This is the New York even if south Bronx has a lot of problems such as gang, drug, street fighting, young people don’t know where they wanna live, poor school system but still now it is New York…..

“The best single thing that has happened on the streets on New York in the past ten years is the re-emergence of teenage gangs… These young people are standing up for life, and if their courage lasts, they will help this city to survive.” p. 49

The re-emergence of gangs became a consequence of urban renewal ushered in by Robert Moses, the burnings, and financial downturn of the time. Land redevelopment and the construction of Cross-Bronx Expressway turned South Bronx into a Necropolis. Those who could afford it moved out, but the majority lived on through the destruction of their homes and neighborhoods. Businesses were closing, people were losing their jobs. Nobody cared about the affected population of poor Hispanics and blacks.

Then the slumlords stated burning buildings. Apartments abandoned by those escaping the Bronx, became primary targets for insurance arsonists. Burning became so profitable that buildings were set on fire every day in the mid 1970s. The burnings symbolized the figurative and literal destruction of the Bronx at the same time. On one hand, whole blocks were cleared out by fires, and on the other, burnings seemed like an appropriate response to the growing sense of abandonment that was felt by the inhabitants of Bronx.

And with that sense, unemployed and angry young men found solace in the gangs. Most referred to them as families, and its members as brothers and sisters. Gangs presented a chance to be a part of something, to be around like-minded people. They gave a sense of purpose and freedom. And they certainly presented plenty of chances to take out all the built-up anger. Gangs existed as long as there was conflict. Constant struggle for turf and respect kept pouring fuel into the “fires” of Bronx. Gang activity bred more gang activity. Kids started joining at younger ages, seeking protection or even just friends. As something that spawned from the socio-economic decline of South Bronx, at their peak, the gangs started to turn against poverty and violence. Relabeling themselves as “peace organizations,” they started advocating for truth and peaceful co-existence between gangs.

Jeff Chang describes peace between gangs as the first step to their eventual decline. Without fuel, the “fires” in the Bronx subsided. When New York Post columnist Pete Hamill wrote that, “(gangs) will help this city to survive,”  I think he was referring to the effect their eventual demise would have on the city.

The hope and optimism of the 60’s exploded with the assassinations of leaders like RFK, MLK , and Malcolm X. These feelings of despair and hopelessness combined with the post Robert Moses conditions of the Bronx, set up the perfect conditions for the gangs that sprung up in The Bronx in the late 60s and early seventies. Chang argues that youth movements usually spring up and last for 5 years,  putting both the youth and civil rights movements of the sixties and the subsequent gang activity in a perfect time frame.

The Ghetto Brothers were a revolutionary group of young people that emerged around 1968. Formed by the four Melendez brothers, it also included Charlie Suarez and Black Benjie. Although involved in gang activity, the group was taken under the wing of their teacher Manny Dominguez. With this, they attempted to make a transition from a gang to an organization. The Ghetto Brothers attempted to organize a gang truce in 1972. They were a great example of the youth energy that arose from the ashes of the sixties optimism.

One very interesting aspect of the ghetto brothers was their expression of their youthful energy and political ideology through their fun energetic music. The new youth movement that would spring up in the Bronx after the Ghetto Brothers disintegrated in 1973 would be influenced by the energy and sense of community of the Ghetto Brothers. This lead to the block parties that would eventually become the foundation of hip hop.

The chapters discuss reason for the downfall of Bronx. It is interesting to note that Robert Moses’s plans for New York City can cause such destruction for one community.  When I first learned of Robert Moses, it was about his funding for High Way expansion into the outer boroughs as well as Long Island. He used the funding to build Flushing Meadows Corona Park. This park still exists today and it is a big part of the Queens community because it has become an iconic symbol of the Unisphere and all the free resources such as swimming pool, soccer fields, and BBQ pits. The destruction of Bronx caused by Moses’s plan is a shocking comparison to the result of Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

Moses’s plan destroyed South Bronx and its community. Landlords made more profit from destroying its property than improving it and collecting rents. This resulted in more apartment buildings being damaged and abandoned. There was a lack of funding into South Bronx as well as lack of police officers in the community. Teenagers often had to join gangs for their own safety. These gangs were often the police of their community and they kicked out drug addicts and protected their turf. Eventually the gang activity escalated into violence with their neighboring gangs. The view people had about South Bronx grew worse as people saw images of collapsed and abandoned buildings and images of teen gangs and violence.

“So the Vice President travels to Europe and Japan, the Secretary of state to the Middle East and Russia, the UN ambassador to Africa. No one of comparable stature comes here.” Chang, pg 24.

As the streets of the Bronx turned into a hell on earth, the government lacked participation to prevent the corruption from the building owners to escalate into such chaos. Countless families were victims of not only the danger provided by the gangs that were forming at the same time, but also from being misplaced from their homes due to the greed of these building owners. These “slumlords” would hire junkies or thugs to set their buildings on fire in order to collect insurance money for the damages. Slumlords as well as insurance companies would benefit from these arrangements as more policies were sold. My question is where was government intervention when entire apartment buildings would burn to ashes and hundreds of families would find themselves homeless on a weekly basis? The government surely failed the citizens of the Bronx to provide a solution to this fast growing problem. The comment of New York’s democratic senator, Patrick Moynihan, “the time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from ‘benign neglect'”, was what finally caught president Nixon’s attention. The government took some action regarding the crisis the Bronx was suffering by cutting back on social services to the inner cities, and by so, removing more than seven fire companies from the Bronx. Unfortunately, this action resulted in what was called “a ‘contagion’ of fires” leaving behind blocks of abandoned destroyed buildings which later on would serve as clubhouses for the developing mass of gangs and cliques.

Throughout the 1960’s people across the nation people were raising their voices against the injustices they felt were happening in their world. The Bronx was no exception as people mobilized under the standard of many causes. Towards the end of the sixties the architecture begins to change, literally. Chang describes the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway, Robert Moses’ enormous road that would allow residents of New Jersey to quickly traverse the Bronx and go into the suburbs of Queens. The project led to the mass exodus and displacement of Bronx dwellers. As the people and jobs left the neighborhoods began to deteriorate as apartments remained empty and unkempt and then were destroyed by fire in order to collect insurance and have some profitability and with this came the demise of the social movement of the previous generation. The Bronx had been converted into rubble and as Chang puts it: “The gangs were a vanguard of the rubble… They had no reason to sing to sweet harmonies. They were the children of Moses’s grand experiment and the fires had already begun.”

As the Bronx began to re-segregate there was a resurgence in youth gangs in the Bronx as turfs were divided violence ensued both among themselves and against other people and authorities. They were the terror of the streets but they also became a respected source of power in the community. In the early seventies with this enormous social following some gangs, like the Ghetto Brothers, took it upon themselves to look beyond the beef and violence to the possibility of peace and change in their neighborhoods. In a momentous, yet somewhat insincere, occasion the gangs met after the death of Black Benjie  made peace very publicly and later privately. It was made clear to them that they were not each other’s enemy anymore.