Rabble Rousers: Frances Goldin and the Fight for Cooper Square, screening September 25 at the 2024 New York edition of the Architecture & Design Film Festival, is a respectable dual portrait of the legendary Lower East Side organizer and the Manhattan neighborhood she vigorously defended for six decades. But where Kelly Anderson, Kathryn Barnier, and Ryan Joseph’s film excels is as a celebration of the common man rather than the great man—of the endless daily struggle and bottomless courage it takes to protect a community from rapacious developers.

Courtesy Realistic Pictures