Frontier Post

The “frontier myth” discussed in the Smith reading helped me greatly to understand how the culture of the East Village was marketed to developers and buyers, it’s “personality” commodified to attract and justify gentrification in the neighborhood. This sort of miniature wave of manifest destiny relied heavily on an irresistible motif pushed in the media, the notion of rediscovering New York, the underlying desire to “tame the wild city.” While this story is historically commonplace, is is interesting to see it play out in such a relatively miniscule area of land. Developers found ways to create a “new social geography,” in which culture and place are synonymous, turning the small Manhattan neighborhood into a piece of “geographical performance art.”

These texts gave a clearer picture of the two perspectives at hand: the ‘indigenous’ neighborhood population and squatters, and the developers and wealthier members of society. While the wealthy arguably frame themselves as modern cowboys and conquerors of new and uncivilized lands, there is an unexpected yet somewhat pervasive theme of the squatters and protestors comparing their situation with Russian history. Local residents described actions of police during  “class war” at Tompkins Square Park as “cossack-like” (Smith). One envisions something akin to the rows of cossack soldiers descending the Odessa steps in Battleship Potemkin, police batons replacing bayonets. At the same time in an interview in the Starecheski reading, a resident at the (unofficially occupied) Thirteenth Street building described some residents as having a Communist rationality: “Represented in the public eye by John the Communist, these squatters explained their occupation as a rejection of private property, a taking of land in the service of building a revolutionary movement.” Later, in Stanley Cohen’s recounting of the trial in which Elliot Wilk claimed that the The Thirteenth Street Tenants Association owns the buildings, Cohen recalls reactions such as “What is this, fucking post-Tsarist Russia?” Of course, those against Wilk’s decision made this analogy in a negative light. Nevertheless, I found it worth noting that historical events such as the Russian Revolution were made relevant to contemporary class struggles in the East Village.

Mayor Dinkins allegation that Tompkins Square Park had been stolen from the community by the homeless is telling of the ways in which gentrification was justified in the East Village. The accounts documented by Abu-Lughod show the government’s consistent decisions to turn a blind eye to local community boards. Those in power chose to ignore the fact that the city had failed to cope with its homeless population (Smith). This way of justification does not take into account the ways in which the system itself has failed the homeless, it does not consider the vulnerability of the homeless population. While it was true that some squatters dealt various issues such as drug addiction, those justifying their displacement ignored the fact that these people were victims of a system that failed them.