Rain didn’t stop the crowd as locals poured into the Bronxlandia building on March 25 to celebrate the beauty that is the Bronx with the Boogie Down for Change crawl.
The event was sponsored by Ideas 42 – a nonprofit that uses behavioral science to correct harmful narratives to help improve lives, build better systems and drive social change. Over the span of more than a decade, its impact has spread to more than 50 countries.
“We’ve been doing research for the last two years to understand the dominant narratives that are held in the Bronx and those dominant narratives were meritocracy and fatalism – our whole initiative is to combat these harmful narratives,” said Jen Tirado, Ideas 42 community coordinator and native Bronxite. “[The Bronx] is more than poverty. It’s more than just violence.”
The crawl, which served to quell negative misconceptions of the borough in areas that are often overlooked, began Saturday morning and hit six South Bronx businesses that are also encouraging the arts and providing spaces for creatives. Those who participated were split into three groups and hit the locations at different times to avoid crowding. Among the select venues were Bronx Native – a small independent and Puerto-Rican owned, Bronx-centric clothing and accessories store; Raze Up – a space that provides “smash therapy” where people can freely shatter glass, dishes and other breakable items with bats and crowbars; Sankofa Haus – a venue space, which provided a space to mingle; the Boogie Down Grind Café; and finally Bronxlandia, with the last stop culminating in a party with food, refreshments, performance, therapy sessions and a confessional.
Therapy sessions were available to ensure that participants were provided with a space to talk through anything that might have made them uncomfortable or may have triggered any emotions associated with the crawl.
“Were talking about taking members of a community and walking them through spaces that…
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