Eyes on the Prize

So long as I breathe, stay strong

I believe, I believe

I believe that, I believe that we

We know the one thing we did right

Was the day we started to fight

Keep your eyes on the prize

Hold on

Hold on, hold on

Hold on, hold on

Keep your eyes on the prize Prize, prize, prize

I believe that we

I believe that we will win

This is the Bronx in New York.

It's the home of the New York Yankees

the Bronx Zoo, and the Grand Concourse.

It has also become the arson capital of the world.

The worst thing I've dealt with was the building

next to where I was living at caught on fire.

Jack! Up here! Get that saw up here.

We're gonna have to cut the roof.

Waking up to fire

coming almost through the walls was horrendous.

It's a rubbish fire in a closet in a vacant apartment.

No way it could have started by itself.

Whoever lived there set fire to it.

They shouldn't do shit like that.

If they don't do anything about it

I'm going to the precinct, and I'm going

to the police department, and I want 'em to know.

Whoever lived there, I want 'em to know that I'm going.

I want 'em to know that I'm going.

If they don't care about the children

I care about mine.

You understand? I care about mine.

So far this year, at least 2,300 fires.

Recently, on one evening, there were 40 fires

in a one-mile area.

It is as if there's a war going on

and many parts of the South Bronx

look like a city under siege, with entire blocks wiped out.

The burning of the South Bronx

was something that became a-- almost a punchline

in newspaper stories

and on TV news.

But it was not a punchline to the people who lived there.

We all understood that we were in trouble.

It was nothing to wake up to fire or hearing the fire trucks.

And then, we started to be very unsafe.

It became dangerous to walk down the street.

No telling what's gonna come out of that abandonment.

Wild dogs to, um, drunkards, to anything.

There's always been drugs in the South Bronx

but when you have no hope

young kids and stuff gets into it.

If you wanna talk about prison, this is a prison.

This is real life. This is New York, you know.

How would I look standing here singing "New York, New York" to you?

'Cause this is what it's really like.

You can buy a large, occupied apartment house

in the Bronx for less than $1,000.

By taking advantage of

the city's three-year tax moratorium, you can collect

several thousand a month while paying no taxes.

Then, $200 will buy you a first-class arson job.

Federally subsidized fire insurance is required by law.

A quick settlement with few questions

puts you ahead by $70,000 or $80,000.

So, that's what people were up against

people who didn't have a choice but to live there.

The 500,000 to 600,000 Puerto Ricans

that came from Puerto Rico to the mainland

people that were displaced from their homes

through urban renewal

the people displaced by the Cross Bronx Expressway

and the Bruckner Expressway that basically became a corridor

between the White suburbs

and the central business district.

They did the least they could do

for these communities that was burning.

I can see no reason why you could take a place

the size of Staten Island and be all vacated, nobody home.

It don't make sense to me. It really don't make sense.

I wonder, was this a plan in the beginning

to get rid of the poor? What the hell was the plan?

And the plan was to gentrify and replace people.

Private sector had abandoned the area

and the government sector had abandoned the area.

I mean, the city housing administrator at the time

Roger Starr, actually said that

just as cities plan their growth

they need to plan when they get smaller.

The unofficial official city policy was planned shrinkage.

Planned shrinkage says

that New York City

should be made into

a smaller city than it is

particularly by, uh

doing whatever can be done

to discourage more poor people from coming into New York City.

In fact, there should be affirmative steps taken

to shrink the city.

You have, uh, two cities

the central city, which would be like Midtown Manhattan

has very good services and is protected.

And then, the outer city is abandoned by government

and has no service.

Those who realize the trends are trying to preserve

a fantasy world in Midtown Manhattan

and they hope that the other parts

as they become Black and Puerto Rican

will somehow fend for themselves.

We had to save ourselves.

Nobody else was coming to our rescue back then.

Nobody was.

I used to come home from work and hear on the radio

"The Bronx is burning, the Bronx is burning."

And that would hit me to the heart.

Then, we met a young man named Harry DeRienzo

which opened our eyes to community organizing.

I was volunteering and doing work

in the settlement house on Simpson Street

called Casita Maria.

He don't wanna know Who you really are

Who you really are

And after hours, I would open it up to young adults

people that were basically my age.

I was so intrigued by the neighborhood.

As someone that grew up in Long Island suburbs

White was the norm. I mean, people of color

weren't really allowed to live there.

Go to the South Bronx, and all of a sudden

I saw all this culture

and all these social networks that were there.

Kelly Street was always a family place.

For one, we never locked our doors.

If you were late or couldn't pay your rent

you got a rent party thrown for you.

And people would donate to help you pay your bills.

I'd go to their house and eat one day

they come to my house and eat another day.

Um, we played together up and down the streets every day.

Our parents went to work together.

All the people were never isolated and alone.

They were always taken care of.

If the kids did something on, let's say Tiffany Street

Miss Jones on Tiffany Street

was calling Miss Mabel on Kelly Street

and they would watch your child.

It was very common for the other mothers

to spank your kids too.

You know, they would beat your kid's ass

if they saw the kid doing something wrong

and then you would go home and tell

and you would get another one

because that's just the way it was.

It was a village.

I met Frank Potts. He was a live-in landlord.

He was part of the Great Migration of Blacks

that came from the South between 1917 and the '60s.

He came up as a teenager.

He and his wife, they started working.

They opened up a little business, and he was a super.

He bought a building.

So, he ended up owning several buildings

on Kelly Street.

He wasn't about to move anywhere, because he owned these buildings.

And Mr. Potts was known

as a very honest

straightforward, caring man.

No nonsense.

He was a, um, a very religious man.

He was a Muslim.

And he, um... That's how he raised us.

Knowing my father

he's a very hard-working man.

Would the deterioration of the South Bronx

have chased him away

to look at him and see the way he works now?

No, he wouldn't have.

He-- he would have survived it anyway.

When you put-- like you--

like just like you have a old car or anything, you know

when you put sweat, blood into someone

no one know the value of it but you

because you-- in every one of these buildings

I have cut my hand. I have blood.

I got blood in every one of these buildings.

I've cut my hand, mashed my hand.

Now, I have sweated in every one of 'em.

My wife, my children

no one know the value of the building like I do.

We started talking in these after-hours sessions.

They were trying to say, "How do we stay here?

We like this area."

And he would come and sit.

And-- and Pop said, "Who this White boy hanging around here?"

'Cause it was odd. We're Black and Brown.

Harry is White, and he had red hair at the time too.

I mean, he was a visibly White boy, White boy.

So, there were three vacant buildings