Jeremiah Moss has been documenting the small businesses and cultural institutions closing all over the city for over a decade through his blog. With his recent book, VANISHING NEW YORK: HOW A GREAT CITY LOST ITS SOUL, he tracks the root causes of this hypergentrification through writing that is clear, researched, and romantic, filled with lamentation for a city that is disappearing. At Word Up Community Bookshop, Jeremiah will present an slideshow lecture of some of the points in his book, then a conversation will follow with Claudia de la Cruz.
There will be a Q&A with the audience afterward. Books will be available for sale.
MORE ABOUT VANISHING NEW YORK: HOW A GREAT CITY LOST ITS SOUL & JEREMIAH MOSS (via HarperCollins):
For generations, New York City has been a mecca for artists, writers, and other hopefuls longing to be part of its rich cultural exchange and unique social fabric. But today, modern gentrification is transforming the city from an exceptional, iconoclastic metropolis into a suburbanized luxury zone with a price tag only the one percent can afford.
A Jane Jacobs for the digital age, blogger and cultural commentator Jeremiah Moss has emerged as one of the most outspoken and celebrated critics of this dramatic shift. In Vanishing New York, he reports on the city’s development in the twenty-first century, a period of “hyper-gentrification” that has resulted in the shocking transformation of beloved neighborhoods and the loss of treasured unofficial landmarks. In prose that the Village Voice has called a “mixture of snark, sorrow, poeticism, and lyric wit,” Moss leads us on a colorful guided tour of the most changed parts of town—from the Lower East Side and Chelsea to Harlem and Williamsburg—lovingly eulogizing iconic institutions as they’re replaced with soulless upscale boutiques, luxury condo towers, and suburban chains.
MORE ABOUT CLAUDIA DE LA CRUZ:
Claudia De la Cruz has over 20 years of experience engaging in popular education and community organizing with working class communities of color, women, immigrants and youth in the Washington Heights, West Harlem and The South Bronx. From her work dedicated to the leadership development process of young women with Da Urban Butterflies, to her ministry work as reverend of San Romero de Las Americas, her contributions to the political education processes at The Rebel Diaz Arts Collective (RDACBX), and her work as co-host and producer of TeleSur English’s Ñ Don’t Stop Web-Show along with Hip Hop duo Rebel Diaz, Claudia has reaffirmed time and time again her commitment to be part of the movement that will deconstruct systems of oppression and exploitation, that will dare to have a radical imagination for the future, and build a better world in the now. Currently, she is co-chair of The Popular Education Project (PEP), a national collective of organizers and popular educators coming from different social movements in the United States. She is also a member of the national steering committee for The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival seeking to shift the national narrative around the poor and poverty, as well as create a non-partisan and unified social movement to impact the socio-economic and political reality of the poor in the United States.
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