On Friday, May 28 at 5pm, tenants protesting the privatization of their public housing developments in Harlem and throughout New York City will gather at the State Building at 125th street for a rally and public information event. The event will be a celebration of several months of organizing among several housing sites in New York City as well as of the partial victory—the scaling back of NYCHA CEO Greg Russ’s initial plan to privatize all remaining 110,000 units NYCHA housing stock to 25,000 units under the notorious “Blueprint” (section 18) housing plan. This retreat by Privatization Czar Russ followed a month of outrage in protests and media throughout New York City.
The Friday event is also a rallying cry for the harder fight ahead, a struggle against the privatization and inevitable displacement that is still promoted by leading politicians in both parties and their friends in the leading financial institutions. These plans have been advanced by the deliberate neglect of basic repairs and maintenance of NYCHA buildings, by a strategy to run the housing into the ground and then to hand over what is left to the market.People from the president of the US to the leading bankers in NY to the hopeful candidates in upcoming elections all are paying empty lip-service to “affordable housing” while selling out this housing to their true “stake-holders”- real-estate developers and Wall Street.
For more information, please write to nogonyc@riseup.net or call 646-780-9657
