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Police are looking for the woman who shot the co-founder of a commune in Staten Island Monday night. Jeffrey Gross was shot three times outside one of the homes belonging to Ganas on Corson Avenue, but managed to say that Rebekah Johnson, a former commune member who was kicked out. Well, the Daily News says police did find target practice silhouettes in her apartment. Johnson had sued Ganas for $3 million, saying she was kicked out of the group for "refusing to have a lesbian relationship." Johnson was also arrested for harrassing Gross and accusing the group of rape and forcing marriages (which have not been substantiated). While members deny it's a cult, it apparently has extensive real estate holdings and pretty flexible living arrangements.
The papers make sure to mention that on Monday night Gross had been coming home after seeing An Inconvenient Truth (hippies love the Earth!). And according to the Ganas website, the group is "an experiment in open dialogue that is based on full disclosure committed to focusing attention, hearing, and responding to everything disclosed with intent to resolve whatever conflicts emerge." Not only that, but single rooms are $710 and double rooms (where the room is shared with another person) are $510.
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I think the important thing of note is that GANAS is the coop that owns the Everything Goes vintage stores on Staten Island.
'hippies love the earth'??...
whatever lady
It looks like a lot of other stories used this NY magazine piece - http://newyorkmetro.com/news/features/16711/index.html - for information.
Ooh, Meghan, good call.
GANAS also just opened up a great used bookshop in the St. George neighborhood. They have cheap books, readings, and Internet access. Despite the nasty stories in the press, all the people in this group have been nice, polite, and very interesting. The LaRouche supporters on the other hand, put the psy in psycho.
I lived there in 2001-02 and while I was just a passerby, it's still really sad to watch the lies and sensationalism exploding around this in the media.
One important thing to note in the rash of articles is that in virtually every case, the people being interviewed are from Ganas's permanent "Core Group" (about 15 people) and their experiences are very different from the experiences of the other 85 or so people who live at Ganas short-term (who are basically just living in nice communal rooming houses). Yes, many/most of the Core Group members are involved with more than one of the others sexually, but A) that rarely involves the other 85 people, and B) all the relationship webs are admirably open and healthy.
This woman seems to be using the most inflammatory language she can, and now using violence... I don't know her, but her actions make her seem like a modern-day Valerie Solanas (the woman who wrote the SCUM manifesto and stalked, then tried to kill, Andy Warhol). I certainly call myself a feminist and while Ganas isn't perfect, it's also clearly a more feminist and positive community than most of the rest of the world.