NEW YORK
Rally protests Charas/El Bohio center eviction
By G.
Dunkel
New York
With spirit, a jazz band, drums galore, puppets from the
Czechoslovakian American Puppet Theatre, wolf masks, dancing
costumes, Little League uniforms, bicycles from the
Recycle-a-Bike program, and the enthusiastic support of the
Service Employees Local 32B-32J Summer Youth Brigade, on July
28 some 300 people marched from Union Square to the Charas/El
Bohio community center on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
Charas faces eviction by a greedy real-estate speculator
named Gregg Singer. In 1998 Singer bought the community
center, occupied and renovated by community members for over
30 years, from the city. Ever since, he has been trying to
put Charas and all the services it provides to the working
and poor people of the Lower East Side on the street.
Charas grew out of a successful struggle to build
community gardens in the 1970s. For 20 years or more,
real-estate speculators have been trying to turn the
neighborhood into a Gold Coast for the affluent and drive the
extremely diverse working-class community away.
Institutions like Charas have fought back, drawing a
surprising amount of support. The Vieques Support Campaign,
Lower East Side Tenants Union, WBAI in exile all use the
facilities Charas supplies and took part in the march.
Politicians like Bronx Borough President and mayoral
candidate Fernando Ferrer, City Councilmember Margarita
Lopez, whose district is the neighborhood, and U.S. Rep.
Nydia M. Velázquez all spoke at rallies for Charas.
Lopez and Velázquez took part in the march.
Community organizer Miguel Maldonado, who co-chaired the
rally at Union Square, summed up the general feeling:
"Buildings are for people, not for profits. We have to keep
up the struggle."
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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