Activist New York

In the early 20th century, NYC tenants—often led by immigrant women—launched rent strikes to protest rising rents and poor conditions. Gaining momentum after WWI, these efforts led to the city’s first rent control laws in 1920 and laid the foundation for ongoing housing justice movements that continue today.

Explore the life and legacy of barrier-breaking Brooklyn-born politician Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to US Congress.

Activists have continued to mobilize for access to the city’s built environment, created resources to live independent visible lives, and formulated a proud disability identity. In the process, they made a more inclusive city for all, and helped expand thinking about the diversity of human bodies and minds. 

In the face of daunting barriers and widespread racism, in the 1930s Chinese American workers in Lower Manhattan’s Chinatown demanded improved labor rights, connected with groups in the global anti-imperialist movement, and resisted longstanding, legalized discrimination.

“We’re a movement now,” proclaimed feminist Kate Millett to tens of thousands of women who marched through the streets of New York on August 26, 1970, to demand full gender equality.

In 1970 Sylvia L. Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, two participants in the Stonewall uprising the year before, created Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) to empower marginalized youth and people of color before the term “transgender” was widely used.

“¡Basta ya!”—”Enough!” was the feeling of Young Lords member Mickey Melendez and other East Harlem activists. It was the summer of 1969, and the group had blocked traffic on 110th Street with piles of garbage to protest inadequate sanitation services. They had already asked the city for brooms to clean their neighborhood’s streets and, when refused, they went ahead and took them.

On April 15, 1967, as many as 400,000 protesters marched from Central Park to the United Nations to demand an end to U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, with Martin Luther King Jr. leading the way. It was the largest antiwar demonstration in U.S. history to date.

New York City in the late 19th century was a hotbed of debate and conflict over sexuality, including what critics labeled obscenity or “vice.”

The 2020 uprisings have brought #BlackLivesMatter back to the center of national conversation. Organized by queer Black women Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, the hashtag first appeared on Twitter in 2013 as a rallying cry to “recognize the humanity of all Black life.”