One Page Position Paper: Due 12/22

This paper will include the following:
1) A statement introducing your position
2) Three well-founded and informative arguments that support your position
3) One argument against your position that you refute
4) A conclusion


Example:

The Atlantic Yards stadium should not be built! The idea to build a stadium is ill-conceived, expensive and harmful to an already over-crowded community.
Bruce Ratner bought the New Jersey Nets not because he was a basketball fan but because he wanted a reason to build a money-making stadium in Brooklyn. Ratner plans to build this stadium at one of the busiest and most dangerous intersection in the entire city. It is already incredibly dangerous to cross the street at the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush and here Ratner wants to add 10 new apartment buildings and a stadium that will attract drivers from all over New York City and New Jesrsey! The children playing in the area will be at risk and the traffic will create new air pollution!
Bruce Ratner is receiving tax breaks to build an un-needed project for the city of New York. Mayor Bloomberg and the Governor Patterson are actually using taxpayers’ money to support this project when we are in a recession and our schools budgets are getting slashed!
Bruce Ratner is trying to convince the city the neighborhood in which he wants to build is “blighted” and that the government should use the power of eminent domain to kick people out of their homes! This was a well-kept neighborhood with a mix of luxury and middle and low income apartments that Ratner has bought out and torn down, now blighting the community! Ratner has blighted the area that was once a completely viable neighborhood! Now he wants to claim that the area is useless except for his project.
People are excited about the idea of professional sports coming back to Brooklyn but what they don’t understand is that Ratner doesn’t even care about sports. He is using the arena as an entry-point into building luxury condominiums that help no one but the already well off.
As a long-time community resident I am strongly opposed to Bruce Ratner’s plans to build this arena. The city should stop the plans and leave the community as it is. The money the tax payers are giving towards this project should be diverted towards social services.