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 in America
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The Toxic Reigns of Resentment
Directed by Jurgen Schflechner, Tim van den Hoff • Documentary • 2020 • 52 minutes
The revival of nationalism paired with xenophobia, an increasing tribalization of politics, and a public sphere oscillating between cruelty and sentimentality mark significant parts of our current political Zeitge...
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Us Kids
Directed by Kim A Snyder • Documentary • 2020 • 86 minutes
From Kim A. Snyder, director of the Peabody Award-winning documentary Newtown, comes an insightful, rousing coming-of-age story of a generation of youth leaders determined to take the reins and fight for justice at a most critical time i...
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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...
