Tompkins Square
What is the relationship between demonstrations and public spaces?
This excerpt from an online History of Tompkins Square outlines something of that relationship in New York City:
Tompkins Square Park quickly became a social center for these expanding communities. Immigrants who were too poor to purchase a newspaper got their news from mingling on the benches. This working class character made the park a popular staging point for demonstrations of political unrest. During the economic panic of 1857 thousands of unemployed workers set up camp in the park and demanded that the city provide public works projects. After a march down to Wall Street on November 11th they returned to the park and began burning the fence. The ensuing riot accomplished no political goals.
Chaos would return to the streets of the Lower East Side in 1863 when the federal government instituted a draft to fill the dwindling ranks of the Union Army. The draft included a clause that exempted any man who paid a $300 fee. Angered by this injustice, poor immigrants flooded the streets throughout the city in the bloodiest urban uprising in the history of the United States.
Much of the violence was directed against African Americans. Rioters blamed blacks for the war and feared that freed slaves would soon flood the job market. On July 13th the Colored Orphan Asylum was burned down, and many blacks were lynched. Eventually Union Army troops returning from the battle of Gettysburg were deployed in the city, and the rioters were defeated.
The Draft Riots provided the city with incentive to tighten its grip on dissonant political forces. In 1866, amid the protest of neighborhood residents, all trees were removed from Tompkins Square, and it was transformed into a military parade ground for the Seventh Regiment of the New York National Guard. Despite it's forlorn appearance, neighborhood residents continued to frequent the grounds when not in use, and after dark the park remained a gathering place for labor organizations who were frustrated with corrupt contracts handed out by the Havemeyer administration.
On January 13th, 1874 10,000 unemployed workers, many of them homeless, assembled in the park for a march on City Hall. The night before, the city secretly voided the permit for the march, and that morning there was much confusion between the organizers of the protest. Amid the chaos, hundreds of police officers stormed into the park and began to wreak havoc on the demonstrators with their nightsticks. The Commissioner of Police commented, "It was the most glorious sight I ever saw."
Neighborhood residents united against the city's brutality, and six months later thousands demonstrated to assert their right to use the park as a public gathering place. Demonstrations would continue for the next two years. Finally in 1878 the state legislature bowed to community pressure and agreed to restore Tompkins Square Park to the people. The park was renovated with trees and benches, and a year later 10,000 neighbors celebrated the victory as German music flooded the park and speakers eloquently proclaimed the importance of the site as community resource.
Check out the link, the piece is interesting.
