Still dancing like Emma Goldman... Jay reads his essay from a new anthology on Lower East Side activism. Tuesday, June 26, 6:00-8:00PM at the Tenement Museum Visitors Center, 108 Orchard Street at Delancey Street, NYC.
The New York Book Club at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum
and the Gotham Center for New York City History at CUNY
invite you to join us for
Resistance: A Radical History of the Lower East Side,
a panel discussion with Jay Blotcher, Al Orensanz, Michael Rosen, and moderator Clayton Patterson
Tuesday, June 26
6:00-8:00PM
Tenement Museum Visitors Center
108 Orchard Street at Delancey
The Lower East Side experienced massive changes during the 1980s and 90s. The stories of activists, writers, artists, and residents who lived through it are collected in this new volume of essays, Resistance: A Radical Social and Political History of the Lower East Side. (Seven Stories Press)
As Jeff Ferrell writes in the book's forward, "Clayton Patterson and the many contributors to Resistance document the hodgepodge of incendiary politics and interpersonal engagement that defined decades of New Yorkıs Lower East Side. More to the point, they show us that for the Lower East Side at its best the people were the politics. Resistance swarms with the movement and emotion of the Lower East Side's people, revealing a politics invented out of their daily battles with police, landlords, developers sometimes even with each other. Reading the book, you feel like a flaneur, lost to the rhythms of the neighborhood streets and learning something new at every turn."
Clayton Patterson, the book's editor and our moderator for the evening, is an ex-teacher, photojournalist, and documentarian. In addition to Resistance, he also edited Captured: A Film/Video History of the Lower East Side. Panelists include Jay Blotcher, who has lived multiple lives as a collage artist, documentary filmmaker, journalist, AIDS activist, and publicist; Al Orensanz, former professor of sociology at the New School and NYU and current director of the Angel Orensanz Foundation for the Arts on the Lower East Side; and Michael Rosen, who has also lived multiple lives as an anthropology professor, developer, community activist, and father to seven boys.