GGR382 NYC Field Course Itinerary 2016 Monday September 5

Course participants arrive in NYC

The course convenes at 4pm at the hostel entrance

Walk around Long Island City

Evening: free after 6:00pm

Tuesday September 6

The course convenes at 9am out front of hostel

Morning: West Village

Lunch: Chelsea Market

2pm: Chinatown with CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities

3:30pm: Lower East Side

Evening: free after 6pm

Wednesday September 7

The course convenes at 9am out front of hostel

Morning: Fulton Street Mall, Atlantic Yards

Lunch: Smith / Court Street

Afternoon: Gowanus & Red Hook

Evening: free after 6:30pm

Thursday September 8

The course convenes at 9am out front of hostel

7 train to Jackson Heights

11am – Neha Gautam and Queens Neighbourhoods United

Lunch: Jackson Heights

3pm: South Bronx with Melanie Gleason

Evening: East Harlem with Andrew Padilla

Friday September 9

The course convenes at 9am out front of hostel

Morning: Inclusionary Zoning & Effect on NYC Neighborhoods of Color with Movement to

Protect the People and Community Action for Safe Apartments (CASA), all at CUNY

Lunch: TBA

Afternoon: Debrief and course wrap-up in Central Park

Evening: free after 4pm

Emergency contact in NYC Deborah Cowen: 416-795-8987

Alexis Mitchell: 347-421-9747

Monday September 5: Long Island City

The course convenes at 4pm at the hostel We will walk around Long Island City to familiarize ourselves with the landscape, stopping at some

significant sites “Manhattan and Brooklyn may be enjoying building booms, but nowhere in New York are more housing developments springing up than in Long Island City... The growth in Long Island City’s property market is being fuelled by its rising profile as a location for culture and nightlife. Formerly desolate corners of the district, such as Hunter’s Point and Dutch Kills, now boast gleaming highrises, hip bars and, since 2014, two Michelin-starred restaurants. The neighbourhood ranks among New York’s most gentrified.” (Financial Times, 2016)

“Long a gritty industrial wilderness, Long Island City, located one stop from Manhattan via six different trains, began the inevitable march to gentrification in 1997 with the construction of the Citylights co-op. Since then, an array of new developments (mostly rentals and condominiums) have followed and many more are under construction. LIC has been known for years as an affordable destination for artists, although—let's face it—the artists are all going to be priced out sooner rather than later. One great indicator of how the neighborhood is changing: graffiti mecca 5 Pointz, which houses a number of artists' studios, is being torn down next year to make way for—what else—high-rise rental buildings.” (Curbed, 2012) "Long Island City, which has seemed to exist only to feed rail and roads to Manhattan, now is convulsively transforming into the kind of opportunistic urban mashup that resembles the new skyscraper cities of Asia and the Middle East as much as New York. Poking up amidst older buildings, luxury high-rises attract criticism. Considering they are advertised as luxury product and command spectacular views, the towers, enabled by recent high-density rezoning, could not be lazier exercises in developer cynicism. With proportions ranging from merely dull to ungainly, they advertise mainly their cost-cutting compromises." (Planetizen, 2016)

Tuesday September 6: Lower Manhattan

The course convenes at 9am out front of the hostel Morning: West Village Jane Jacobs’ home, Stonewall Memorial, Washington Sq park [West Village] Lunch: Chelsea Market Afternoon: Chinatown & Lower East Side 2pm - CAAAV (55 Hester Street New York, NY 10002) 3:30pm – Alexis leads LES walk

“The point of cities is multiplicity of choice.” – Jane Jacobs, 1961

“[Death and Life of Great American Cities] represented the first liberal attack on the liberal idea of urban renewal.” -NY Times, 2006

It is hard to think of a starker contrast than that between Moses modernism and Jacobs localism. Yet the standoff between Jacobs and Moses only ever sparred two separate wings of the middle class concerning how to build and rebuild the city for people of greater rather than lesser class privilege.” - Smith and Larson, 2007

“When drag queens were arrested, what degradation there was. I remember the first time I got arrested, I wasn't even in full drag. I was walking down the street and the cops just snatched me. We always felt that the police were the real enemy. We expected nothing better than to be treated like we were animals-and we were… In 1969, the night of the Stonewall riot, was a very hot, muggy night. We were in the Stonewall [bar] and the lights came on. We all stopped dancing. The police came in. They had gotten their payoff earlier in the week. But Inspector Pine came in-him and his morals squad-to spend more of the government's money. We were led out of the bar and they cattled us all up against the police vans. The cops pushed us up against the grates and the fences. People started throwing pennies, nickels, and quarters at the cops. And then the bottles started. And then we finally had the morals squad barricaded in the Stonewall building, because they were actually afraid of us at that time. They didn't know we were going to react that way. We were not taking any more of this shit. We had done so much for other movements. It was time.” – Sylvia Rivera (interviewed in 1998 by Leslie Feinberg)

Chelsea Market/ HighLine “When today’s urban sophicates aren’t harkening back to a bygone industrial age, they’re dreaming of an agricultural Eden full of strapping yeoman farmers in overalls and small town folk gossiping around the wood-burning stove at the general store. Check out the names of the shops in Chelsea Market: Ronnybrook Dairy (ice cream), Dickson’s Farmstand Meats (butcher shop), Friedman’s Lunch (restaurant), Lucy’s Whey (cheeses), and The Filling Station (olive oil, vinegar, and craft beer — don’t ask). Everything is everywhere declared “artisanal,” “farm-grown,” or “handcrafted,” all of it no doubt marketed by college-educated children of the American suburbs who wouldn’t know how to milk a cow if the directions were printed on the udder.” – Bourne, 2012 “What you make of it is largely determined by what you think of its underlying subject, which in this case is gentrification. If you are part of the community pushed out by the new wealth gentrification inevitably brings, then no doubt the High Line’s precious attention to symbols of decay and ruin — all those meticulously landscaped weeds — will seem calculated to piss you off. If, on the other hand, you are part of a gentrifying wave, as so much of young New York now is, then the High Line will seem to be singing from your hymnal, and you will revel in the distressed steel girders and exposed brick walls.” – Bourne, 2012

CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities works to build grassroots community power across diverse poor and working class Asian immigrant and refugee communities in New York City. We were founded in 1986 by Asian working class women alarmed by the spike of hate violence on Asian communities and its root causes stemming from institutional racism in the United States. Through our organizaing model of basebuilding, leadership development, campaigns, alliances, and organizational development- we organize Asian communities to fight for institutional change and participates in a broader movement towards racial, gender, and economic justice.

Wednesday September 7: Brooklyn

The course convenes at 9am out front of hostel Morning: Brooklyn heights Lunch: Court / Smith Streets

Afternoon: Gowanus and Red Hook

“Brooklyn is home to four of the country’s most rapidly changing neighborhoods as measured by racial composition. In Bed-Stuy, for example, the white population has grown by over 600% over the past decade. Meanwhile, the Center for Urban Research estimates that Brooklyn lost 50,000 African Americans to economic displacement between 2000 and 2010.[6] Red Hook has lost 17% of its Black population and 14.4% of its Hispanic population over the same period. As people are priced out of the neighborhood, block-by-block census records show that the Black and Brown population of Red Hook has quickly receded away from the main commercial strip of Van Brunt street and is now predominantly concentrated in the Red Hook Houses.[7] The old Puerto Rican community of the waterfront has vanished, displaced by affluence and whiteness.”- Glück, 2013

“Much of the tension has crystallized around a mammoth concrete warehouse at 160 Imlay Street that a Manhattan group bought in 2000 for $7.2 million and for which it received a zoning variance allowing conversion into 144 condominiums… But the project, supported, has been mired by stop-work orders resulting from a two-year-old lawsuit brought by opponents including more than 80 local businesses, as well as Mr. O'Connell. ‘Imlay Street could be the tipping point that affects all the zoning in Red Hook,’ Mr. O'Connell said. ‘You pay $1 million for an apartment, you don't want to hear trucks loading or unloading early in the morning.’ – from NY Times, 2006

The site’s developers – Est4te four - on 160 Imlay: “We think this will be a wonderful opportunity to regenerate a significant part of the area and build a strong creative community — rediscovering the industrial soul of the area with artistic craftsmen, and mixing this with media companies and recording studios will diversify and foster collaboration and inspiration within the community.” Source: http://ny.curbed.com/tags/160-imlay

Thursday September 8: Jackson Heights, South Bronx, East

Harlem

The course convenes at 9am out front of hostel

7 train to Jackson Heights

11am – Neha Gautam and Queens Neighbourhoods United (meet at ‘Diversity Plaza’ on 37th

between 73rd street and 74th street)

Lunch: Jackson Heights

3pm: South Bronx with Melanie Gleason

Evening: East Harlem with Andrew Padilla

Neha Gautam is an educator, film-maker, and community organizer. Neha was born in India and lived in both Ethiopia and Alaska before moving to New York City at the age of 12. She earned a dual BA in History and International Studies at the City College of New York (CUNY). She began pursuing photography and video in 2006 at the International Center of Photography (ICP). Neha has over 12 years of community organizing experience. She is a documentarian who enjoys bringing visibility to the South Asian diaspora as well as the social movements in and around Queens, New York. She believes that media is a powerful tool for creating social change and giving voice to communities living marginally and in exile. Queens Neighborhoods United (QNU) is a community-based organization made up of members from Jackson Heights, Corona, and Elmhurst. QNU believes in establishing democratic control over land-use, policing, and immigration policies that directly impact us, our families, homes, businesses, places of work, and neighborhoods. Through grassroots organizing, leadership development, advocacy, and community education, QNU builds power to fight criminalization and displacement in our communities. Melanie Gleason is a licensed public interest attorney who is currently doing pro-bono legal work around the U.S. Melanie has been a community organizer for over a decade and focusses much of her work around immigrants rights. She is currently working with a community legal clinic in the South Bronx.

Andrew Padilla - Lifelong East Harlem resident and producer of the film “El Barrio Tours: Gentrification in East Harlem”

Friday September 11: Midtown Manhattan The course convenes at 9am out front of hostel Morning: Housing panel with Rob Robinson at the CUNY Grad Center Lunch: TBA We will pick up lunch and eat on the lawn in Central Park (weather permitting) Afternoon: Debrief and course wrap-up in Central Park

ROB ROBINSON is a Special Adviser to the Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights. He is co-founder of the Take Back the Land National Movement and a member of the US Human Rights Network. Rob spent two and a half years, homeless in Miami and ten months in a New York City homeless shelter. He eventually escaped his cycle of homelessness and has been in the housing movement in New York City since 2007. In the fall of 2009, Rob was chosen to be chairperson for the first-ever official visit of a UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing. Rob has worked with homeless populations in Budapest Hungary and Berlin Germany. He is connected with housing movements in South Africa and Brazil. He is a member of a social justice media collective which produces and airs a monthly radio show over WBAI in New York City called Global Movements Urban Struggles. Rob has generously organized the following panel discussion for us at CUNY: Homelessness, Housing and it's relationship to Inclusionary Zoning in NYC. Andrew Padilla - Lifelong East Harlem resident and producer of the film “El Barrio Tours: Gentrification in East Harlem” Alicia Boyd - Brooklyn resident and founder of the Movement to Protect the People Members of Community Action for Safe Apartments (CASA), The Bronx, New York