Campaigns

For over 130 years, the park‘s pavilions have served as a playspace for children, a bandstand, a reviewing stand, a speakers’ rostrum, and as a focal point for labor rallies and social protests.  Despite this illustrious history, the Union Square Partnership Business Improvement District (BID) is attempting to turn the pavilion into an upscale restaurant. Demanding transparency and consideration of our communities' needs, Union Square Not for Sale is a campaign based in the belief that parks are for people, not for profit.

Coney Island is the land of the free and the home of the freaks, Playground of the People, The Poor Man's Riviera – the developer Joe Sitt and Thor Equities have been buying up property there for years and have big plans for development. The City of New York, led by petit tyrant Mike Bloomberg, has a brutal rezone in the works that would reduce the amusement  area to just 9 acres. King Neptune and Queen Mermaid join the battle to Save Coney Island.

The East Village is internationally recognized as a site where flourishing shops and culture are seriously threatened by a rapid influx of chain stores.  Currently, between 2nd Avenue and Avenue D and Houston Street and 14th Street there are less than 10 chain stores, making it one of the last few commercial sites in Manhattan where independently owned business predominate. The struggles to defend the East Village therefore set precedents for communities around the world.  In protecting and strengthening neighborhood diversity, we build critical case studies that emboldens healthy neighborhoods everywhere to fight their own extinction.