About this handbook

Disruptive Engagement: An Organizer’s Guide to Building Community Power for Justice in Land Use and Housing in New York City is a guide by organizers for organizers.

Land and housing are foundational to our ability to live and thrive. When we attempt to shape what gets built and sustained in New York City neighborhoods, we face a confusing system that instructs individuals to attend hearings, submit written comments, and testify in front of neighbors and officials. Disruptive Engagement is a handbook that draws on the knowledge of organizers from across New York City about how to disrupt the official community engagement apparatus in the most productive ways possible towards the goal of building justice in land use and housing.

With specific examples from New York City neighborhoods, this guide provides practical advice for how to maneuver official public hearings, build deliberate alliances, pursue legal challenges, upset the land-use review procedure, launch effective petition drives, and resist business as usual. We explore the challenge of trying to win gains within the existing system while at the same time working towards radical rupture with dominant logics.

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Editors: Naomi Schiller & Vanessa Thill

Contributions and interviews from: Karen Blondel, Julia Byrant, Seonae Byeon, Luisa Cuautle, Jen Chantrtanapichate , Jenny Dubnau, Ramona Ferreyra, O.K. Fox, Ted Freed, Jeremy Kaplan, Lena Melendez, Cheryl Pahaham, Jack Riccobono, Naomi Schiller, Alina Shen, Vanessa Thill. (See full bios & photos below).

Book Details: 150 pages, perfect-bound, book design by Partner & Partners, published by the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY in collaboration with Birds, LLC press.

For any questions, or help purchasing, please contact us at [email protected]

Publisher & Sponsors: This handbook is a collaborative project sponsored by the Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research from the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Published through the Center for the Humanities publishing platform Distributaries. See the full list of co-sponsors and thank you's below.

Oral History Project & Interviews with Organizers:

The full interviews with organizers (in both audio & text formats) from our oral history project on which the handbook is based, can be found here: Landusearchive.commons.gc.CUNY.edu.

Editors of Disruptive Engagement:

Naomi Schiller is an anthropologist and organizer who teaches at Brooklyn College and the The Graduate Center and has worked with neighbors in the Lower East Side to challenge New York City’s approach to community engagement.

Vanessa Thill is an artist and organizer who works with Art Against Displacement, Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side.

Contributors to Disruptive Engagement handbook:

Karen Blondel: Gowanus Neighborhood Coalition for Justice, Red Hook West NYCHA Resident Association. Karen is a resident leader in Red Hook, Brooklyn and a public housing organizer around environmental and social justice.

Julia Bryant: Movement to Protect the People, formerly involved in fighting Atlantic Yards. Julia has been involved in anti-displacement struggles against the Atlantic Yards development at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues in Brooklyn, as well as the City’s plans to rezone neighborhoods adjacent to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden and Prospect Park, including Crown Heights.

Seonae Byeon: Flushing Anti-Displacement Alliance. Seonae organized in Flushing, Queens to stop the Special Flushing Waterfront District rezoning proposal, which was approved by the City Council in 2020 despite fierce community opposition.

Luisa Cuautle.: Ridgewood Tenants Union. Luisa organizes with her neighbors to fight displacement in Ridgewood, Queens.

Jen Chantrtanapichate: Sixth Street Community Center, No North Brooklyn Pipeline Coalition, Cleanup North Brooklyn, Frack Outta Brooklyn (FOBK). Jen is a climate justice activist who has organized on many fronts, including a neighborhood fight against a waste-transfer station and a campaign to stop the construction of a natural gas pipeline through North Brooklyn

Jenny Dubnau: Western Queens Community Land Trust, Artist Studio Affordability Project, Justice for All Coalition, Queens. Jenny is an artist and activist who has been involved in many battles for more just land use and housing, including Amazon’s unsuccessful bid to set up a headquarters in Long Island City, and most recently with the fight for equitable and democratic land use in Western Queens.

Ramona Ferreyra, Tekina Guatu Ke Ini Inaru: Ramona is a social entrepreneur and founder of Save Section 9, a tenant-led organization fighting to preserve and fund Section 9 public housing.

Ted Freed: Northern Manhattan is Not for Sale, Citywide People's Land Use Alliance, Inwood Legal Action. Ted organizes in Inwood to protect his neighborhood from displacement and works with groups from across NYC through the Citywide People’s Land Use Alliance.

O.K. Fox, Ridgewood Tenants Union. OK organizes with their neighbors to fight displacement in Ridgewood, Queens.

Jeremy Kaplan: Protect Sunset Park, DSA NYCHA Solidarity Working Group. Jeremy is an organizer and documentary filmmaker who has organized campaigns against displacement across Brooklyn, including the successful 2020-2021 challenge to the Industry City proposal to gentrify Sunset Park’s waterfront.

Lena Melendez: Northern Manhattan is Not for Sale, Housing Justice for All Coalition. Lena is a longtime housing justice organizer in Inwood, Manhattan where she battled New York City’s 2020 rezoning.

Cheryl Pahaham: Inwood Legal Action, Northern Manhattan Is Not For Sale, Racial Impact Study Coalition. Cheryl is a sociologist and organizer in Inwood, where she co-chaired Inwood Legal Action’s unsuccessful effort to mount a legal challenge to NYC’s 2019 rezoning of Inwood.

Jack Riccobono: Voice of Gowanus. Jack is a community advocate who joined the fight against the Gowanus 2021 rezoning, which changed the area from a mainly industrial use to residential use despite community concerns posed by a century of industrial use and inadequate sewage infrastructure.

Alina Shen: CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities, Chinatown Art Brigade. Alina is a tenant organizer working with CAAAV.

This handbook is a collaborative project sponsored by the Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research from the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Published through the Center for the Humanities publishing platform Distributaries.

We also received support from a Tow Research and Creativity Grant from Brooklyn College and Social Practice CUNY, an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-supported initiative.

Special thanks Kendra Sullivan has been a vital supporter and interlocutor. Sixth Street Community Center and its Deputy Director, Jen Chantrtanapichate, made it possible for us to have several in-person meetings. Dan Fethke took wonderful portraits of many of us included in this pamphlet. CUNY students Onyx Clark, Allyson Ganster, Teresa Rodriguez, and Moa Zachariah produced transcripts from the interviews. Seonae Byeon created a website archive of the full interviews that we have excerpted and edited in this handbook.