LETTERS:

To the editor:

In the last issue, I read your editorial account of the Community Board
2 vote on the proposed plans for Downtown Brooklyn. I was deeply disturbed
at your overly personal and vitriolic attack on board member Rachel Foster.
Not only were your remarks intentionally defamatory (i.e., calling for
Ms. Foster’s resignation), much of what you reported was unsubstantiated.

You accuse Ms. Foster of “ducking” the vote because she “felt
pressured” and “intimidated” by the protestors. You base
this information on one anonymous source. One single, anonymous source
does not good journalism make. If you and your reporters had engaged in
standard, journalistic procedures of fact checking, you would have avoided
such outlandish claims.

Having known Ms. Foster personally since our college days at Cornell University
in the late 1980s, I can attest to her character. She is a person who
is deeply committed to the social good. As a Legal Services attorney who
has done her share of trial work, she is not one to “cower”
in adversarial situations. A few protestors would certainly not have deterred
her.

I strongly urge you to investigate this matter further and acknowledge
in your next edition of The Brooklyn Papers that your pointed attack of
Ms. Foster was simply unsubstantiated and unwarranted.

—Jeneve Brooks-Klinger, Manhattan