Housing Advocates to Share Insight, Skills for Actualizing the Human Right to a Home
Doors @ 7:00pm
@ MoRUS | 155 Ave. C between 9th & 10th Street, Manhattan
Beyond the ideologies associated with the urban lore of squatting are practical knowledge and hands-on skills necessary to reclaim abandoned, public space. Activists Frank Morales and Bill Timesup will lead a discussion about occupying neglected buildings and vacant lots to restore them to usefulness and vitality on Thursday, February 27 at 7:00 PM at the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS), 155 Avenue C between 9th and 10th Streets.
Morales, a Lower East Side native and political activist whose work with squatters dates back to the 1970s when he served as an Episcopal priest in the Bronx, and Bill Timesup, founder of the environmental action group Time’s Up! and co-founder of MoRUS, will share the vast resources gleaned from their combined experiences. The two-hour session will include a slide presentation and Q&A on tools, building systems and the nuts and bolts of squatting in New York City in 2014. Attendance is open to the public and free-of-charge but a suggested donation of $5.00 is always appreciated and in return, will include a copy of Morales’ zine, “The ABC’s of Squatting.”
Opened in December 2012, MoRUS, a fully volunteer-run and staffed non-profit history museum and living archive of urban activism, aims to preserve grassroots activist history in the East Village and promote environmentally-sound community-based urban ecologies. Housed in the storefront of C Squat, MoRUS also showcases the unique public spaces and community gardens for which the neighborhood is renowned.