On a cool December afternoon, Annie Zhu stood in the hallway of Brooklyn Technical High School before leaving for her second swim practice of the day. Zhu, a 15-year-old sophomore, is tall with long dark hair and has the classic swimmer “V” shape—a small waist and broad shoulders—that are only sculpted through tireless laps in the pool. She is currently ranked in the top ten in the nation in her age group, with her 200-meter and 400-meter individual medley times in the top three.

Zhu prepares for a race at a Brooklyn Tech swim meet. Kennedy/Brooklyn Ink.

Zhu thinks about her dream—to win an Olympic medal—every morning when she wakes up at 4:30 a.m. for practice and before she takes the first plunge into the pool. Whether she is in school, underwater, or being shuttled between practices, the Olympics are on Zhu’s mind.

Zhu wore jeans and a USA Swimming sweatshirt from a recent meet and carried a heavy textbook in her hand. She had just finished making up the Chinese exam she missed while she was in Seattle last week competing in the Short Course National Meet.

This was less than an hour before Zhu’s second practice of the day with Agua Swim Team, Manhattan’s premiere competitive club team, on the Upper East Side and one of the top teams in the Northeast. She was coming off a day of rest due to shoulder pain, a common injury among competitive swimmers often due to overuse. After all, November was her busiest month this year.

In addition to daily practices with Agua, Zhu competed with the Brooklyn Tech Engineers varsity team during the fall, which she says is more focused on teamwork. Zhu’s name takes up the majority of the record board at Tech, and Coach Maureen O’Hara is grateful to have her as a key anchor to a fast relay, and an example to the other girls.

In addition to advancing to the public school championship with the team for the first time in over twenty years, Zhu’s medley relay team also qualified for the state championship, a difficult feat at a young age. The Engineers, the underdog of the meet, lost to powerhouse Stuyvesant High School by a mere 17 points. “We were happy to even make the finals,” Zhu said.

After the high school season, Zhu traveled to Europe to race in part of the World Cup series in Sweden and Germany, where she faced strong international competition. Her goal is simple. Train hard and make the Olympic swim team. “I’m happy because if I didn’t start swimming, I don’t know what I would be doing,” Zhu said.

Today, Zhu’s parents need to pick up Zhu by 4 p.m. otherwise she may be late for her evening practice. In traffic, it could take over an hour. “Usually I do my homework in the car,” Zhu said with a smirk. “I’m used to it by now.”

She knows, too, that if she doesn’t do her work in the car, she’ll be up late and won’t get enough sleep for practice the next day. Sleep, Zhu knows, is an important part of the Olympic equation. When she’s not in the water perfecting her stroke (breaststroke is her specialty), Zhu often plays back the tapes she has from the 2000 and 2004 Olympic games to keep her goal in check. “I enjoy watching people break records,” Zhu said.

Zhu took her first steps on a pool deck and was swimming before she turned one. Her parents, Kenny and Linda, are both experienced swimmers from China. Together they head the American Swimming Learning Center at James Madison High School in Midwood. Since 1995, they have taught over 1,500 students how to swim.

After her weekend practices with Agua, which Zhu says are the most grueling, she helps her parents at the learning center, along with her older brother, Alan, 24 and sister, Angela, 22, also swimmers. “In my house it’s 24 hours talking about swimming,” Zhu said.

At the 2008 Olympic Trials in Omaha, Nebraska, where she was one of the youngest competitors, Zhu qualified for the 100-and 200-meter breaststroke and 200-meter individual medley trials. She finished 78^th out of a pool of 105 in the 100-meter breaststroke, 56^th of 90 in the 200-meter breaststroke, and 87^th of 114 in the 200-meter individual medley, an impressive feat at such a young age. Zhu also made the cut for the 400-meter individual medley after the trials.

Zhu said her experience helped prepare her for the next time around so she won’t be nervous. For now, she is focused on achieving her goal one step at a time and looking ahead to her next big meet in January. “I think I get Christmas day off from practice,” Zhu said as she headed toward her parents’ car to drive to another practice.

By Terry Baynes and Meredith Kennedy

Just a few days after returning home from a summer tour with the band Maserati, Brooklyn-based indie drummer Jerry Fuchs died early last Sunday morning after plummeting five stories down an elevator shaft. He was 34.

Fuchs was on his way to a six-month anniversary party hosted by the nonprofit organization, The Uniform Project, in a multi-use building on 338 Berry St. in Williamsburg.

Fuchs and a photographer Stephen Alessi were both riding the freight elevator up to the party when it came to a halt between the fifth and sixth floors, reported the  Daily News. Alessi successfully jumped out of the stalled car to the nearest floor and Fuchs followed, but his hood got caught and tugged him back. He fell nearly 50 feet to the ground floor.

It is unclear why there was no operator in the elevator at the time of the accident at 1 a.m. Ian Harris, who attended The Uniform Project party said in an e-mail that there was an operator manning the elevator when he rode it earlier in the evening.  Mona Gora, owner of the building on Berry Street, declined to respond to phone calls about the accident.  Organizers of the benefit from the Uniform Project are also refusing to respond to questions.

Christopher Lee, who has lived on the first floor of the building for the past ten years said that the elevator is used frequently by the building’s approximately 50 tenants, their friends, and clients. In addition, he said, people often have parties in the building that last into the early hours of the morning, and there is often someone there to safely operate what he described as a freight elevator.  “It has no buttons that light up for the different floors,” he said.

Jerry Fuchs. Photo courtesy of the New York Daily News

Indeed, the elevator on Berry Street in equipped with a heavy steel door, double metal gates, and a manual control lever. “I’ve seen thousands of people come and go from the building,” Lee said.  “But I’ve never seen anyone walk into that elevator and try to operate it themselves even if the superintendent had stepped away.  It’s not an easy task to get in there.”

Alessi and Fuchs were riding alone in the elevator from the lobby to the fifth floor but stopped slightly above the fifth floor.  City inspectors on the scene of the accident examined the elevator and did not find any mechanical issues with it, said Carly Sullivan, a spokesperson for the Department of Buildings.  She also said that there are no pending complaints with the elevator at this time.

But the elevator does have a history of violations, according to the Department of Buildings website.  Records show one active violation (9011/296054) filed on April 1, 2009.  Another elevator violation (081017-E-9011/272571) was dismissed on October 30, 2009.

Sadly, Fuch’s death occurred at the beginning of National Elevator Escalator Safety Awareness Week, which runs from November 8th to the 14th.  This week, the New York City Department of Buildings is holding elevator and escalator safety classes for more than 2,000 grade school children across the city. According to the buildings department’s website, elevator inspectors are scheduled to teach children how to safely ride the 60,000 elevators in the city and what action to take in an emergency. A September 2006 article from Elevator World about what to do when someone is trapped states that it is unwise to try and jump or climb out of an elevator because it could result in injury, or in many cases like Fuchs’, death.  A year ago, 5-year-old Jacob Neuman died while trying to get out of a stalled public housing elevator also in Williamsburg.  Like Fuchs, he fell down the elevator shaft.

Henry Ng, a graphic designer and illustrator and friend of Fuchs, could not believe when he heard the news on Monday morning and had to check online to confirm the details. He was one of the hundreds of people to update their Twitter feed and Facebook status to honor Fuchs.

“There are people in life who have this positive ‘electricity,’ who operate at a higher voltage than most, and he was one of them,” Ng said in an e-mail. “This past year, he even got a new tattoo on his arms which depicted the MIDI input and output port patterns. This seemed to fit him very well, I think, as his drumming had a machine-like precision to it.”

Fuchs will be remembered Thursday evening in a memorial service at Enid’s Bar in Greenpoint, a popular spot the musician used to frequent.

Beck and his dog (photo courtesy MySpace.com)

Several police officers stood guard in front of Grace Funeral Home in East New York on Wednesday afternoon as family and friends from the rap community wearing black t-shirts that read “RIP Mike Beck” gathered to pay their respects to 36-year-old artist Mike Becht, known as Mike Beck in the music industry. Even more visitors were expected to attend the late viewing.

Outside of the funeral home, close family members and other rappers who had worked with Beck waited for the wake to begin. Beck’s aunt, Vanessa, 52, wearing dark sunglasses and a black leather jacket, expressed her frustration over her nephew’s life cut short. Inside the mood was somber. One woman collapsed into her neighbor’s arms weeping. Beck’s son, Michael, was one of the first to arrive, dressed in a suit and tie. He was greeted by Beck’s sister, Tasha Shuler, who clutched her young nephew and said, “He lived for you.”

It has been almost a week since Beck was killed and there is still speculation about the shooting late Friday night. A close friend who has recorded several tracks with Beck, known as A.G., said he has heard several different accounts of the shooting. “Some say he was visiting a girl, others say he was going to settle some beef,” said A.G., who found out about his friend’s death over the Internet. Beck’s aunt, meanwhile, believes someone tried to rob him before he was shot on the corner of Logan Street and Belmont Avenue. He struggled one block back to his truck while the ambulance was called to the scene. “He was determined to live,” said Shuler.

Beck was killed as he was turning his life around. As a young man in East New York he had run afoul of the police. But after spending time in prison for his involvement in a homicide, he decided to focus on music, which had long been a passion. “He was rapping since age five,” his aunt said. With the encouragement of his close friend and hypeman Bill Blass, Beck began to establish his hip-hop career and distance himself from crime.

But Beck also used his years of experience and networking to help others along the way. “Mike was the bridge between artists trying to make it in the industry and artists who already had,” A.G. said while looking at a picture on his cell phone of him and Beck. “Just when everything was coming together, this happened.”

This is not the first time a death has shaken Brooklyn’s hip-hop community. Two years ago, Beck’s mentor Bill Blass died, and more recently, an artist who goes by Big Lou also passed away. “Rapping is just a whole different world,” said Beck’s uncle Mike, for whom he was named.

Since Friday, there have been nearly 100 comments posted on allhiphop.com in honor of Beck. The homepage of his website, heavybank.com, also pays tribute to his life and includes a link to make donations to Beck’s family. “There are no words to describe Mike Beck,” said Beck’s cousin as he entered the funeral home. “That’s all that needs to be said.”

The night before rapper Mike Beck was scheduled to perform a Halloween show in Boston, he was shot to death on the corner of Logan Street and Belmont Avenue in East New York. Details of the Friday night shooting are still unclear.

Late that evening, friend and fellow hip-hop musician Tydro Mazin, 30, waited at his apartment with his children for Beck to show up and finalize their plans for the next day’s performance. Mazin fell asleep before Beck arrived. Early Saturday morning Mazin called Beck wondering why he never showed. “I called him and it went right to voicemail, which was strange, but I didn’t think much of it,” Mazin said Monday afternoon. Five minutes later, Mazin’s phone rang. Beck was dead.

Beck was 36-years-old and in the midst of a budding hip-hop career. “He’s the most ambitious person I have ever known, as far as music is concerned,” Mazin said. “You would never catch him sleeping because he didn’t want to miss a minute of anything.” In a short time Beck rose through the hip-hop ranks, working with such stars as Fat Joe, Busta Rhymes, Bone Thugz-n-Harmony and Raekwon.

The police have reported very little about the details surrounding his death, though there is speculation among Beck’s followers that the shooting occurred during a botched robbery. Beck, Mazin said, was alone when he died and no witnesses have been reported, further complicating the investigation. Police say that after being shot in the upper leg, Beck struggled to Fountain Avenue where he was picked up by emergency crews and transported to Brookdale Hospital. He was pronounced dead on arrival at 11:20 p.m.

It it still unclear where, precisely, Beck was shot — on the street, or, as others speculate, in a truck.

Mazin described Beck as man with few enemies. “I heard a lot of conflicting stories,” he said, “so I don’t want to say anything definite about it. I was just devastated, for real.”

On his website, Beck describes a difficult childhood growing up in East New York. His mother, father and step-father all struggled with drug and alcohol addictions, leaving Beck, his brother and three half-sisters to be raised mostly by their grandmother. At the age of 13, Beck wrote, he turned to the streets and began committing crimes. At 17, he was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in a murder.

It was during his time in jail, acccording to Beck’s MySpace biography, that he was “awakened to a new skill that he found within himself.” After being released from prison, he was invited by Bill Blass, a man Beck had met during his time on the streets and was well-known for mentoring aspiring hip-hop artists, to join rapper Rakim on the 18th Letter Tour. Later in his career, Beck was a part of the group Kill All Rats, also known as K.A.R., where he enjoyed his first real success with the single “U Can Tell I’m From NY.” More recently, Beck separated from K.A.R. and created the media company, Heavy Bank Entertainment.

Mazin recalled that their friendship evolved because they were both looking to pursue a new musical direction and had both played the same roles in their former groups. “He literally got me out of a mental slump after I strayed away from my group.” Mazin said. “I was stagnant as far as music was concerned and he gave me the energy to keep moving and do my own thing. I owe him a lot.

“He was more than just an artist. He was an organizer. He dedicated his life to music and everything entertainment.”

Over the past six months, Beck and Mazin were developing what they referred to as a silent partnership. Not only did they work on a lot of songs and projects together, but they would introduce each other to new people.

“He was a networker to the nth degree,” Mazin said. During one of their last, the two discussed finishing up the last five or six songs on their mix tape after the show they were scheduled to perform in Boston the night after his death. “We was all hyped about it,” Mazin said.

In the wake of Beck’s death, his friends and family have been organizing a mural in his honor, recording a tribute song, and conducting video interviews from people he influenced during his career. His fans flooded Twitter, HeavyBank.com and his MySpace page with words of praise and grief. “I won’t let your legacy die,” wrote his younger sister Tasha. “We will make sure people buy and play your music because that’s what you were about, making hits and doing your shows.” Brooklyn rapper True Sun Ali added, “It’s hard to fight back the tears but we gotta stay strong and continue to represent for a leader that was taken too soon. You will truly be missed.”

In addition to his mourning friends and fans, Beck leaves behind a wife and son. His wake will be held tomorrow at Grace Funeral Parlor in East New York from 2-4 p.m. and 6-9 p.m.

Photo: Kennedy/Brooklyn Ink

By Meredith Kennedy

The Dodgers left Brooklyn for Los Angeles over 50 years ago, but their presence lives on through team memorabilia and old photographs in Sport Prospect sporting good store on 7th Avenue in Park Slope. For one-time Brooklyn fans, watching the New York Yankees in the 105th World Series evokes memories that are not so sweet.

This may be one New York sports constituency that doesn’t exult the Bronx Bombers 40th trip to the Fall Classic.

Owner Carl Manco, 57, stocks Sport Prospect with original Brooklyn wear, including graphic t-shirts and classic zip-ups that line the walls of the small neighborhood store. At the checkout counter, there is a bin of small Brooklyn Dodger squeezable baseballs with the 1955 World Series Champions insignia on sale for $2.

“It’s a store like no other because we control our own inventory. I like to keep it simple,” Manco said during a recent weekday evening at his store. “Everyone comes in here and wants to take away something that says Brooklyn.”

As the Yankees take on the Philadelphia Phillies this week, Manco may be in the minority, but he is not alone. Many former Dodger fans aren’t cheering on the city’s premiere sport franchise. “The die-hard Dodgers fans are gone, but there are still a lot of people who hate the Yankees,” baseball historian John Thorn said in a telephone interview from his home in upstate Saugerties.

That was not the case at Wednesday’s rainy day pep-rally hosted by Mayor Bloomberg in Times Square for a large crowd of Yankee fans. Bloomberg encouraged fans to wear Yankee gear to school and work to show support for the city’s team. “We’ve got the best city in the world and the best team in the world,” Bloomberg said. Still, many Brooklyn Dodger fans would disagree.

Thorn, 62, author and editor of several baseball related books, was born in a displaced persons camp in occupied Germany before coming to New York with his parents, both Holocaust survivors, in 1949. “I caught on at young age to the fact that baseball was the true visa to America,” Thorn recalled. Though he grew up in the Bronx, Thorn was an avid Dodgers fan, and had a keen interest in the sport since childhood.

When the Dodgers were relocated to Los Angeles in 1957 after building a fortune on community allegiance, Thorn, like many, was heartbroken. “It was the equivalent of your parents divorcing,” Thorn said, “if not worse.” Even after the news of the uprooting was made official, fans remained in denial and at a loss for what team to root for in the future.

At the time, the Yankees were the only other New York alternative. Thorn continued to root for the Dodgers from the East Coast, until becoming a Mets fan when they joined the league in 1962. To root for the Yankees during that time would have meant rooting for the upper class.

Even with the Mets’ disappointing, injury-plagued season, Thorn will not turn to the Yankees, still enjoying success in an expensive new stadium completed this year. “Yankee fans deserve sympathy because they are lesser people. They need victory,” Thorn said jokingly. As a Mets fan, he is used to enduring long, fallow periods. “This testifies to character.”

Today, the Yankees may be the center of the city’s attention and have the support of Mayor Bloomberg, but the Bombers will have to win without Thorn’s support. “Constitutionally, I am incapable of rooting for them.”

The Brooklyn Tech varsity girls swim team. Photo: Kennedy/Brooklyn Ink

By Meredith Kennedy

The Brooklyn Tech varsity girls swim team is the undefeated division champions, but their opponent, the Fort Hamilton Tigers always give the Engineers a good meet. They met for the first time this season at the Tiger’s pool on a recent evening.

The 400-meter freestyle relay is the last race of the swim meet.  It is usually the most exciting event because in a close meet it is the difference between a win or loss for a team. Tonight, it was already clear who was going to win.

The swimmers surrounded the pool and chanted the familiar cheers, “Let’s go Ti-gers woot woot.”

The crowd was on their feet cheering for their daughters and friends. The coaches paced. The Engineers paraded around the deck in their navy blue championship t-shirts and sweats from last season to remind the Tigers who they were facing.

Four swimmers for each relay lined up and prepared to swim four laps of the pool. Brooklyn Tech has a powerhouse relay that includes sophomore Annie Zhu, a swimmer who Coach Maureen O’Hara believes will end up in the Olympics one day.

Zhu stepped up to the block and tightened her goggles. The Tech’s top relay team was already leading the race, and Zhu looked ready to take off into the water.  She finished first easily, swimming her final 50-yards in under 30 seconds, a difficult feat for such a young swimmer. Zhu floated in the water and waited for the other relay teams to finish. She reached over the lane markers and congratulated the Fort Hamilton swimmers with a handshake. The meet was decided, and Tech was still undefeated.

The referee blew the whistle three long times and announced the final score. Brooklyn Tech 53, Fort Hamilton 44. The swimmers took off their caps and shook each other’s hands before rushing into the locker rooms to change.

“I can’t believe it’s 6 p.m. and I have two projects due tomorrow,” one swimmer said as she hurried off the pool deck to face the reality of homework that haunts even the undefeated.

Coach O’Hara, meanwhile, remained focused on the task at hand.  Pleased as she was with the victory, she was not letting it get to her head, especially after 17 years of coaching. “We won’t really know where we stand until the playoffs begin,” she said as she left the natatorium.

Her swimmers also filed out, their parents and fans in tow, and, for now, still wearing those navy blue shirts that read “2008 Division Champions.”

Two days after 30-year-old Moses Harrell was shot to death in Fort Greene, a police officer from the 88^th precinct kept watch from his scooter outside of the family’s apartment at 95B Vanderbilt Ave. where bunches of black balloons and messages of sympathy hang at the foot of the porch. The victim’s killer remains unidentified.

Early Sunday evening, Harrell’s mother returned home from church to the quiet, tree-lined street where she lived with her son to find him dead in the backyard after an argument. According to police, the suspect was male and fled the scene in a dark car. Harrell’s older sister Beverley Burton, who lives nearby, does not know what precisely led to the shooting or who is responsible for her brother’s death. “It’s under investigation, that’s why the cops are here,” Burton said, wearing a long black coat with a picture of Michael Jackson pinned to the chest.

Harrell’s girlfriend, who was dressed in all black and declined to give her name, is also unsure about what happened. “We’re just really somber right now,” she said as she left the apartment and walked down the street to Walgreens with a friend and her young daughter.

The neighbors are just as confused as the family. An older man who lives down the street and refused his name was sleeping when the shooting happened and woke up to the sound of helicopters. “I’ve lived here 44 years and never had no problem,” he said as he walked back to his apartment down the street late Tuesday afternoon. “Not even a fire that I remember.”

A woman who lives just a few doors down from Harrell was also sleeping when she heard the gunshots. “I looked out the window and I didn’t see anything,” she said as she accepted a package from a UPS deliveryman. “It was very smooth-in, out, gone.”

Soon after, Maria Perez, a friend of Harrell’s, walked her son and daughter home from school and paused in front of the apartment to pay her respects. Tears began to roll down her face as she kneeled down and made the sign of the cross in front of a headstone that read “RIP.” “I just saw him here three days ago and he smiled and waved at us,” Perez said, choking up. “He loved my children and my daughter called him black chocolate. I hope he is rested in peace.”

Harrell, says his sister, was a gentle soul who was well known in the neighborhood. He left behind a 7-year-old daughter, Damaya and a 1-year-old son, Zaione. “The kids adored him, the women loved him, and the guys wanted to be him,” Burton said. Harrell’s mother is trying to cope, and she prefers not to talk to anyone yet. She came outside to get the mail surrounded by friends, but quickly returned back inside in her black fleece and sweatpants.

Editor’s note: Moses Harrell’s age was incorrectly posted as 20 years old in the original article. Harrell was 30.

Photo Kennedy/Brooklyn Ink

Opponents of the Atlantic Yards project board the bus to Albany. Photo: Kennedy/Brooklyn Ink

Meredith Kennedy

This morning a busload of Brooklyn residents and members of the grassroots organization Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn departed for Albany to appear before the New York State’s top court and voice their opposition to what they claim is the unconstitutional use of eminent domain for Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project.

This afternoon the Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in the case Goldstein et al. v. New York State Urban Development Corporation. The case challenges the state’s use of eminent domain to uproot Brooklyn residents and business owners in favor of the private developer Forest City Ratner as part of the $4.9 billion 22-acre Atlantic Yards project. Forest City Ratner has argued in response that the project will alleviate congestion at a transit-accessible area in Brooklyn and redevelop the area with the construction of civic facilities.

Developer Bruce Ratner’s arena and skyscraper plan to build a new venue for the New Jersey Nets in downtown Brooklyn and provide affordable housing has caused a split in the community since December 2003. Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn opposes the use of taxpayer subsidies for an arena and a high-rise, private for-profit development in low-rise Brooklyn neighborhoods. Ratner, on the other hand, argues that the clamshell-like design of the arena will likely become an iconic part of the neighborhood.

Local businesses, homeowners, and political figures have resisted the sales of their property and argue that they were not given the opportunity for input or consent. Today, over 40 Brooklynites traveled up the Thruway because they feel it is necessary for the court to know there are people behind the legal papers that have piled up over the years.

Boerum Hill resident Claudia Massa was the first to arrive outside of the rundown Freddy’s Bar on the corner of 6^th Avenue and Dean Street. She waited for the bus to arrive on a bench outside of the bar, where outdated press releases about Atlantic Yards hung in the window – a reminder of the long-simmering opposition.

Massa is a volunteer for Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn and has been fighting against Atlantic Yards for the past four years. “I took a day off of work, that’s how important it is to me,” Massa said. While Atlantic Yards development would provide employment, Massa argued, eminent domain “is not the way to get jobs.”

The legal fight against Ratner began with Daniel Goldstein, who refuses to vacate his apartment located in the footprint of Ratner’s commercial development. Goldstein’s case is the first the state’s highest court will consider on limits on the use of eminent domain since the landmark 2005 Kelo v. City of New London eminent domain case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which allowed eminent domain for private development and sparked a nationwide backlash.

Michael White, a lawyer and urban planner from Brooklyn Heights, who has worked for New York State governors in the past, thinks that Atlantic Yards should be broken up into multiple projects to create more jobs more quickly. Today White’s concern is that New York’s eminent domain abuse standards are too lax. “If they let the project go forward they are accepting eminent domain,” White said. “They should know the opposition is very rational and very strong.”

Blake Morris, a volunteer attorney for Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn’s legal committee, has been working on the Atlantic Yards project since its inception. For Morris, today marks one completion of a litigation arc. Though he forgot to pack his sunglasses on the cool and exceptionally bright fall morning, he was looking forward to filling up the Albany courtroom, which only accommodates 60 people.  “We’re going to show homegrown interest and that people are behind this,” Morris said.

For Steve Ettlinger, a local writer who lives a few blocks from Freddy’s bar, a strong public showing in Albany was essential. “Going into the courtroom is like coming up for air,” he said as the crowd began to board the bus.

Before heading upstate, Letitia James, Councilwoman for the 35^th District and District Leader Olanike Alabi saluted the team of community members opposed to Atlantic Yards. James encouraged the passengers to think about what they represent when they appear in court this afternoon. “You give Prospect Heights and our struggle a face,” James said. “Things are changing but our fight for truth and justice remains the same.”

James and Alabi waved goodbye to their community members as the bus pulled away from the corner that overlooks the proposed site for the large-scale Atlantic Yards project. As of now it is uncertain how long the court’s decision will take. The case is expected to adjourn by the end of the year, which could clear many legal hurdles for Ratner. However, he must also sell millions of dollars in bonds to raise capital before that in order to meet a financial deadline for his mega-project.