Steven Englander | |
|---|---|
 Englander in 2012 | |
| Born | June 11, 1961 Chicago, Illinois |
| Died | December 12, 2024 (aged 63) New York, NY |
| Known for | ABC No Rio |
Steven Englander (June 11, 1961 - December 12, 2024) was the director and art curator of ABC No Rio from 1998 until 2024.
Steven Englander, who was born in Chicago and raised in Racine, Wisconsin, moved to New York City in 1979 to study film at New York University. [1] He graduated in 1984. While in college and afterward, Englander was involved in various anarchist and other political groups, most notably ABC No Rio. [2]
Englander first got involved with ABC No Rio in the late 1980s. [3] [4] [2] In 1990, he moved into the building and lived there on and off until 1997. As co-director, he curated exhibits and was on-call for building issues. In 1994 he began the three-year fight against eviction. [5] In 1997 Englander and other squatters moved out of the building so that the entire space could be used as a community arts facility. This decision set the stage for negotiations in 2006 in which Englander facilitated ABC No Rio’s purchase of their 156 Rivington building from the New York City government for $1. [6]
As a curator, Englander also developed skills as an art installer. He curated or collaborated on many shows including:
In 2007, Englander established the organization's first archives, processing 25 years' worth of material. [17] Under Englander's direction, ABC No Rio raised millions of dollars to build a new facility. [18]
The initial batch of donations, largely from the collective members and their networks, totaled $300,000 by 2004. [6] An anonymous check for $1M arrived in the mail in 2009. [19] That same year Scott Stringer and City Councilman Alan J. Gerson allocated $1.65 million for a new building. [20] By 2024, the building had received $21,000,000 from the city. [21]
With the funding in place and demolition scheduled, Englander oversaw the move of many of the building's furniture and materials to storage and the zine library and archive's move to Clemente Soto Velez in 2016. [22]
Englander was a Lower East Side squatter and lived at another former squatted building, now an HDFC co-op, Umbrella House. [23] He and his neighbors built a rooftop garden on the building that became operational in 2015. The building's motto is "From Ruin to Renewal." [23] He wrote the preface for the book Cracking the Movement : Squatting Beyond the Media. [24]
Englander was an anarchist who was involved with the Anarchist Switchboard and the Libertarian Book Club and League. In an oral history interview he stated "I was actually one of the few people who was responsible for keeping [the Anarchist Switchboard] going." Keeping organizations going was a trademark of Englander's activism. [3]
Englander was a participant in the Autonomedia editorial collective weekly meetings/salon. Fly (artist) credits him with connecting her to the collective, which published her first book Chronic Riot Spasm. [25]
On December 12, 2024, five and half years after receiving a lung transplant, Englander died of complications arising from the rare lung disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. His last days were spent in the hospital with his partner, Victoria Law, their daughter, and other squatters and ABC No Rio regulars including Fly and Seth Tobocman [26] . Shortly after his death, he was given the honorary title of ABC No Rio board member emeritus to honor his achievements in the organization.
Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building, usually residential that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. The United Nations estimated in 2003 that there were one billion slum residents and squatters globally. Squatting occurs worldwide and tends to occur when people find empty buildings or land to occupy for housing. It has a long history, broken down by country below.
ABC No Rio is a collectively-run nonprofit arts organization on New York City's Lower East Side. Founded in 1980 in a squat at 156 Rivington Street, following the eviction of the 1979–80 Real Estate Show, the center featured an art gallery space, a zine library, a darkroom, a silkscreening studio, and public computer lab. In addition, it played host to a number of radical projects including weekly hardcore punk matinees and the city Food Not Bombs collective. ABC No Rio was directed by Steven Englander from 1998 until his death in 2024.
Self-managed social centres in the United Kingdom can be found in squatted, rented, mortgaged and fully owned buildings. These self-managed social centres differ from community centres in that they are self-organised under anti-authoritarian principles and volunteer-run, without any assistance from the state. The largest number have occurred in London from the 1980s onwards, although projects exist in most cities across the UK, linked in a network. Squatted social centres tend to be quickly evicted and therefore some projects deliberately choose a short-term existence, such as A-Spire in Leeds or the Okasional Café in Manchester. Longer term social centres include the 1 in 12 Club in Bradford, the Cowley Club in Brighton and the Sumac Centre in Nottingham, which are co-operatively owned.
Exarcheia is a community in central Athens, Greece close to the historical building of the National Technical University of Athens. Exarcheia took its name from a 19th-century businessman named Exarchos who opened a large general store there. Exarcheia is bordered on the east by Kolonaki and is framed by Patission Street, Panepistimiou Street and Alexandras Avenue. Exarcheia is known for being Athens' historical core of radical political and intellectual activism. Exarcheia is often considered the anarchist quarter of Athens, known for its radical democracy.
C-Squat is a former squat house located at 155 Avenue C in the Alphabet City neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City that has been home to musicians, artists, and activists, among others. After a fire, it was taken into city ownership in 1978 and squatters moved in 1989. The building was restored in 2002 and since then it has been legally owned by the occupants. Its ground-floor storefront now houses the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space.
Dos Blockos was a squat situated at 713 East 9th Street in Alphabet City, Manhattan, New York City. In active use as a squat from 1992 onwards, the six-story building housed up to 60 people at its peak, including Brad Will. The building funded repairs by being a set for movies. The squatters were evicted in 1999 and the building was converted into a commercial apartment building.
The DA! collective is an art collective that squats in London, England, co-founded by Simon and Bogna McAndrew, Stephanie Smith, Samuel Conrad, Julika Vaci, Aishlinn Dowling, Sam Padfield and Murat Bulut Aysan. After squatting in three buildings, they received national attention when they squatted a townhouse in Mayfair, Westminster, Greater London in October 2008. The property, at 18 Upper Grosvenor Street, is a 30-room grade II-listed 1730s mansion worth an estimated £6.25 million owned by the billionaire Duke of Westminster, Britain's wealthiest private landlord.
In England and Wales, squatting – taking possession of land or an empty house the squatter does not own – is a criminal or civil offence, depending on circumstances. People squat for a variety of reasons which include needing a home, protest, poverty, and recreation. Many squats are residential; some are also opened as social centres. Land may be occupied by New Age travellers or treesitters.
In the United States, squatting occurs when a person enters land that does not belong to them without lawful permission and proceeds to act in the manner of an owner. Historically, squatting occurred during the settlement of the Midwest when colonial European settlers established land rights and during the California Gold Rush. There was squatting during the Great Depression in Hoovervilles and also during World War II. Shanty towns returned to the US after the Great Recession (2007–2009) and in the 2010s, there were increasing numbers of people occupying foreclosed homes using fraudulent documents. In some cases, a squatter may be able to obtain ownership of property through adverse possession.
Alan W. Moore is an art historian and activist whose work addresses cultural economies and groups and the politics of collectivity. After a stint as an art critic, Moore made video art and installation art from the mid-1970s on and performed in the 1979 Public Arts International/Free Speech series. He has published several books and runs the House Magic information project on self-organized, occupied autonomous social centers. His partial autobiography was published in 2022 in The Journal of Aesthetics & Protest as Art Worker: Doing Time in the New York Artworld. Moore lives in Madrid.
Kill City: Lower East Side Squatters 1992–2000 is a photography book by Ash Thayer, documenting the squatting scene in New York City's Lower East Side in the 1990s. Kill City was published in 2015 by PowerHouse Books.
A self-managed social center, also known as an autonomous social center, is a self-organized community center in which anti-authoritarians put on voluntary activities. These autonomous spaces, often in multi-purpose venues affiliated with anarchism, can include bicycle workshops, infoshops, libraries, free schools, meeting spaces, free stores and concert venues. They often become political actors in their own right.
Umbrella House is a former squat and a Housing Development Fund Corporation in New York City's East Village, at 21-23 Avenue C. The squat, formed in 1988, was known for its political engagement and high level of collective organization among its members. In 2010, the building officially became a housing cooperative.
Squatting in the Republic of Ireland is the occupation of unused land or derelict buildings without the permission of the owner. In the 1960s, the Dublin Housing Action Committee highlighted the housing crisis by squatting buildings. From the 1990s onwards there have been occasional political squats in Cork and Dublin such as Grangegorman, the Barricade Inn, the Bolt Hostel, Connolly Barracks, That Social Centre and James Connolly House.
Squatting in the Netherlands is the occupation of unused or derelict buildings or land without the permission of the owner. The modern squatters movement began in the 1960s in the Netherlands. By the 1980s, it had become a powerful anarchist social movement which regularly came into conflict with the state, particularly in Amsterdam with the Vondelstraat and coronation riots.
Squatting became a political phenomenon in the Czech Republic after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Squats in Prague included Sochora, Stary Střešovice and Ladronka. Milada was occupied in 1998 and following its final eviction in 2009, there was a lull in squatting actions. In the 2010s a new social movement squatted houses to highlight the number of derelict properties in Prague and the social centre Klinika was founded in 2014.
Squatting is the occupation of unused or derelict buildings or land without the permission of the owner. From the 17th century onwards, there have been waves of squatting in Ukraine. In the 21st century, squatting has been practiced by different groups such as artists, anarchists, Ukrainian nationalists, displaced Crimean Tatars returning to the region and refugees created by the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation.
Squatting in Estonia is the occupation of unused land or derelict buildings without the permission of the owner. It is a tactic used by different groups including former factory workers, homeless people, artists and anarchists.
Squatting is common in the country of Cambodia. Following the Khmer Rouge and the Pol Pot regime, the new democratic government introduced land reform. In the capital Phnom Penh, where in 2003 an estimated 25 per cent of the population was squatting, there are informal settlements and occupied buildings.
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