Homeless individuals and their housed neighbors protested Mayor Eric Adams’ encampment sweeps in Tompkins Square Park on Friday, invoking memories of the 1988 riot there.
Friday evening hundreds gathered in Tompkins Square Park to decry the removal of a homeless camp that occurred a few days earlier on April 6. The standoff took place on 9th Street and Avenue B when several tent dwellers refused to cooperate with sanitation workers who attempted to literally trash their homes. This act of defiance has inspired the East Village in a way that has not been seen since the Tompkins Square Park riots more than 30 years ago.
“It hasn’t been real for quite a long time. Now it looks like it might start getting real again,” said Eric, a long-term housing activist, referring to the infamous and violent battle between squatters and the NYPD in 1988.
