Standing before a meeting of his neighbors and staff from Cambridge’s community development agency, a bearded man in a green flannel shirt picked up his accordion and sang a song.

Tom O’Leary had made up the lyrics to “More Veritas, Please” sitting on his porch in Cambridge’s Riverside neighborhood. It’s a song of protest against the university that has slowly been taking over the place where he lives.

“We want no more tall buildings, nor houses torn down,” O’Leary sang. “We want green space and sky, and a parking place now and again.”

Riverside is where, over the past 40 years, Harvard has put up some of its largest and least-loved buildings. Neighborhood residents live in the shadow of Peabody Terrace and the Mather House tower.

And now that Harvard is planning to tear down the popular Mahoney’s garden store and put up an art museum, the residents have mobilized with renewed vigor.

O’Leary’s song brought levity to a meeting this winter—even the Harvard representative laughed and clapped—but for the most part opposition in Riverside is fierce and very serious.

Over the years, Harvard has moved deeper into the three neighborhoods where it dwells—and residents there have fought every step of the way.

The battles have been fought on three fronts. In the well-heeled and well-organized Agassiz neighborhood, the discussion is slow and focused. In Mid-Cambridge, the location of the city’s hospital, high school and public library, the approach is methodical. And in Riverside, a traditionally working-class area, the anger boils over.

In all three places, residents face the same threats of encroachment by an ever-growing institution. But rarely do the ringleaders of neighborhood activism work together—by and large, each group is on its own.

This is the story of how three people from Harvard’s three neighborhoods deal with the behemoth in their midst.

In Agassiz, Slow and Steady

As Miriam Goldberg sips coffee and discusses her opposition to Harvard expansion, other patrons of Broadway Espresso overhear her and spontaneously voice their agreement.

Unfazed by eavesdroppers in the Mass. Ave. coffee shop halfway between Porter Square and Harvard Square, Goldberg shakes hands and makes introductions.

“This is a pretty close-knit community,” she says.

Her daughter, a nursing student, walks by the coffeshop and Goldberg excuses herself to wish her daughter a happy birthday.