NU Borders and Identities Collaborative

Who are we? We are different individuals from different boroughs that are trying to accomplish change in our community and help our kind. Our kind which are Black and Latinxs who are in the oppression of a struggle. As students we’re here to better and fix our community problems.

Living and looking at the society were in we want to help education, poverty, unemployment, discrimination. We need to speak up and make a change since people like to judge the book by the cover. We came up with ideas to bring our voice to social media and make accounts supporting Black Lives Matter, create t-shirts to sponsor ourselves, and get donations to give back to our communities.

Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR)

• It help us to develop critical thinking.
• The tool to address problems that are affecting us and our society in order to come up with solutions.
• It guides us to open our eyes in front of injustices that are happening in today’s society that are not things that happen naturally but with an arbitrary and oppressive purpose.
• The tool for youth to show them the reality they’re facing too.
• It shows the problems that we as youth we facing too, but it also give us the knowledge to make a change.
• It’s all about getting knowledge to make a change in our society.
• According to a NY Times 2013 quote in 2013: “Critical youth studies demonstrate that the knowledge youth get in schools is not to make a change, it is to follow what the society has always been”.
• “YPAR follows popular education by focusing the acquisition of knowledge on injustice as well as skills for speaking back and organization for change”.
• It show us that,there’s two ways of viewing life: The truth vs. The lie.
• According with Cammarota and Fine from YPAR article claimed, ‘The blue and red pill scene in The Matrix serve as an excellent metaphor. After he ingests the red pill, Neo ends up in the place of truth, and the blue pill leave you on the lie’.

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is an international activist movement, originating in the African-American community, that campaigns against violence and systemic racism toward black people.

The oppressor in our daily life is the cops, and government.
Authority given to people in the blue suit to fear and kill american
Parents at home praying their kids are not another victim to dig into their insurance
Dig another hole next to her friends from high school who couldn’t make a living.
Dig another hole next to trayvon and eric who were killed for no justice
My paper and pen and keys from the computer speak the words for my people
Our bloodshed red with different skin color but my flag blue and red with 13 stripes 50 stars
I am latino and black and I represent my flag
I am who I am

• “Graffiti is not just a way of life for them, it is also how they have been able to make a living doing commissioned pieces or exhibiting and selling at galleries” (New York Times, 2015).
• “ They frequently seek out abandoned or derelict areas, search for dangerous and physically challenging spots in the city to leave their mark, and create living maps of their city through their travels” (Scheepers, 2004).
• Graffiti is another form of expressing themselves to show what is going on in their minds at the moment. On the other hand, graffiti can be used out of boredom or entertainment.
• Graffiti doesn’t get acknowledged for the creativity the artists have made. Behind graffiti there is a message or meaning.
• Graffiti have an effect on others, it makes their mind go wild trying to interpret what the graffiti means.
• “Like baseball cards, kids would trade photographs of New York City subway graffiti,” By Colleen Shalby November 12, 2013.
• Graffiti started by a student from Philadelphia in 1967, but it actually started being showed in showcases artwork in the 1980’s.
• “For Jenkins, and many of the friends he grew up with, graffiti was a written language that created a community on the fringes of New York.” By Colleen Shalby Nov 12, 2013.
• While others associated it with crimes of vandalism,  “Jenkins equates it to language. But he said, ‘it’s a language people aren’t familiar with.’”

“The Lincoln Hospital was founded in 1839 as the “The Home for the Colored Aged”, the hospital became a general hospital open to all people without regard to color or creed in 51st Street and the Hudson River.

The Lincoln Hospital serves the large South Bronx community of latinxs and African-Americans in which was in a very poor condition. In the 1970’s, the hospital was mainly focused on testing new medical equipment and training medical students than helping their patients because the Albert Einstein Medical College was running the hospital.

In July 14th, 1970, the Young Lords (a radical social activist group founded by Puerto Rican youth in the 1960s that demanded reform in health care, education, housing, employment, and policing) decided take over the building with 100 young men and women for 24 hours with no resistance from the staff and were heartily welcomed by the patients.
The Young Lords had exposed the conditions in the inner city hospitals and addressed the problem and got promised by Mayor John Lindsay to construct a new hospital at 149th street and Morris Avenue” (The Lincoln Hospital Offensive).
Right now the Lincoln Hospital has a rating of 3.1 on Google ratings and has a many negative ratings due to their Emergency Room and staff service. The Lincoln Hospital has a long history of lack of medical attention.

The Bronx Terminal Market, 1935

• Built during the New Deal to support local townspeople.
• One of the largest food wholesaler operations but serves as a bank, restaurant, and hotel for farmers.
• Lost jobs and earned new opportunities (because of new business).
• Near jail house, Bronx House of Detention.
• Demolished in 2006-2009.
• Now it is a mix of diverse shopping with plenty of stores and opportunities.

Ever since the Bronx Terminal Market was built, many people depended on it to make money. When big businesses came along, many people lost their jobs and lost ways to support their families. The Bronx Terminal fell into financial burden for the city in 1960. Due to the cause of the Bronx Terminal market crashing, many people have lost their jobs. Later on during the years 2006 and 2009 the B.T.M and the Detention hall was demolished, replacing it for a shopping mall.

• November 12, 2001 a JFK airplane heading towards Dominican Republic crashed in a Queens neighborhood 3 minutes after it left the airport (New York Daily News, November 13, 2001).
• Everyone on the plane died including infants and crew members and 5 people died when the plane crashed to the ground, 265 people (New York Times, November 14, 2001).
• Flight 587 Memorial Scholarship Fund guarantees free tuition at any CUNY or SUNY institution for the family of the victims of the plane crash (New York Daily News, April 21, 2005).
• Hostos Community College is the only place in the US with a memorial paying tribute to those who died in the plane crash.