US Census Bureau is taking its show on the road

2010 is census year in America - and there is a lot riding on this drive to count everyone in the country. Some $400bn (£251bn) of federal money is allocated according to the population in each of the 50 states, and so are Congressional seats.

However, immigrant communities are often suspicious of the census, fearing the information could be used to deport those in the US illegally. Some Hispanic leaders are even calling for a boycott of the census, as I found out on a snowy morning in New York.

A troupe of dancers were braving the cold outside the Bronx Borough Hall, trying to drum up interest in the 2010 census.

Welcome to the Census Bureau road tour: census officials are criss-crossing the US with their signature blue trailers between now and April, targeting communities where traditionally people have been reluctant to be counted.

If you want better services, allow yourself to be counted, I am guaranteeing that nothing bad will happen to you

Ruben Diaz Jr,
Bronx Borough President

In the Bronx, just 56% of people returned the census in 2000, a “horrible” result, according to Bronx Borough president Ruben Diaz Jr.

He says the Bronx lost federal dollars and even seats in Congress because of undercounting.

Ligia Jaquez of the US Census Bureau is here to persuade people it is worth their while to fill out the form.

“It’s the benefits that you bring to your community,” she says.

“The government and the state use that data, for funding for new roads, new schools, for emergency services. When your community isn’t counted properly then the funding will be low.”

But not everyone wants to be counted. Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

Like a thousand other coming-of-age-in-an-ethnic-family dramas, “Falling Awake” puts good intentions and appealing performances into the balance against clichés of dead-end neighborhoods and rebellious (but sensitive) youth.

Jay (Andrew Cisneros) spends his days playing guitar for tips in City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan and his nights pumping gas closer to home, in the Bronx. His father is a doorman; his sister lives at home with her two children; and his brother is in Iraq, but you could have guessed all that.

As Jay works on his songs and dreams of escape, a fight at a house party inexorably leads to a moment of greater violence, because that’s what happens in this type of movie, along with shouts of “You don’t know anything about me” and a lot of bellowing by the angry father (Nestor Serrano). Between scenes handed down from “Boyz n the Hood” and “West Side Story,” the film’s moment-to-moment depiction of life on the stoops of Soundview in the South Bronx feels authentic, and Mr. Cisneros has an easy rapport with Flaco Navaja and Michael Rivera, who play Jay’s best friends. Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

The DN’s Erin Einhorn sent this video of yesterday’s press conference with Sen. Hiram Monserrate at which he compared himself to murdered civil rights workers and announced he had hired civil rights attorneys Norman Siegel and Steve Hyman to take his case.

You’ll notice as Einhorn pans the crowd that three Bronx Democrats - Sen. Ruben Diaz Sr. and Assemblymen Jose Rivera and Peter Rivera - showed up to support their fellow Latino lawmaker, while no officials from Monserrate’s home county of Queens is present.

Diaz Sr. is a longstanding Monserrate supporter, but I was surprised to see the two Riveras (who are allies, but not relatives) on hand.

“It’s not a question of support; it’s a question of whether somebody is not getting the kind of fair treatment I think they should be getting,” Peter Rivera told me this morning.

“I think the Senate is treading on very dangerous ground when it tries to impeach one of their members for being found guilty of a misdemeanor. Those aren’t the rules that we have lived by in Albany. Ever.”

“I have an issue with changing the rules midstream and singling out individuals, particularly when they happen to be Hispanic.” Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

 Wednesday night, a musical group from the Bronx begins the first of four concerts at Madison Square Garden. The fourth show was added after the first three sold out.

The group is called Aventura, and they sat down with Eyewitness News reporter Carolina Leid.

Aventura’s new record has held the number one spot for the last 20 weeks on Billboard’s top Latin albums chart. Both Aventura and Lady GaGa’s New York shows open Wednesday. But the guys from Aventura will triple the number of tickets GaGa sells, playing for 20,000 fans a night.

Now, after 10 years of struggle, Aventura has sold millions of records, won numerous awards and is one of the most sought after Latino groups in the world.

The four creative young men blended Dominican bachata with R&B, hip hop and other urban sounds to create a new and unique signature sound.

“When you see us live, you really realize that it’s, you just have to give us good lighting, a stage, a great audience and we’re going to rock,” group member Romeo said.

Aventura was raised in the south Bronx. They formed their group in 1996. Now, they say they can’t even walk the streets without fans hounding them.

“The other day, I’m in the bronx and it’s cold and I have a big North Face coat…covering up my face,” Aventura member Max said. “And someone’s like, ‘Ese no es Mikey de Aventura?’ I was like get the heck out of here. They still recognize me.”

It’s a long way from when the guys formed their group in their school cafeteria. Aventura still has its four original members. There is lead singer, composer, producer and heart throb Romeo; producer and guitarist Lenny; basist Max and vocalist Henry.

“To us, we’re enjoying the moment, thanking God and, of course, thanking our fans,” Lenny said.

They’re dubbed the Kings of Bachata, music from their Dominican roots.

The group has sold out three nights at Madison Square Garden and had to add a fourth night to meet demand, putting them among the ranks of artists like Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel.

“We’re going to have the stage in the middle,” Max said. “It’s going to be crazy. We can’t wait for that night, those nights, it’s going to be four.”

Smash hits like Obsession, Hermanita, and Mi Corazonsito have taken the group all over the world. And fans are just that - fanatic. Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

  By the rivers of Babylon

There we sat down and wept

When we remembered Zion.

Psalm 137

THE afternoon sun dipped low over the empty lots around Charlotte Street. There in the long shadows stood three boys against a backdrop of smashed bricks, crumpled beer cans and a busted bike wheel. Behind them, past the tall weeds of this urban prairie, loomed decrepit apartment buildings.

Yet the trio were grinning, their faces friendly, even goofy. Look closer at the picture and you can see why they smile:

A scrawny mutt’s snout peeks out from their huddle.

Thirty years ago this summer, I returned to the South Bronx, where I grew up, with a Yale diploma in one hand and a beat-up Pentax camera in the other. Raised to get a good education, become a doctor and escape, I had instead come right back to teach photography — on Charlotte Street, no less, the world’s most famous slum.

In the four years I had been away, the South Bronx had gone from anonymous to notorious, a brand name for urban decay and despair. The landscape of my childhood had vanished, its buildings abandoned, stripped and incinerated.

Private tragedies became public humiliation in 1977. Howard Cosell damned the place, declaring, “The Bronx is burning,” as the cameras showed fires flickering beyond Yankee Stadium. Looters picked clean Tremont Avenue’s stores during that summer’s blackout. President Jimmy Carter made an obligatory pilgrimage — as Ronald Reagan would during his campaign in 1980 — for a photo-op amid the rubble.

The only way I could even try to confront this confusion was to slice it up into snapshots, each frame giving the illusion of a neat answer to inexplicable questions. For five years, I wandered from Fordham Road to Mott Haven, taking thousands of pictures in parks, street fairs, stores and even empty lots.

The negatives ended up stuffed in a closet. And the South Bronx was quietly transformed in the late 1980s by community campaigns that created new homes, community gardens and smaller schools. I became a journalist and traveled to Latin America, where I confronted poverty that made New York’s worst look tame.

But I always came back to the Bronx. I have spent much of my professional life chronicling the same streets I photographed as a young man. Six years ago, I moved back for good, with my wife and son. Some people thought I was crazy; cynics swore it hadn’t changed much from the Bad Old Days of 1979.

This year, I dug out the old pictures. The images may be black and white, but to look back upon them now is to discover that their secrets are revealed in shades of gray. In a landscape that was written off as uninhabitable — if not unsalvageable — you can see creativity, faith and even a kind of innocence.

Click. In the middle of a Mott Haven street, a lone couple hugs tightly and twirls to the music of an unseen orchestra. Squeegee boys dart out among the land yachts rolling off the Deegan to cadge a quick quarter.

Click. A couple with faces etched by lines depicting a tough journey rest for a moment, she with her groceries and he with a beer. An artist fills an abandoned building with lithe torsos made from the charred wood that had choked its apartments. A blind guitarist sings boleros from a faraway island. Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post