Event Ideas (Riots, Revolts, Revolutions)

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2006 April 10-May 1 Immigration Protests

Focus on May 1st, day of multiple & diverse protests across city— relationship of union, church, and community-based organizing efforts.

  • Marnie

2004 RNC

RNC Protest

  • daniel
  • tessza

2000’s Contemporary Worker Organizing in NYC

Service Workers / Immigrant Workers (focused on left-led efforts)

  • harmony (option1)

Anti-gentrification and anti-displacement resistances in Harlem and the question of scales of resistances

  • Charlotte

1977 New York City Blackout

I want to focus on the riots in Brooklyn, on Broadway st. a commercial corridor that runs from williamsburg through bedford stuyvensant and into bushwick. the businesses on this street were looted, stores were burnt and it has never been the same. the majority of those looting were poor black and latinos from the neighborhood (the bedford stuyvensant and bushwick sectors of broadway were hit the worse).

miguelina

1969-now: Stonewall, ACT UP and current radical queer revolt

tracing a narrative of radical politics apart from the mainstream gay/lesbian movement that largely appropriated Stonewall and framed it as its “spark.” How do activists and organizers today think about Stonewall and ACT UP? Is it a part of the way they understand their politics and radical history?

1960s & 1970s Freeway Revolts

Looking at the Jane Jacobs / Robert Moses era freeway revolts

  • nick

1930’s & 1940’s Organizing of the Communist Party / Protesting WWII

Focusing on either the Unemployed Councils, the organizing in Harlem, the CIO, or the United Front. Possibly expanded to include actions against World War II by these or other groups.

  • harmony (option2)
  • nick

1920s’ & 1930’s Rent Strikes and anti-eviction organizing

I am interested in looking at either 1918-20 or the 1930s, and thinking about how rent strikes and anti-eviction organizing were publicly spatialized on the exteriors of buildings and on the city streets, and also how these actions emerged from the everyday life of poor and working class renters.

  • amanda (option 1)
  • Charlotte (interested if no one is interested in contemporary Harlem stuff)

Gary Plan Riots,October 1917(!)

Primarily eastern-European Jewish immigrant school children, spurred on by their parents (who were spurred on by Tammany) rioting in Harlem, the Bronx and Brooklyn over what was to become a city-wide vocational public schooling plan with mandatory military training. Tammany (and socialists and Catholics) vs. a pro-business city Administration. Resulted in a win as the Gary Plan was eventually trashed with the election of Tammany-backed Mayor Hylan. Restoration of a more localized form of public schooling and administration. Topical as we are witnessing the same phenomenon with Bloomberg’s (semi-privatized) radical reorganization of the public school system.
Peter*

1900’s Garment worker organizing

The Uprising of 20,000 and the Great Revolt

  • harmony (option3)

1775 Sons of Liberty

I just watched some of the HBO “mini series event” John Adams. Might be interesting to explore how the revolt in Massachusetts progressed to a full scale Revolution.

Lenape resistance (early 1600s)

I’d be interested in telling the stories of the Lenape people (the people native to Manhattan) who resisted European occupation. There is not a whole lot written on this, but I think it’s a really important story to get at somehow.

  • amanda (option 2)
  • raymond

long term social deviance as form of riot

Im concerned with how riots may not be how revolution happens these days and would like to focus on other long term violent social contestations in the city. mainly the broad psychic revolt against the feeling of lost identity and representation amongst inner city youth which resulted in grafitti and street art protest as a way of dealing with the situation without a singular explosive event.

  • jordan

Global City 1861 and now

I was reading a book chapter that linked Mayor Woods’ 1861 secession proposal with the perceived reluctance of local immigrant ‘whites’ to fight for the Union in the Civil War. The secession would have allowed NYC to continue to benefit from trade with the South. It said that there was actually a lot of support for the war (and thus the nation) in New York City, but that is overshadowed by the Draft Riots in 1863. It might be interesting, especially if we look at the revolutionary war, to see nationhood vs. trade/finance cohere sides in class war.

Schenck v. United States / Protesting WWI in the LES

I’d like to use the Schenck v. U.S. Supreme Court case (famed for Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s “clear and present danger” standard) as a window into the world of radical protest in NYC during World War I.

  • brendan