Nos Quedamos/We Stay
The BMHC and Bronx Commons represent spaces that both celebrate the musical history of the South Bronx, while also providing a space for emerging artists, thereby, creating a dialogue between the past, present, and future artistic architects of the Bronx. These sites demonstrate the active role that community members are taking in creating spaces that reflect their personally-defined needs and wants, which has not always been possible in the Bronx. The landscape of the South Bronx has constantly been shaped by outside forces with little to no consideration for the residents who experience physical, emotional, and mental displacement. An example of displacement in the South Bronx occurred during the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway, in which entire neighborhoods were uprooted and "At least five thousand persons" (Schneider 45) forced out starting in the late 1940s. During the early 1990s, residents of the Melrose Commons neighborhood in the Bronx faced the threat of displacement yet again due to a plan for redevelopment. However, the “grassroots community group, Nos Quedamos (We Stay), generated a new redevelopment plan which included area residents instead of displacing them” (“Melrose Commons”). The efforts of WHEDco in helping to establish the Bronx Music Heritage Center and Bronx Commons among other sites continues the legacy of organizations such as Nos Quedamos, which have worked to privilege the voice of Bronx residents. They also show that community members have a right to be involved in the creation of the spaces they inhabit. These sentiments are encapsulated David Harvey’s, “The Right to the City.” He writes, “The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the process of urbanization” (Harvey 23).
For Bobby, the threat of displacement is not only influenced by changes in physical space but also by the memories and narratives that are threatened as these spaces change. He states, “That word gentrification gets thrown around a lot and it’s pluses and minuses to it. Anybody...that has the economic means should be able to live anywhere they want to but the problem…[is] they come in like gangbusters and they don’t know jackshit about the community and they don’t respect the community at all.” However, Bobby offers several ways in which new residents of the South Bronx and work towards “[becoming] an integral part of the community.” He suggests reading books such as Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life in the Bronx from the 1930s to the 1960s by Mark Naison and Bob Gumbs. Residents could also attend local cultural events, community centers or even interact with small, local businesses. These interactions would enable residents to begin forming their own relationship with the Bronx in a way that recognizes the stories that came before them. Seeking out resources and being conscious of the role one plays in varying contexts can almost be seen as a prerequisite when navigating a space as culturally profound as the South Bronx. Bobby points out, “a community has to be sustained with some kind of economic growth and that means money...but it shouldn’t be that at the expense of the people that have grown up here already and laid the groundwork for that economic regrowth. There’s a lot of people in this neighborhood that remember the fires, that survived the fires and all that incredible entropy that happened here in the South Bronx. And they should be respected and looked up to as sages, as survivors.”