Tompkins Square Park

Q. Sakamaki
Tompkins Square Park
Photographs: Q. Sakamaki
Publisher: powerHouse books
120 pages
Year: 2008
ISBN: 978-1-57687-451-6
Price: 60 €
Comments: Hardcover, 26 x 20,9cm, b&w photographs. In very good condition. Text in English.
You better hold on, something’s happening here
You better hold on, meet you in Tompkins Square
—Lou Reed, “Hold On” (1989)
Summer 1988. Tompkins Square Park, which long served as a makeshift home for the homeless and a center for social unrest, erupted in violence when the New York City Police and hundreds of rioters clashed over ideological differences. Residents of the Lower East Side, historically home to diverse immigrant communities but facing gentrification, united to protest the 1 a.m. curfew the city was attempting to enforce on the park, in effect banishing the homeless and closing off many areas of the park that were once public. Over the humid night of August 6, protestors carrying signs that read “Gentrification is Class War” and chanting “It’s our fucking park, you don’t live here!” clashed with police armed with riot gear. The violence lasted until the next morning.
The August 6 Police Riot—so called because the consensus was that the police overreacted to the protestors—and subsequent Tompkins Square Park riots were the manifestation of a larger concern of the over-gentrification of the Lower East Side. The Lower East Side has a long history of liberal, and at times radical, movements that attracted artists, intellectuals, anarchists, activists, squatters, immigrants, and even exiles. Many in the community, unlike in other more passive communities facing gentrification, stood up and worked together with the homeless to protect housing rights and human rights, as well as their own lifestyle. By 1991, the estimated 300 homeless people living in Tompkins Square Park were gone and the park was forcefully closed for renovations. Twenty years after the police riots, the park now boasts one of the best dog runs in New York City.














more books tagged »new york« | >> see all
-
Berenice Abbott
by Berenice Abbott
Euro 120 -
Police (dedicated)
by Jaydie Putterman & Rosalynde Lesur
sold -
The Block
by Herb Goro
sold -
New York New York (FACSIMILE EDT)
by Lörinczy György
sold -
127th@StNick
by Nadja Groux
sold -
One last goodbye (Signed)
by Jehsong Baak
Euro 50
more books tagged »powerhouse books« | >> see all
-
Boxing
by Larry Fink
sold -
So80s: A Photographic Diary of a Decade
by Patrick McMullan
sold -
BELGRADE BELONGS TO ME
by BOOGIE
sold
more books tagged »protest« | >> see all
-
Para verte mejor, américa latina (Signed)
by Paolo Gasparini
sold -
Okinawa
by Shomei Tomatsu
sold -
Sanrizuka - Moeru Hokuso daichi / Document 1966-1971 (WITH OBI)
by Tadao Mitome
Euro 300 -
OO! Shinjuku
by Shomei Tomatsu
sold -
CHRONICLE
by Shilo Group
sold -
Provoke : Between Protest and Performance : Photography in Jap...
by Provoke group
sold
more books tagged »poverty« | >> see all
-
industrial zone
by Dolf Toussaint
Euro 120 -
Lukten av thinner (The smell of thinner)
by Halil
sold -
Kensington Blues
by Jeffrey Stockbridge
Euro 100 -
La Habana. Visión interior
by Juan Manuel Díaz Burgos
sold -
FAUBOURG (SIGNED)
by Manuel Gipouloux
sold -
TERRE D'EXIL
by Jean-François Joly
sold
Books from the Virtual Bookshelf josefchladek.com