Скачать или смотреть Holding Ground - The Rebirth of Dudley Street (1996) | Mark Lipman and Leah Mahan | PA 2.50

“Holding Ground: The Rebirth of Dudley Street” is a powerful 1996 documentary that tells the inspiring true story of how residents of Boston’s Dudley Street neighborhood—an area once plagued by poverty, abandonment, and illegal dumping—organized to reclaim their community and rebuild it from the ground up.

At the center of the film is the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI), a grassroots, multicultural coalition of African American, Latino, Cape Verdean, and white working-class residents who came together in the 1980s to fight back against neglect and urban decay. Against the odds, they became the first community-based organization in the U.S. to win the power of eminent domain, allowing them to take control of abandoned land and transform it into affordable housing, gardens, parks, and community spaces.

The documentary follows their struggles and victories over a span of years, highlighting themes of self-determination, racial unity, grassroots activism, and urban renewal. It’s not just about revitalizing buildings—it’s about restoring dignity, ownership, and hope to a community long overlooked by city leaders and developers.

“Holding Ground” is both a historical record and a blueprint for community empowerment, showing how ordinary people can achieve extraordinary change when they work together with vision and persistence.