How housing justice in New York’s Chinatown connects to broader abolitionist struggles for community safety, collective wellness, and the possibility of living otherwise

From youth organizing out of the oldest porcelain store in Chinatown, to working-class tenants taking their predatory landlords to housing court, to artist collectives reclaiming public space through outdoor projection art, You Can’t Evict a Movement explores the visionary possibilities of housing justice activism in New York City.

Drawing on ethnography, participatory mapping, and oral history interviews with tenants, organizers, artists, sex workers, mutual aid practitioners, and young people, Diane Wong reveals how Chinatown has become one of Manhattan’s last working-class neighborhoods and a battleground for gentrification—a fight that determines who has the right to shape the future of the city.

Through what she calls interstitial politics, Wong shows how transformative change takes root in the crevices of daily life—in streets and storefronts, hallways and staircases, massage parlors and kitchen tables. Housing becomes a catalyzing issue that connects to broader abolitionist struggles for community safety, collective wellness, and the possibility of living otherwise.

Ultimately, You Can’t Evict a Movement is about emplacement as much as displacement—a testimony to how the most transformative changes in cities are forged from the ground up through insurgency, creativity, and the fundamental belief that an alternative future is not only possible but that ordinary people are already building that vision.