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This chapter summarizes the preceding discussions and presents some concluding thoughts. Poor working-class people in Greenpoint–Williamsburg were engaged in constant conflict with the New York City administration and the state and federal agencies which affected their environment and subsistence. When protest surfaced, it was a manifestation of anger and frustration built up in relation to poor employment conditions, government agencies that caused delay and humiliation, absentee landlords, and inadequate city services. The forms protest took and the demands for city services reflected the dependent position to which the workers of Greenpoint–Williamsburg had been reduced. The racial divisions within poor people's movements were clearly related to real estate trends precipitated by the same regional developments which had led to high levels of unemployment and a rising need for public assistance among black, white, and Hispanic workers.

This chapter opens with a brief discussion of the production of urban space and the historical contributions of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs to the structuring of New York City. The section that follows outlines the impact of globalization and the increasing inequalities that have framed the lives of New Yorkers over the past three decades. The next section focuses on the changing conditions of life in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, as well as the ongoing community organizing around environmental justice and affordable housing. It follows the long and concerted collaboration among many community groups, churches, local politicians, and others for a fair and sustainable Community Development Plan, which came to be known as 197A. It shows how, after 9/11/2001, in Greenpoint–Williamsburg, the Bloomberg administration introduced massive plans for rezoning, overruling the previously approved Community Development Plan 197A. The final section traces the immediate impact of the 2008 global economic crisis on the half-built new condominiums precipitated by the Bloomberg rezoning.

This introductory chapter begins by considering the opposing views about the American working class, in particular the portrayal of the American worker as apolitical. It then presents the background of the current study, detailing the author's rationale for observing the working-class people of Greenpoint–Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It is argued that in order to understand the political consciousness of the American working class, attention must be paid to the skirmishes in the background as well as to the actions of the vanguard. How groups act outside of the unions and outside the more dramatic events of the century needs to be examined as well. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

The trends that have shaped the industry and social structure of the United States have also fashioned New York City and its neighborhoods. This chapter traces the course of the city's economic and political development and the particular conditions which formed Greenpoint–Williamsburg. Greenpoint–Williamsburg does not have defining geographic characteristics, but certain population trends differentiate it clearly from surrounding areas. These same characteristics of the population affect political development and the composition of protest movements.

This chapter crosses the boundary from statistical representation to the description of individual workers as they seek employment. Finding a job, working a short time, losing a job, and looking again form a part of the cycle of life in the neighborhood. The chapter describes the pervasive influence of the state in terms of state-sponsored work programs and the other major work alternative: the military. Frequently, the only work available in the neighborhood is in a government program where employment depends upon an individual's political usefulness. Through a consideration of the nature of work in Greenpoint–Williamsburg, the way employment precipitates far-reaching changes in the lives of individuals and the structure of the community can be understood.

Welfare assistance reflects a crucial aspect of low-income life: interaction with government institutions. Attitudes and roles fostered by the public assistance program indicate the constraining influence of state bureaucracies, upon which low-income people are commonly dependent. The description presented here of relations between clients and officials and of pressures on each side also stands as a general picture of experiences of low-income people in the United States. Greenpoint–Williamsburg economic life reflected that of the nation from 1975 to 1977. Just as high unemployment, military enlistment, and the CETA program were nationwide phenomena, so was the welfare program. Since reliance on welfare assistance was a more constant factor it the structuring of most low-income households than any particular job situation, it is important to discuss the process and its influences in some detail. This chapter outlines the procedures which an applicant had to follow in order to enroll for public assistance. The focus is primarily on interaction between client and welfare officer, and the officers' perceptions of their role in the welfare bureaucracy are analyzed.

This chapter identifies three types of landlords in Greenpoint–Williamsburg and relates each to different political and economic consequences for the neighborhood. Absentee landlords tend to be wealthier than resident landlords and have different reasons for their interest in property. The third landlord, the New York City Housing Authority, has yet other interests. Each form of landlord influences the distribution of the neighborhood population and the degree of deterioration of particular areas. The chapter also discusses the causes of the racial discrimination practiced by white working-class homeowners, which can be contrasted with the more open policies of absentee landlords. Such variations have important consequences for the growth of electoral constituencies and political power.

This chapter describes the history, activities, and problems of the Norman Street Block Association, which was but one attempt by residents of Norman Street to influence their environment. In three years of interaction with the residents of Greenpoint–Williamsburg, the author collected a mass of data which testified to the frequent involvement in collective action of working-class poor in urban areas. Although seldom successful and often not long-lasting, such persistent efforts to control the environment were a significant feature of low-income life.

This chapter continues the discussion of the Norman Street Block Association, focusing on the issues around which successful events were organized and the way in which successes were also closely related to the class position and material needs of the Norman Street residents. Two programs which involved the distribution of resources on Norman Street stimulated interest among block residents and were successfully organized: a summer lunch program and a play street. A third project, decorating for the Bicentennial celebrations of 1976, was also completed as planned.

In order to meet various social and economic demands, households in Greenpoint–Williamsburg developed a high degree of cooperation. This has allowed them to deal flexibly with the fluctuations of employment and unemployment, changes in the welfare system, the variable support that may be gained from federal agencies, and rising rents and food prices. To demonstrate the extent of cooperation between households on Norman Street, the chapter examines three households of the Brock–Sanchez family and one unrelated household which formed part of the same support network. This network included three other households—those of Elizabeth Brock, Arlene Brock, and Sharon Bianco—which are also discussed as they interact with the four previously mentioned households. Since Mary Sanchez played a major role in the success of activities on the Norman Street block, her household and its support network also illustrate how the networks aided the development of collective activity.

During the second half of the twentieth century, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism) returned in a formal and dramatic way to Nauvoo, Illinois. This chapter discusses that return, beginning with the restoration work of J. LeRoy Kimball and the organization he headed, Nauvoo Restoration Incorporated. Over a period a several decades, Kimball led a team of renowned archaeologists and historians to restore Nauvoo into a Midwestern version of Colonial Williamsburg. Eventually, however, tensions between the historical and the religious led to a shift in emphasis for the site, as those directing Nauvoo Restoration embraced the proselytizing potential among the thousands who took to the road in the post-World War II tourism boom, visiting sites like Nauvoo.

This chapter tells the story of what grew in the void left behind when the growth machine abandoned Williamsburg, Brooklyn—a neighborhood whose pre-World War II working-class, immigrant residents decamped for the suburbs during the 1950s—and what happened to its new, poorer denizens when the growth machine returned in the 1990s. It is a story that revolves around the activities of several community-based organizations devoted to seeking, creating, and protecting housing for poor local residents. It is also a story about how these organizations' ability to secure their constituents places to live has been facilitated and constrained by the particular manifestations of larger economic and political forces operating in the city.

This chapter explores the different dimensions of participation found in the community-based organizations (CBOs) of Williamsburg and Bushwick, focusing on the interplay between organizational goals and the forms of individual participation that different CBOs cultivate, encourage, and downplay. Some Williamsburg and Bushwick CBOs do in fact emphasize participatory forms that aim for individual transformation, and are less concerned with enhancing the organization's capacity to exert pressure within wider economic and political fields. Other CBOs encourage forms of participation that stabilize the organizations' existence—a necessary first step if a CBO is to bargain within fields to improve the set of opportunities available to local residents. The specific forms of participation that various Williamsburg and Bushwick CBOs activate complement these organizations' distinct theories of how participation can strengthen their position within the economic and political fields in which they operate.

The second half of this book demonstrates the vigorous productivity of the communication innovations of the Boston Whigs. Between November 1772 and the end of 1774, shared public declarations introduced a communication dynamic that scaled up to reach all thirteen colonies. Parliament’s passage of the Boston Port Bill and the other Coercive Acts in the spring of 1774 provided the “shock of electricity” that strengthened and expanded this intercolonial network. With Boston “suffering in the common cause of America,” Virginia responded to committee communications from Boston, Philadelphia, and Annapolis by framing responses for committees in other colonies, by designing an association for economic coercion, and by preparing for a meeting of the First Continental Congress. To do all these things, the Virginia committees, assemblies, and convention did what every other American Whig gathering did: articulate a vigorous expression of local opinion that could also speak for the whole network.

This chapter explains how federally funded community organizing programs directed Williamsburg-Greenpoint residents' anger against the city government, allowing the neighborhood to evade the violent white racial backlash against the school busing that broke out in nearby Canarsie in 1972. Building on this mobilization and using War on Poverty funds, MYF social worker Jan Peterson worked closely with a group of Italian American women to open the neighborhood's first day care and senior citizens' center—Small World Day Care and the Swinging Sixties Senior Center. The two became a contentious project opposed by many male leaders in the neighborhood—one that drew women to join the National Congress of Neighborhood Women (NCNW), which Peterson founded in Brooklyn in 1974.

This chapter examines the use of fortifications by the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia in the Peninsula campaign during the Civil War. It looks at the Federals' campaign in Richmond and the response of the Confederates, highlighting the extensive use of fortifications by both sides for both offensive and defensive purposes. The chapter also considers the construction of earthworks by General George McClellan of the Union, the fortification of Yorktown, and the Warwick Line, whose construction was credited to John Bankhead Magruder. In addition, it discusses the campaign of Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston and his evacuation of Yorktown before concluding with an appraisal of the Williamsburg Line.

This book explores the relationship between indigenous and Atlantic slaveries in New France. Between about 1660 and 1760, French colonists and their Native allies enslaved thousands of Indians. The collection of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation includes relics of slavery: Indian slave halter (fitting emblem of indigenous North American slavery), shackles or leg irons, whips, and iron collars. Although they were produced at nearly the same time and for similar purposes, these slave restraints, like the cultures that made them, can seem worlds apart.

Museums of all kinds became more interactive and immersive. In two now exhibits, “Nation of Nations” and “1876,” the National Museum of American History placed viewers inside of historical milieus. Meanwhile, exhibits in Philadelphia and Boston made use of technologies like computers and phone banks to personalize historical understanding and identification. Finally, living history sites like Plimoth Plantation and Colonial Williamsburg placed more emphasis on realism and authenticity in their presentations of the past.

This chapter analyzes the decisions made between 1691 and 1710 to relocate both colonies’ capitals to the new cities of Annapolis and Williamsburg, revealing that these moves restructured relations between the planters and the empire. Both capitals were established because of a brief confluence of three strands of opinion. First, the imperial vision of Francis Nicholson, who, as governor for both colonies, spearheaded the projects as part of a Lockean vision to connect small-scale farmers with the imperial state. Second, the ideas of a faction within the planter class who remained committed to the 1680s improvement agenda as a bulwark against imperial influence; these men eventually became disillusioned and advocated a new urban corporate plan. Third, the objectives of the wealthiest elite planters, who saw the capital cities as spaces to secure their status within the empire through consumption and display. The eventual triumph of this third faction meant that the new capitals served to consolidate planter-merchant networks and hardened the region’s commitment to slave-driven plantations. In the process this elite group, for the first time, rejected the century-long effort to use urban spaces to facilitate civic-minded regulation of the market, cementing the planter elite’s faith in rural civic virtue.

Chapter 3 examines the neutralized cinema in the era of widescreen, from 1950 to 1960. While most histories of widescreen focus on participation, I argue that presence formulated an additional exhibition category. In this way, widescreen was at times figured as a process of mental rather than bodily immersion. Such a description further distanced film from television at a crucial historical juncture and insisted on the removal of vestigial live theater attributes such as the proscenium arch. The chapter discusses the transcineum theater structures at Colonial Williamsburg as pinnacles of Schlanger’s work; these “floating voids” or “optical vacuums” transported spectators into an enormous screen, and thus into the past, via a highly calculated filmic environment.