The Cooper Square Committee recently hosted an audience test screening of the still-in-progress documentary film “It Took 50 Years: Frances Goldin and the Struggle for Cooper Square.”
Directed by Ryan Joseph and Dave Powell, below right, the film chronicles a Lower East Side community struggle that spanned five decades, in which residents fought a sweeping urban renewal plan for a 12-block area from Ninth St. to Delancey St., envisioned their own community-driven alternative plan, and ultimately saved their homes.
The film also explores the life of Frances Goldin, a Cooper Square Committee co-founder, organizer and literary agent, whose clients include Barbara Kingsolver and Mumia Abu Jamal, as well as the late Adrienne Rich. At the event, Goldin, 89, also signed copies of the recently released “Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA,” which she co-edited and which contains essays by the likes of Michael Moore and Angela Davis.
During a Q&A with Goldin and the filmmakers, Goldin pointedly stressed that “only The Villager” covered the story when, in 2012, members of the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association — in roughly 300 co-op closings — were finally able to purchase their units for, as one activist described it, the “jaw-dropping price” of $250 apiece. Based on a Northern European model, it’s the first mutual housing co-op in New York State.
Also at the screening, along with many community activists, were Valerio Orselli, the M.H.A.’s executive director, who enjoyed the free popcorn, below left, as well as academics Frances Fox Piven and Tom Angotti, who appear in the film. The screening was held at the Cooper Square M.H.A. office, at 59 E. Fourth St.
