Roberta Gold

This is a very engaging book for anyone interested in New York City history, especially the history of the Progressive movement in the post-WW2 period. Gold clearly lays out the context of the battle for tenants' rights in New York. In Cold War America, home ownership was increasingly being presented as the one true path to good citizenship, and true American values. As most Americans who could afford it streamed out of the cities and into new (and often segregated) housing developments, urban living, and renting one's home, was increasingly devalued. Next came urban redevelopment, a bonanza for business interests that rarely took into account the futures of middle and lower-class families due to be displaced by the new projects. The neighborhood groups who arose to defend these families and, quite literally, fight city hall, were often led by people--most frequently women--who had cut their political teeth in the pre-war socialist movements. As the 50s rolled into the 60s, political groups like the Black Panthers built tenants rights into their platforms. Gold shows all this history, and the inter-related nature of the may movements that rose and fell over time, with clarity and detail. We also get to learn about the powerful personalities, again, most often women, who kept this movement alive in its many configurations over the years. The book is a scholarly work, built on the author's doctoral thesis, and sometimes the facts and figures come a bit too fast for easy reading or full comprehension. But Gold makes clear that while the movements' losses to the entrenched power of business, politics and paternalism were frequent, and the successes all too rare, the overall struggle to elevate tenants' rights, and the rights of neighborhood members to keep their communities together, succeeded at least in keeping these concerns on the minds of New Yorkers and New York politicians.

Full disclosure: Roberta Gold is the brilliant younger sister of my brilliant wife.… (altro)