Building Consensus

Alan Feuer would have us believe that the mayor, Bill de Blasio, is doing everything he can to stop gentrification in New York City [“Defender of the Community,” Report, April]. Feuer describes the mayor’s plan as the “best possible option in the constrained climate of twenty-first-century liberalism.” He concedes that the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side — a diverse group of workers and tenants with serious views on capital, labor, and the state — has developed a thoughtful, alternative agenda, but ultimately dismisses them as a bunch of cranks and paranoiacs.

Feuer further claims the city’s…