The "Soul" of Brooklyn (A response to Complacent Nation)

A comment made in the recent Complacent Nation email post:

"It's no secret Brooklyn is slipping through our fingers.
The outsider soul of the borough is being squeezed by
yuppies, babies and boutiques. On this night we reclaim
our home with danger art, huge music and elements of the
unimaginable."

My response:

"Your work is brilliant, your influence is immense, your outreach is strong, and your poetry is poignant.

But my gut clenches at your mention of the "Brooklyn" that is slipping. What exactly is this "outsider" soul that some unnamed authority has permissed you to write of.

What soul is this? Is it that of the Dutch founders of Breuckelen who found themselves nudged out of their rightfully founded New Netherland by British Imperialists?

Is it the old village of Bostwjick which found itself incorporated along with Flatbush, the Flatlands, Gravesend, and New Utrecht into the incessantly encroaching town of Brooklyn.

Or maybe it's Seth Lowe's city, the third largest in the nation. Which, when the Metropolis across the river extended it's hand to join in, emphatically cried no. Until, of course, the namesake of The Great East River Bridge was dangled before their eyes. Of half a million voters, a margin of 300 agreed to sell Brooklyn's independence away, just for the naming of the bridge. Forever branding it as "An Outer Borough."

Or maybe it was the bleak, lifeless, industrial wasteland that poor Puerto Ricans and Dominicans settled in decades ago before all these fucking artists started moving in, and hosting these parties. Forcing up the rents so that they and their families somewhere farther and farther away.

Because, of course, Walt Whitman never spoke of the stuff aristocrats who plopped their haughty, rich rumps down upon Brooklyn Ferry when Manhattan got too "Catholic" a good hundred-fifty years before Complacent ever dared to stamp their seal on a place much older, and much, much more complex than us all.

To re-iterate my first point, you are an amazing influence on the artistic burgeoning of our home, for this, I thank you.

But please, do not claim to speak for the Soul of Brooklyn.

Very Sincerely,
A Native.