Our communities have been under siege from powerful corporate interests that want to take our land and our homes away just for profit, without regard to basic rights. Jonathan will not let that happen anymore. Here are two examples.

Hydrofracking:
Sounds obscene, doesn’t it? Well, it is: hydrofracking is a process in which water is injected at high pressure to break up rocks and release gas for commercial exploitation.

Did you know that hydrofracking uses 2 to 9 million gallons of water EACH TIME a “frack” is done and that the process injects 140,000 pounds of toxic substances into our groundwater and leaves communities with air and water pollution?

Did you know that the oil and gas corporate interests are pushing to create 40,000 ponds to hold the waste from hydrofracking all across New York, which means that the health of tens of thousands of New Yorkers will be at risk, for the sake of Big Oil and Big Gas profits?

Did you know that Dick Cheney pushed through, with bi-partisan support, an exemption that allows hydrofracking to happen without any of the protections of our clean water laws? And that our state politicians, in league with corporate special interests, took away the rights of local communities to regulate hydrofracking? Jonathan has a plan of action to work with communities across the state to stop Big Oil and Big Gas from wrecking our communities.

Eminent Domain:
In New York State eminent domain, a tool intended to be used with restraint to benefit the public, has been turned into an industry of abuse that is instead seriously harming the public and the state's economic vitality. Our state is without question the worst abuser of eminent domain in the nation.

In New York, eminent domain's principal purpose is to put property into private hands for private profit. We have public agencies that are delivering vast mega-monopolies of land to the likes of Columbia University and Forest City Ratner. These deals channel huge profits into private hands. Our public agencies—which are supposed to do the peoples’ business—are turning neighborhoods into wastelands of economic stagnation and real blight. The less wealthy, the middle class, minorities and the less politically advantaged are those most likely to suffer. This is, among other things, a classic violation of civil rights and civil liberties.

Jonathan will fight for reform of the eminent domain process. While our courts ought to be protecting us against abuses where there is no legitimate public purpose, the courts are letting agencies, for all intents and purposes, steal property on behalf of politically-connected developers. We need comprehensive reforms to take the private profit and the politically connected developers out of eminent domain.