Tompkins Square

The area around Tompkins Squre Park in New York City, USA, was largely derelict and abandoned in the 1970s. During that decade and the 1980s, a network of squats and community gardens grew up there, with a former schoolhouse which activists had renamed El Bohio acting as a sort of informal centre. But in the late 1980s, capital moved to reclaim the neighbourhood, leading to the "Tompkins Square Riots" of 1988-89 and other battles as people tried to defend their homes.

The anarchist anthropologist David Graeber gives some information on these events in his book Direct Democracy (pp 267-8) :

There were points in the 1970s when three-quarters of the area's housing stock was abandoned by landlords, seized by the city for non-payment of taxes. The New York punk scene in fact really emerged from precisely this time and place, and its aura of urban apocalypse and despair had everything to do with the feeling of a city that was literally being allowed to fall into ruin, abandoned to rats, junkies, and arsonists. In reaction, a host of artists, squatters, activists, and new immigrants reclaimed buildings and green spaces, and these, in turn, soon became the object of intense struggles – near warfare, at times – during the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the area started to be gentrified again. The most famous incidents, of course, were the "Tompkins Square Riots" of 1988 and 1989, fought over police efforts to clear out homeless encampments from the park itself. Equally gruelling, though, were the battles over the surrounding squats. There were mysterious fires that the fire department refused to put out, sudden dawn raids by riot cops backed by helicopters and armored personnel carriers. In some cases, there were protracted seiges so bitter that it was years before police attempted to to move on a squat again. The final result was that by 2002, twenty-two squats had been reduced to eleven, though, in that year, the city finally gave in and allowed the remaining squatters to gain title to their homes.

Bibliography

David Graeber, Direct Action. AK Press; Edinburgh, Scotland; 2009.

The following three works are cited by Graeber; I haven't seen them myself:

Abu-Lughold et al, From Urban Village to East Village: The Battle for New York's Lower East Side. Cambridge, Blackwell, 1994.

Christopher Mele, Selling the Lower East Side: Culture, Real Estate, and Resistance in New York City. University of Minnesota Press; Minneapolis; 2000.

Seth Tobocman, War in the Neighborhood: A Graphic Novel. Autonomedia; Brooklyn, New York, USA; 1999.