In Sunset Park, Wine, Food and Talk of Displacement

• Pictured: Protester Sam Wicks talks to Brooklyn Crush attendees Tom and Cassie Laughlin. Photo by John V. Santore

SUNSET PARK, BROOKLYN — By 5:15 p.m. on Saturday afternoon, the protesters had arranged themselves in a line stretching up Fourth Avenue and pivoting down 36th Street. Each held a red flag featuring the word "displacement" with a line through it.

Three blocks away at Industry City (IC), hundreds of guests were attending the Brooklyn Crush Wine & Artisanal Food Festival, having paid about $75 to enter and sample the wares of more than five dozen vendors.

That event may have seemed innocuous enough, but Ana Orozco, an organizer with the Sunset Park-based anti-displacement group UPROSE, saw it as an omen.

UPROSE wants the Brooklyn waterfront to become the home of industrial jobs that pay good wages to local workers.

But Industry City, she said, was offering low-wage work, while increasingly hosting events like Brooklyn Crush, drawing in outsiders with money so they could spend it on businesses not rooted in the community.

As that clientele grew, she said, more corporate clients would move in, raising area rents and pricing out local companies (and with them, current residents).

Despite Industry City's professed interest in training residents in sustaining careers (using tools like its new Innovation Lab), Orozco said it had instead become "a leader of displacement in Sunset Park."

Saturday's protest aimed to spread that message to the community, and to dissuade Brooklyn Crush visitors from attending similar events in the future (Orozco encouraged them to patronize local businesses, however).

On the corner, protester Sam Wicks engaged in a lengthy discussion with Tom and Cassie Laughlin, a South River, New Jersey couple who had just left the festival.

Tom held two souvenir wine classes while he spoke. In addition to his flag, Wicks held a sign that read, "Brooklyn Crush: Do Not Crush Brooklyn."

The Laughlins said they both worked in jobs connected to manufacturing and industry, and were sympathetic to the protesters' concerns. Even so, they were confused by their approach.

“We're not from the area. We thought, hey, this is a cool community,” Tom said, adding that he and his wife had been interested in sticking around and getting dinner.

Instead, new he felt like he had been tricked into participating in something harmful to neighborhood.

“How does telling people from the outside world we don't need you make your community better?” Tom said.

"When I saw this," Cassie said of the protest, "I (felt) like I'm doing something bad. We're going to spend money (here). How are we bad?"

Asked about the Laughlins' remarks, Orozco didn't seem upset.

"Now that you know the community is really scared of what Industry City (represents)," she said, describing her message, "please don't patronize Industry City events."

A spokeswoman for IC couldn't immediately be reached for comment Saturday, but inside, Sam Winship, who said he organized Brooklyn Crush, expressed bafflement at the protest.

"There's a reason we do this event in Brooklyn," Winship said, explaining that numerous participating vendors were, in fact, headquartered in the borough (a staffer said it was at least 20, though Orozco questioned how long they had been in operation).

"Brooklyn has a large maker culture," Winship said. "A central part of Brooklyn Crush is promoting and supporting those businesses."

Exposing Brooklyn entrepreneurs to new clients will help the community, not hurt it, he continued, referring to UPROSE's argument as "the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life."

Regarding the group's overall call for the creation of manufacturing jobs on the waterfront, Winship described it as a "macro-economic" battle that was far beyond his control.

"I'm a small business person," he said. "I'm a cork on the tide."