Something feels wrong about a walking tour happening this weekend that will have up to 100 people strolling through Queensbridge Houses, the city’s largest public housing complex, gawking at residents and the buildings they live in. The tour, led by former Queensbridge resident and current Long Island City bishop Mitchell Taylor and organized by the Municipal Art Society, aims to, well, that’s not exactly clear.
“Most people will not walk into Queensbridge because they don’t feel safe,” Taylor explained to the Daily News. “But if they’re led, it’s a horse of another color. Change has to happen and it has to begin from within. It’s not about changing a community from the outside in but the inside out.”
One anonymous tenant pointedly summed up the walking tour’s strange expression of privilege: “It’s an invasion. One hundred of us can’t go into their neighborhoods and do that. They’d call the cops.”
(Photo: @Metro Centric)
