Landmarked in 2006, the P.S. 64 school building on E. Ninth St. was once used as an art, and community activist’s center. The city sold it to developer Gregg Singer in 1998. The deed says it must “provides educational, health, recreational, religious or other essential services for the community it serves.” Thus the push to make it a dorm for 500+ students. The building has been boarded up since December 2001, closing its use to the community. Now its floors are reportedly covered in pigeon guano. The rally and march are to ask that a community center be restored.

They marched from there to the Cooper Union, which has just abandoned it’s charter to provide free education for New York students. Students are now occupying the dean’s office.
I interview: Ben Shepard of Time’s Up, Bill Di Paola of MORUS and Father Pat Moloney, founder of Bonitas House, directly across the street from the building.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Filed under: Architecture, Lower East Side, Politics , OWS, Protest by gamma