The class war against the poor and moving in the army of the rich. The criminals of the Government have used the police to keep abandoned buildings empty for fifteen to twenty years in order to drive out the poor. The Lower East Side along with Harlem and South Bronx was a community of resistance during the inner city uprisings of the 1960's and was targeted for an urban renewal scheme to clear the ghettos and make way for upscale housing and luxury developments. I tend to blame the military for this, their solution being to push poor people out of inner city neighborhoods into military concentration camps and offering the people bribes to leave, renovating the area for a better class people, rents soaring to outrageous prices, people being displaced from their homes and forced out of the neighborhoods and into the streets. The Government infiltrates these inner cities with crack and other drugs creating poverty and riots and then blame the people targeting them as the criminally mentally ill homeless etc.
Housing is a basic human right.
Manhattan island was the site of the most famous real estate rip off in history. Native beliefs recognized human beings as part of mother nature and had no concept of owning the land, water and air. Ultimately European colonist relied on their superior fire power to impose their property laws through genocide coast to coast. Now in the year 2001 a nation is built up thru stolen labor. As an African American, I sometimes feel intimidated walking down the streets of the East Village and The Lower East Side.