Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz delivers a tearful ode to the Atlantic Yards boondoggle and his crony Bruce Ratner. Filmed at Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn's "ceremonial groundbreaking" of Burying The Soul Of Brooklyn. 2005 Green Party Candidate for Brooklyn Borough President Gloria Mattera was in attendance, wearing the Andrew Cuomo mask. Video by Michael ONeil and the Green Party Of Brooklyn.

Photo from Queensbuzz.com

Activist marching band Rude Mechanical Orchestra on the move, photo by Michael ONeil

Photo by Michael ONeil

More pictures on Flickr!

The venue for the party was closed due to inclement weather and we were unable to locate a replacement venue on such short notice.

By David Pechefsky

IN Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s State of the City speech on Wednesday, he spoke of the City Council as if it were an equal partner in government. Indeed, the mayor’s surprisingly close re-election, the unusual defeat of a handful of council members and some spirited races in the general election in a city where winning the Democratic primary is tantamount to victory, might lead one to expect the 51-member body to be imbued with new democratic vigor. However, the council members inaugurated this month have joined a body whose governance structure is hardly more democratic than a high school student council’s — where the principal calls the shots.

Today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission shreds the fabric of our already weakened democracy by allowing corporations to more completely dominate our corrupted electoral process. It is outrageous that corporations already attempt to influence or bribe our political candidates through their political action committees (PACs), which solicit employees and shareholders for donations. With this decision, corporations can now also draw on their corporate treasuries and pour vast amounts of corporate money, through independent expenditures, into the electoral swamp already flooded with corporate campaign PAC contribution dollars.

This corporatist, anti-voter decision is so extreme that it should galvanize a grassroots effort to enact a Constitutional Amendment to once and for all end corporate personhood and curtail the corrosive impact of big money on politics. It is indeed time for a Constitutional amendment to prevent corporate campaign contributions from commercializing our elections and drowning out the civic and political voices and values of citizens and voters. It is way overdue to overthrow “King Corporation” and restore the sovereignty of “We the People”!