Dudley Street Initiative & Holding Ground

The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) is a nonprofit community-based planning and organizing entity rooted in the Roxbury/North Dorchester neighborhoods of Boston. DSNI's approach to neighborhood revitalization is comprehensive including economic, human, physical, and environmental growth. It was formed in 1984 when residents of the Dudley Street area came together out of fear and anger to revive their neighborhood that was devastated by arson, disinvestment, neglect and redlining practices, and protect it from outside speculators. (http://www.roxburyculturalnetwork.org/#/dsni/4533185245)

Holding Ground:

I absolutely love how the film starts with a clip of Martin Luther King declaring, "Boston must conduct the creative experiments and the abolition of ghettos which will point the way to other communities." I love this statement because we should have safe communties free of people that do not contribute and that do not care about us. The video presents a history of this Boston neighborhood and its various ethnic groups, from the Irish and Italians who settled there earlier in the century to the immigrants from the Cape Verdean Islands and American blacks who moved in while post World War II mortgage programs helped white residents move out to the suburbs.



The video also talks about DSNI's early phases, when the initiative grew out of residents' anger at being excluded from a plan to redevelop the community.  Dudley Street residents were interviewed, as well as community development professionals, and Boston city officials. This is important because we should have the residents opinions. The film also highlights the progression of the initiative, from residents' taking ownership of the community planning process and working to clean up the problem of illegal garbage dumping and to DSNI's securing eminent domain power to take over abandoned land for housing development.