November 20, 2019
Dozens of activists from groups including Met Council on Housing, CWA, TenantsPAC, NY Communities for Change, Make the Road NY, and Cooper Square Committee converged on 52 Vanderbilt Avenue today clanging on pots and pans. The Manhattan Institute, a think tank located there, was the target of their ire.
Carlos Encarnación of NY Communities for Change explained that clanging on pots and pans was in solidarity with the Chilean people who oppose the neoliberal agenda down there. CWA’s Nell Geiser told the Gazette that financier and Manhattan Institute Chairman Paul Singer‘s Elliot Management Fund has taken a stake in ATT that the Union fears will put thousands of jobs at risk. The Gazette was unable to go upstairs and interview Singer.
At one point the lobby was so jam packed with pot and pan clanging activists that it was all the building’s staff could do to keep them there as elevator doors opened and closed. After a brief stay the activists regrouped on the sidewalk outside and launched an impromptu picket line extending to 45th Street and back. From there they relocated to the east side of Vanderbilt, clanging their pots and pans and chanting, e.g. ‘Singer, Singer, you can’t hide/workers and tenants side by side!’ ‘House the Poor/Tax the Rich!’ and ‘Singer, Singer, whaddya say?/how many jobs did ya kill today?’
Alex Lee of Cooper Square Committee told the Gazette that what drew him to this mobilization was the prospect of think tanks like Manhattan Institute pushing Albany politicians to undo or water down the hard won provisions of the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 or HSTPA. This new law ‘protects 2.5 million renters from evictions, unaffordable rent hikes, and unsafe living conditions,’ according to the flyer he provided.