Post-Screening Q&As: Fri Mar 24 at 7pm with filmmakers Kelly Anderson, Kathryn Barnier, Ryan Joseph and Dave Powell. Sat Mar 25 at 6pm with filmmaker Dave Powell, Jasmine Gomez (former Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association II co-op Board President), Tito Delgado (This Land is Ours CLT) and Monxo Lopez (South Bronx CLT/Cooper Square CLT). Sun Mar 26 at 5pm with filmmaker Dave Powell, Dey Del Rio (New Economy Project/NYC Community Land Initiative, Tito Delgado (This Land is Ours CLT) and Monxo Lopez (South Bronx CLT/Cooper Square CLT). Mon Mar 27 at 7pm with filmmaker Ryan Joseph, Frances Goldin's daughter, Reeni Goldin and President of Cooper Square Committee Board, Joyce Ravitz. Tue Mar 28 at 7pm with filmmakers Kelly Anderson and Ryan Joseph. Wed Mar 29 at 7pm with filmmaker/producer Kathryn Barnier and Val Orselli, This Land is Ours CLT / former Executive Director of Cooper Square.
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."