18.260]  [SPEAKER_10]: That's where it is we appreciate.
[41:18.260 --> 41:25.020]  [SPEAKER_10]: That's where we go when we want to fish or swim or boat or relax and commune with nature.
[41:25.540 --> 41:29.800]  [SPEAKER_10]: That's not going to be available to us if we don't draw the line and stand up and fight for it.
[41:29.920 --> 41:33.260]  [SPEAKER_10]: Well, we can't fight for it when it reaches Kansas City.
[41:33.700 --> 41:36.000]  [SPEAKER_10]: We've got to cut this thing off at the pass.
[41:36.140 --> 41:38.640]  [SPEAKER_10]: When we get out to an area that has reached...
[41:38.640 --> 41:54.360]  [SPEAKER_10]: We leave New York City and we go north, south, east, or west, and we see a series of concentric circles that define the density and the destruction that threatens our environment and threatens our quality of life.
[41:54.420 --> 42:02.520]  [SPEAKER_10]: We see it happening that way, and we also see the basic rise of environmentalism moving from east to west more generally.
[42:02.800 --> 42:21.440]  [SPEAKER_10]: So where are those who are concerned about the environment to draw the line if it isn't at the farthest concentric circle from the city where we still have clean, pristine drinking water and woods and beaches, sound bays and ocean beaches that are clean and fresh?
[42:21.820 --> 42:23.540]  [SPEAKER_10]: Where are we going to do it if we don't do it there?
[42:23.620 --> 42:28.920]  [SPEAKER_10]: And where are we going to do it if we don't start as far east as we can before the country as a whole is devastated?
[42:29.140 --> 42:38.860]  [SPEAKER_10]: It seems like a shopping center that may affect a region, but in fact it is representative of a threat to our environment that transcends even the tri-state area.
[42:38.980 --> 42:40.220]  [SPEAKER_10]: It affects everybody, Emmanuel.
[42:40.520 --> 42:41.960]  [SPEAKER_16]: Now, Nancy, you had a question, I believe?
[42:42.160 --> 42:45.400]  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I have actually some comments also that...
[42:45.400 --> 42:45.840]  [SPEAKER_16]: Speak up.
[42:46.140 --> 42:51.620]  [SPEAKER_01]: You were talking earlier about global warming and rainforest and deforestation.
[42:51.880 --> 42:57.600]  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, this represents a stand of pygmy pitch pine trees that are a very unique ecosystem.
[42:57.960 --> 43:01.420]  [SPEAKER_01]: I think the only other one like it is in New Jersey.
[43:01.840 --> 43:09.940]  [SPEAKER_01]: And this represents a group of trees that are very tenacious trees and they can only survive in the worst kinds of conditions.
[43:10.120 --> 43:12.660]  [SPEAKER_01]: So they're very special to this area.
[43:12.660 --> 43:23.340]  [SPEAKER_01]: And they're very, as far as the ecosystem itself and to the animals that live there and to the condition of the soil and everything, these trees are very, very important.
[43:23.780 --> 43:36.600]  [SPEAKER_01]: Also, I think, to people in Manhattan and the other areas, we have to understand that this mall has been designed with kind of 1970 mentality planning.
[43:36.900 --> 43:39.060]  [SPEAKER_01]: It has 8,000 parking spaces.
[43:39.560 --> 43:42.540]  [SPEAKER_01]: That's a string of cars that would be 20 miles long.
[43:43.020 --> 43:45.780]  [SPEAKER_01]: This has no public transportation going to it.
[43:45.940 --> 43:49.280]  [SPEAKER_01]: No bicycle paths designed around it.
[43:50.100 --> 43:52.380]  [SPEAKER_01]: It's going to create congestion.
[43:52.720 --> 44:01.340]  [SPEAKER_01]: I think one of the problems that we see is that the Department of Transportation Studies, both state and county, have not been completed.
[44:01.560 --> 44:11.120]  [SPEAKER_01]: And they actually say that it's going to take two to three years for them to finish their studies about the congestion, the traffic that will be caused by this mall out there.
[44:11.980 --> 44:18.080]  [SPEAKER_01]: And it seems now, today with global warming, as being a very, very real issue.
[44:18.340 --> 44:29.520]  [SPEAKER_01]: I just attended a symposium in New York City, where Dr. Hanson from the National Aeronautics and Space Association spoke, and also to the
[44:35.360 --> 44:54.300]  [SPEAKER_01]: Planning and Policy Department, spoke about global warming and how carbon dioxide, which represents 57 percent of the greenhouse gases, and 13 percent of that is caused by cars and deforestation, is really a major problem.
[44:54.520 --> 45:13.580]  [SPEAKER_01]: And how other cities and localities are taking this issue very, very seriously and planning for the future by cutting down on congestion, using public transportation, planning their cities so that public transportation is actually developed.
[45:13.820 --> 45:33.820]  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think the Citizens Planning Board, because we do represent businesses in Patchogue and Mastic and Shirley area, would like to see the cities there that are actually set up to deal with, you know, people already and facilities that are there be developed in a way that we can develop more,
[45:34.180 --> 45:44.680]  [SPEAKER_01]: you know, public transportation to those areas, and make those areas more viable, instead of creating this mall that is just built, you know, specifically to draw more cars to the area.
[45:44.960 --> 45:48.360]  [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, again, what we do locally affects everyone globally.
[45:48.820 --> 46:08.080]  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that, you know, the EPA, both the EPA and Dr. Hanson stated that the problem is big enough to bring together a coordinated society-wide effort and that the federal government is taking global warming so seriously that they are going to plant one billion trees.
[46:08.580 --> 46:14.620]  [SPEAKER_01]: This is George Bush actually saying that this is the problem, and his administration is backing this program.
[46:14.840 --> 46:20.520]  [SPEAKER_01]: And we're going to pay $174 million to plant a billion trees in the United States.
[46:20.520 --> 46:24.400]  [SPEAKER_01]: And here we are in Long Island cutting down 2,000 acres.
[46:24.400 --> 46:27.000]  [SPEAKER_01]: It just doesn't seem to make any more sense.
[46:27.240 --> 46:32.560]  [SPEAKER_16]: I'd like to turn back to Dan Morris over at the Open Space Council.
[46:33.400 --> 46:41.920]  [SPEAKER_16]: We mentioned earlier how businesses in Patchog, Riverhead, other parts of Long Island might be opposed to this mall.
[46:41.940 --> 46:47.240]  [SPEAKER_16]: If you could perhaps go into why that is and what kind of opposition you've seen.
[46:48.500 --> 47:11.080]  [SPEAKER_06]: Well, we've had some tentative discussions with the merchants in these areas, and they are hesitant or concerned about the effect of this, especially at the time of, you know, hard economic times throughout Long Island and the region as it is.
[47:12.500 --> 47:36.900]  [SPEAKER_06]: The, you know, the effect of this would be the effect of the mall on the shopping areas would be just like all of these areas have been affected by the bypass roads that were put up to ease traffic congestion in the downtown areas.
[47:36.900 --> 47:42.560]  [SPEAKER_06]: And they all sucked off the business from the downtown areas.
[47:42.700 --> 47:48.600]  [SPEAKER_06]: Well, this mall is just going to be the same sort of effect only on a much larger scale.
[47:48.600 --> 48:00.160]  [SPEAKER_06]: We're talking about six major chain stores moving into an area that has, as the study said, there will be no competition.
[48:00.340 --> 48:02.820]  [SPEAKER_06]: They'll just blow it all away.
[48:03.840 --> 48:10.080]  [SPEAKER_16]: Are you familiar with the fight against the hypermarket that took place a couple of years ago?
[48:10.240 --> 48:19.260]  [SPEAKER_16]: For listeners who don't know what a hypermarket is, it's this kind of huge store that has everything you could possibly ever want in this life.
[48:19.520 --> 48:21.840]  [SPEAKER_16]: And it's all in one particular area.
[48:21.960 --> 48:24.340]  [SPEAKER_16]: The store is incredibly, incredibly big.
[48:24.660 --> 48:27.560]  [SPEAKER_16]: And they wanted to build that in a particular part of Long Island.
[48:27.700 --> 48:29.500]  [SPEAKER_16]: And there was a lot of opposition.
[48:29.500 --> 48:32.300]  [SPEAKER_16]: It was kind of slow at first, but then it really got organized.
[48:32.300 --> 48:34.800]  [SPEAKER_16]: And a lot of people spoke out against it.
[48:35.180 --> 48:39.000]  [SPEAKER_16]: And the company, which was from France, retreated.
[48:39.100 --> 48:44.220]  [SPEAKER_16]: But I understand they, they filed a lawsuit because they claimed their rights were taken away.
[48:44.440 --> 48:45.000]  [SPEAKER_16]: That's right.
[48:45.220 --> 48:52.020]  [SPEAKER_16]: Now, do you think that that's indicative of a good track record for a Long Island environmentalist?
[48:52.160 --> 48:55.740]  [SPEAKER_16]: Do you think the same kind of response is going to happen here?
[48:56.180 --> 48:57.820]  [SPEAKER_06]: I would like to think it would.
[48:59.160 --> 49:00.820]  [SPEAKER_06]: It's a little different situation.
[49:00.840 --> 49:10.800]  [SPEAKER_06]: The hypermarket was going up in what was a more developed area as it was.
[49:12.580 --> 49:15.820]  [SPEAKER_06]: However, it was a critical area.
[49:16.260 --> 49:27.120]  [SPEAKER_06]: And we would like to see, we hope to see, we'll see the growth of opposition to this mall.
[49:27.420 --> 49:30.900]  [SPEAKER_06]: One thing to understand is it's not just the mall that is being built.
[49:31.080 --> 49:36.060]  [SPEAKER_06]: There are between 5,000 and 12,000 housing units also going up in this area.
[49:36.060 --> 49:37.940]  [SPEAKER_06]: It's not just the mall.
[49:37.940 --> 49:43.060]  [SPEAKER_06]: That's kind of part of it.
[49:43.240 --> 49:44.380]  [SPEAKER_06]: I think it is difficult.
[49:44.860 --> 49:52.060]  [SPEAKER_06]: They're interactive with, you know, the other 20 parcels that the developer owned.
[49:52.320 --> 50:11.260]  [SPEAKER_08]: Can, Dick Amper, can you explain the forms of terror that big money and developers and people who own land and feel that they have some kind of God-given American constitutional right, some guarantee to profit from that land?
[50:11.560 --> 50:14.120]  [SPEAKER_08]: And what happens when people try to stand in the way?
[50:14.280 --> 50:14.620]  [SPEAKER_10]: It is.
[50:14.840 --> 50:17.060]  [SPEAKER_10]: It's a major distortion of manifest destiny.
[50:17.060 --> 50:18.780]  [SPEAKER_10]: We can all make investments in anything.
[50:18.980 --> 50:21.740]  [SPEAKER_10]: And sometimes we make good investments.
[50:21.860 --> 50:23.680]  [SPEAKER_10]: Sometimes we make bad ones.
[50:23.680 --> 50:31.480]  [SPEAKER_10]: And so those folks who invested in the defense industry, when peace broke out, simply miscalculated the social direction we were taking.
[50:31.660 --> 50:36.820]  [SPEAKER_10]: And while nobody would wish them any ill luck, they were not entitled to an automatic return on investment.
[50:36.820 --> 50:45.680]  [SPEAKER_10]: And those who miscalculate the will of the public to change our environmental direction may lose a little bit on their economic investments.
[50:45.680 --> 50:51.400]  [SPEAKER_10]: I think he made a very, very good case, Emmanuel, about the hypermarket advance by Carrefour.
[50:51.640 --> 50:56.440]  [SPEAKER_10]: But I think Dan Morris is looking in another direction, and he's saying, what's the difference between the two?
[50:56.560 --> 51:09.080]  [SPEAKER_10]: And the one is that Carrefour was a French-based corporation that came into the south to talk at Pine Barrens, a more developed area, but one equally environmentally sensitive, and attempted to impose its will.
[51:09.080 --> 51:16.800]  [SPEAKER_10]: Well, it was fairly easy for the town fathers that had not been influenced for many years to resist that kind of project because it was from an outsider.
[51:17.120 --> 51:22.620]  [SPEAKER_10]: But Mr. Bresland and those who he works with have an inside track.
[51:22.860 --> 51:35.500]  [SPEAKER_10]: The environmentalists that he hired to do his environmental impact study were, in fact, employed by the very town that this project is in front of today in their environmental department reviewing other projects.
[51:35.720 --> 52:00.460]  [SPEAKER_10]: In fact, the three principal ones, the commissioner and the two environmental assistants most responsible for attempting to win approval for the project for Mr. Bresland, in fact, opposed a similar project from another outside developer for a much smaller mall several years ago when Mr. Grant was proposing the Grant Park Mall.
[52:00.680 --> 52:10.540]  [SPEAKER_10]: So, once again, we see this cozy relationship between government and developers and between developers and the political machinery that makes the decisions.
[52:11.040 --> 52:12.620]  [SPEAKER_10]: That's got to be wrong.
[52:12.800 --> 52:21.500]  [SPEAKER_10]: And at the same time, the folks who are listening have got to wonder, is this just another shopping center or just another town hall gone mad?
[52:21.500 --> 52:31.260]  [SPEAKER_10]: I think Nancy reminded that of us when she said, or reminded us of Rene DuBois's famous quote, we've got to think globally but act locally.
[52:31.280 --> 52:33.360]  [SPEAKER_10]: Here's something we can do something about.
[52:33.480 --> 52:35.020]  [SPEAKER_10]: This is our Pine Barrens.
[52:35.100 --> 52:38.940]  [SPEAKER_10]: This is where rain collects to create our drinking water.
[52:39.100 --> 52:48.300]  [SPEAKER_10]: It is, in effect, our very own rainforest, and one that we can influence very directly right within 50 miles of the center of Manhattan.
[52:48.500 --> 52:50.440]  [SPEAKER_10]: I think we have to look at it conceptually.
[52:50.620 --> 52:54.940]  [SPEAKER_10]: We see all the specific flaws with it, but I think we have to see what it represents.
[52:55.080 --> 53:06.700]  [SPEAKER_10]: It took 20,000 years to create these woods and the underground aquifers that Long Island depends on, and we can destroy an acre of that land in two hours.
[53:06.940 --> 53:11.140]  [SPEAKER_10]: Now, they're proposing to destroy as much as 2,000 acres in one fell swoop.
[53:11.260 --> 53:13.840]  [SPEAKER_10]: There are 237 other projects behind it.
[53:13.920 --> 53:23.640]  [SPEAKER_10]: If we don't draw the line here, we're just going to look at more of the destruction that depresses all of us and which serves no one except developers with big bucks.
[53:23.800 --> 53:29.860]  [SPEAKER_16]: I think you touch upon a very good point there, especially when you use the word destruction instead of development.
[53:29.860 --> 53:40.600]  [SPEAKER_16]: That's something that I'd like to see a lot of people change, because there's nothing more contrary to me than to witness the destruction of a complete forest and have somebody go around saying hey, it's development, it's progress.
[53:41.400 --> 53:52.960]  [SPEAKER_16]: But Dick, speaking as a business executive, and as Rich asked a couple of moments ago, some people feel they have the right to be able to exploit their land.
[53:53.200 --> 54:01.240]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I'm of the belief that it's almost impossible to own land were pretty much entrusted with its care.
[54:01.240 --> 54:02.760]  [SPEAKER_16]: Do you agree with that?
[54:03.160 --> 54:03.760]  [SPEAKER_10]: I agree with it.
[54:03.820 --> 54:05.880]  [SPEAKER_10]: And we have a solution to the problem.
[54:06.520 --> 54:10.180]  [SPEAKER_10]: We are not attempting to take anything from anybody.
[54:10.460 --> 54:14.240]  [SPEAKER_10]: Take the most conservative-minded businessman you can think of.
[54:14.480 --> 54:15.700]  [SPEAKER_10]: He makes an investment.
[54:15.840 --> 54:17.600]  [SPEAKER_10]: He goes wrong in this matter.
[54:17.800 --> 54:19.120]  [SPEAKER_10]: And who bails him out?
[54:19.120 --> 54:20.800]  [SPEAKER_10]: It's the people who bail him out.
[54:20.800 --> 54:37.680]  [SPEAKER_10]: In the last two elections, 84% of the people who vote in Suffolk County set aside a quarter of a penny in their sales tax money to buy up land in one place and one place only over their drinking water in the Pine Barrens.
[54:37.760 --> 54:39.300]  [SPEAKER_10]: You can't buy it in Huntington.
[54:39.380 --> 54:41.000]  [SPEAKER_10]: You can't buy it in Nassau County.
[54:41.000 --> 54:43.700]  [SPEAKER_10]: You can only buy it in the Pine Barrens.
[54:43.740 --> 54:46.100]  [SPEAKER_10]: We're prepared to pay fair market value.
[54:46.240 --> 54:48.760]  [SPEAKER_10]: It's not the government or administration that's doing it.
[54:48.760 --> 54:50.240]  [SPEAKER_10]: It's the people of Long Island.
[54:50.360 --> 55:02.380]  [SPEAKER_10]: At a time when they can't afford the high taxes that over-development has caused, still they've said, take a quarter of a penny from us every time we make a purchase and buy up land.
[55:02.580 --> 55:04.900]  [SPEAKER_10]: These developers are not losing their shirts.
[55:05.060 --> 55:09.320]  [SPEAKER_10]: They're getting fair market value despite their indifference to our concerns.
[55:09.500 --> 55:11.100]  [SPEAKER_10]: But how do they drive up the value of that land?
[55:11.240 --> 55:16.040]  [SPEAKER_10]: Well, they drive up the value of the land in very odd sorts of ways.
[55:16.040 --> 55:22.420]  [SPEAKER_10]: They go to the town boards and the town planning boards and they get permits to build on their land.
[55:22.700 --> 55:31.140]  [SPEAKER_10]: And so instead of our buying 200 raw Pine Barrens acres, they say, I now have approval to build 525 condominiums.
[55:31.140 --> 55:38.780]  [SPEAKER_10]: So what you have to pay me now is not what 200 acres of land cost, but what my profit is on 525 condominiums.
[55:39.560 --> 55:40.200]  [SPEAKER_10]: It's a racket.
[55:40.200 --> 55:42.820]  [SPEAKER_10]: It's a plain and simple racket.
[55:43.040 --> 55:57.740]  [SPEAKER_10]: And apart from the man's selfish interest, his right to develop in an entrepreneurial way which you might not even want to take exception to, we're dealing with development that's occurring at the expense of something as basic as our right to drink pure,
[55:57.880 --> 55:58.780]  [SPEAKER_10]: fresh drinking water.
[55:58.980 --> 56:00.320]  [SPEAKER_10]: And that's as wrong as it can be.
[56:00.780 --> 56:10.680]  [SPEAKER_16]: Now to get back to the demonstration taking place on Saturday, I'm going to hand it over to Rich DiDonato, member of Citizens Planning Board out there.
[56:10.840 --> 56:12.220]  [SPEAKER_10]: Okay, we'll pitch that for a bit.
[56:12.340 --> 56:18.420]  [SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, if you can tell us when, where, and perhaps give a few phone numbers as well for folks interested.
[56:18.560 --> 56:26.000]  [SPEAKER_16]: And at this point, I'd like to say that our phone lines are also open for anyone who wants to call in with questions or comments, 212-279-3400.
[56:26.980 --> 56:27.360]  [SPEAKER_08]: Great.
[56:28.380 --> 56:32.060]  [SPEAKER_08]: What might be interesting for the general public is to come out.
[56:32.420 --> 56:36.620]  [SPEAKER_08]: One of the reasons we're having it on the site is for people to come out and actually see what's at stake here.
[56:37.640 --> 56:39.040]  [SPEAKER_08]: It really brings it home.
[56:39.400 --> 56:51.600]  [SPEAKER_08]: The demonstration this Saturday, October 13th at 12 noon is on the site of the proposed monstrous development over our aquifer in the middle of our pristine pine barrens.
[56:52.080 --> 56:55.220]  [SPEAKER_08]: Take exit 68 off the Long Island Expressway.
[56:55.340 --> 56:56.820]  [SPEAKER_08]: That's the William Floyd Parkway.
[56:58.000 --> 57:01.020]  [SPEAKER_08]: We're just about half a mile and you'll be there.
[57:01.160 --> 57:03.440]  [SPEAKER_08]: You'll see us and the press will be there.
[57:03.900 --> 57:18.140]  [SPEAKER_08]: News 12 with their video cameras and I just want to say to the general public that I think it's really time for all environmentalists, which I think the majority of the public really are in their hearts.
[57:18.140 --> 57:40.640]  [SPEAKER_08]: I think it's a time for environmentalists to come out of the closets because over the last decade or so somehow subtly and subtly but steadily the environmentalist has been put in a very kind of suppressed position to be cast in the light of being un-American,
[57:40.920 --> 57:51.020]  [SPEAKER_08]: some kind of un-American misfit and anti-growth, anti-business, anti-capitalism, shall we say.
[57:52.540 --> 57:55.620]  [SPEAKER_08]: As we all know, that's the farthest thing from the truth.
[57:56.140 --> 58:03.800]  [SPEAKER_08]: I feel that people who care about the environment and their water and their air are the real Americans.
[58:04.060 --> 58:12.180]  [SPEAKER_08]: They're the people that are really speaking up about things that need to be protected and are the most patriotic.
[58:12.180 --> 58:24.800]  [SPEAKER_08]: I think there's no need for environmentalists to slink with some kind of an apologetic posture, afraid to really stand up.
[58:25.480 --> 58:33.340]  [SPEAKER_08]: Environmentalists, we should all be proud and turn this thing around because it's been turned around on us in the last 10 or 15 years.
[58:33.340 --> 58:35.380]  [SPEAKER_08]: It's time to turn it around on them.
[58:35.580 --> 58:54.460]  [SPEAKER_08]: They have successfully maneuvered themselves over us in a position of power and intimidation to have everyone thinking like, well, am I doing the right thing?
[58:54.540 --> 59:01.240]  [SPEAKER_08]: Do I really have the right to stand up and say, hey, you know, please, you know, don't do this to the air, don't do this to the water.
[59:05.100 --> 59:13.320]  [SPEAKER_08]: The self-doubt that this is something that is the proper thing to do, there should be no need for self-doubt.
[59:14.340 --> 59:25.600]  [SPEAKER_08]: If anything, the doubt has to be turned around on those who are manipulating the public, short-sighted, high-profit minded.
[59:26.160 --> 59:29.860]  [SPEAKER_08]: The doubt has to be turned around 180 degrees and put on them.
[59:30.140 --> 59:31.940]  [SPEAKER_08]: What are you doing to our land?
[59:32.080 --> 59:33.280]  [SPEAKER_08]: What are you doing to our water?
[59:33.380 --> 59:34.800]  [SPEAKER_08]: Who gave you the right to do this?
[59:34.980 --> 59:49.220]  [SPEAKER_08]: In the longer term, I think that somehow in this country, the concept of private ownership, private ownership of land, somehow has to be modified.
[59:50.640 --> 59:56.600]  [SPEAKER_08]: The world is getting too small to have one man be responsible in his short lifetime.
[59:57.060 --> 01:00:04.540]  [SPEAKER_08]: This man, this man who wants to destroy 2,000 acres of pine barrens, I guarantee you, will not be alive in 20 years.
[01:00:05.100 --> 01:00:07.200]  [SPEAKER_08]: He's an aged man.
[01:00:07.420 --> 01:00:11.620]  [SPEAKER_08]: He, you know, he eats ham and eggs for breakfast every morning.
[01:00:11.840 --> 01:00:14.940]  [SPEAKER_08]: I mean, there's no way this man's going to exist another 20 years.
[01:00:14.940 --> 01:00:22.120]  [SPEAKER_08]: But, after he's gone, our drinking water is spoiled for indefinitely, for forever.
[01:00:23.220 --> 01:00:29.420]  [SPEAKER_08]: This kind of mentality cannot be accepted by the public, by the citizens anymore.
[01:00:29.680 --> 01:00:34.660]  [SPEAKER_16]: Well, I think that might be a very good question to ask the public, who presumably are out there listening.
[01:00:35.860 --> 01:00:38.820]  [SPEAKER_16]: How do you feel about standing up and saying enough?
[01:00:38.820 --> 01:00:44.080]  [SPEAKER_16]: Do you feel comfortable going to a town planning board or going to an environmental demonstration?
[01:00:44.520 --> 01:00:47.080]  [SPEAKER_16]: Do you think the time is right to do that kind of thing?
[01:00:47.240 --> 01:00:47.600]  [SPEAKER_08]: Absolutely.
[01:00:47.800 --> 01:00:56.940]  [SPEAKER_08]: But I must say that the old style in which it's done, was done, with civil disobedience and rudeness and all that, is out.
[01:00:57.320 --> 01:01:03.860]  [SPEAKER_08]: Got to meet them on their own turf, in their own style, with sophistication.
[01:01:05.480 --> 01:01:08.380]  [SPEAKER_08]: Demeanor and politeness, if you will.
[01:01:08.620 --> 01:01:16.180]  [SPEAKER_08]: But strong determination and strong conviction and not be backed down by them.
[01:01:16.220 --> 01:01:19.120]  [SPEAKER_08]: Because they have all kinds of methods of shutting you right down.
[01:01:19.240 --> 01:01:21.680]  [SPEAKER_08]: Oh, we're not hearing any more testimony today, this and that.
[01:01:21.940 --> 01:01:25.820]  [SPEAKER_08]: Now, we're not of the nature to, you know, chain ourselves to the chairs.
[01:01:26.380 --> 01:01:30.240]  [SPEAKER_08]: That's not the way that change is really going to be made these days.
[01:01:30.240 --> 01:01:36.120]  [SPEAKER_08]: But the way change is really going to be made is for people to just stand up and be counted.
[01:01:36.300 --> 01:01:36.680]  [SPEAKER_08]: Come out.
[01:01:36.820 --> 01:01:47.960]  [SPEAKER_08]: Now, on the 13th, Saturday, October 13th, we have the demonstration on site at 12 noon, exit 68 Long Island Expressway, north on William Floyd, one-half mile.
[01:01:48.280 --> 01:01:49.480]  [SPEAKER_08]: And you'll be there.
[01:01:49.480 --> 01:01:59.340]  [SPEAKER_08]: Then, two days later, and actually more important, in the afternoon on the 15th, Monday the 15th, at the Brookhaven Town offices themselves.
[01:01:59.340 --> 01:02:05.280]  [SPEAKER_08]: You can actually come down and see the Brookhaven Town Planning Board in action in person.
[01:02:05.280 --> 01:02:06.600]  [SPEAKER_08]: It's a sight to behold.
[01:02:06.760 --> 01:02:08.200]  [SPEAKER_08]: I wouldn't miss it for the world.
[01:02:08.200 --> 01:02:19.060]  [SPEAKER_08]: And that can be reached by taking exit 64 off the Long Island Expressway, going north a couple of miles to 3233 Route 112 in Medford.
[01:02:19.180 --> 01:02:19.680]  [SPEAKER_08]: It's on the right.
[01:02:19.680 --> 01:02:20.440]  [SPEAKER_08]: It's a complex.
[01:02:20.440 --> 01:02:25.840]  [SPEAKER_08]: It looks kind of like a professional buildings of a dentist officer type thing.
[01:02:25.880 --> 01:02:29.860]  [SPEAKER_08]: But it's all the Brookhaven Town offices, and our people will direct you to the auditorium.
[01:02:29.860 --> 01:02:39.680]  [SPEAKER_08]: And what they're going to do is try to quietly rubber stamp the final approval of this monster as quietly as possible.
[01:02:40.420 --> 01:02:46.420]  [SPEAKER_08]: And it will take place sometime after 1.30 in the afternoon, sometime probably between 1.30 and 6.
[01:02:46.600 --> 01:02:47.660]  [SPEAKER_08]: You know, that's another way.
[01:02:47.760 --> 01:02:49.300]  [SPEAKER_08]: They wear the public down.
[01:02:49.560 --> 01:03:00.960]  [SPEAKER_08]: How many people are able to go out in the middle of Monday afternoon, leave their jobs, leave their kids, whatever, and go and stand in some hearing room and wait for hours for it to come up on the docket?
[01:03:01.100 --> 01:03:02.660]  [SPEAKER_16]: Well, that's exactly what my question was going to be.
[01:03:02.720 --> 01:03:04.140]  [SPEAKER_16]: Who makes up these times?
[01:03:04.140 --> 01:03:05.440]  [SPEAKER_16]: Monday at 1.30 p.m.
[01:03:05.440 --> 01:03:09.080]  [SPEAKER_16]: I can't imagine how many working people can go to a hearing at that time.
[01:03:09.120 --> 01:03:13.760]  [SPEAKER_08]: That's part of the mentality of the whole thing.
[01:03:13.840 --> 01:03:14.500]  [SPEAKER_08]: It's part of their strategy.
[01:03:14.540 --> 01:03:17.980]  [SPEAKER_16]: But who gives them the right to make that decision?
[01:03:18.180 --> 01:03:24.880]  [SPEAKER_08]: They don't listen to public will or public opinion on these things.
[01:03:24.880 --> 01:03:26.320]  [SPEAKER_08]: They do what they damn well please.
[01:03:26.500 --> 01:03:30.260]  [SPEAKER_16]: Well, I mean, there should be a way for them to have to listen to that, is my point.
[01:03:30.400 --> 01:03:39.100]  [SPEAKER_08]: If enough heat and enough publicity and enough embarrassment is, you know, brought upon them, their ways will change eventually.
[01:03:39.380 --> 01:03:42.060]  [SPEAKER_10]: I think Richard is absolutely right.
[01:03:42.220 --> 01:03:48.060]  [SPEAKER_10]: He said you have to drive up Route 112 north of the expressway and you'll see what looks like a professional complex.
[01:03:48.380 --> 01:03:51.600]  [SPEAKER_10]: It looks like a professional complex, but there's nothing professional about it.
[01:03:51.600 --> 01:03:55.860]  [SPEAKER_10]: They ignore their professional planning staff and they create their own political agenda.
[01:03:55.940 --> 01:04:06.940]  [SPEAKER_10]: And they do try to make citizens, first of all, distant from the process by holding meetings at a time when they know it's difficult for citizen input.
[01:04:07.200 --> 01:04:14.040]  [SPEAKER_10]: Once they've done that, in this particular project they have repeatedly failed to provide even basic public notice for meetings.
[01:04:14.040 --> 01:04:24.280]  [SPEAKER_10]: And one or two occasions have violated the public meetings law by holding meetings that were not announced and that were therefore not legally conducted, had to go recreate them.
[01:04:24.360 --> 01:04:27.860]  [SPEAKER_10]: It's like the wild east, if you would, out here.
[01:04:28.000 --> 01:04:37.140]  [SPEAKER_10]: And the thing that bothers them, the only thing that bothers them is exposure, where citizens come out and say, wait a minute, you've got this thing all wrong.
[01:04:37.140 --> 01:04:40.320]  [SPEAKER_10]: Don't make us say, please don't do this.
[01:04:40.340 --> 01:04:40.520]  [SPEAKER_10]: Right.
[01:04:40.960 --> 01:04:42.320]  [SPEAKER_10]: You work for us.
[01:04:42.500 --> 01:04:43.800]  [SPEAKER_10]: We're paying your salary.
[01:04:44.660 --> 01:04:49.180]  [SPEAKER_10]: Here is what it is that needs to be done, and this is how you need to go about doing it.
[01:04:49.320 --> 01:04:51.820]  [SPEAKER_10]: We need to make our government more responsive to us.
[01:04:51.900 --> 01:04:52.880]  [SPEAKER_10]: They've not done that.
[01:04:53.120 --> 01:05:01.000]  [SPEAKER_10]: You go to these meetings, and if you succeed in making a point, and I agree with Richard, it's not civil disobedience that works anymore.
[01:05:01.000 --> 01:05:07.260]  [SPEAKER_10]: It's simply winning the day, and we win the day with arguments that are more right than theirs.
[01:05:07.500 --> 01:05:15.080]  [SPEAKER_10]: And they are thus embarrassed in public, and they are exposed for the self-serving folks that they frequently are.
[01:05:15.160 --> 01:05:15.380]  [SPEAKER_10]: Hear, hear.
[01:05:15.540 --> 01:05:19.100]  [SPEAKER_10]: And you simply go out and explain to them what's going.
[01:05:19.200 --> 01:05:24.780]  [SPEAKER_10]: When they say that you are out of order, you say, no, you're out of order, and you're out of touch.
[01:05:24.940 --> 01:05:27.460]  [SPEAKER_10]: The citizens need to run their government.
[01:05:27.460 --> 01:05:35.220]  [SPEAKER_10]: It remains a government of by and for the people, and this project is not a people's project in any way, shape, or form.
[01:05:35.460 --> 01:05:39.060]  [SPEAKER_10]: As soon as we do that, there is an immediate discomfort.
[01:05:39.060 --> 01:05:39.840]  [SPEAKER_10]: You can see it.
[01:05:39.900 --> 01:05:40.680]  [SPEAKER_10]: It is fun.
[01:05:40.940 --> 01:05:45.800]  [SPEAKER_10]: With all of the effort required to get out to a meeting on Monday, Richard is right.
[01:05:45.800 --> 01:06:03.660]  [SPEAKER_10]: You have to go out and see it, because the scraping of chairs and the clearing of throats and the discomfort of the part of these people, when caught at their own game, proves the day and frequently wins both of the case of the Long Island Pine Barren Society suit in court,
[01:06:03.660 --> 01:06:10.280]  [SPEAKER_10]: but more importantly in the court of public opinion, where 84% of the public says we're going to go out and do something about this.
[01:06:10.280 --> 01:06:12.420]  [SPEAKER_10]: We're going to go out and vote the money to acquire these lands.
[01:06:12.560 --> 01:06:14.080]  [SPEAKER_10]: We're not going to build projects like this.
[01:06:14.160 --> 01:06:23.140]  [SPEAKER_10]: But it takes citizens to take time out of a routine that we get in, and not by the notion that we can't fight city or, in this case, town hall.
[01:06:23.140 --> 01:06:25.600]  [SPEAKER_10]: Yes, we can, and we must.
[01:06:25.760 --> 01:06:27.420]  [SPEAKER_10]: And when we do it, we prevail.
[01:06:27.600 --> 01:06:42.140]  [SPEAKER_08]: See, the average person, Emmanuel, the average housewife and husband are so run-ragged by the economy today, just trying to keep the mortgage paid up and the clothes on the kids.
[01:06:42.140 --> 01:06:43.460]  [SPEAKER_08]: They're so exhausted.
[01:06:43.680 --> 01:06:46.220]  [SPEAKER_08]: They're beat into submission and apathy.
[01:06:46.680 --> 01:06:50.300]  [SPEAKER_08]: In their hearts, they would like to do something about it, but they just can't.
[01:06:50.360 --> 01:06:52.340]  [SPEAKER_08]: They just don't even have the time or physical strength.
[01:06:52.460 --> 01:07:00.760]  [SPEAKER_08]: And this is exactly what this type of government and this type of system relies on.
[01:07:00.800 --> 01:07:08.620]  [SPEAKER_08]: They know that people don't have the time, the focus, the energy to really keep an eye on them.
[01:07:08.620 --> 01:07:10.560]  [SPEAKER_16]: All right, I want to, again, give out the phone number.
[01:07:10.700 --> 01:07:14.440]  [SPEAKER_16]: It's 212-279-3400.
[01:07:15.300 --> 01:07:18.100]  [SPEAKER_16]: And we do have open lines, so give a call.
[01:07:18.300 --> 01:07:21.980]  [SPEAKER_16]: Is environmental activism our future?
[01:07:22.120 --> 01:07:23.000]  [SPEAKER_16]: Is it dying?
[01:07:23.160 --> 01:07:23.800]  [SPEAKER_16]: Is it succeeding?
[01:07:23.980 --> 01:07:26.080]  [SPEAKER_16]: Have you been a part of it in the past?
[01:07:26.940 --> 01:07:27.620]  [SPEAKER_16]: Let us know.
[01:07:27.720 --> 01:07:31.440]  [SPEAKER_16]: Give us a call now, and we're going to go to the phones in just a minute.
[01:07:31.580 --> 01:07:33.740]  [SPEAKER_08]: About the number of the Citizens Planning Board for the demonstration.
[01:07:33.900 --> 01:07:36.640]  [SPEAKER_16]: If you could give out that phone number, that would be very helpful, and then we'll go to the phones.
[01:07:37.240 --> 01:07:47.100]  [SPEAKER_08]: If you have an interest in the eastern part of Long Island, no matter where you are, because it's a reflection of where you live, I guarantee you.
[01:07:47.160 --> 01:07:54.440]  [SPEAKER_08]: It stands for the same principles, the same kind of environment that you hold near and dear wherever your community is.
[01:07:55.260 --> 01:07:57.640]  [SPEAKER_08]: That's clean water and open spaces.
[01:07:58.640 --> 01:08:08.460]  [SPEAKER_08]: Join us Saturday the 13th, out at the site, exit 68, north a half mile on William Floyd.
[01:08:08.600 --> 01:08:15.280]  [SPEAKER_08]: Then join us on Monday the 15th at the Brookhaven Town Planning Board, Route 112, Medford Long Island.
[01:08:15.280 --> 01:08:21.860]  [SPEAKER_08]: That's exit 64 off the expressway, north a bit to 3233, Route 112.
[01:08:21.860 --> 01:08:26.260]  [SPEAKER_08]: On the right is the Brookhaven Town offices, any time after 1.30 in the afternoon.
[01:08:26.260 --> 01:08:33.580]  [SPEAKER_08]: And you can reach the Citizens Planning Board at area code 516-928-6391.
[01:08:33.580 --> 01:08:37.560]  [SPEAKER_08]: That's 516-928-6391.
[01:08:37.620 --> 01:08:42.320]  [SPEAKER_08]: Or area code 516-473-1039.
[01:08:42.720 --> 01:08:46.480]  [SPEAKER_08]: Area code 516-473-1039.
[01:08:46.740 --> 01:08:48.160]  [SPEAKER_08]: That's the Citizens Planning Board.
[01:08:48.160 --> 01:08:52.540]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I think it's important to stress that numbers mean a lot.
[01:08:52.740 --> 01:09:08.280]  [SPEAKER_16]: If there's a lot of people out there on Saturday afternoon protesting the development, I'm sorry I did it myself, destruction of the Pine Barrens and the open space on Long Island, a large attendance will make a difference.
[01:09:08.280 --> 01:09:18.300]  [SPEAKER_16]: After all, it was a lot of people organizing, demonstrating, that managed to get the Shore Nuclear Plan closed, that managed to preserve the area for this long.
[01:09:18.440 --> 01:09:27.480]  [SPEAKER_08]: By the way, Emmanuel, this particular developer says the best way to improve the Pine Barrens, improve the Pine Barrens that have been there for 20,000 years...
[01:09:27.480 --> 01:09:27.840]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yes.
[01:09:28.020 --> 01:09:33.320]  [SPEAKER_08]: ...do exactly what he's doing, to pave over them and to, you know, put in parking for 8,000 cars.
[01:09:33.320 --> 01:09:37.780]  [SPEAKER_16]: We know that the Pine Barrens have been a source of constant trouble ever since they were first invented, right?
[01:09:37.780 --> 01:09:40.380]  [SPEAKER_08]: What was the quote of the head of the planning board?
[01:09:40.960 --> 01:09:41.780]  [SPEAKER_10]: It's amazing.
[01:09:41.780 --> 01:10:02.520]  [SPEAKER_10]: He suggested that because it's a fire-dependent ecosystem, that is, that we routinely have wildfires that help perpetuate the oak and the scrub oak and the pitch pine species, he said that we could reduce fire a lot by paving over, much in the way they said during the Vietnam War,
[01:10:02.580 --> 01:10:05.100]  [SPEAKER_10]: that we might have to destroy it to save it.
[01:10:05.100 --> 01:10:08.680]  [SPEAKER_10]: I mean, this is the kind of thinking that we're still dealing with here.
[01:10:08.960 --> 01:10:22.220]  [SPEAKER_10]: And I agree with you, Emmanuel, that when you turn out large numbers of people that show their concerns, others take note, others take heart, moreover, and you begin to retake control of your government.
[01:10:22.380 --> 01:10:24.060]  [SPEAKER_10]: That's clearly what's necessary here.
[01:10:24.060 --> 01:10:31.380]  [SPEAKER_16]: Well, the comments would be funny if these people weren't so powerful and almost assured of having their way.
[01:10:32.020 --> 01:10:33.380]  [SPEAKER_16]: We're going to go to the phones now.
[01:10:33.520 --> 01:10:44.200]  [SPEAKER_16]: I want to remind people who call in, we do have four people already on the phone line, so you'll have to speak up a little bit and ask your question, make your comment, and no speeches.
[01:10:44.200 --> 01:10:45.640]  [SPEAKER_16]: We don't really have time for any speeches.
[01:10:46.920 --> 01:10:49.400]  [SPEAKER_16]: 279-3400 is our phone number, area code 212.
[01:10:49.820 --> 01:10:50.420]  [SPEAKER_16]: Good morning.
[01:10:50.700 --> 01:10:54.280]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, I have a question about what the guy said before about the Pine Barrens.
[01:10:54.360 --> 01:10:55.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: F*ck it, f*ck it!
[01:10:56.340 --> 01:10:56.780]  [SPEAKER_16]: Okay.
[01:10:58.360 --> 01:11:00.560]  [SPEAKER_16]: Slight problem there with the connection.
[01:11:01.060 --> 01:11:01.760]  [SPEAKER_16]: Good morning.
[01:11:02.180 --> 01:11:05.800]  [SPEAKER_18]: Yes, I'm in favor of what you're trying to do to keep the Pine Barrens.
[01:11:05.800 --> 01:11:07.080]  [SPEAKER_18]: I love Pine Barrens.
[01:11:07.160 --> 01:11:12.080]  [SPEAKER_18]: I used to go to Kensico Reservoir, and they had a beautiful stand of pines that I walked through.
[01:11:12.260 --> 01:11:13.520]  [SPEAKER_18]: It's like the forest primeval.
[01:11:13.700 --> 01:11:17.500]  [SPEAKER_18]: So in a kind of poetic, nature-loving way, I love them.
[01:11:17.620 --> 01:11:24.480]  [SPEAKER_18]: But when you start to harp on the fact that the meeting starts at 1.30, I mean, it sounds like it's terrible.
[01:11:24.680 --> 01:11:31.440]  [SPEAKER_18]: But if it'll start then, it'll go to 2 to 3 to 4, 5, and then a break for supper, and then on and on, maybe.
[01:11:31.440 --> 01:11:42.740]  [SPEAKER_18]: So I'm a little surprised that, you know, some of your thinking is, like, demeans your intention, and that just as they're bureaucrats, you know, you're doing it.
[01:11:42.760 --> 01:11:56.160]  [SPEAKER_18]: Because if the water is impure, even if the stand of pine is maintained, the flow of the water table from adjoining chemical plants and so on and garbage disposal could be polluting the water.
[01:11:56.160 --> 01:12:03.040]  [SPEAKER_18]: So it's not just the standard or the pines that are, you know, endangering us.
[01:12:03.140 --> 01:12:04.640]  [SPEAKER_18]: It's, you know, if they were cut.
[01:12:04.940 --> 01:12:06.960]  [SPEAKER_18]: There's all the other aspects of that.
[01:12:07.080 --> 01:12:08.480]  [SPEAKER_18]: So what about children?
[01:12:08.700 --> 01:12:10.220]  [SPEAKER_18]: What about all the kids in school?
[01:12:10.720 --> 01:12:14.340]  [SPEAKER_18]: If it was brought to their attention, it's the world that they'll be inheriting.
[01:12:14.480 --> 01:12:14.880]  [SPEAKER_08]: Of course.
[01:12:15.540 --> 01:12:17.360]  [SPEAKER_08]: These developers don't care about that.
[01:12:17.360 --> 01:12:18.800]  [SPEAKER_08]: All they care about is the fast turnover.
[01:12:18.800 --> 01:12:23.180]  [SPEAKER_08]: I don't quite follow your reasoning about what we were saying about being 1.30 in the afternoon.
[01:12:23.620 --> 01:12:25.040]  [SPEAKER_08]: It starts at 1.30.
[01:12:25.320 --> 01:12:32.720]  [SPEAKER_08]: The Brookhaven Town Planning Board convenes at 1.30 and goes for a number of hours.
[01:12:32.840 --> 01:12:41.880]  [SPEAKER_08]: They don't let you know until that afternoon what time and what placement on the docket this particular project is going to, what time it's going to come up.
[01:12:41.880 --> 01:12:49.780]  [SPEAKER_08]: You have to have the staying power and just be able to get out there to the meeting and hold out and wait until it comes up.
[01:12:49.840 --> 01:12:51.020]  [SPEAKER_08]: And so I don't follow your reasoning.
[01:12:51.180 --> 01:12:51.680]  [SPEAKER_08]: What are you saying?
[01:12:51.840 --> 01:12:52.980]  [SPEAKER_16]: Well, he's not with us anymore.
[01:12:52.980 --> 01:13:00.860]  [SPEAKER_16]: But I think what he was trying to say was that perhaps complaining about the time takes away from the issue.
[01:13:01.020 --> 01:13:01.920]  [SPEAKER_16]: I'm not sure if that's exactly what he meant.
[01:13:01.920 --> 01:13:02.480]  [SPEAKER_10]: I think that's right.
[01:13:02.480 --> 01:13:14.340]  [SPEAKER_10]: And I think that even more important than that, what I think he's arguing, and I think it's correct, is that we cannot simply cave in to these devices that are established by government to thwart our will.
[01:13:14.520 --> 01:13:31.260]  [SPEAKER_10]: I think if we get a good group of people out there at 1.30, rather than to wait for the item to appear conventionally or conveniently on an agenda or later behind closed doors, I think what he's arguing is that if it's important enough for the people to come out,
[01:13:31.400 --> 01:13:35.960]  [SPEAKER_10]: it's important enough for our government officials to listen to us when we're ready to talk about it.
[01:13:36.080 --> 01:13:40.760]  [SPEAKER_10]: If we arrive at 1.30, I think we need to say the public must be heard at this time.
[01:13:40.860 --> 01:13:49.500]  [SPEAKER_10]: And the routine business, the business that they'd like to conduct in the way that they would like to conduct it, has to take a backseat to the will of the public.
[01:13:49.500 --> 01:13:52.120]  [SPEAKER_10]: I think it's a good point, and I think it's one we have to keep in mind.
[01:13:52.260 --> 01:14:03.420]  [SPEAKER_10]: They do have a lot of intimidating mechanisms, and I think it's very important that we need to come out here and say, we're here because the most important project ever to come before you is here.
[01:14:03.740 --> 01:14:10.040]  [SPEAKER_10]: We have taken the time, we think it's important enough to make these points, and you will hear us now.
[01:14:10.240 --> 01:14:17.300]  [SPEAKER_08]: Emmanuel, are you aware that this is the largest proposed single building project in New York State history?
[01:14:17.300 --> 01:14:20.840]  [SPEAKER_16]: Well, that's one of the reasons we're on tonight, to hopefully get that through to people.
[01:14:21.000 --> 01:14:22.160]  [SPEAKER_16]: Let's go to another phone call.
[01:14:22.540 --> 01:14:23.180]  [SPEAKER_16]: Good evening.
[01:14:25.480 --> 01:14:26.600]  [SPEAKER_16]: Good morning, rather.
[01:14:26.600 --> 01:14:28.680]  [SPEAKER_17]: Oh, good morning it is.
[01:14:29.500 --> 01:14:31.760]  [SPEAKER_17]: A couple of points, please.
[01:14:33.340 --> 01:14:45.980]  [SPEAKER_17]: First of all, the timing that this is happening is because the folks who are holding the meeting are bureaucrats, and they are employed to hold meetings, and it's their job during the day.
[01:14:46.360 --> 01:14:48.380]  [SPEAKER_17]: That's why it's during the day, unfortunately.
[01:14:49.380 --> 01:14:53.900]  [SPEAKER_17]: It doesn't really help for everyone else who has a job who doesn't happen to be a bureaucrat.
[01:14:54.120 --> 01:15:00.240]  [SPEAKER_16]: Well, I know there have been meetings in the evenings, because I've gone to some of them, and they do have meetings in the evenings when there's large turnouts.
[01:15:00.420 --> 01:15:05.420]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yes, I've been to evening meetings, and they usually have much better turnouts, and they're much more interesting.
[01:15:05.680 --> 01:15:05.800]  [SPEAKER_17]: Right.
[01:15:07.720 --> 01:15:08.080]  [SPEAKER_17]: Also...
[01:15:08.720 --> 01:15:10.400]  [SPEAKER_16]: Do you have a question or a comment?
[01:15:10.400 --> 01:15:11.180]  [SPEAKER_17]: Oh, yeah.
[01:15:11.560 --> 01:15:12.920]  [SPEAKER_17]: Two more points, really, please.
[01:15:14.000 --> 01:15:22.120]  [SPEAKER_17]: The other is the dimension of the project, the size of it.
[01:15:22.920 --> 01:15:30.220]  [SPEAKER_17]: It really shows the difficulties that we've been having over time in our zoning policy.
[01:15:30.460 --> 01:15:30.960]  [SPEAKER_14]: Absolutely.
[01:15:31.540 --> 01:15:42.860]  [SPEAKER_17]: It leads to large tracts of single types of zoning, like malls, or you have residential, or you have office buildings.
[01:15:42.920 --> 01:15:45.680]  [SPEAKER_17]: They're all separate, and they're all miles and miles apart.
[01:15:45.920 --> 01:15:50.700]  [SPEAKER_17]: And you have to do a lot of traveling on the Long Island Expressway to get there, or whatever.
[01:15:51.080 --> 01:15:54.280]  [SPEAKER_17]: And it leads to a lot of traffic, a lot of driving, a lot of pollution.
[01:15:54.900 --> 01:16:00.240]  [SPEAKER_17]: And it makes it really hard to walk, bike, or take mass transit, because everything's so dispersed.
[01:16:00.240 --> 01:16:01.020]  [SPEAKER_08]: Very good.
[01:16:01.360 --> 01:16:01.860]  [SPEAKER_08]: There's no planning.
[01:16:02.080 --> 01:16:02.260]  [SPEAKER_08]: There's no...
[01:16:02.260 --> 01:16:03.660]  [SPEAKER_08]: You know, what we really need...
[01:16:03.660 --> 01:16:04.420]  [SPEAKER_08]: There's no master plan.
[01:16:04.600 --> 01:16:06.200]  [SPEAKER_17]: ...is to integrate our land use.
[01:16:07.400 --> 01:16:19.220]  [SPEAKER_17]: First of all, to integrate land use with commercial, residential, and shopping, but also to integrate the planning with transportation planning, and not just do them all over the place.
[01:16:20.280 --> 01:16:21.620]  [SPEAKER_17]: That's point number two.
[01:16:22.500 --> 01:16:34.840]  [SPEAKER_17]: Point number three is, I was wondering, what is the closest bus line or train line to the demonstration and to the hearing?
[01:16:35.240 --> 01:16:37.500]  [SPEAKER_16]: Well, now, that's a good question, and I think...
[01:16:37.500 --> 01:16:37.680]  [SPEAKER_16]: Absolutely.
[01:16:38.060 --> 01:16:39.740]  [SPEAKER_10]: It's not an easy process.
[01:16:39.920 --> 01:16:40.140]  [SPEAKER_10]: No.
[01:16:40.820 --> 01:16:44.580]  [SPEAKER_17]: I mean, mass transit in this country is very difficult, because they spend all the money on the LIE.
[01:16:44.580 --> 01:16:44.780]  [SPEAKER_17]: Right.
[01:16:45.000 --> 01:16:46.200]  [SPEAKER_17]: Along with these considerations.
[01:16:46.740 --> 01:16:58.480]  [SPEAKER_10]: But the way to do that would be to find your way to Penn Station and take the Long Island Railroad to Ronkonkoma.
[01:16:58.480 --> 01:17:05.120]  [SPEAKER_10]: Now, I say this merely to dramatize what our caller has already suggested as a problem.
[01:17:05.520 --> 01:17:10.520]  [SPEAKER_10]: Ronkonkoma is still 15 miles from the site.
[01:17:10.700 --> 01:17:11.020]  [SPEAKER_14]: Uh-huh.
[01:17:11.120 --> 01:17:16.740]  [SPEAKER_10]: But it is the closest direct train or public transportation link.
[01:17:16.740 --> 01:17:33.120]  [SPEAKER_10]: In fact, the State Department of Transportation has been excoriating this project just because there's no way to get there by public transportation and the volume of passenger car transportation that would be generated by the creation of the first phase of this mall,
[01:17:33.280 --> 01:17:38.560]  [SPEAKER_10]: the State Transportation Department thinks would take two or three years to sort out.
[01:17:38.560 --> 01:17:43.820]  [SPEAKER_10]: And still, we could be less than a week away from approval of the project.
[01:17:43.820 --> 01:17:50.180]  [SPEAKER_10]: Now, that really is the ultimate indictment of the planning process our caller was complaining about.
[01:17:50.340 --> 01:17:50.720]  [SPEAKER_10]: Emmanuel?
[01:17:51.040 --> 01:17:52.180]  [SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, we're going to take one more call.
[01:17:52.240 --> 01:17:52.520]  [SPEAKER_16]: Go ahead.
[01:17:52.760 --> 01:18:15.560]  [SPEAKER_08]: If people will call 516-473-1039 and say they want to come out on the Long Island Railroad to Ronkonkoma Saturday morning and arrive sometime around 11 o'clock, 11, 11.30, we will have a car there to bring anyone who shows up for the demonstration to the site.
[01:18:15.620 --> 01:18:30.120]  [SPEAKER_08]: I think if they have the determination and show the interest to take a train from Penn Station to Ronkonkoma, the end of the Ronkonkoma line, we should pick them up and take them to the site.
[01:18:30.120 --> 01:18:45.280]  [SPEAKER_10]: I want to tell you, Emmanuel, the last train to Willy World leaves Penn Station on Saturday morning at 10.15 from Penn Station and will arrive at Ronkonkoma at 11.31, just in time to tell them what we think of them.
[01:18:45.420 --> 01:18:45.860]  [SPEAKER_10]: Thank you, Dick.
[01:18:46.080 --> 01:18:49.900]  [SPEAKER_16]: Okay, and again, we want to give that phone number one more time for people who are interested in going.
[01:18:49.900 --> 01:19:02.280]  [SPEAKER_08]: Have them call 516-473-1039, 516-473-1039, go to Penn Station, take the Ronkonkoma line on the Long Island Railroad.
[01:19:02.480 --> 01:19:03.960]  [SPEAKER_10]: Is that the last stop, Dick?
[01:19:04.260 --> 01:19:12.800]  [SPEAKER_10]: You get on at 10.15, you get off at 11.31, and not only do you get a demonstration, but you get to see, as Richard said earlier, exactly what we're fighting for.
[01:19:12.800 --> 01:19:14.800]  [SPEAKER_10]: It'll be a lovely day in the country.
[01:19:15.060 --> 01:19:24.320]  [SPEAKER_10]: You'll see Long Island as it has been for all eternity, and in a way, we can continue to keep it if we're able to stop this project.
[01:19:24.480 --> 01:19:25.040]  [SPEAKER_10]: Anyone who comes out on that train...
[01:19:25.040 --> 01:19:26.120]  [SPEAKER_16]: You can bet there won't be much litter.
[01:19:26.300 --> 01:19:26.580]  [SPEAKER_10]: ...on that train.
[01:19:26.880 --> 01:19:28.200]  [SPEAKER_10]: What time does it leave Penn Station?
[01:19:28.360 --> 01:19:29.200]  [SPEAKER_10]: It leaves at 10.15.
[01:19:29.400 --> 01:19:30.680]  [SPEAKER_08]: It'll be out there at 11.30.
[01:19:30.780 --> 01:19:32.340]  [SPEAKER_08]: It leaves Penn Station at 10.15.
[01:19:32.580 --> 01:19:32.820]  [SPEAKER_08]: Okay.
[01:19:32.940 --> 01:19:37.700]  [SPEAKER_08]: Anyone who comes out, we will give you a tour of this beautiful, beautiful area.
[01:19:37.700 --> 01:19:43.700]  [SPEAKER_08]: We have naturalists who can point out the flora and fauna, and you'll have a wonderful afternoon.
[01:19:43.940 --> 01:19:45.880]  [SPEAKER_08]: We'll get you some food.
[01:19:45.880 --> 01:19:46.600]  [SPEAKER_08]: We'll feed you.
[01:19:46.720 --> 01:19:48.320]  [SPEAKER_08]: We'll get you back to the train station.
[01:19:48.480 --> 01:19:49.600]  [SPEAKER_08]: You'll have a wonderful afternoon.
[01:19:50.320 --> 01:19:50.880]  [SPEAKER_16]: Okay.
[01:19:55.600 --> 01:19:58.840]  [SPEAKER_16]: We are here at WBAI in New York.
[01:19:58.840 --> 01:20:12.600]  [SPEAKER_16]: We've been talking with four environmentalist leaders, Dick Amper of the Pine Barren Society, Dan Morris of the Open Space Council, Nancy Oku, and Rich DiDonato, both of the Citizens Planning Board.
[01:20:12.840 --> 01:20:26.600]  [SPEAKER_16]: We've been talking about saving the open space of Long Island, saving the Pine Barrens, and preventing what could be, I believe, Long Island's biggest shopping mall from being constructed right on top of this area.
[01:20:26.820 --> 01:20:32.360]  [SPEAKER_16]: And I'll give one last chance for you folks to give out phone numbers and whatever else you want to give out.
[01:20:32.360 --> 01:20:45.800]  [SPEAKER_10]: We'd be happy for everybody to call the Long Island Pine Barren Society for any information on protecting the Pine Barrens, or the entire ecosystem that our caller that was interrupted earlier was concerned about preserving, not just a few pine trees,
[01:20:45.940 --> 01:20:47.240]  [SPEAKER_10]: but all of eastern Long Island.
[01:20:47.240 --> 01:20:54.780]  [SPEAKER_10]: Don't hesitate to contact us at 516-929-6660, or write us if you prefer.
[01:20:55.100 --> 01:20:59.280]  [SPEAKER_10]: We're available at post office box of 429.
[01:20:59.920 --> 01:21:03.380]  [SPEAKER_10]: That's in Manorville, Manorville, New York.
[01:21:03.540 --> 01:21:05.660]  [SPEAKER_10]: The ZIP Code is 11949.
[01:21:06.060 --> 01:21:06.500]  [SPEAKER_10]: Richard?
[01:21:07.480 --> 01:21:08.140]  [SPEAKER_10]: Right, Dick.
[01:21:08.580 --> 01:21:10.540]  [SPEAKER_08]: The Citizens Planning Board, who's having...
[01:21:10.540 --> 01:21:13.380]  [SPEAKER_08]: I'll quickly tell you about the demonstration again.
[01:21:13.960 --> 01:21:20.040]  [SPEAKER_08]: Saturday afternoon on the site out there at the gateway to the Pine Barrens, October 13th, Saturday afternoon, starting at 12.
[01:21:20.040 --> 01:21:27.140]  [SPEAKER_08]: If you want to take the Long Island Railroad from Penn Station, take the Ronkonkoma line, leaves at 10-15 in the morning, get you out there around 11-30.
[01:21:27.140 --> 01:21:27.880]  [SPEAKER_08]: We'll pick you up.
[01:21:27.920 --> 01:21:28.360]  [SPEAKER_08]: We'll feed you.
[01:21:28.400 --> 01:21:30.040]  [SPEAKER_08]: We'll give you a tour of the Pine Barrens.
[01:21:30.140 --> 01:21:35.100]  [SPEAKER_08]: You'll have a great day out in the country and get you back to the train.
[01:21:35.100 --> 01:21:37.720]  [SPEAKER_08]: If you're going to drive, you have to...
[01:21:37.720 --> 01:21:37.780]  [SPEAKER_16]: Okay, Rich.
[01:21:37.780 --> 01:21:40.800]  [SPEAKER_16]: Rich, we're out of time, so just give the phone number and...
[01:21:42.260 --> 01:21:44.320]  [SPEAKER_08]: 516-473-1039.
[01:21:44.580 --> 01:21:46.520]  [SPEAKER_08]: 516-473-109.
[01:21:46.680 --> 01:21:50.180]  [SPEAKER_08]: Maybe Dan Morris would like to give the number of the Open Space Council.
[01:21:50.640 --> 01:21:54.800]  [SPEAKER_06]: Open Space Council is 758-5915.
[01:21:54.800 --> 01:21:56.360]  [SPEAKER_06]: That's area code 516.
[01:21:56.760 --> 01:21:57.200]  [SPEAKER_16]: Okay.
[01:21:57.520 --> 01:21:59.960]  [SPEAKER_16]: And thanks very much to everybody for being here.
[01:22:00.020 --> 01:22:02.460]  [SPEAKER_16]: Thanks, Nancy Oku, for being there as well.
[01:22:02.460 --> 01:22:06.400]  [SPEAKER_16]: And hopefully we'll see a lot of people out on Long Island.
[01:22:06.560 --> 01:22:10.180]  [SPEAKER_16]: Exit 68 of the expressway this Saturday at 12 noon.
[01:22:10.300 --> 01:22:11.140]  [SPEAKER_16]: We'll let you know how it goes.
[01:22:11.340 --> 01:22:14.420]  [SPEAKER_16]: This is Emmanuel Goldstein filling in for Andrew Phillips on investigations.
[01:22:14.880 --> 01:22:15.940]  [SPEAKER_16]: Stay tuned for Bob Fass.
[01:22:16.220 --> 01:22:16.720]  [SPEAKER_16]: Good night.