Erasing Charas/El Bohio is one of the most overt racist acts by the city in recent years, regarding real estate. No one in the current administration probably is old enough to even remember that E. 9th Street was totally burnt out, a no man's land in the 1970's. It was the people behind El Bohio along with other homesteaders who actually took over the block and began to redevelop it. And it was Charas' commitment to keeping the building as a community center without big money backing that preserved its many community-based programs for so many years. There was theater, a film series, all sorts of classes in art, writing and marshal arts, all taught by and for people- and mostly young people- in the neighborhood. They pulled off endless projects with practically no budget. "I think some of the best things were when we decided a project would cost $75,000, but we did it with nothing." -Chino Garcia, Charas. This was all founded on a kind of community ethos imported from the island, an ethos of leadership and protection based on a drive to have the neighborhood be self-determining about the socio-cultural health of the people who live there. If NYU moves in it is nothing but a kind of ethnic cleansing capitalist-style. Horror.