From In These Times: http://inthesetimes.com/article/15231/a_brief_history_of_squatting/
The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space chronicles decades of Lower East Side occupations.
BY Arun Gupta
August 1, 2013
He had warned me about showing up unannounced, but it’s easy to rationalize such things when you’re jonesing. It was 1999. I stood outside the Lower East Side squat bellowing, “Laaaarr-rreeee.” Making myself a nuisance earned me admission into the building, though the squatters clustered out front looked at me with expressions that read: “Who is this idiot?”
Larry was livid when I stepped into his apartment. “Don’t ever fucking do that again!” he roared. But in an instant his eyes were smiling and he sweetly inquired, “Now, how may I help you?”
Chagrined, I conducted my business and exited. Striding past the German beer garden, I mentally savored my spliff while lamenting the disappearance of the storefront dealers who peddled dime bags with the convenience of a 7-Eleven. That’s routine for denizens of the Lower East Side: to wistfully recall what once was.
Before Rudy Giuliani became mayor in 1994, the neighborhood was alluringly feral. The withdrawal of public services, crime epidemic and abandonment of housing decades earlier had spawned a multiracial movement of neighborhood associations, building takeovers, community gardens and thriving institutions such as the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, the punk-centric ABC No Rio and the housing-rights organization Good Old Lower East Side.
No one misses the muggers, street dealers hawking smack, or addicts openly sticking needles in their arms. Social pathologies were the last line of defense against capital, until Giuliani used his “quality of life” campaign against the homeless, potsmokers, bicyclists and the poor to also sweep away Bohemia.
The transformation from heroin shooters to oyster shooters is now complete, but the past still pokes through the present landscape of faux speakeasies, fin-de-siècle bistros and bucolic gastronomica.
The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS), located in a storefront of C-Squat, is one of 11 surviving squats that have made peace with the city. The mini museum, a tribute to local activism, contains a photographic journey through decades of squatting, gardens, Critical Mass, Reclaim the Streets and Occupy Wall Street. Co-founder Bill DiPaolo calls it “living history,” and it faithfully evokes decades of resistance to a hidden market and its visible fist.
Continue reading at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/15231/a_brief_history_of_squatting/
