RABBLE ROUSERS: FRANCES GOLDIN AND THE FIGHT FOR COOPER SQUARE

COMMUNITY DISCUSSION

Board Members from Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association II and Cooper Square Community Land Trust will talk about the past, present, and future of Cooper Square MHA II and CLT. Invited guest, Council Member Carlina Rivera, to be confirmed

DOCUMENTARY FILM OVERVIEW

In 1959 New York City announced a “slum clearance plan” by Robert Moses that would displace 2,400 working-class and immigrant families, and dozens of businesses, from the Cooper Square section of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Guided by the belief that urban renewal should benefit - not displace - residents, a working mother named Frances Goldin and her neighbors formed the Cooper Square Committee (CSC) and launched a campaign to save the neighborhood. Over five decades they fought politicians, developers, white flight, government abandonment, blight, violence, arson, drugs, and gentrification - cyclical forces that have destroyed so many working-class neighborhoods across the US. Through tenacious organizing and hundreds of community meetings, they not only held their ground but also developed a vision of community control. Fifty three years later, they established the state’s first community land trust - a diverse, permanently affordable neighborhood in the heart of the “real estate capital of the world.”

Rabble Rousers: Frances Goldin and the Fight for Cooper Square is a documentary produced by Kathryn Barnier (Producer, Director, Editor), Ryan Joseph (Producer, Director), and Kelly Anderson (Producer and Director). Its premier was in late March 2023 in New York City. 

Event presented by the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association II, the Cooper Square Community Land Trust, Fouth Arts Block (FAB) and NYC Open Streets.