March 9, 2025 • 15 mins
Original Air Date: March 9, 2025
Geeta Ghandbhir is the director of a segment of the HBO doc series “Eyes On The Prize3: We Who Believe In Freedom Cannot Rest 1977- 2015”. Her segment includes 1977 “sweat equity” in The Bronx, which could have been a precursor to Housing For Humanity and an activist in Philly in the early days of AIDS who made sure the world knew this was not just a White gay man’s disease.
Geeta Ghandbhir is the director of a segment of the HBO doc series “Eyes On The Prize3: We Who Believe In Freedom Cannot Rest 1977- 2015”. Her segment includes 1977 “sweat equity” in The Bronx, which could have been a precursor to Housing For Humanity and an activist in Philly in the early days of AIDS who made sure the world knew this was not just a White gay man’s disease.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Sunstein Sessions on iHeartRadio, Conversations about issues that matter.
Here's your host, three time Grasie Award winner, Shelley Sunstein.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I always tell you that if a documentary is on HBO,
it's just the best. I mean, I have said this
for years and years, and I want to tell you
about a series that is now airing on HBO and
of course Max. It's a new installment of Henry Hampton's
(00:30):
landmark nineteen eighty seven series Eyes on the Prize. So
it's called Eyes on the Prize three. We who Believe
in Freedom Cannot Rest nineteen seventy seven to twenty fifteen.
Now I watched episode one and it's directed by Gita Gandebier,
(00:51):
and it chronicles I always call these hidden figures, and
that I take from the movie Hidden Figures about the
black women who were behind NASA that we never heard of.
And there are so many hidden figures of history, and
this series uncovers two of them. I had no idea, Gita,
(01:14):
I was here. I arrived in New York City in
nineteen seventy seven. I arrived in New York City when
the Bronx was burning, and I had no idea about
the community activists who took over abandoned buildings and through equity,
(01:34):
basically working on building apartments in those abandoned buildings, they
then took over ownership. So, first of all, congratulations, I
just had no clue whatsoever. How did you come across
this story, Gida, Thank.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
You well, Thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
First of all, so I had an incredible team to
really bright young women, actually because another one joined us.
So Nimko Shikata and Hala Cunningham and Sarah Schiste were
my producing team, and they relentlessly searched for stories that
were relevant to this time period, and we knew we
needed a story about housing equity, and that one really
(02:18):
struck home again. The Bronx burning, as I believe Fernando
Ferrera says in the episode, became a symbol to the
country of a terrible injustice that was happening to a
vulnerable community.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
And I think that.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Story of the folks from Banana Kelly, which still exists today,
they're still doing this kind of work that they started
back in the seventies, felt like something that where we
could show a continuity, and also it was such an
incredibly positive story of people taking back control of a
(03:00):
community and a neighborhood. As is said in the episode, also,
you know, a neighborhood is made of people, right, It's like, it's.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Not buildings, it's not the block, it's the people.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
And we really wanted to highlight them because again, as
you said, we had not heard of them, and it
seemed it was astonishing to me that we hadn't.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Tell us about the activist who came to the Bronx
and really started all of this.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
Sure, so I think the one of the people who
is sort of the spark for this, Harry Durienzo. He
was a working at that time at a place called
Cassida Maria and in the Bronx sort of a community center,
and he was the one who spoke to the local
(03:49):
folks about the possibility that they could do something.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
You know.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
I think he just sparked an idea and they all
ran with it. So they cite him as being the
person to again plant the seed. But it takes a village,
and these are folks who were constantly fighting for their
(04:15):
rights and constantly trying to takeing care of each other too.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
They were always working in community before that.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
We highlight the social networks that existed in the Bronx,
again because services didn't necessarily reach folks, and these are
mostly again black and brown folks, many who have immigrated
from places like Puerto Rico, and they were already a
network and had a safety network and a community network
(04:43):
that was really strong. So it didn't take much to
get them started to get them going, and they really
pulled in many, many people from the neighborhood to and
together they believed that they could make change, that they
could reclaimed what seemed like, as folks said in the
(05:04):
news at the time, a war zone, a place that
seemed completely devastated. It was desolate, it was dangerous, and
they wanted to stay and they made that happen.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Explain how housing equity works. To me, it seemed like
a predecessor of how habitat for humanity and the irony
there is that then President Carter came and visited and
backed what was going on with housing equity in the Bronx.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Sure, so they what they actually the term that they
actually used for their movement was sweat equity and the
concept was that they built would build a cooperative community
where people these abandoned buildings which no one wanted, you know,
essentially the government the owners had abandoned them.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
They burnt them to the ground and then abandoned them.
They burned them to the ground for the insurance money and.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
Then abandoned them, so technically no one owned them. The
idea was that they would take them back from the
government and if the folks from the community put in
a certain amount of labor into restoring the building, they
could own a co op. So it was a co
It was a cooperative community, and they started with three
(06:25):
buildings and that was the process they used again labeled
sweat equity, and it was it was another street. There
was another area too, It was I think a Washington
It was on Washington Street that started it, and that
started that that method, and then the folks from Banana
Kelly saw that and picked it up. And again Banana
(06:48):
Kelly being called Banana Kelly because the Bronx, the street
in the Bronx is shaped like a banana, so it
was the name of the two streets.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
But they and that and Carter came eventually and visited.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
The Bronx and saw what they were doing and thought
it was fantastic and started to donate or not donate,
but started to give some government money and some government
funding towards these initiatives because he was like, this is
you know, he actually recognized how incredible this was that
people investing in their own community and not feeling hopeless
and hapless and helpless would If people felt they had
(07:22):
ownership over things, it could really change the way that
a community functioned and grew and blossomed. So that's sort
of the process of sweat Equity.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
I am speaking with Gita Ganduvier and she is the
director of episode one America Don't Look Away, nineteen seventy
seven to nineteen eighty eight. It's part of a new
documentary series which just debuted on HBO and you can
see it on HBO Max. And we're talking about housing,
(07:58):
sweat equity, housing equity in the Bronx. What I was
curious about GETA was in the beginning, where did they
even get the money before they started getting funding in
the Bronx, people who were renovating these abandoned buildings, Where
did the money come from to to even start their work?
Speaker 4 (08:18):
I think I think so so interestingly, Harry Deurando, he credits,
he credits mister Potts. He was one of the landmark
figures in the in that community, who owned a couple
of buildings, had rehabbed them to take care of them.
Was a very hard working man who had come up
from the South as part of the Great Migration, and
(08:41):
he credits him with and his son with being sort
of central figures in starting this process. I think there
was some of the processes just cleaning it out, right,
you need to clean out the building, that's what that's
kind of that's labor that you can you can do
without much, right, so, and then everyone would donate a
little right the community. But I think mister Potts was
(09:04):
one of the key figures who actually did have some
stable income, who had buildings that he owned and he
was renting. So he was one of the founders at
that time in that neighborhood who helped a lot and
also had to know how because he had a lot
of skills. He and so folks were influence and people
did what they could right, People did what they could.
(09:26):
I think that's how it worked in the very beginning.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
And there was another person featured from my hometown of Philadelphia,
and this was in the early days of AIDS, which
was then called a gay, white man's disease and this
one woman a Muslim. She just went on the war
(09:50):
path to make sure that it was known that this
is it was not a white person's disease, that this
was impacting the black and brown community as well. So
tell us about her and what got her involved.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
So I think, so doctor Rashida is really really fantastic.
She came, I mean, just such an inspiration and she
was finally able to see the show, and I think,
you know, really thank God, felt that we did justice.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
To her work. She was a nurse and in the.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
Early days of HIV and AIDS and in Philadelphia, she
saw a great disparity between the treatment and the health
outcomes of white men versus black men, and the challenges
that the black community faced, and that really sparked her
(10:48):
to do something about it.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
She thought, she realized she also.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
Came out of movements like the Black Panther movement and
the Black Power movement of.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
The sixties and seventies.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
That was her understanding and her belief, and this kind
of resonates throughout the series. Is no one is coming
to save us. We have to save ourselves. No one
is going to do it for us, we must do
it for ourselves. That was the ethos of Banana Kelly,
and it was also the ethos of the organization she
created called Bibashi. So Bibashi became the pre eminent organization
(11:22):
for that essentially worked for and served black gay men
and black and brown people who were suffering from HIV
and AIDS. And she really ran with the idea that
you have to start it is a holistic treatment, that
you must start from the beginning with education.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
You have to reach people where they are.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
So she would go into gay clubs again and as
she said, the gay community didn't the gay black community
didn't have the resources that the white community have or
even the places to be like the places they did
not have necessarily clubs that were you know, that were
loud and proud at that time that they lived in
(12:09):
there and segregated neighborhoods that they were meeting each other,
and again in circumstances that were that were I guess
more sort of more siloed. So I think for her
it was about reaching this community that was so marginalized
and I just didn't have the access to the information
(12:31):
and resources they needed.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
See. The takeaway for me just watching these two stories,
is that really one person can make a difference. I mean,
people just don't kind of get it. People throw up
their hands in despair and say it's too big, it's
(12:54):
too much, I can't do anything. But that's that's not
the case. It's just amazing how one person can make
a difference.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
It's an incredible message for today.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
Honestly, I cannot tell you how important I feel.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
That this series is.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
Is this at this moment when we are facing such
a tumultuous time in you know, in US history?
Speaker 3 (13:18):
And I think the the.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
As you said, the effects of sort of despair and
fear lead to apathy. And this series is to me,
has been so inspiring when you see what these folks
did against all odds, against all odds, and again their
message was, no one's going to do it for us.
We're going to, you know, we're going to. We're going
(13:43):
to do it ourselves like we're not going and we will.
We will not be denied.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
We will not be refused. And that is so powerful.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Oh, we only have about a minute left, So Gita,
what have we not touched on that you want our
audience to know?
Speaker 3 (13:58):
I just want to say, what is really.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
It was also really interesting to me, is the themes
of that time period. You see also politically that the
transition from Jimmy Carter being in office to Reagan and
Reagan being in office, I mean again stems he was
sort of the great unraveling when it came to services.
Also when you know, again, it was a presidency that
(14:22):
was incredibly racist. So you see, there's a lot of
reflection in my episode of what is Happening Today? So
I think there is to me that was really resonated,
and I hope viewers sort of can take from that
some of the you know again, the lessons and also
the inspiration.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Eyes on the Prize. Three. We Who Believe In Freedom
Cannot Rest nineteen seventy seven to twenty fifteen to six
part documentary series. You can see it on HBO and
stream it on Max.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
You've been listening to Sunstein Sessions on iHeartRadio, a production
of New York's classic rock Q one O four point
three
Welcome to Sunstein Sessions on iHeartRadio, Conversations about issues that matter.
Here's your host, three time Grasie Award winner, Shelley Sunstein.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I always tell you that if a documentary is on HBO,
it's just the best. I mean, I have said this
for years and years, and I want to tell you
about a series that is now airing on HBO and
of course Max. It's a new installment of Henry Hampton's
(00:30):
landmark nineteen eighty seven series Eyes on the Prize. So
it's called Eyes on the Prize three. We who Believe
in Freedom Cannot Rest nineteen seventy seven to twenty fifteen.
Now I watched episode one and it's directed by Gita Gandebier,
(00:51):
and it chronicles I always call these hidden figures, and
that I take from the movie Hidden Figures about the
black women who were behind NASA that we never heard of.
And there are so many hidden figures of history, and
this series uncovers two of them. I had no idea, Gita,
(01:14):
I was here. I arrived in New York City in
nineteen seventy seven. I arrived in New York City when
the Bronx was burning, and I had no idea about
the community activists who took over abandoned buildings and through equity,
(01:34):
basically working on building apartments in those abandoned buildings, they
then took over ownership. So, first of all, congratulations, I
just had no clue whatsoever. How did you come across
this story, Gida, Thank.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
You well, Thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
First of all, so I had an incredible team to
really bright young women, actually because another one joined us.
So Nimko Shikata and Hala Cunningham and Sarah Schiste were
my producing team, and they relentlessly searched for stories that
were relevant to this time period, and we knew we
needed a story about housing equity, and that one really
(02:18):
struck home again. The Bronx burning, as I believe Fernando
Ferrera says in the episode, became a symbol to the
country of a terrible injustice that was happening to a
vulnerable community.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
And I think that.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Story of the folks from Banana Kelly, which still exists today,
they're still doing this kind of work that they started
back in the seventies, felt like something that where we
could show a continuity, and also it was such an
incredibly positive story of people taking back control of a
(03:00):
community and a neighborhood. As is said in the episode, also,
you know, a neighborhood is made of people, right, It's like, it's.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Not buildings, it's not the block, it's the people.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
And we really wanted to highlight them because again, as
you said, we had not heard of them, and it
seemed it was astonishing to me that we hadn't.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Tell us about the activist who came to the Bronx
and really started all of this.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
Sure, so I think the one of the people who
is sort of the spark for this, Harry Durienzo. He
was a working at that time at a place called
Cassida Maria and in the Bronx sort of a community center,
and he was the one who spoke to the local
(03:49):
folks about the possibility that they could do something.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
You know.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
I think he just sparked an idea and they all
ran with it. So they cite him as being the
person to again plant the seed. But it takes a village,
and these are folks who were constantly fighting for their
(04:15):
rights and constantly trying to takeing care of each other too.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
They were always working in community before that.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
We highlight the social networks that existed in the Bronx,
again because services didn't necessarily reach folks, and these are
mostly again black and brown folks, many who have immigrated
from places like Puerto Rico, and they were already a
network and had a safety network and a community network
(04:43):
that was really strong. So it didn't take much to
get them started to get them going, and they really
pulled in many, many people from the neighborhood to and
together they believed that they could make change, that they
could reclaimed what seemed like, as folks said in the
(05:04):
news at the time, a war zone, a place that
seemed completely devastated. It was desolate, it was dangerous, and
they wanted to stay and they made that happen.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Explain how housing equity works. To me, it seemed like
a predecessor of how habitat for humanity and the irony
there is that then President Carter came and visited and
backed what was going on with housing equity in the Bronx.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Sure, so they what they actually the term that they
actually used for their movement was sweat equity and the
concept was that they built would build a cooperative community
where people these abandoned buildings which no one wanted, you know,
essentially the government the owners had abandoned them.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
They burnt them to the ground and then abandoned them.
They burned them to the ground for the insurance money and.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
Then abandoned them, so technically no one owned them. The
idea was that they would take them back from the
government and if the folks from the community put in
a certain amount of labor into restoring the building, they
could own a co op. So it was a co
It was a cooperative community, and they started with three
(06:25):
buildings and that was the process they used again labeled
sweat equity, and it was it was another street. There
was another area too, It was I think a Washington
It was on Washington Street that started it, and that
started that that method, and then the folks from Banana
Kelly saw that and picked it up. And again Banana
(06:48):
Kelly being called Banana Kelly because the Bronx, the street
in the Bronx is shaped like a banana, so it
was the name of the two streets.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
But they and that and Carter came eventually and visited.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
The Bronx and saw what they were doing and thought
it was fantastic and started to donate or not donate,
but started to give some government money and some government
funding towards these initiatives because he was like, this is
you know, he actually recognized how incredible this was that
people investing in their own community and not feeling hopeless
and hapless and helpless would If people felt they had
(07:22):
ownership over things, it could really change the way that
a community functioned and grew and blossomed. So that's sort
of the process of sweat Equity.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
I am speaking with Gita Ganduvier and she is the
director of episode one America Don't Look Away, nineteen seventy
seven to nineteen eighty eight. It's part of a new
documentary series which just debuted on HBO and you can
see it on HBO Max. And we're talking about housing,
(07:58):
sweat equity, housing equity in the Bronx. What I was
curious about GETA was in the beginning, where did they
even get the money before they started getting funding in
the Bronx, people who were renovating these abandoned buildings, Where
did the money come from to to even start their work?
Speaker 4 (08:18):
I think I think so so interestingly, Harry Deurando, he credits,
he credits mister Potts. He was one of the landmark
figures in the in that community, who owned a couple
of buildings, had rehabbed them to take care of them.
Was a very hard working man who had come up
from the South as part of the Great Migration, and
(08:41):
he credits him with and his son with being sort
of central figures in starting this process. I think there
was some of the processes just cleaning it out, right,
you need to clean out the building, that's what that's
kind of that's labor that you can you can do
without much, right, so, and then everyone would donate a
little right the community. But I think mister Potts was
(09:04):
one of the key figures who actually did have some
stable income, who had buildings that he owned and he
was renting. So he was one of the founders at
that time in that neighborhood who helped a lot and
also had to know how because he had a lot
of skills. He and so folks were influence and people
did what they could right, People did what they could.
(09:26):
I think that's how it worked in the very beginning.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
And there was another person featured from my hometown of Philadelphia,
and this was in the early days of AIDS, which
was then called a gay, white man's disease and this
one woman a Muslim. She just went on the war
(09:50):
path to make sure that it was known that this
is it was not a white person's disease, that this
was impacting the black and brown community as well. So
tell us about her and what got her involved.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
So I think, so doctor Rashida is really really fantastic.
She came, I mean, just such an inspiration and she
was finally able to see the show, and I think,
you know, really thank God, felt that we did justice.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
To her work. She was a nurse and in the.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
Early days of HIV and AIDS and in Philadelphia, she
saw a great disparity between the treatment and the health
outcomes of white men versus black men, and the challenges
that the black community faced, and that really sparked her
(10:48):
to do something about it.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
She thought, she realized she also.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
Came out of movements like the Black Panther movement and
the Black Power movement of.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
The sixties and seventies.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
That was her understanding and her belief, and this kind
of resonates throughout the series. Is no one is coming
to save us. We have to save ourselves. No one
is going to do it for us, we must do
it for ourselves. That was the ethos of Banana Kelly,
and it was also the ethos of the organization she
created called Bibashi. So Bibashi became the pre eminent organization
(11:22):
for that essentially worked for and served black gay men
and black and brown people who were suffering from HIV
and AIDS. And she really ran with the idea that
you have to start it is a holistic treatment, that
you must start from the beginning with education.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
You have to reach people where they are.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
So she would go into gay clubs again and as
she said, the gay community didn't the gay black community
didn't have the resources that the white community have or
even the places to be like the places they did
not have necessarily clubs that were you know, that were
loud and proud at that time that they lived in
(12:09):
there and segregated neighborhoods that they were meeting each other,
and again in circumstances that were that were I guess
more sort of more siloed. So I think for her
it was about reaching this community that was so marginalized
and I just didn't have the access to the information
(12:31):
and resources they needed.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
See. The takeaway for me just watching these two stories,
is that really one person can make a difference. I mean,
people just don't kind of get it. People throw up
their hands in despair and say it's too big, it's
(12:54):
too much, I can't do anything. But that's that's not
the case. It's just amazing how one person can make
a difference.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
It's an incredible message for today.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
Honestly, I cannot tell you how important I feel.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
That this series is.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
Is this at this moment when we are facing such
a tumultuous time in you know, in US history?
Speaker 3 (13:18):
And I think the the.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
As you said, the effects of sort of despair and
fear lead to apathy. And this series is to me,
has been so inspiring when you see what these folks
did against all odds, against all odds, and again their
message was, no one's going to do it for us.
We're going to, you know, we're going to. We're going
(13:43):
to do it ourselves like we're not going and we will.
We will not be denied.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
We will not be refused. And that is so powerful.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Oh, we only have about a minute left, So Gita,
what have we not touched on that you want our
audience to know?
Speaker 3 (13:58):
I just want to say, what is really.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
It was also really interesting to me, is the themes
of that time period. You see also politically that the
transition from Jimmy Carter being in office to Reagan and
Reagan being in office, I mean again stems he was
sort of the great unraveling when it came to services.
Also when you know, again, it was a presidency that
(14:22):
was incredibly racist. So you see, there's a lot of
reflection in my episode of what is Happening Today? So
I think there is to me that was really resonated,
and I hope viewers sort of can take from that
some of the you know again, the lessons and also
the inspiration.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Eyes on the Prize. Three. We Who Believe In Freedom
Cannot Rest nineteen seventy seven to twenty fifteen to six
part documentary series. You can see it on HBO and
stream it on Max.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
You've been listening to Sunstein Sessions on iHeartRadio, a production
of New York's classic rock Q one O four point
three
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