demands of the government to help ease the strain of the depression. Organizations rejected offers of charity and instead had asked for public works programs that would provide jobs for the masses of unemployed. In 1877 five thousand people fought with the National Guard when a crowd amassed to hear Communist revolutionary speeches. On April 7, 1897, a rabbi was arrested for not obtaining a permit for the performance of Birkat Hachama, a Jewish ritual done once every 28 years. 20th century In the middle 19th century the "Square" included a large parade ground for drilling the New York National Guard. The modern layout of the park by Robert Moses in 1936 is said to be intended to divide and manage crowds that have gathered there in protest since the 1870s. That tradition was rekindled as the park became the nursery of demonstrations against the Vietnam War in the 1960s. By the 1980s Tompkins Square Park had become for many New Yorkers synonymous with the city's increased social problems. The park at that time was a high-crime area that contained encampments of homeless people, and it was a center for illegal drug dealing and heroin use. In August 1988, a riot erupted in the park when police attempted to clear the park of homeless people; 38 people were injured. Bystanders as well as homeless people and political activists got caught up in the police action that took place on the night of August 6 and the early morning of August 7, after a large number of police surrounded the park and charged at the hemmed-in crowd while other police ordered all pedestrians not to walk on streets neighboring the park. Much of the violence was videotaped and clips were shown on local TV news reports (notably including one by a man who sat on his stoop across the street from the park and continued to film while a police officer beat him up), but ultimately, although at least one case went to trial, no police officers were found culpable. A punk rock festival has been held in the park in the years since, in commemoration of the event. The park had become a symbol of the problems in the city, including homelessness—which had prompted the 1988 riot. Against that backdrop, Daniel Rakowitz shocked the neighborhood in 1989 when he murdered Monika Beerle, dismembered her, made a soup out of her