ITF Post: The Tribeca Dog Run and determining “public good” and “private interests”

In his documentary “National Parks: America’s Best Idea” (2009) , Ken Burns chronicles the development of national parks in the United States since 1851, connecting the development of the parks system with the development of democratic processes in the United States. From the very beginning of the national parks system, Burns examines the parks’ as physical spaces of democracy, spaces available to the public at large rather than a select few.  New York City’s Department of Parks and Recreation emphasizes this approach at their website:

Our vision is to create and sustain thriving parks and public spaces for New Yorkers.

Our mission is to plan resilient and sustainable parks, public spaces, and recreational amenities, build a park system for present and future generations, and care for parks and public spaces.¹

The political logic of public parks rests on the idea that common spaces for citizens to gather are essential for democracy² yet Burns notes the tensions between public and private interests shaped the development of the national parks system:

But at each juncture, the parks have always, the supporters of the parks, have always had strange bedfellows. From the very beginning the railroads were part and parcel of delivering an elite clientele to these places. But god bless them. The original impulse was that spiritual ‘slash’ democratic. That this was the Declaration of Independence applied to the landscape, and Americans got it from the very beginning. The rich Americans got it from the very beginning. And while it offered certain opportunities, shall we say, that tested the fragility of these places on the parts of railroads and others, nonetheless it was permitted to grow into something that has continued to expand.³

Burns’ documentary doesn’t include smaller parks like Central Park or Prospect Park, and certainly not the Tribeca Dog Run. Yet a recent series of events about the small dog run, approximately 92 x 43 feet, between the city (the legal owner) and local residents forms an interesting case study in real-time about the tensions between public and private.

Apparently local residents created a nonprofit organization called the Dog Owners of Tribeca group and, despite not having legal ownership of the park, put a lock on the gate and asked members to apply and pay membership fees, decisions that effectively closed a city-owned space for the use of a small group. Some of the public reactions to the Dog Owners of Tribeca’s actions is the headline run by The New York Post’s: “Snooty dog owners hijacked NYC park for ‘private’ kennel club” ⁴

The use and sale of public land is not just an issue in New York City; another recent, though much violent, example includes the Malheur Refuge Occupation in Harney County, Oregon in 2015⁵ and the protests against the drilling for the Dakota Access Pipeline, which pitted the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against the government⁶.  The recently-released documentary, “Wild Wild Country,” examines the Rajneeshpuram cult in Oregon. The Rajneeshpuram created a commune on sixty thousand acres of land purchased from the state government and attempt to take over local government by busing in homeless people to vote and a bioterrorism attack.⁷

Essential to this class, I think, are the different ways in which “public” and “private” are defined in each case – the Tribeca Dog Run, Malheur Refuge Occupation, the protests at Standing Rock, and the Rajneeshpuram commune. Though the legal ownership of physical land isn’t in dispute, each case asks when private interests outweigh, or are outweighed, by the public good.