Grassroots protest killed a proposed expressway through Lower Manhattan

Evidence

“Arrest that woman,” Toth demanded as if Jacobs were Kusama. Although other insurgents took advantage of the chaos to destroy the stenotype tape of the meeting, Jacobs alone was booked and charged with disrupting a public hearing. When she showed up nine days later for her arraignment, she was informed that she now was being charged with inciting a riot and criminal mischief and enjoined from further anti-LOMEX protests. The case never went to trial, but the city took notice. In July 1969, Lindsay, who had campaign against LOMEX and then reversed his position after the election, declared LOMEX dead “for all time”: it was a thought, and phrase, Robert Smithson might have savored. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1146

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the gentrification-origin thesis: community activism against infrastructure preserved the cast-iron district that artists then colonized. Ties to the reading goal re: conditions enabling invention density.