When Wilfredo Ruiz puts his harmonica to his lips, the elderly Puerto Rican residents of St. Vincent de Paul nursing home gather around his wheelchair. Sometimes some of them dance. They sway to distinctive rhythms of traditional plena, Aguinaldos and romantic boleros from the island. Others, reminded of the music [...]
At 17, Francois Blood received a wake-up call when he was sentenced to 10 to 20 years behind bars. Originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma, Blood moved to New York in 1998 and had been in the city for less than two months when he was swept up on charges of armed [...]
Isaac Rivera, 44, learned about the Green Career Center, a workforce development program run by the Osborne Association, while serving time for a drug charge at Rikers Island. When he was transferred to an alternative-to-incarceration facility where inmates are free to leave the premises during the day, as long as [...]
Every Friday morning, a parade of people minding colorful shopping carts fills the sidewalk along Thurman Munson Way. At any time, someone strolling along the sidewalk can hear Spanish, English, French and Quechua being spoken. Women, some with small children, and men, young people and the elderly start lining up [...]
A real-life event inspired Charles Rice-Gonzalez to write his debut novel, Chulito, a coming-of-age and coming out queer love story set in Hunts Point. “Chulito”, published in October, grew from the memory of a day in the late 1990s, when Rice-Gonzalez sat looking out onto the Grand Concourse from the [...]
Three years ago, three local community organizations – The Point CDC, Sustainable South Bronx and Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice – banded together in an effort to ensure that new development met the needs of residents. Surveying the opportunities, they found that the rebuilding of the South Bronx had [...]