Get your popcorn and let’s talk about the solidarity economy & arts, space, and more in New York City. For the series kick off of ART.COOP’s “Art Worlds We Want” at CTHQ, we screened the powerful film, “Rabble Rousers: Frances Goldin and the Fight for Cooper Square,” and talked to two organizers featured in the film who have been deeply involved in the fight to transform Cooper Square into the community-controlled land that it is today in downtown – Tito Delgado and Valerio Orselli. We also met Emilie Miyauchi from the Cooperative Economics Alliance of New York City. She gave us a lay of the landscape of the solidarity economy movement in New York City. There was popcorn, time for Q&A with our panel and the opportunity to connect.

About “Rabble Rousers: Frances Goldin and the Fight for Cooper Square” 

In 1959, the City of New York announced a “slum clearance plan” by Robert Moses that would displace over 2,400 families and dozens of businesses in the Cooper Square section of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Guided by the belief that urban renewal should benefit, not displace local residents, a working mother named Frances Goldin, along with her neighbors, formed the Cooper Square Committee (CSC) and launched a campaign to save the neighborhood.  The film tells the remarkable story of the community’s successful battle for housing rights through the eyes of unflinching radical activist, Frances Goldin. Goldin’s legacy is one of pragmatism in neighborhood planning. Her initial battle with Robert Moses was only the start. She and her community fought five New York City Mayors, the real estate industry, and they endured several social  scourges that decimated their neighborhood. However, after 53 years of grueling battles, Frances Goldin and the CSC  found their salvation in an innovative new legal tool called the Community Land Trust. Today the Cooper Square Community Land Trust gives residents control of the land that is proposed for development in their neighborhood. This legal tool had been wielded to create truly affordable housing for Cooper Square residents. Today Cooper Square stands as the only racially diverse and affordable area in NYC  for low- and moderate-income residents, right in the middle of the most gentrified section of Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

Watch the trailer here

About Cooperative Economics Alliance of NYC (CEANYC)
The Cooperative Economics Alliance of New York City (CEANYC) strengthens and expands community-led, democratically-controlled initiatives — from worker, financial and consumer co-ops to community land trusts and gardens, mutual housing, and low-income housing co-ops. Our goal is to build an economy based on values of social and racial justice, ecological sustainability, cooperation, mutualism, and democracy.

Instagram: @gocoopnyc

Speakers

Emilie Miyauchi educator and organizer at CEANYC 

Tito Delgado Board member of Cooper Square Committee and This Land is Ours Community Land Trust

Valerio Orselli founding member of Cooper Square Community Land Trust and This Land is Ours

More about the Art Worlds We Want Series

This event is the kick-off to Art.coop’s series “Art World’s We Want” at CTHQ, Creative Time’s new gathering space supporting artists working at the intersection of art and politics as they continue to plot, orchestrate, and recharge from cultural, political and social organizing work.

Why are artists on strike right now? What do we want instead? How are artists using their collective power to resist dominant systems of exploitation and build what we need to support our creative practices with care at the center? Over the course of 10 weeks, Art.coop will be holding space at CTHQ for “Art Worlds We Want.”

We believe it’s clear that artists need an economy rooted in solidarity if we are to overcome our status as exploited workers. Likewise, the solidarity economy movement needs artists if it is to prevail. We believe that culture—visual arts, music, culinary arts, literature, theater, television, Web content, and more—is the key to sparking the collective imagination of what’s actually possible when there is community control of our economy, culture, and spirits. There have never been radical movements without radical creators at the helm— we need artists to lead us towards reimagining, resisting, and building.

Join Art.coop in person at CTHQ for collective inquiry, discussion, network building, and practical ways to shift from individualism towards solidarity in your lifestyle and creative practice:

September 30 – Resist & Build: Land & Space in NYC

October 14 – Resist & Build: Visual Arts & Music

November 18 – Resist & Build in Fashion

December 9 – Resist & Build in Journalism, Entertainment & Media

*Office Hours with Art.coop @ Creative Time (CTHQ) – weekly, Tuesdays from 11am – 3pm, beginning on October 17th until December 5th*

About Art.coop

Art.coop is a hub for artists who are fed up with the current system who want to connect, get money, ideas, and tools to strengthen their communities. They exist to grow an arts/culture movement within the solidarity economy by centering artists and cultural workers who make systems-change irresistible. Art.coop core organizers are Ebony Gustave, Natalia Linares, Caroline Woolard, Robin Bean Crane, Marina Lopez, and Sruti Suryanarayanan.