It’s Not Where You Live, Its How You Live:
Class and Gender Struggles in a Dublin Estate

Book Talk with author and activist John Bissett

7PM Friday 16 May • 428 East 10th Street

We are pleased to welcome and present noted author and activist John Bissett to our Lower East Side community from Ireland, to talk about his book ‘It’s Not Where You Live, It’s How You Live,’ followed by a conversation with Cuala co-director Eddie Rodriguez.

Join us to hear stories of the obstacles and triumphs faced by Dublin 8 public housing residents as well as here on Ave D and the Lower East Side. Since 2024 John and Eddie have been collaborating on our ‘Shared Struggles’ project, exploring the challenges faced by public housing residents in Ireland and New York City amid escalating levels of privatization, displacement and dispossession of public housing. Just last month here on Avenue D residents of Jacob Riis Houses overwhelmingly rejected NYCHA’s efforts to convert the development to the PACT privatization process, voting 2:1 against it – a monumental victory for resident activists at the end of a year-long campaign and leading the way in resisting privatization and protecting public housing on the Lower East Side.

 ABOUT JOHN BISSETT

Activist and writer John Bissett has been a community worker for over 35 years, has organized and participated in significant housing, anti-austerity and public debt campaigns, and is the author of Regeneration: Public Good or Private Profit.

John will give a talk about his most recent work ‘It’s Not Where You Live, It’s How You Live,‘ a ground-breaking and compelling work that takes us deep into the world of a public housing estate in Dublin, showing in fine detail the life struggles of those who live there. The book puts the emphasis on class and gender processes, revealing them to be the crucial dynamics in the lives of public housing residents. The hope is that this understanding can help change perspectives on public housing in a way that diminishes suffering and contributes to human flourishing and well-being.

Combining long-term research into residents’ lived experience with critical realist theory, ‘It’s Not Where You Live, It’s How You Live’ provides a completely fresh perspective on public housing in Ireland and arguably, beyond.

John’s talk will be followed by what promises to be a lively and engaging discussion between John and Cuala Foundation co-director, educator and activist Eddie Rodriguez.

Reserve your tickets here to avoid disappointment

The Lower East Side

Manhattan’s Lower East Side is the island’s most creative community where successive generations of residents have collaborated in solidarity to support each other through waves of oppression and deprivation.

Manhattan was a meeting place for native tribes for thousands of years before Europeans arrived and Native tribes began to collaborate against the European settlers after the Corlear’s Hook massacre of 23 February 1643 by a force led by Maryn Adriansen acting on the orders of Willem Kieft.

Cuala Foundation grew from New York City’s largest ever Irish cultural festival CualaNYC in 2016, that commemorated the 1916 Rising (which ultimately freed 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties from the British Empire), and celebrated Ireland’s shared history with New York and the Rising’s links with other independence movements.

Today Cuala’s work focuses on creating new systems of social, economic and cultural power by, for example, producing collaborative projects that celebrate community history, reclaiming abandoned space for community use, and protecting public housing.