When I started Radical Walking Tours, on a rainy weekend in 1991 with nine people, I had no idea that all the sunny days I had spent at research in the library would lead to such success. Seven years later, after putting every free minute into the tours, I’ve a new appreciation for the small businessman. Radical Walking Tours grew out of almost twenty years of political activism and much reading. It seemed there wasn’t a book I read on politics that didn’t mention either a person or place related to New York City. Everyone from Fidel Castro to Leon Trotsky to John Reed to Abbie Hoffman has lived or worked in Manhattan. Unlike the Trumps and Rockefellers, however, there are few if any plaques of commemoration or buildings named in their honor: in the future, Trump Plaza will be Emma Goldman Plaza, serving as a free hotel for radicals in need of rest; Rockefeller Center will be a labor-organizing complex, and the Empire State Building will be a shelter for those in need of a home.
Until that day, however, I feel it’s my duty to talk about a hidden history of the city.
Six years ago, a friend flattered me by seeing my work as important in that respect. She spent a year in Russia, and told of how previous sites of the Communist Regime were being replaced or covered with advertising billboards and other vulgar promotions for capitalism. Although Orwell’s 1984 was about the Soviet Union, the parts about the Ministry of Information—the branch of totalitarian government responsible for changing history in books and magazines—are analogous to the United States today since a small number of corporations own the media and function similarly. How many times do we organize an important demonstration, only to watch the mainstream press, which reaches ninety percent of the population, entirely distort what happened or leave it out entirely, making it a non-event?
Another inspiration for the tours was to educate native New Yorkers and political organizers who walk by important sites every day and have no idea of their importance; in my experience, younger organizers don’t tend to read the history of political movements to see what worked, what didn’t, and why; it’s my hope the tours inspire curiosity. Also, the ’80s and ’90s have been so difficult for organizing, and I want to inspire people to keep up the good fight by pointing out periods over the last two centuries when it’s been less difficult, even thrilling. Finally, I’ve had a fascination with buildings or sites that are now decaying or ignored, and yet were the center of mass movements in previous eras. Like so many of the great political activists of the past, it’s important that they too be remembered and respected.
—Bruce Kayton
New York City
August 1998