The history of the Lower East Side Alliance, the EV/LES rezoning and the Chinatown Working Group, in 34 posts. Post 1: the origins

 A history of the Lower East Side Alliance, the EV/LES rezoning, the CWG and BAN

The history of the Chinatown Working Group and its origins from the Lower East Side Alliance has never been told from the inside. Most scholarly treatments have relied on print news media and Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side member testimonies, but not from the origins in LESA. This document is intended to address that lacuna as well as to provide at least one view of CWG's history outside the ranks of the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side.

I’ve chosen to alter all the names of the participants except for the names of the holders of public government or quasi government office and high-profile non profit directors, whose anonymity I cannot protect in recounting the history since their role and their position was public, and in any case I take it as a given that as public officials they chose to be in the public eye. In taking on their role they understood and accepted scrutiny of the public and its critical eye and word. The other participants in the action of this history will recognize themselves and their colleagues in the story and may freely comment on the blog to correct, amend or otherwise comment without sacrificing their anonymity.  

I will attempt to recount the story exclusively through my own eyes – what I saw myself, heard, and did. Where I have drawn conclusions beyond what I witnessed myself, I will try to indicate the conjectural nature of those conclusions no matter how obvious or definitive they may be. I cannot guarantee a perfection of memory, but I can at least distinguish between memories of what I witnessed and memories of my own interpretations of what I saw. This will be then a highly personal account. It begins with the formation of the Lower East Side Alliance (LESA).

Quick chronology of LESA:

1. wishing to resist the commercial gentrification of the the East Village and the Lower East Side by nightlife, local residents appeal to the local community board District Manager who rebuffs and rejects their appeal

2. local residents organize a town hall by themselves against the opposition from the CB

3. the town hall, arranged in six short weeks, draws a capacity audience of over 300

4. CD2 activists take up the resistance with an elected officials forum

5. CB3 turns around to join the resistance

6. following two murders related to local bars, the State Liquor Authority (SLA) agrees to a “summit” with CD2 and CD3 members resulting in a liquor license moratorium and the appointment of a city resident on the SLA Board

7. the moratorium ends with the 2008 financial collapse, the state seeking to boost commerce with nightlife that tends to thrive during high unemployment. 

Prior to 2000, the Lower East Side was unrecognizable from what it is today. By “Lower East Side” I mean the old use of it which denoted an originally working-class immigrant ghetto stretching from 14th Street to the Brooklyn Bridge east of the Bowery, and which, in the 20th century, became a neighborhood generally characterized by its poverty, old and often abandoned tenements, and neglect. In the latter half of the 20th century, the area was home to a variety of ethnic or marginzalized peoples including Puerto Riquenos, Chinese immigrants first, second and third generation, artists and self-styled artists, substance abusers and black market substance vendors, indigent Vietnam veterans, ex-convicts, street sex workers and former street sex workers and transvestites (this before “trans” entered the lexicon). With typically biased social and racist hierarchical perceptions, white substance abusers often called themselves and were called “artists” while their black counterparts were referred to as “junkies”. 

I moved there in 1978. Life in the slum was not easy. Tenements were abandoned or burnt by their landlords, others left without heat or hot water, rent strike banners could be seen across many buildings. The space in general was unmonetized. Ownership played little role, leaving the space to those who actually occupied it. This meant almost no commerce, but also a degree of freedom and fluidity unavailable anywhere else in the dense urban environment. People moved into spaces including storefronts without asking permission. Residents shifted from apartment to apartment, building to building without lease or legal recognition. The debris of demolished buildings were left for the taking. 

After 2000, gentrification and development picked up rapidly and noticeably. I had a lot of time on my hands (about which more later), and began to think about how to save some of the unique character and freedom of this uncommodified oasis in the city. In retrospect, gentrification had already spread, saving the neighborhood from it was too late, and the force of commercialization was too great to resist in any case. But hindsight is 20/20; standing in the weeds it’s not so clear. 

As it happened, there was a highly contested city council primary election in 2004 with a great many candidates, some of them local citizens willing to listen to local voices. An issue of concern to many was the proliferation of nightlife driving up commercial rents and driving out the old, local commercial operations – bike shops, copy shops and similar local services. It occurred to me that organizing a resistance to commercial gentrification would be an easy task. Local residents were not just unhappy about the bars replacing local services, they were troubled by the bars' noise and disruption of the street. When people feel an immediate problem in the quality of their life or in their pocket, that’s when they are most likely to respond actively. It seemed the ideal focus for a protest campaign that might bring residents together to fight against the tide of upscale transformation from a distinctive and unique place of freedom and counterculture to yet another familiar cookie-cutter mainstream world of monetization, ownership, control and conformity.

I started by drafting a letter addressed to the candidates which I planned to send to the local newspaper, The East Villager. First, I’d gather signatures for the letter from the local block associations. I don’t remember how I managed to gather the 55 signatures that eventually signed, but 55 seemed plenty and probably I had exhausted my resources of signers, so I sent it with those 55. The letter asked the candidates to respond to our gentrification concerns. The Villager published it.

The signatories became the basis of an email network which I sent notices to regularly and frequently. about local concerns, political events and such. I called the network LES Residents for Responsible Development. The purpose of the name was to give some air of legitimacy to what was really just a local protest movement. Several candidates did respond to the Villager letter, especially and most enthusiastically "Cathy" (I've altered the name). In time, she would become a central member of what turned into the LESA, the Lower East Side Alliance. 

Meanwhile, I went to a local tenants advocacy non profit, Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES) to see what help I might have from them. At the time there was a newly hired activist, Shelly (I've altered the name). She took an interest in my concerns. She suggested we bring the issue of restraining bars to the community board. Shelly arranged a meeting with Susan, the CB3 District Manager. The District manager is an unelected salaried position charged with facilitating the CB operations. It would turn out that Susan had taken far more of a role than facilitation or management, as was obvious from our meeting.