Reblogged
Reblogged
Rosario Dawson's family as squatters in Alphabet City, Manhattan (1986)
The East Village had a large squatter movement in the 1970s and 80s. Low-income residents took over years-long abandoned city-owned buildings and renovated apartments for themselves. There were other self-help housing movements happening simultaneously around NYC, like Banana Kelly in the Bronx and ACORN in Brooklyn. The movement in Lower Manhattan ended around 1995 with large-scale NYPD raids, forcefully evicting tenants. Rosario Dawson's family was one of those residents. Listen to their story.
