Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberta Gold
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Labor Union ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
Alternative Vision ◽  
Racially Mixed ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City ◽  
New Yorkers

This book explores the emergence of New York City's tenant movement as the leading voice for an alternative vision of residence and citizenship against the backdrop of suburban expansion. It considers how tenants responded to the unprecedented housing crisis that faced New Yorkers at the end of World War II and discusses their positions on three public policy questions: public housing, slum clearance, and civil rights. It also examines the tenants' creation of labor-union cooperatives and their fight against “urban renewal”; the struggle over the rent strikes that erupted in Harlem and other ghettos in 1963; and how community politics played out in racially mixed neighborhoods where tenants waged campaigns against redevelopment in the mid-1960s. The book highlights the variety of ways in which New York tenants laid claim to what Marxists have called “the right to the city”: a kind of democratic say over the uses of capital to shape the urban environment and the lives of its inhabitants.

“A Time of Struggle”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberta Gold
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Rent Control ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
World War ◽  
Housing Shortage ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The City ◽  
New Yorkers

This chapter examines the unprecedented housing crisis that erupted in New York City at the end of World War II. At the end of the war, New Yorkers faced their worst housing shortage ever. The housing supply that had already been inadequate for the city's population and contained many substandard tenements had fallen even further behind, as construction virtually ceased during the Great Depression and the war. Meanwhile, demand was rising. Even the worst slum apartments found a market among African Americans who were moving north and discovering that de facto segregation confined them to a few crowded neighborhoods. By 1950, census figures showed that the city required an additional 430,000 dwelling units to properly house its population. This chapter looks at the rise of tenant activists and how they addressed the housing crisis via grassroots mobilizations in concert with leftist and liberal organizations, allowing them not only to retain, but also to institutionalize, the signal achievements of rent control and public housing.

Activism from the Start

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-26
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Garodnick
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
World War I ◽  
York City ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
World War ◽  
City Life ◽  
East Village ◽  
The Town ◽  
New Yorkers

This chapter begins by describing the redbrick buildings that emerge out of the East Village on Manhattan's East Side, the plain and unenticing facades of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village that disguise the unique slice of city life that takes place within. It talks about Stuy Town's idyllic quality that contradicts the tumultuous history that produced this middle-class enclave tucked in the midst of Manhattan. It also explains Stuy Town's roots that are planted in bitter soil as the town was born of government-backed, and subsidized, racist policies and displaced with poor New Yorkers. The chapter tells Stuy Town's story of activism, where elected officials, civil rights leaders, and tenants joined together to fight against corporate greed and unjust policies, and for the rights of New Yorkers. It recounts how Stuy Town emerged from a housing crisis in New York City that began during World War I.

“The Wickedness of the Masses”

2019 ◽  
pp. 8-32
Author(s):  
Lauren C. Santangelo
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
York City ◽  
New York State ◽  
Constitutional Convention ◽  
York State ◽  
Dangerous Place ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Masses ◽  
The City ◽  
New Yorkers

This chapter explores suffrage strategies from 1870 to 1894—from the Manhattan movement’s foundation to the New York State Constitutional Convention campaign. For suffrage leaders like Lillie Devereux Blake and those in the New York City Woman Suffrage League, the city remained a frustrating, if not dangerous, place. These beliefs informed movement tactics in the 1870s and 1880s, as organizers clung to the safety of supporters’ homes or rented commercial halls for meetings. The opportunity presented by the New York State Constitutional Convention in 1894 interrupted this routine and energized the campaign in unprecedented ways. Optimistic activists hoped they could convince delegates to support an amendment to the state constitution, and etiquette-obsessed socialites opened up a suffrage headquarters at the renowned Sherry’s restaurant. Not to be outdone, affluent opponents challenged their suffrage-seeking sisters. While unsuccessful in amending the constitution, the events of 1894 proved to mainstream activists that under the right circumstances wealthy New Yorkers could become outspoken suffrage advocates.

Confessions of a Free Speech Lawyer

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodney A. Smolla
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Task Force ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
History Of ◽  
Gang Rape ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

This personal and frank book offers an insider's view on the violent confrontations in Charlottesville during the “summer of hate.” Blending memoir, courtroom drama, and a consideration of the unhealed wound of racism in our society, the book shines a light on the conflict between the value of free speech and the protection of civil rights. The author has spent his career in the thick of these tempestuous and fraught issues, from acting as lead counsel in a famous Supreme Court decision challenging Virginia's law against burning crosses, to serving as co-counsel in a libel suit brought by a fraternity against Rolling Stone magazine for publishing an article alleging that one of the fraternity's initiation rituals included gang rape. The author has also been active as a university leader, serving as dean of three law schools and president of one and railing against hate speech and sexual assault on US campuses. Well before the tiki torches cast their ominous shadows across the nation, the city of Charlottesville sought to relocate the Unite the Right rally; the author was approached to represent the alt-right groups. Though the author declined, he came to wonder what his history of advocacy had wrought. Feeling unsettlingly complicit, the author joined the Charlottesville Task Force, and realized that the events that transpired there had meaning and resonance far beyond a singular time and place. Why, he wonders, has one of our foundational rights created a land in which such tragic clashes happen all too frequently?

The Mysterious Victory of the Newsboys: The Grand Duke Theatre's 1874 Challenge to the Theatre Licensing Law

2013 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-80
Author(s):  
Michelle Granshaw
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Juvenile Delinquents ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Financial Power ◽  
House Of Refuge ◽  
The City ◽  
New Yorkers ◽  
Legal Battle

In 1874, a group of newsboys took on some of the wealthiest, most respected, and most powerful New Yorkers and emerged victorious. The Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents, a philanthropic organization that worked to guard public morals and championed Christian values, faced two challenges that year over the city's theatre licensing fee. Its prominent members and their financial power made the organization a formidable force in local city matters. As a result of the 1872 Act to Regulate Places of Public Amusement in the City of New York, theatre managers were required to pay $500 to the city for an operating license. The city gave the fees to the society, which it used to operate the city's House of Refuge. The society believed that theatres corrupted the city's youth and that, therefore, the theatres should help fund youth reform efforts. In its legal proceedings against theatres without licenses, the society typically targeted cheap entertainment establishments in poor neighborhoods. These playhouses “werenotparticularly powerful and presumably would not put up too strenuous a legal battle.”

Last Subway

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Mark Plotch
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
East Side ◽  
Transit System ◽  
Construction Period ◽  
Transit Services ◽  
Subway System ◽  
To Come ◽  
The City ◽  
New Yorkers

This book is the fascinating and dramatic story behind New York City's struggle to build a new subway line under Second Avenue and improve transit services all across the city. The book reveals why the city's subway system, once the best in the world, is now too often unreliable, overcrowded, and uncomfortable. It explains how a series of uninformed and self-serving elected officials have fostered false expectations about the city's ability to adequately maintain and significantly expand its transit system. Since the 1920s, New Yorkers have been promised a Second Avenue subway. When the first of four planned phases opened on Manhattan's Upper East Side in 2017, subway service improved for tens of thousands of people. Riders have been delighted with the clean, quiet, and spacious new stations. Yet these types of accomplishments will not be repeated unless New Yorkers learn from their century-long struggle. The book offers valuable lessons in how governments can overcome political gridlock and enormous obstacles to build grand projects. However, it is also a cautionary tale for cities. It reveals how false promises, redirected funds, and political ambitions have derailed subway improvements. Given the ridiculously high cost of building new subways in New York and their lengthy construction period, the Second Avenue subway (if it is ever completed) will be the last subway built in New York for generations to come.

“The Child Is Never Basically Bad”

2019 ◽  
pp. 13-38
Author(s):  
Carl Suddler
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
York City ◽  
Juvenile Justice System ◽  
Youth Crime ◽  
World War ◽  
Criminal Behaviors ◽  
Depression Era ◽  
The City

This chapter focuses on the juvenile justice system and its related efforts to address youth crime in New York City before World War II. From the 1930s to the onset of the war, there was a nationwide tension about how to address crime. In New York City, this debate had racial, political, and social implications that persisted beyond the period. On one side, there were those, such as New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who believed crime in the city was rampant and that an increased carceral sovereignty, including preventive policing, was critical to establish order. On the other side, there were those, such as Jane M. Bolin, who rejected such logic and aspired to advance a neo-Progressive rationale that emphasized the correction of social ills contributing to criminal behaviors—regardless of the numbers. This chapter provides a sketch of Harlem during the Depression era, with an emphasis on black youths and various crime-prevention effortsthey encountered.

The VC Office and the Concentration of Capital

2020 ◽  
pp. 104-139
Author(s):  
Sharon Zukin
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Venture Capitalists ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Investment Funds ◽  
Bases Of Power ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Business Establishment ◽  
The City

Profiling New York–based venture capitalists and VC firms that have been established in the city since the early 2000s, the chapter examines their risky but privileged perch between Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Interviews with VCs are juxtaposed with the post–World War II history of venture capital as a distinctive form of investment and management. The VCs’ equally distinctive commitment to New York is then contrasted with the increasing geographical dispersal of their investment funds to other regions of the world. Meanwhile, the integration of some corporate and VC members of the tech “community” into New York’s business establishment suggests the formation of a local tech-financial elite, updating C. Wright Mills’s critique of the institutional bases of power.

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