Fires That Displaced People In New York City Essay
TASK 2Create a powerpoint presentation, a prezi, a music video, a slide show, or a written essay with pictures that shows and explains the reasons for the fires that displaced people during the 1970’s in New York City and the effect these fires had on people and the neighborhoods.
In this task the readings include:
1. An introduction
2. A reflection about the South Bronx written by a writer for
The Post
3. An interview with a journalist who covered the fires in
Bushwick
4. An oral history from someone who experienced the fires at the time
You need to take notes in your notebook. You can pick which information that you think is important for your presentation.
You cannot start working on your presentation until you have completed all of the readings …show more content…
and watched the short video. You should be takinbg notes on each reading.
As you read and view pictures-keep these things in mind:
These presentations must include pictures, reasons why the fires happened and the effect the fires had on communities and people. Your presentations should include:
● What happened?
● Why did these things happen?
● How were communities affected?
● How were people affected?
● What are the similarities or differences between this example of displacement and the displacement caused by genfrification? ● What are the similarities between what happened to
Bushwick and the South Bronx
TOPIC:
The displacement of thousands of people-mainly
African
American and Latino people-from different neighborhoods in
New York City
.
Introduction
Throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s many neighborhoods across the country were burned down on purpose. Two neighborhoods that were hit the hardest by these fires were Bushwick, Brooklyn and the South Bronx.
These fires forced thousands of people out of theses neighborhoods and in some cases created an increase in homelessness. Also, thousands of businesses in these neighborhoods were burned down as well, causing a major loss of jobs, which meant that people who used to be able to support their families could no longer do so.
We are going to focus on two neighborhoods that were deeply affected by these fires and caused tens of thousands of people to be displaced. There were two main causes of the fires:
1.
The city’s politicians decided to close down fire stations in order to save the city money. Also, the city saved money by firing the people that checked buildings for fire safety for fire and repaired fire hydrants. 2.
The second cause of so many fires was the fact that landlords decided that it was too expensive to fix up their buildings, so the landlords set their buildings fire, so they could collect the money from their fire insurance policies. The landlords would make money as they destroyed the neighborhood.
Write down what parts of this introduction you can use for your task. Put all information in your own words. Keep in mind the questions that you should include in your presentation:
What happened?
Why did these things happen?
How were communities affected?
H
ow were people affected?
What are the similarities or differences between this example of displacement and the displacement caused by genfrification?
What are the similiarities between what happened to
Bushwick and the South Bronx
View pictures taken during this period by clicking here
.
● View at least 15 pictures.
Pick 3 pictures that you would like to use for either a powerpoint presentation, prezi, slide show, music video, or essay. At the End of this section you should have taken notes that answer the questions, and should have picked three pictures
for your presentation. Save pictures to your google drive.
When you finish this section, you can move on to the next reading. ●
Here are parts of an article written in The New York Post. This article is a reflection on what happened to several neighborhoods in New York City during the 1970’s. The article explains the city politician’s decision to cut back services in the fire departments to save money and how that affected the South
Bronx. Remember the (SAME)questions to keep in mind:
● W hat happened?
● Why did these things happen?
● How were communities affected?
● How were people affected?
● What are the similarities or differences between this example of displacement and the displacement caused by genfrification? ●
W
hy the Bronx burned
By
Joe Flood
May 16, 2010
All in all, 50 fire units were shut down or moved. Fire inspections were cut by 70%; and dozens of fire alarm boxes were broken down. “I’d say a quarter to a third of the hydrants didn’t work,” says Jerry DiRazzo, who fought fires in the
Bushwick section of Brooklyn. “You can see the way an area changes when they don’t repair a neighborhood. This was history being made, a city collapsing.”
The South Bronx along with Brooklyn’s Brownsville, Bushwick, and Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhoods, and Manhattan’s
Harlem and Lower East Side were indeed burning. Seven different neighborhoods in The Bronx lost more than 97% of their buildings to fire between 1970 and 1980; 44 blocks (out of 289 in the borough) lost more than 50%.
“T he smell is one thing I remember,” says retired Bronx firefighter Tom
Hendrson.
That smell of burning — it was always there, through the whole borough
almost.”
Before
you move on to the next section-make sure that you took
notes about what you just read, in your notebook. Keep the questions in mind when taking notes.
Watch the video
Decade of Fire
(google it) and answer the following questions in your notebook
:
Describe what you are seeing in the video.
H
ow much of the neighborhood was destroyed becasue of the fires?
How much of the population was displaced because of the fires?
What cutbacks do you think that they are talking about
?
What do you think they mean by “government policy of neglect?”
Do
not go on to the next section until you have answered the
questions in your notebook.
●
This is an interview with a reporter named Martin Gottlieb. He did a series of reports about the fires in Bushwick during the
1970’s. Keep the SAME questions in mind as you take notes in your notebook from this reading:
What happened?
W
hy did these things happen?
How were communities affected?
How were people affected?
What are the similarities or differences between this example of displacement and the displacement caused by gentrification
?
QUESTION: As a reporter, what was your experience writing about Bushwick?
A. We did a lot of hard investigation on the causes of the arson that destroyed the neighborhood. It was basically a war zone in those days, because of the fires. Bushwick was one of the hardest hit neighborhoods in New York. There were empty blocks, packs of wild dogs--crime and drugs were gigantic issues.
Here’s what happened. Besides the city cutbacks, the landlords would pay people to set their buildings on fire. The arsonists
(people who set fires on purpose) would get paid by the landlords, but the real greed came from the landlords themselves.
They would collect tens of thousands of dollars from their fire insurance policies. What was left after blocks of these fires was a neighborhood that was completely burnt out and burned down. Many of the residents would sleep with their clothes on, because they never knew if their building was
next.
One of the fires in Bushwick killed an entire family of ten. So many people got burned and some died. I don’t know the exact number. I do know that because the buildings were attached (connected) if a fire was set in one building, it would burn the buildings attached, even if those buildings were not owned by the landlord who hired the arsonist.
Bushwick wasn’t a well known neighborhood those days. It was left to fall apart without attention. The city was broke in those days, there were empty lots all filled with burned out mattresses, burned household appliances and other garbage dumped in them.
The firemen never stopped working, they were constantly on call. A lot of the neighborhood was literally burned down, pulled apart and taken away.
It was a depressing place to be. People who lived or worked in the neighborhood told me that they constantly smelled like smoke. The smell was in their hair, in their clothes and worst of all in their lungs. This was especially hard on kids with asthma.
Overall, I can say that as a reporter at the time, the city and the greed of the landlords destroyed several neighborhoods all over the city. This
was a terrible time in our history, and many people never recovered from what happened to them.
Do
not go on to the next section until you have taken
notes on this section. This is the last section that you should read before you begin your presentation. Remember the questions that you shold be thinking about as you take notes in your notebook:
What happened?
Why did these things happen?
How were communities affected?
How were people affected?
What are the similarities or differences between this example of displacement and the displacement caused by genfrification?
ORAL HISTORY BY JOSE CRESPO-A RESIDENT OF
BUSHWICK DURING THE 1970’s
I was born and raised in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The neighborhood went through horrible changes. I remember so many times that we had to run out of the apartment because buildings connected to mine were set on fire.
It seemed that every day some building in Bushwick was on fire. On
Greene street between Wilson and Central, the entire block was burnt down over a two year period.
I remember that one entire family of 10 were all killed in a fire over on
Covert street. Everybody on the block was upset. Bushwick began to look like a place where a bomb had been dropped.
I remember coming home after my family went away for a couple of weeks in the summer. Three houses on my block were burned down and all the families that lived there were gone. We had known these people for a long
time and all of us grew up together. Now most of them were spread around the city, living with family members in over crowded, uncomfortable conditions. They never came back and the burnt out buildings stayed there and became a place where people came to shoot drugs. I guess my neighbors were lucky because everyone escaped without being burned badly, but the block was never the same. Instead of children playing in the street, and hanging together in our neighbor’s home, now all that was left was crumbled, burned buildings, garbage and people using drugs.
What makes me sad is that what used to be a neighborhood filled with families and kids playing together and growing up together, Bushwick was turned into a dangerous, filled with burned out buildings, empty lots, garbage everywhere, and very few safe places to go.
When you finish reading and taking notes- go to the website-Bushwick burned out-1970’s. Click on images. Pick out which images you might want to use for your presentation.
GRADING RUBRIC:
I can stay on task and I can control my responses and behaviors in a range of situations, so that I can pursue goals and live up to the realistic standards that have been set for me.
I can
I can interact with new forms of media.
I can analyze how events, ideas, and individuals interact and develop. I can obtain, evaluate, and communicate information.
I can create
understand a
I can make meaning multimedia
new form of
I can identify the
from using a variety presentations that show
media that I
benefits of using
of new forms of
my understanding of a
read, listen to, different types of
media and apply it
topic in a variety of
or view.
to my work.
ways.
media.
I can make
I can summarize
I can explain how
predictions about
a series of
events and ideas can the ways in which
events and the
I can explain the
impact the
individuals interact
people or
cause and effect
development and
and develop based
characters
relationships in a
interaction of
on previous events
involved.
series of events.
individuals.
and ideas.
I can find identify
I can evaluate the
a variety of
validity of sources
I can evaluate and
and determine the
rank the validity of
sources of
I can determine
information and solid sources of most important
sources, analyze
communicate my information and pieces of
information and
opinion of this
summarize the
information from
share my
information.
information.
these sources.
conclusions.
In this task the readings include:
1. An introduction
2. A reflection about the South Bronx written by a writer for
The Post
3. An interview with a journalist who covered the fires in
Bushwick
4. An oral history from someone who experienced the fires at the time
You need to take notes in your notebook. You can pick which information that you think is important for your presentation.
You cannot start working on your presentation until you have completed all of the readings …show more content…
and watched the short video. You should be takinbg notes on each reading.
As you read and view pictures-keep these things in mind:
These presentations must include pictures, reasons why the fires happened and the effect the fires had on communities and people. Your presentations should include:
● What happened?
● Why did these things happen?
● How were communities affected?
● How were people affected?
● What are the similarities or differences between this example of displacement and the displacement caused by genfrification? ● What are the similarities between what happened to
Bushwick and the South Bronx
TOPIC:
The displacement of thousands of people-mainly
African
American and Latino people-from different neighborhoods in
New York City
.
Introduction
Throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s many neighborhoods across the country were burned down on purpose. Two neighborhoods that were hit the hardest by these fires were Bushwick, Brooklyn and the South Bronx.
These fires forced thousands of people out of theses neighborhoods and in some cases created an increase in homelessness. Also, thousands of businesses in these neighborhoods were burned down as well, causing a major loss of jobs, which meant that people who used to be able to support their families could no longer do so.
We are going to focus on two neighborhoods that were deeply affected by these fires and caused tens of thousands of people to be displaced. There were two main causes of the fires:
1.
The city’s politicians decided to close down fire stations in order to save the city money. Also, the city saved money by firing the people that checked buildings for fire safety for fire and repaired fire hydrants. 2.
The second cause of so many fires was the fact that landlords decided that it was too expensive to fix up their buildings, so the landlords set their buildings fire, so they could collect the money from their fire insurance policies. The landlords would make money as they destroyed the neighborhood.
Write down what parts of this introduction you can use for your task. Put all information in your own words. Keep in mind the questions that you should include in your presentation:
What happened?
Why did these things happen?
How were communities affected?
H
ow were people affected?
What are the similarities or differences between this example of displacement and the displacement caused by genfrification?
What are the similiarities between what happened to
Bushwick and the South Bronx
View pictures taken during this period by clicking here
.
● View at least 15 pictures.
Pick 3 pictures that you would like to use for either a powerpoint presentation, prezi, slide show, music video, or essay. At the End of this section you should have taken notes that answer the questions, and should have picked three pictures
for your presentation. Save pictures to your google drive.
When you finish this section, you can move on to the next reading. ●
Here are parts of an article written in The New York Post. This article is a reflection on what happened to several neighborhoods in New York City during the 1970’s. The article explains the city politician’s decision to cut back services in the fire departments to save money and how that affected the South
Bronx. Remember the (SAME)questions to keep in mind:
● W hat happened?
● Why did these things happen?
● How were communities affected?
● How were people affected?
● What are the similarities or differences between this example of displacement and the displacement caused by genfrification? ●
W
hy the Bronx burned
By
Joe Flood
May 16, 2010
All in all, 50 fire units were shut down or moved. Fire inspections were cut by 70%; and dozens of fire alarm boxes were broken down. “I’d say a quarter to a third of the hydrants didn’t work,” says Jerry DiRazzo, who fought fires in the
Bushwick section of Brooklyn. “You can see the way an area changes when they don’t repair a neighborhood. This was history being made, a city collapsing.”
The South Bronx along with Brooklyn’s Brownsville, Bushwick, and Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhoods, and Manhattan’s
Harlem and Lower East Side were indeed burning. Seven different neighborhoods in The Bronx lost more than 97% of their buildings to fire between 1970 and 1980; 44 blocks (out of 289 in the borough) lost more than 50%.
“T he smell is one thing I remember,” says retired Bronx firefighter Tom
Hendrson.
That smell of burning — it was always there, through the whole borough
almost.”
Before
you move on to the next section-make sure that you took
notes about what you just read, in your notebook. Keep the questions in mind when taking notes.
Watch the video
Decade of Fire
(google it) and answer the following questions in your notebook
:
Describe what you are seeing in the video.
H
ow much of the neighborhood was destroyed becasue of the fires?
How much of the population was displaced because of the fires?
What cutbacks do you think that they are talking about
?
What do you think they mean by “government policy of neglect?”
Do
not go on to the next section until you have answered the
questions in your notebook.
●
This is an interview with a reporter named Martin Gottlieb. He did a series of reports about the fires in Bushwick during the
1970’s. Keep the SAME questions in mind as you take notes in your notebook from this reading:
What happened?
W
hy did these things happen?
How were communities affected?
How were people affected?
What are the similarities or differences between this example of displacement and the displacement caused by gentrification
?
QUESTION: As a reporter, what was your experience writing about Bushwick?
A. We did a lot of hard investigation on the causes of the arson that destroyed the neighborhood. It was basically a war zone in those days, because of the fires. Bushwick was one of the hardest hit neighborhoods in New York. There were empty blocks, packs of wild dogs--crime and drugs were gigantic issues.
Here’s what happened. Besides the city cutbacks, the landlords would pay people to set their buildings on fire. The arsonists
(people who set fires on purpose) would get paid by the landlords, but the real greed came from the landlords themselves.
They would collect tens of thousands of dollars from their fire insurance policies. What was left after blocks of these fires was a neighborhood that was completely burnt out and burned down. Many of the residents would sleep with their clothes on, because they never knew if their building was
next.
One of the fires in Bushwick killed an entire family of ten. So many people got burned and some died. I don’t know the exact number. I do know that because the buildings were attached (connected) if a fire was set in one building, it would burn the buildings attached, even if those buildings were not owned by the landlord who hired the arsonist.
Bushwick wasn’t a well known neighborhood those days. It was left to fall apart without attention. The city was broke in those days, there were empty lots all filled with burned out mattresses, burned household appliances and other garbage dumped in them.
The firemen never stopped working, they were constantly on call. A lot of the neighborhood was literally burned down, pulled apart and taken away.
It was a depressing place to be. People who lived or worked in the neighborhood told me that they constantly smelled like smoke. The smell was in their hair, in their clothes and worst of all in their lungs. This was especially hard on kids with asthma.
Overall, I can say that as a reporter at the time, the city and the greed of the landlords destroyed several neighborhoods all over the city. This
was a terrible time in our history, and many people never recovered from what happened to them.
Do
not go on to the next section until you have taken
notes on this section. This is the last section that you should read before you begin your presentation. Remember the questions that you shold be thinking about as you take notes in your notebook:
What happened?
Why did these things happen?
How were communities affected?
How were people affected?
What are the similarities or differences between this example of displacement and the displacement caused by genfrification?
ORAL HISTORY BY JOSE CRESPO-A RESIDENT OF
BUSHWICK DURING THE 1970’s
I was born and raised in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The neighborhood went through horrible changes. I remember so many times that we had to run out of the apartment because buildings connected to mine were set on fire.
It seemed that every day some building in Bushwick was on fire. On
Greene street between Wilson and Central, the entire block was burnt down over a two year period.
I remember that one entire family of 10 were all killed in a fire over on
Covert street. Everybody on the block was upset. Bushwick began to look like a place where a bomb had been dropped.
I remember coming home after my family went away for a couple of weeks in the summer. Three houses on my block were burned down and all the families that lived there were gone. We had known these people for a long
time and all of us grew up together. Now most of them were spread around the city, living with family members in over crowded, uncomfortable conditions. They never came back and the burnt out buildings stayed there and became a place where people came to shoot drugs. I guess my neighbors were lucky because everyone escaped without being burned badly, but the block was never the same. Instead of children playing in the street, and hanging together in our neighbor’s home, now all that was left was crumbled, burned buildings, garbage and people using drugs.
What makes me sad is that what used to be a neighborhood filled with families and kids playing together and growing up together, Bushwick was turned into a dangerous, filled with burned out buildings, empty lots, garbage everywhere, and very few safe places to go.
When you finish reading and taking notes- go to the website-Bushwick burned out-1970’s. Click on images. Pick out which images you might want to use for your presentation.
GRADING RUBRIC:
I can stay on task and I can control my responses and behaviors in a range of situations, so that I can pursue goals and live up to the realistic standards that have been set for me.
I can
I can interact with new forms of media.
I can analyze how events, ideas, and individuals interact and develop. I can obtain, evaluate, and communicate information.
I can create
understand a
I can make meaning multimedia
new form of
I can identify the
from using a variety presentations that show
media that I
benefits of using
of new forms of
my understanding of a
read, listen to, different types of
media and apply it
topic in a variety of
or view.
to my work.
ways.
media.
I can make
I can summarize
I can explain how
predictions about
a series of
events and ideas can the ways in which
events and the
I can explain the
impact the
individuals interact
people or
cause and effect
development and
and develop based
characters
relationships in a
interaction of
on previous events
involved.
series of events.
individuals.
and ideas.
I can find identify
I can evaluate the
a variety of
validity of sources
I can evaluate and
and determine the
rank the validity of
sources of
I can determine
information and solid sources of most important
sources, analyze
communicate my information and pieces of
information and
opinion of this
summarize the
information from
share my
information.
information.
these sources.
conclusions.