Independent Lens

I grew up in the South Bronx in the 1970s during the time of the fires. It was obvious the landlords were burning their buildings. How they got away with it was a mystery. And in my time, I can honestly say of the thousands of fires that I witnessed, nobody ever went to jail. The State sets up an insurance pool and everybody got paid, everybody got kicked back. In ten years, about 80% of the housing was lost to fires. About a quarter of a million people lost their homes. Filmmakers Vivian Vazquez Irizarry, Gretchen Hildebran, Julia Steele Allen bring you "Decade of Fire." Developers want to carve up the Bronx all over again. This is happening all across America, and it's probably happening in your city as well. The same people who were redlined and neglected for years are now being displaced, but in cities across the country, we are fighting back. Now only on "Independent Lens."

dreamy music

sirens wailing

helicopter whirring

somber music

I grew up in the South Bronx in the 1970s during the time of the fires. To me, it was home.

energetic music

I'd wake up, and the building next door was on fire. The building down the block was on fire. Houses were disappearing. Screaming, everybody screaming outside, and running. The story we were told, the story the whole world was told, was that the fires were somehow our fault. The fire was in the air. Fire was everywhere. People were angry.

general uproar

People didn't care about property. They don't even care about life, as far as I can see. But the Bronx wasn't burning in a protest or a riot, or because we didn't know any better. We were fighting to survive. The fire department didn't come until after all the people had jumped out. There wasn't no fire engines at all. We was the fire engines. In ten years, we lost nearly 80% of our housing to fires. Around quarter of a million people lost their homes. But we did not burn the South Bronx. In fact, we were the ones who saved it. The Bronx is still my home. I worked most of my life in the Bronx. I raised my children here. This is my place.

subway train clattering faintly

It's still hard to accept that that could've happened, and that it did happen.

somber music

A lot of us still believe that we were to blame, 'cause that's the only story that ever gets told about the fires. But I could never let that go. What really happened to us here? Do you want to put some garlic on that, or no? Too much? Maybe a little bit of garlic. Antonio's the second of my three children, just back after college. I'm always talking to my kids about where we came from, our roots. So this is Grandma Carmen and her two brothers when they first came here. You know, Grandma Carmen came here when she was ten. I figure my father wanted something more. In the '40s and then, in the '50s, there was a big migration from PR to here. My grandparents were struggling to survive in Puerto Rico. After years of being a U.S. colony, there weren't enough jobs. As U.S. citizens, we could go up north. My grandfather decided that he was gonna try his luck in New York. People wanted to come to the greatest city in the world. Why not them?

traffic noises

We came to live at 160th Street in the Bronx.

jaunty music

Once you came across the First Avenue Bridge to come into the Bronx, it was like going, you know, to another world. I mean, the Bronx was it. Mike Amadeo was one of many looking for a way out of crowded Harlem and East Harlem. If you moved to the South Bronx, it was a step up. After the pawn shop, that was-- my father's store used to be. Whoever thought that I was gonna be the owner of this store? God put--put me here. In those days, New York City was segregated, but not the South Bronx. These neighborhoods were some of the most integrated places in the whole country. We had everything here. We had Irish. Um... A lot of Italian and Jewish people lived here. Our African-American neighbors had come from the Jim Crow South looking for a better life, just like us. We were the first African-Americans to move into Lyman Place, um, as homeowners. This is the house that your dad bought? Yes, in 1940. It had a wood picket fence, and I said, "Oh, Daddy! Is that our house?" and right away, I was starting to protect it. My family came to the Bronx in 1957. That's when my adventures started, seeing different people. Everybody played football together, stickball together, partied together.

bright music

As soon as the weather got nice, out would come the instruments. The bongos, the conga, the timbales, and then the Irish would start playing their Irish music back, so you had these music wars going out the windows. That's what made the neighborhood great. We grew up here on Leggett Avenue. My earliest memories are of us playing out in the front.

knocking softly

Hi. - Hello. Thank you for letting me in. Oh, my God. I haven't been back inside that old apartment since I was a teenager. I remember being part of a community. There was this openness to our lives, this sense of opportunity and excitement.

distant siren wailing

haunting music

This was my first memory of a fire. I'm looking out the window, and right in front of me, there were just flames. I had a very good friend. We would sit together in class. We were really close. Her building burned that night. The next day, she was gone. She never came back. That was the first time I realized there was something wrong in my neighborhood. Our families were setting roots down here, but our neighborhoods were being targeted by government policies based on race.

tranquil drum music

It started with redlining. Redlining. When this first starts in the 1930s, any neighborhood that has 5%, 10% black or Puerto Rican population is seen as a declining neighborhood. The federal housing agencies, banks, insurance companies-- they start taking maps and literally drawing lines around them. If a neighborhood had a red line drawn around it, it's a bad bet. Don't give a loan there, don't give out homeowner's insurance, fire insurance. Our housing stock in these redlined areas was already old. These were prewar buildings, and they were left to rot. Things in the neighborhood became even worse when the government implemented urban renewal, which tore down so-called slums in Manhattan.

building rumbling

bright music

The greatest slum clearance project on record goes forward. This poor tenement area is to be used for modern apartment buildings and parks.

jazz music

It was a beautiful idea. Get rid of older housing and build civic buildings and middle-class housing. But its consequences go beyond just the rebuilding. It was something called urban renewal, which means moving the Negroes out. It--it means Negro removal. That is what it means. And the federal government is accom-- is--is a--is an accomplice to this fact. Slum clearance targeted African-American and Puerto Rican communities in Manhattan. Over 100,000 people's homes were demolished. People are displaced, and they go on the subway lines to the Bronx. Urban renewal displaced 100,000 people into our decaying buildings. From here on, it would only be described as a ghetto. 15 years ago, the neighborhood was Jewish and Irish, with a scattering of others. Now, it's a neighborhood of the others.

somber music

Our neighborhoods were going into decline, but news reports didn't want to talk about redlining or policy. They just wanted to talk about us. This is a new element This is a different element. Every kid carries a switchblade knife. Every one of these kids are potential killers. I think they have to learn to live the way we do and take care of things. What--what about some of those criticisms that the Negro is dirty, that the Negro is more violent, therefore the Negro doesn't make as good a neighbor? Well, that's because they have never given the Negro the chance. It was a heavy thing, to leave there. We had relatives there upstairs. I had cousins. But of course, they were moving, too. For white people, it was easy to leave for the suburbs. The government would even help subsidize the mortgage. All you had to do was qualify. If you were black or Hispanic, you weren't given a mortgage for a suburb. Right? You couldn't move into, uh, neighborhoods that you wanted to move into. No. - You couldn't. No, you couldn't. - You couldn't get a mortgage to move out. - You couldn't.

haunting music

My father wanted to get a loan to buy a house in Soundview. For a quick while, we sort of had this hope that we were gonna be homeowners, like, "Oh, we're gonna move to a house! We're gonna move to a house." It was very exciting. And then, all of a sudden, that topic just ended. He worked for the same company for so many years, yet he-- he wasn't eligible for a loan. Why? Why was he not eligible for a loan? It was painful. We could see the neighborhood changing around us.

downbeat music

Trash in the streets. Many of our landlords had sold their buildings to speculators. They chopped up the apartments, squeezing more people into smaller spaces. We don't have no heat in the building. We don't have no water. We have to go outside to get the water, because the landlord doesn't want to do anything in the building. We know he's not gonna do anything about it. He just wants to get the money and go. The new landlords wouldn't fill the boiler in the winter, even when it was freezing out. People had to use their ovens and electric heaters just to stay warm, and the old wiring in our buildings couldn't handle the new appliances. It wasn't any one thing. It was all these things that eventually led to the fires.

sirens wailing

urgent music

1968, it went crazy. Hey! I was shipped up to 85 Engine. We were in the eye of the storm. Fires were on the rise in our neighborhood, but the response wasn't what it should've been. Commissioner O'Hagan, why the rise from '64 on? Why is the city burning? If you bring a, uh, poor family out of the, uh-- the Deep South, uh, with a promise of opportunity and put him in an urban center for the first time and crowd 15 to 20 people in an apartment who have never lived in this type of an environment before, crowded into a--you know, living quarters that they're not familiar with, it's not surprising that you have an increase in--in, you know, fires.

somber music

If I live in a building, I'm not gonna burn the building, 'cause I got the little

bleep

I hustle for to be in there. I don't want it burned. My mother and father lived here since they were kids. I lived here when I was a kid. And now you're gonna tell me, "Go move someplace else." What for? I live here.

distant sirens wailing

The fires were spreading quickly. This would've been the time for the fire department to stop them. I'd like to see as much as I can about what was going on in the fire department

at that time

the runs, the closings, how many people worked there, how many firefighters-- There's--there's tons and tons of stuff up here. How would I find how many fire companies and how many firemen worked over time, like, what the change is? How would I find what the changes were in fire companies? I don't think they keep records like that. Like, i--you know what it was? It was so fast... - Mm-hmm. And it was so overwhelming, we--we think that they didn't even record half the fires. They didn't even record half the fires? Fires in the city increased more than 50%.

distant siren wailing

at that time

What I keep hearing and reading is that, at the time when there were so many fires in the South Bronx, firehouses closed. On the one hand, there could be legitimate reasons for why fire companies were closed. Makes me wonder...why. I'm very pleased to announce that the RAND Corporation and New York City are engaged in a series of discussions which will lead to a major involvement by the RAND corporation in urban problems here in New York City. In the late 1960s, the City was sliding towards bankruptcy. City services get more expensive all the time. How do you get a bigger bang for the buck? Mayor Lindsay hired the RAND Corporation to help trim the budget.

dramatic music

at that time

RAND Corporation analysts claimed that their computer models would help win the war in Vietnam, and now, they promised to fix the City. RAND Corporation was assigned to the fire department to try to reduce the cost of fire protection in the City using RAND computer models to predict future trends. John O'Hagan, head of the fire department, started eliminating fire companies. Well, there are, uh, eight companies that are to be eliminated. They're closing fire companies mostly in poor neighborhoods with the very high fire numbers, while neighborhoods that have lower fire numbers are untouched, uh, and in many cases, are gaining companies. I would talk to these RAND consultants. "Why was that decision made? Makes no sense." And this consultant said to me, "Management decisions are logical, and they make sense," but that was a political decision. Political decisions do not make any sense. We are suspending the seven-man manning and adaptive response in the, uh, Bronx, which will save half a million dollars. - How much money do you save... For those people who have the power and the authority, we didn't matter. In the South Bronx, where we needed fire protection the most, it wasn't there. It's like the rug comes out from under you and you don't really know what happened.

disquieting music

at that time

Our parents came here to start a new life. Next thing you know, the Bronx is burning. They didn't see that coming. The community did not see it coming. They're in it. They can't see out from under it. They can't see that there are all these forces at play.

tranquil chime music

at that time

A memorandum sent by presidential advisor Daniel Moynihan has angered civil rights leaders. In it, he argued that the traditional economic gap between black and white in the north is virtually closed, and that the race issue would now benefit from a period of what he chose to call "benign neglect." Here was this man who was considered a progressive Democrat putting out there that the problems of the cities should be ignored. Just let them burn, because they're creating too much of a ruckus. I say, we have to calm down the rhetoric of racial accusation and paranoid sensitivities and go on, carry on the substantive improvement in conditions that has been taking place. Moynihan had an influence which allowed federal policy to continue to ignore what was happening in the South Bronx, and Moynihan also wrote that when people like us in the ghetto have fires, they were set on purpose, saying that fires were a leading indicator of social pathology. He's saying we set the fires 'cause there's something wrong with us.

somber music

distant sirens wailing

at that time

By the time I was 10, 11, 12, there was not just fires. There was neglect and abandonment everywhere. We have all the mechanical grooms dump their loads here. By the end of the day, we pick up all the piles and make one trip to the dump. This saves the City a lot of money, gas, and everything. Nobody's aware of the fact that we got a city dump right here in-- in the backyard, and that's a nice thing

to do in the morning

get up and open your window and see, uh--uh, sanitation trucks dumping garbage in your back door. The visual reminder that we received every day was that you're nothing. You're nothing. This is where you live. This was my middle school graduation. It was the last time that we were all together as friends. When did that start appearing? The losing of people? By the end of middle school, life became hardcore. It started back when I was in high school. This building was abandoned. That building was abandoned. It didn't faze on me that this was happening. I just noticed there's no one-- nobody living in this building anymore. Then vandals would run in and pull out the plumbing. I used to sleep with my boots on. I had to be ready to jump up and run, jump up and fight, jump up and do whatever had to be done at a moment's notice. I stood here for three years with no landlord or nothing. There was a phantom landlord collecting money. I don't know who the person was. I still have the--the-- The receipts? - The receipts. Everything around us was crumbling, and we were all trying the best we could to survive. I never wanted you to come this way. Don't walk anybody. Don't go that way.

downbeat music

to do in the morning

We didn't take chances. Many of my friends who did the right thing, went to school, ended up on drugs, um, dead, going to jail. I could've easily been one of those people. How could children like that thrive, like, in that community? How could we have thrived? It was very hard. - Right. It was very hard. Whatever I had to do, I did. Yeah, you did. - Mm-hmm. You got us through. - Mm-hmm. You're brave. No, I learned. Mm-hmm. - I learned a lot. We used to tell our landlord, "Don't abandon us, 'cause we can't live anywhere else." My children were all born here, and we tried to make something better for them. The sense that I get-- there's this guilt and shame from not having what it takes to elevate oneself out of that circumstance. That's what we internalize, right, 'cause we're living in it, and we did blame ourselves. Why are we doing this to ourselves? It--it was complicated, and it's awful, because I think that in many ways, we still blame ourselves. This is where the club was. - This is where the club was. This exactly where it is. - This is where the club was. "Hello? Can we come in?" Yeah. - Psychedelic black walls? -

laughs

to do in the morning

I wasn't allowed in there. Are you kidding? My dad would've-- - Not just your parents. Some other guys was not gonna allow you in there. - Right, but you know how-- how it is with little kids. During the day, we used to run in to look and then run out. That was-- it was exciting.

funk music

to do in the morning

My sister and I--we-- we toed a straight line, for the most part. We were goody-two-shoes. But the gangs were part of my community. Everybody that I was hanging with-- we were coming from those areas of burnt-out buildings. We all were-- were in the same mindset. What's the point? This is what we have. This is what we have to live with. When I moved to the Bronx, gangs started to flourish. The friends that I made that I would kick it with in the stoop-- they called themselves the Savage Skulls. These were my brothers and my sisters. You could not tell me, you know, I didn't belong to them and they didn't belong with me, you know? The gang that was in the building--they say, "We live there. The building's gonna be safe, so you don't worry about it." Remember when you used to sell Avon to all the wives of the gang members? Do you remember that? I had my market there.

distant siren wailing

to do in the morning

By the mid-1970s, nearly all of our buildings had seen some kind of fire.

fire bell ringing

to do in the morning

And now arson was becoming commonplace. The youths in the neighborhood seem to get some enjoyment out of, uh, using some form of accelerant, usually gasoline.

downbeat music

to do in the morning

Arson, arson. 3 boys, 9 to 11, seized in a Bronx blaze. There was a building on Tiffany Street... And the owner approached my brothers to burn two buildings in that block. They agreed, and then they approached me. We're living in the street. If you give us $250, that's a lot. You know, it's more than our moms could ever afford to give us. I wasn't one of the girls. I was one of the boys, you know, when I was growing up with them. I would do anything for them. I had this strange thoughts that used to come to my head, like, you know, if I go with them, you know, help them, and--and watch the cops, I had this crazy notion that at least I'm keeping them out of prison. This is how I thought. Was there a time when you were involved in torching a building that you regretted? Every single one. There are more newspaper articles about the fires post-'74. But the kind of attention is interesting. There's a sensationalism. "These fires are arsons. We've got to get the guys. "We've got to get these young people who wanna torch buildings for fun." If you look at arson arrests, you can see that a lot of young people talk about how they were paid by someone to torch the buildings, and you don't hear about the folks who hired these young people, the landlords or anybody else. Is it a difficult thing, to--to set a fire? Mm, I would say no, not more difficult than walking down a street. What's the main motive that people operate on? The money. There's a lot of money to be made from arson. The housing was no longer viable for the landlord as a place to make money. You take the rent, you don't fix anything, you don't pay the taxes, and the last step is burning it. Hire a gang to burn it. In the community, we knew that landlords were burning their buildings. We just didn't know how much money they made. The State sets up an insurance pool so they can dole out policies in places where it's impossible to get a fire insurance policy. Landlords would kick back money to these insurance brokers who'd come in and, you know, look at a--an abandoned, half-burned-out building in some neighborhood in the Bronx and say, "Oh, yeah, that's worth $100,000, easily," and everybody got paid, everybody got kicked back. The state insurance pool paid out $10 million in 1974 alone. By the end of the decade, the insurance company Lloyd's of London paid out over $45 million in claims. That would be around $250 million today. And those were just the payments I could find records for because of a federal investigation. Who knows how much was paid out by other insurance companies? What I did learn was that once they collected the insurance, landlords weren't required to fix the buildings. They could just pocket the money and walk away.

Arson unit prosecution activity

61 felony convictions. That's all, out of 4,000 suspicious fires that year in the Bronx. The city does have fire marshals, somewhere between 60 and 70 for the entire city of New York. Because there are so few marshals for such an appalling number of fires, most battalion chiefs simply label a suspicious fire in a vacant building as "cause unknown," thereby avoiding the need for an investigation. So h-- I find this memo. It's called the "Evaluation of the fire department's program for combating arson in the city of New York." "The City should not implement "the proposed fire marshal surveillance program. "We do not feel that any increases "to the present force of marshals should be made until this evidence is presented." The Office of Management and Budget. The only way a fire gets investigated is when you call a fire marshal. They're saying that there's no proof that bringing on more fire marshals would solve the problem of arson.

siren wailing

Arson unit prosecution activity

And there was no questions asked. They collected and they walked away from the buildings. And in my time, I can honestly say of the thousands of fires that I witnessed, nobody ever went to jail.

jazz music

Arson unit prosecution activity

There can no longer be any doubt that without appropriate federal assistance, there will be a municipal default in New York by the end of the year. When the City is essentially bankrupt, it asks the federal government for a loan. They're able to convince the president to give the loan to this--to New York, but it's only in return for massive budget cuts. New York City's budget was now under the control of a non-elected state body. Nicknamed Big MAC, this panel ordered deep cuts in all city services. The sharply reduced level of spending has meant the loss of more than 40,000 city jobs in the past year and reductions in service in all areas, altering life across the city. Since 1970, the fire department had been cutting its ranks. Their force of over 12,000 firefighters would eventually be reduced to less than 8,000. Now, the fire department was cutting before the City collapsed. We were cut to the bone, uh, and we were cut deeper than the bone when the--the real cuts came in in 1975.

crowd talking

Arson unit prosecution activity

Fire! Fire!

sirens wailing

Arson unit prosecution activity

They continued to close fire companies in the South Bronx.

insistent music

Arson unit prosecution activity

To date, with these 14 companies that have been eliminated over the last two years, we've lost 82 lives. This is complete madness, again, and people are gonna die. And all of a sudden, neighborhoods just went fwoosh! Gone. They would look like a tsunami. The burning of the Bronx eventually spread across the Grand Concourse to the Harlem River and it worked its way to near Fordham Road. This here doesn't explain a true response to... the abandonment, the devastation, the neglect. They-- there hasn't been a response that comes close. Not even close. And then, the lights went out.

people shouting

sirens wailing

Arson unit prosecution activity

The '77 blackout-- it was devastating. Over a thousand fires burned that night.

somber music

Arson unit prosecution activity

People have been imploding for so long. The next day, we heard that there was a lot of looting on Third Avenue, Southern Boulevard. Prospect Avenue was destroyed, and that's where my father worked in a furniture store. My father lost the job he'd had for 17 years. I was 15 years old, but I know that I needed to leave the South Bronx. But I didn't have the vision to think about where, how. We're all in this together, and we're all falling. I was focused on making sure that I would at least graduate high school, but I wanted to go away to college. My parents decided to split up, and my mother moved back to Puerto Rico.

somber music

Arson unit prosecution activity

There was nothing left to keep me here. After all that we went through, was this really how it was gonna end? High pop to the left side. Cey goes to the railing, he's got some room, and he makes a catch. That is a live picture, and obviously a major fire in a large building in the South Bronx region of New York City. My goodness, that's a huge blaze! It was the World Series. Millions of people were watching the Yankees play the Dodgers. A few blocks away, a school building was burning to the ground. The Bronx had been burning for ten years, and we were finally getting the world's attention. That's the very area where President Carter trod just a few days ago.

hip-hop music

Arson unit prosecution activity

I came downstairs, and the president was right in front of the building

around 9

00. Did you blink twice? No, I didn't, but I said, "Wow. You know. What are you doing here?" But we need more money, Carter, because I think the--

laughter

around 9

I feel good about this. See that he cares about the South Bronx. I hope he don't forget us when he go back to Washington. Once we decide to-- to renovate, uh, block by block, we just need to concentrate forces here. All the attention and promises raised hopes in the community, but the money never arrived.

people clamoring

around 9

Then Carter was replaced by Ronald Reagan. Reagan! Reagan! I'll sell you my vote for a job! Because almost three years ago... We know that! What are you gonna do for us? Let the man talk! - I'll get there. Help us, not by yourself, but you can put a word in for us. -

yelling

around 9

I am trying to tell you that I know now, there is no program or promise that a president can make that the federal government can then come in and wave a wand and do this. Go back to Hollywood! We don't want you! President Reagan, in his televised speech on the economy, proposed 83 major program cuts. It was another blow to the South Bronx.

somber music

around 9

It didn't seem to matter who was in power. No help was coming for the South Bronx. When I went to SUNY Albany, it was a big transition. It was like moving to another country, in many ways. - Yeah. It was so different. A professor said, "Hey... where'd you come from?" My freshman roommate told me flat-out that I wasn't gonna make it because I came from the South Bronx. But I had friends from the city. We all stuck together, whatever we needed to do to survive and to stay. We're gonna stay. We're gonna make it. You go to college, and then you come back. So you reach this moment where you feel the need, "I need to get out." What brought you back? Visually seeing, "Wait a second. "Not all communities are like what I-- where I came from." So that sense of injustice, of-- the sense of anger.

energetic hip-hop music

around 9

Even before I graduated, I started coming back. After my freshman year, I spent the summer recruiting kids from my neighborhood to go to college. In my second year, I came back to work on tenant organizing and voter registration.

sirens wailing

around 9

Around this time, "Fort Apache" showed up, a Hollywood movie that started filming here. "Fort Apache, The Bronx." The fuse has been lit!

people clamoring

around 9

We were sick of seeing our community being used as a backdrop, of hearing that we set the fires, of seeing these racist stereotypes used as entertainment. We'd had enough. If no one else wants to fight, we'll fight, but I'm sure I could get all the women in the Bronx to go out there and fight. Already, the Gemini Theatre has canceled it. That was our first victory of the day, and the movie has been pulled out of Philadelphia entirely. The fight against "Fort Apache" was a part of something bigger. My generation knew we would have to re-create the world ourselves. Some of us were inventing hip-hop in South Bronx basements, while some of us were figuring out how to save our blocks. That spirit became contagious. Is the Bronx in the house? Stay, fight, and build. I want a good neighborhood, I want to be safe, I want not to worry about my kids when I go to work at night. This is where I have my faith in. This was my first business, it was doing great, and I just didn't want to let it go. I knew that success was to keep the houses here, and the people here and interested in staying here, no matter how crazy it might have looked. Hetty moved into abandoned buildings on her block to keep vandals from gutting them, then started after-school programs for children. Let's try to say the Zulu all by itself. I thought, "I don't think I want my block to disappear. I think I had a good time growing up on that block." On Lyman Place, there is now a sense of hopefulness. The federal government and State lack the compassion and interest in our people, and what we're saying is that this is our piece of land, this is our stake in our future, and this represents our last hope. I saw that in our neighborhoods, there was natural resources. We had the people, and we had the buildings, and they were idle. What we really had to do was just bring those resources together and make them effective. 1186, two years ago, was an abandoned city-owned building. I made a commitment then. I was gonna put this building back together. Ramon Rueda and his friends founded the People's Development Corporation, one of the first groups to start rebuilding in the South Bronx. We renovated that building, and this was-- was vacant. We had a carpentry shop, so we actually trained the young folks to rebuild their homes. Is this your apartment here? - Yeah. Is that why you're taking special care with the floor? Yes.

laughs

around 9

How do you like working on your own place? It feels great. I want it perfect. Basically, a bank uses equity as a down payment,

and the down payment that we put here is sweat

our own sweat, our own labor, our own time. Around that time, a friend of mine said, "Come over and see this group on Washington Avenue." Inspired by the People's Development Corporation, a group of neighbors on Kelly Street were determined to save and renovate their own block. This is Banana Kelly. You can see by the curve of the block. It's curved like a banana. We had abandoned buildings on the block. Banana Kelly's idea of purpose and organizing has been to try and save our neighborhood. The people that live here will be able to control the neighborhood they live in. People from the area slowly got involved because they went to Washington Avenue, said, "Oh, my God, look at this. These people are like us." "They're doing work, they're learning stuff, "and they're in-- rebuilding these buildings and they're gonna live here." These buildings--they had solar panels on the roof, they had wood grain floors, beautiful modern apartments, and it was like, "Oh, we can have this?"

electronic music

and the down payment that we put here is sweat

People were saying, "What kind of fools are you? "You don't own those buildings. "You're working for free? What are you, crazy?" There was something about the people that I was working with. They didn't want to give up. So we took over three buildings and just started to clean them out. It was really scary work. I thought it would be impossible, but every day, we would see more and more people coming together to do this, and if they were here, I'm gonna be here. Made me stronger, and made me better. I wanted to achieve something. I'm proud of that.

hip-hop music

and the down payment that we put here is sweat

Hiya. How you doing? Let's bring this hug in. Throughout the 1980s and '90s, dozens of grassroots organizations were using music, culture, and community to bring the neighborhood back to life. I just decided that I was gonna do something. I lived in the area, and I wanted to give something back, and we said, "Come on! Let's bring this band to the park." People were longing for culture, for the arts, or for something. We just filled the void.

over mic

and the down payment that we put here is sweat

If it wasn't for us being here, the park wouldn't be like it is right now. It'd probably be fallen to everything else that we know that's going on. -

singing

and the down payment that we put here is sweat

The sounds of children-- what they do is healing. The rhythm started coming back, and I--I was tuning the block like you'd tune an instrument.

piano music

and the down payment that we put here is sweat

Are there kids out there, playing, and do they have that pitch of happiness?

children laughing, shouting

and the down payment that we put here is sweat

Hetty also had to take on the City to save her block. This house was empty, the one over there was empty, 'cause the City was gonna close down this block. Rather than rebuilding, the City wanted to shrink the Bronx population, moving people out and demolishing old buildings. Hetty helped her neighbors to organize to keep them from being unfairly evicted. We had to meet once a week to try to counteract the City's effort to throw everybody out. Tenants all over the Bronx, including my neighbors at 986 Leggett, pooled their resources, paid for their own gas and oil, and managed their own properties. That was the beginning of the largest tenant-run co-op program in the country. Community organizing is what finally stopped the fires. A coalition of Bronx residents and clergy members demanded that the City take action. Because of this pressure, the fire department finally assigned an arson investigation team to the borough in 1982, and the fires began to slow down. After the fires, the people in the Bronx hung onto their blocks with almost no support. Giving up is too easy. The hard thing is to stick in there and stay with your-- your beliefs. If your-- show that you made it, maybe other people will do the same. I refuse to just walk away. In 1986, their hard work paid off. We want it to be permanent, affordable housing for those who are at the very bottom of the economic ladder. The mayor proposed a five-year, $4.4 billion program to build or rehabilitate 100,000 units of housing. Banana Kelly and other organizations were finally able to begin massive rebuilding of the Bronx. We're not asking for nothing personal. We're asking for it as a group... Not as savages, not as ghettos, as people, just being people. Yeah! Ha! Those of us who grew up in the South Bronx-- we carry this pride of having survived. Life still isn't easy here, but I'm determined to stay. I work with public schools in the Bronx to help young people finish high school and get into college. I wanna pass this history on to my kids and all kids in places like the South Bronx. They should know where they come from. Have you ever had that experience where someone said, "Oh, you're from the Bronx?" and then they made a comment? Like, what--what's the comment? - The face. So--with a face.

laughter

and the down payment that we put here is sweat

We fight every day to get up in the morning, go to school. I feel like we're already fighting against the stereotype. - That's right. And we're, like, proving other people wrong that aren't from the Bronx that we are better and we deserve better.

gentle music

and the down payment that we put here is sweat

We wanted a continuous line of connection between old Bronx that we see disappearing and new Bronx, whatever is coming, but we're the connection. We're planning here four or five towers, about 1,600 to 1,700 fair market units. Developers are moving in, looking to tear down and rebuild, creating upscale housing. Longtime residents and business owners wonder if it's just a matter of time before their Bronx is no longer theirs. Developers want to carve up the Bronx all over again. This is happening everywhere, and it's probably happening where you are, too. The same people that were redlined and neglected for years are now being displaced, but in cities across the country, we are fighting back. Fight, fight! Bronx Coalition for a Community Vision protested the City's rezoning plans for Jerome Avenue. Where is the young people's voice in what's happening to their environment in which they're living? It's important that the people in the Bronx, the people that are here-- we wanna say that this is our Bronx, our lives, and our solution.

cheers and applause

and the down payment that we put here is sweat

We don't see any safeguards. People that have been living in this community for over 50 years, who stood while the Bronx was burning-- they didn't move out. I'm clear that I stand on the struggle and the blood, sweat, and tears of people who fought. Is the Bronx worth fighting for?

all

Yes. Definitely. - Mm-hmm. I'm here to urge you to vote no on the proposed rezoning on Jerome Avenue. I was born and raised in the Bronx. I grew up in the South Bronx during the time that, at least on record, 150,000 people were displaced. We can never let that happen again.

cheers and applause

all

What? Housing is a right! Louder! Fight, fight, fight! What? Housing is a right! Louder! Fight, fight, fight! Housing is a right! Louder! Fight, fight, fight!

upbeat funk music

all

First they stole our language Then they stole our names Then they stole the things that brought us fame Then they stole our neighbors And they stole our streets And they left us to die on Rican Beach Well, you can take my life But don't take my home