War in the Neighbourhood Cartoon Art Postcard

Cover art from Tobocman's book. Documented Real Estate battles on the Lower East Side. Grassroots efforts to take over abandoned tenements in the late '80s and early '90s. Along with a ragtag neighbourhood collection of working-class blacks, Puerto Ricans and whites, as well as artists and homeless people from all backgrounds, Tobocman broke into abandoned, crumbing tenements in hopes of securing affordable housing. As the neighbourhood gentrified in the late 1980s, the squats became the centre of a housing movement that eventually collapsed under the weight of its diverse membership and from the unrelenting opposition of real estate developers, the police and the city government.