Brooklyn Anti-Gentrification Protesters Confront City Planners: PHOTOS

Dozens of Brooklyn residents fed up with housing inequality in the borough spent a full day — Thursday, Sept. 17, the anniversary of Occupy Wall Street — staging protests on both sides of the East River.

The group, led by the Brooklyn Anti-Gentrification Network (BAN), got an early start flyering outside the Atlantic Terminal, Broadway Junction and Flatbush Junction subway stations.

Around noon, they staged a small protest in front of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) management office in Farragut Houses at 251 Nassau Street.

Then they traveled to Manhattan for a rally at City Hall, where they demanded that politicians put in place “strong anti-displacement policies,” biased “upzoning” and other “real estate corruption” in city government.

Michael White, co-founder of Citizens Defending Libraries, spoke about the new trend of selling Brooklyn library spaces to developers who promise to incorporate the libraries into fancy new housing developments.

”We are selling off our parks, we’re selling off our schools, we’re selling off our hospitals, we’re selling off the NYCHA units,” White said.

“If they can get away with selling libraries, they can get away with anything,” he said.

Then, around 4:30 p.m., the main event: a confrontational protest in front of the NYC Department of City Planning at 22 Reade Street, where demonstrators formed a cramped rally line under a sidewalk shed and called on city planners in the building above to stop catering to developers and start putting longtime residents first.

The protesters made a pit stop at Canal and Bowery in Chinatown before marching back across the Manhattan Bridge to Brooklyn.

At Barclay’s, in the dark of night, they chanted:

“I got no love for the landlord, landlord! All this rent that we payin’ for, payin’ for!”

“Fight, fight, fight! Housing is a human right!”

“We have nothing to lose but our chains!”