Every Thing Goes Book Cafe and Neighborhood Stage

Story

Ganas is an intentional community founded in 1979 in Tompkinsville, Staten Island. Ganas has non-egalitarian, tiered membership groups, and is thus a partial member at the Federation of Egalitarian Communities. The community uses a group problem-solving process called "Feedback Learning", which was begun by co-founder Mildred Gordon. The community attracted press attention after a 2006 shooting incident which led to lurid tabloid headlines. The community was founded by a group of six people, and has grown to consist of 10–12 core group members plus 60 to 70 members of varying involvement. There are three businesses run by Ganas, including a bookstore-cafe.HistoryGanas started in Staten Island in 1979 with six founders including Mildred Gordon and Jeff Gross. In 1973 Gordon left New York City where she had founded GROW, an unaccredited school of group therapy that "turned out unlicensed group psychotherapists." Throughout 1972 GROW was the subject of state Attorney General and city fraud investigations into "fraudulent use of Ph.D.'s from unaccredited universities". Gordon went to San Francisco where she studied biofeedback which became the basis of what she termed "Feedback Learning". Gordon met the five people who would become the original core-group of the Ganas community and incorporated the tax-exempt 501(c)(3) non-profit organization Foundation for Feedback Learning (FFL) in 1974. The new community went by the name FFL until changing their name to Ganas in the early 1990s. In the late 1970s they returned to New York and moved into a Lower East Side apartment, finally settling in Tompkinsville, Staten Island in 1979. On Staten Island the core-group shares ownership of eight houses and three commercial buildings that house their retail stores. There are about 65 non-core group residents who live in Ganas houses and cover expenses by either paying rent or working in the stores.