When Frank Pirraglia, 21, saw the devastation caused by looters on Fordham Road last Monday night, he realized it was also a call to action.  “After seeing all the violence and destruction, I realized I needed to get out there and do my part to try and help clean up,” he said.

 

On Tuesday morning, it was clear Pirraglia would be part of a larger contingent of volunteers taking swift action to remove the debris left by looters. Such actions were reminiscent of those taken by Bronxites in the 1970s to rebuild their community in the wake of a wave of destruction, particularly in the South Bronx, as the borough continued to battle a period of budget cuts, amid alleged mishandling of City resources by elected officials.

 

Pirraglia is a Bronx native and a senior at Fordham University. Through social media he found out that an effort was being organized to help the community clean up from Monday night’s scenes of chaos. “There was an assembly on East Fordham Road and Grand Concourse where they were giving out gloves and masks, and all plastic bags, and all the essential items that are required to clean up the neighborhood,” said Pirraglia.

 

It was unclear what organization was spearheading the clean-up activities. In Mayor Bill de Blasio’s press briefing Wednesday morning, he recounted speaking with Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. about the clean-up efforts. When he asked the borough president what organization was helping with the clean-up, Diaz Jr. replied that some young people had told him, “We’re not from any organization; we live here.”

 

The mayor used the example of the young volunteers to offer hope for a better future in the City. “These young people; this is their neighborhood and they are the future of the Bronx, and they are the future of New York City,” de Blasio said. “Thank you to these young people in the Bronx who wanted to create something positive even in the midst of a crisis and a challenge. They wanted to move their neighborhood forward.”

 

The destruction from looters was significant. CBS New York reported that, “at least a dozen businesses along Fordham Road” were struck by “vandals” and “looters”. One furniture store owner told CBS, “[I had] almost $300,000, $400,000 invested in my business”.

 

One of the only known elected officials to have personally witnessed the violence was Councilman Fernando Cabrera whose District 14 includes both Fordham Road and Burnside Avenue, and from the Major Deegan Expressway to Grand Concourse, though Cabrera reported that the mayor was also present driving around the streets and witnesses the events in the Bronx on Monday night also.

 

The two retail corridors were hit especially hard by vandals. Cabrera had posted a video on social media showing Monday night’s looting on Fordham Road.

 

The video starts with a scene of multiple FDNY fire trucks partially blocking an intersection as firefighters extinguish flames on a sidewalk. Later, his walking tour reveals more trash strewn on the roadway, with the remnants of trash bags set ablaze on the sidewalks. Near the end of the nine-minute video the councilman can be heard saying, “This is the situation right here on Fordham Road – awful”.

 

The video starts with a scene of multiple FDNY fire trucks partially blocking an intersection as firefighters extinguish flames on the sidewalk.

 

His walking tour reveals trash strewn on the roadway with the remnants of trash bags set ablaze on the sidewalks.  Near the end of the nine-minute video the councilman can be heard saying, “This is the situation right here on Fordham Road, awful.”

 

Broken glass from storefronts, and damage to small businesses made Yves Filius, 35, think of how difficult it may be to survive, going forward. Filius lives in the South Bronx, but wanted to see for himself the damage caused by the looters in the Fordham neighborhood. “What I saw this morning, as well, I mean, I was upset about the damage and chaos that ensued – lot of small businesses that, you know, may not recuperate,” he said.

 

Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz did not mince words when describing what he thoughts should happen to those responsible for causing the damage and mayhem in the Bronx. “This small group; they should be prosecuted,” he said. “They should be caught and prosecuted and thrown in jail.”

 

Dinowitz has already lived through a darker chapter in Bronx history, and wanted to remind a younger generation not to accept what happened Monday night as being normal. “I remember [the] 1977 Blackout; I remember when every store on Tremont Avenue and Burnside Avenue was destroyed,” he said. “Thankfully we haven’t seen that, but that was devastating to the Bronx and the people who committed the crimes yesterday are not decent people. They’re just not.”

 

At one point on June 2, locals took a moment to kneel in the streets and pray together with a chaplain. Some people were seen on one single knee, a peaceful gesture adopted as a form of silent protest against police brutality and racial injustice, and popularized more recently, in 2016 by sports hero and former San Francisco 49er, Colin Kaepernick, who started to “take a knee” during the playing of the national anthem and salute to the U.S. flag before public sports events to raise awareness about the treatment of minorities.

 

Some, but not all, people objected to the gesture at the time, perceiving it as disrespectful to those who fought and died for the country, and widespread national debate ensued. Kaepernick subsequently lost his sports contract with the 49ers in the fallout since the NFL did not back him. He is still unemployed.

 

Meanwhile, Megan Rapinoe, captain of the U.S. women’s soccer team, was the first White sportsperson to follow suit in solidarity with Kaepernick and the wider Black community, in “taking a knee” at a 2016 soccer event, before U.S. Soccer subsequently imposed a rule banning the gesture. Rapinoe did not lose her job as a result. She said at the time that she lamented that there was no dialogue about the topic with U.S. Soccer before the ban was imposed.

 

Back on the streets of the Bronx, every time a photograph was taken by reporters of NYPD officers, many bystanders would stop and say positive, encouraging words of appreciation to them. Three police officers were asked how often they experienced this feedback. They replied, “a lot”.

 

Meanwhile, one sanitation worker involved in the clean-up efforts said he had received help from members of the local community cleaning up debris at almost every corner and intersection.

 

Following Monday night’s looting and riots, a Citywide curfew was imposed, excluding essential workers, from 8:00 p.m. until 5 a.m., and remains effective until 5:00 a.m. on June 8. It came as President Donald Trump suggested to all U.S. governors that he would send in the military to restore law and order if local states could not. De Blasio publicly responded, saying such an action would only increase tensions, referencing where this has been the case in other conflicts around the world.

 

Gov. Andrew Cuomo later weighed in on the debate, initially critiquing the NYPD for not doing enough to bring the situation under control and curb looting. He later publicly apologized and withdrew his remarks, acknowledging the complexity of the situation the NYPD were faced with. Meanwhile members of the public decried excessive use of force on protestors by some members of the NYPD, posting examples to social media.

 

NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea held a press conference on June 3, together with the mayor to respond to questions about the recent nights’ events across the City and to appeal for dialogue in improving relations between NYPD and local communities. He acknowledged where there was wrongdoing on the part of police but also defended police officers, saying that all perspectives needed to be taken into account when analyzing particular incidents, and noting that police officers were often placed in difficult and dangerous situations while trying to keep the peace, and were, in some cases, ambushed and attacked.

 

Following the growing calls for legislative reform of police conduct, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson and Council Member Ritchie Torres, Chair of the Council’s Oversight and Investigations Committee, had sent a letter on May 31 to the Department of Investigation (DOI) Commissioner Margaret Garnett requesting a full and independent investigation of the NYPD’s mishandling of some of the weekend’s protests in other parts of the City. The investigation will probe the general policies and practices of the NYPD relating to mass demonstrations.

 

A separate, earlier letter on May 30 by Johnson and Council Members Daniel Dromm and Vanessa Gibson, Chairs of the Committee on Finance and Subcommittee on Capital Budget, respectively, was sent to the mayor late on May 29 on behalf of the City Council and the Council’s Budget Negotiating Team requesting that the de Blasio Administration to identify meaningful savings of between five and seven percent among city agencies to address the $9 billion City budget gap.

 

The letter also critiqued the proposed cuts to the City budget announced thus far by the de Blasio Administration as being insufficient or inequitably distributed. One example was the fact that the Department of Youth and Community Development had been hit with a proposed cut of 32 percent of its budget, while the NYPD only faced proposed cuts of less than one percent.

 

As the protests continued across the country, on June 2, Johnson announced that the City Council Committee on Public Safety would be voting on legislation in June to address police misconduct, including a bill to criminalize an officer’s use of a chokehold or other techniques that restrict breathing, and a second bill requiring the NYPD to create guidelines for police discipline. 

 

As a backdrop to all of these discussions and reforms, health experts continued to warn that there is still a clear risk of another increase in coronavirus cases given the amount of people on the streets during the peaceful protests, as well as during the looting and riots, where social distancing was clearly not possible, despite the fact that many were wearing face-masks.

 

The community turnout on Tuesday to clean up the mess left by looters may one day be depicted as the age-old, indomitable spirit of Bronxites, as it once was in the documentary Decade of Fire, which tells the story of the origin of the phrase “The Bronx is Burning”.  This phrase fell into the public consciousness in the 1970s, in reference to the arson epidemic caused by the total economic collapse of the South Bronx at that time. Then, locals were initially led to feel guilty for the widespread destruction and perceived neglect of property caused by fires, only for it to be proven later that the fires constituted coordinated arson by specified groups.

 

The spirit of pride in the community was certainly sensed by elected officials, residents, and volunteers on Tuesday who also came from other parts of the borough to show support with the clean-up efforts. “Through all that I saw, I saw our people coming together and cleaning up the community,” Filius said. “I saw the pride of the Bronx.  And the pride of the Bronx is what continues to motivate and push our people forward.”

 

*Síle Moloney contributed additional reporting to this story.