As residents of  New York City and patrons of the Brooklyn Museum,  we are appalled that the Brooklyn Museum is planning to host the 6th Annual Brooklyn Real Estate Summit on Tuesday, November 17th, 2015.

The 600+ top real estate owners, developers, and investors who will gather at the Brooklyn Museum are key players in the scourge of gentrification that is destroying working class communities and communities of color across the globe and most acutely here in Brooklyn.  As housing prices soar, families are displaced, communities ripped apart and record numbers of New Yorkers—60,000 or more—are now homeless.

The Brooklyn Museum has long enjoyed a reputation as both a pillar in its community and  as a forward-thinking cultural institution. On your website, you take pride in being part of and serving one of the “most diverse...urban centers in the world,” yet you are hosting a conference whose very aim is to eradicate that diversity from Brooklyn.

We, the undersigned demand the Brooklyn Museum to do right by its borough, by its patrons and by its own mission and cancel the Brooklyn Real Estate Summit.