Darn Good Docs – Rabble Rousers

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. A working mother named Frances Goldin and her neighbors formed the Cooper Square Committee (CSC) and launched a campaign to save the neighborhood.. 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.