ABC No Rio
From Infoshop OpenWiki
ABC No Rio is a social center located at 156 Rivington street in New York City's Lower East Side that was founded in 1980. It features a gallery space, a zine library, a darkroom, a silkscreening studio, and public computer lab. In addition, ABC No Rio plays host to a number of radical projects in New York City, including (but not limited to) weekly hardcore/punk matinees and the NYC Food Not Bombs collective. ABC No Rio seeks to be a community center for the Lower East Side, sponsoring projects and benefits for the community, as well as a center of radical activism in New York City, promoting "Do it yourself volunteerism, art and activism, without giving-in or selling-out to corporate sponsors."
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[edit] History
[edit] Beginnings
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Lower East Side of Manhattan was facing massive disinvestment by absentee landlords—at some periods in the decade up to 80% of the area's housing stock was abandoned and in rem (seized by the city's government for non-payment of taxes). At the same time that the neighborhood was being abandoned by building owners, a influx of immigrants from Puerto Rico combined with a growing squatter movement and a small but visible "downtown" arts scene.
ABC No Rio itself grew out of the 1979 Real Estate Show, in which a small collective of radical artists seeking to foster connections between these communities occupied an abandoned building at 123 Delancey St. and turned it into a gallery to show solidarity with working people in a critique of the city's land management system—in essence, keeping buildings empty until the area again attracted investment from developers—and a demonstration of what can be achieved through solidarity. The show was to explicitly "illuminate no legal issues" and it called for "no rights"; instead, it was "preemptive and insurrectionary". The show opened to the public on January 1st, 1980; it was promptly shut down before the morning of January 2nd by the NYC Housing Preservation and Development Agency.
In the following negotiations with the HPD, the collective was granted the use of the building at 156 Rivington and has remained there ever since.
[edit] Current Legal Battles
In the negotiations following the occupation of 123 Delancey St, ABC No Rio was given tacit permission to use its current building, located at 156 Rivington Street. ABC No Rio has been in legal limbo for decades, sometimes a squat, sometimes paying a small rent to the city. In 1994, the city revoked ABC No Rio's commercial lease and stopped accepting their rent checks. The city planned on selling the building to Asian Americans for Equality for only $4000. This city tactic of attempting to divide non-profit community groups has been used many times to split groups that the city approves of from more confrontational ones was used frequently against Lower East Side squatters throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. In October 1994, in response to the attempted eviction, a few activists began squatting the upper floors of the building, which had been unused for several years. The squatters' presence stalled the eviction proceedings for several years, along with the community-based protests, which resulted in several arrests. ABC No Rio refused to give up the space and embarked on a project of raising money and reforming their image, to appear to be a more legitimate organization in the eyes of the city. In 1997, the city agreed to sell the building to ABC No Rio for $1 provided ABC could raise the money to renovate the building and bring it up to code. After 3 years, the squatters&mash;numbering around ten and including a young family&mash;left their apartments, which were converted to a zine library, a "Food Not Bombs" kitchen, a silk screening studio, a computer lab, and other artist spaces. The details of the $1 sale have not yet been fully worked out; ABC No Rio has sent in their proposal and other materials for the city's Uniform Land Use Review Process (ULURP). Their proposal was certified by the City Planning commission on February 14, 2005, and passed as a resolution before the New York City Council on July 27, 2005. The ULURP must pass the mayor's office before full approval. The review process is expected to conclude in October or November of 2005, by which time they must have raised $350,000 to begin Phase I of the renovation project. Despite all this, ABC No Rio's legal status remains precarious, as the city still will not accept their rent checks and they have no official permission to be currently occupying the building.
[edit] Current Projects
ABC No Rio is a collective of collectives; the individual projects enjoy a great deal of autonomy in their day-to-day affairs. Building-wide matters are addressed at building collective meetings. Some of the current projects are:
[edit] Punk and Hardcore
Perhaps ABC No Rio's best known project is the Punk/Hardcore Collective. Since December, 1989, ABC No Rio has hosted weekly punk/hardcore matinees on Saturday afternoons. For most of the 1980s, the NYC punk/hardcore scene had been focused around the Sunday matinees at CBGB's. These shows devolved into weekly bloodbaths due to gang violence and, therefore, in November, 1989, CBGB's stopped hosting them. The new shows at ABC No Rio were carefully set up to be devoid of the violence, homophobia, sexism, and machismo that took over the CBGB's matinees, and to this day follows a policy of booking only independent (i.e., non-major label) bands that do not in any way promote sexism, racism, homophobia, and so on. It is often considered the Gilman Street of the East Coast, having hosted and nurtured many of the bands in today's punk scene.
[edit] Zine Library
ABC No Rio holds a large collection of zines formerly hosted by the now-defunct Lower East Side radical bookstore and infoshop Blackout! Books. The collection spans over two decades, and features many zines with a radical political perspective, or a focus on punk and other DIY artforms. Some titles include: Love & Rage, Maximum RocknRoll, Slug and Lettuce, as well as many other less regularly printed or single-issue titles.
[edit] Food Not Bombs
The New York chapter of Food Not Bombs cooks on the second-floor kitchen of ABC No Rio every Friday and Sunday, and serves free food in nearby Tompkins Square Park.
[edit] Darkroom Collective
The Darkroom Collective runs a public darkroom on the third floor of ABC No Rio that is open at least 3 days a week. In addition, in a partnership with several neighborhood high schools and nearby Cooper Union, members of the Darkroom Collective teach classes for high school students.
[edit] Computer Lab
The Computer Center on the fourth floor of ABC No Rio seeks to close the digital divide by providing a public computer lab to the underserved Lower East Side. The computer lab is made up only of donated computers, and runs almost exclusively free or open source software.
[edit] Silkscreening Collective
The Silkscreening Collective runs a public screen-printing studio, also located on the fourth floor.
[edit] Books Thru Bars
The Books Thru Bars Collective sends donated books to persons incarcerated in U.S. prisons.
[edit] COMA
The Citizens Ontological Music Agenda is a project that hosts experimental music, poetry, and other forms of performance on Sunday Evenings.
[edit] Visual Arts Committee
The Visual Arts Committee co-ordinates shows and exhibitions in the main gallery, as well as the bi-annual building-wide Ides of March group exhibit.
[edit] External links
- ABC No Rio website
- New York Times article on the Real Estate Show
- 1996 Village Voice article on the eviction
- NY Times article on the resolution of the eviction
- Time Out New York article on the resolution of the eviction
This page was seeded with material from Wikipedia
