In this interview, Frances Goldin reflects on her decades of activism, beginning with her fight against urban renewal long before the founding of the Cooper Square Committee in 1959. She recalls her first battle against Robert Moses’ plan to create Lincoln Center, which wiped out a vibrant Black and Irish longshoreman community. Frances later joined the fight against urban renewal on the Lower East Side, where an urban renewal plan threatened to displace 2,500 poor Jewish, Puerto Rican, Chinese, Russian, and Italian families. After moving to the Lower East Side herself, Frances embraced the neighborhood’s spirit of activism, shaped by her own upbringing in Springfield Gardens, Queens, where her working-class Jewish family faced ostracism. She married Morris Goldin, a member of the Communist Party, and together they breathed activism as part of daily life. Losing major battles against Moses, Frances realized the need to redefine urban renewal on their terms. This led to the founding of the Cooper Square Committee at the Church of All Nations, where residents, led by radical women, created the Alternate Plan for Cooper Square.
With principles preventing displacement and prioritizing community benefits, the group held over 100 meetings between 1959 and 1961 to build their vision. Frances credits their success to four essential elements: grassroots mobilization, professional expertise, effective organizing, and the strategic use of media to publicly shame policymakers. Demonstrations were creative and impactful, ensuring their voices could not be ignored. For Frances, activism on the Lower East Side was nothing short of transformative, embodying the determination and solidarity needed to protect and empower communities.
Frances emphasizes the importance of tactical escalation, lifelong commitment, and creativity. She underscores the need for a racially mixed, multilingual leadership drawn from the community itself, nurtured through intentional organizing. Never a paid staffer at Cooper Square, Frances balanced family life with activism, supported by a marriage rooted in shared political values and equitable division of labor.
Frances critiques the housing movement’s insufficiently radical tactics against powerful real estate interests and highlights the necessity of securing properties under community land trusts to ensure long-term affordability. She laments privatization and the failure to demand taxes on the wealthy while stressing Cooper Square’s focus on maintaining affordable housing and expanding its portfolio. She regrets not publicizing their success in defeating Robert Moses and creating Cooper Square, noting the need to share strategies for fighting City Hall.
Frances concludes with a story of solidarity and triumph, recounting how Cooper Square activists and supporters from across NYC secured the return of a promised vacant lot after a dramatic Board of Estimate action where nine were arrested, showcasing the power of collective action.