Homeless people and their supporters protest for affordable housing on Avenue A. July 1989

Although the community’s anti-gentrification movement had begun before 1988 with a small collection of squatters and anarchists, the August 6 riot triggered what became the larger Tompkins Square Park movement, a grassroots resistance that demanded affordable housing. The park became the symbol of this movement, whose impact extended beyond the neighborhood and into the rest of New York, the rest of the U.S., and even some parts of Europe, notably Berlin.

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