Rabble Rousers: Frances Goldin and the Fight for Cooper Square
Democracy and Its Discontents
•
1h 23m
Directed by Kelly Anderson, Kathryn Barnier, Ryan Joseph • Documentary • With Frances Goldin, Tito Delgado • 2022 • 82 minutes
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.”
Up Next in Democracy and Its Discontents
-
Welcome to Leith
Directed by Michael Beach Nichols & Christopher K. Walker • Documentary • 2015 • 86 minutes
Welcome to Leith chronicles the attempted takeover of a small town in North Dakota by notorious white supremacist Craig Cobb. As his behavior becomes more threatening, tensions soar, and the residents des...
-
This Is Our Land
Directed by Lucas Belvaux • Drama • With Émilie Dequenne, André Dussollier, Guillaume Gouix • 2018 • 114 minutes
Marine Le Pen was defeated in the French election that brought Emmanuel Macron to power, but her far right-wing party, with its nationalist, anti-immigrant platform, lives on to feed...
-
An Act of Conscience
Directed by Robbie Leppzer • Documentary • With Martin Sheen, Randy Kehler, Pete Seeger • 1997 • 90 minutes
How far are you willing to go to stand up for your deepest beliefs? For Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner of Colrain, Massachusetts, their life-long commitment to pacifism led them to risk los...
