BOY: So what is this film about?
MORALES: It is about how people
have been displaced from their homes in East Boston.
BOY: We just keep seeing moving trucks everywhere
because of all the people trying to make
millions doing luxury condominiums.
♪
INTERVIEWER: How does it make you feel?
Pretty sad.
♪
MORALES: The history of East Boston...
is a history of human migration.
And it was a place where you could find,
at the time, very affordable places to live.
Perfectly suitable for a migrant like myself
and thousands of others, so I made this place my home.
The people that I work with are here,
the people I love are here,
the children that my son hangs out with are here.
Although, I could be with my son anywhere and be home,
I should have the choice of picking up
and moving somewhere else... or not.
♪
(loud hammering)
We're getting entire blocks bought by these developers.
Instead of having 15 apartments,
now they have 45, 60 apartments
And they're studios or one or two bedroom apartments.
We have gone from rents
of $500 to $3,000 a month.
And then they say,
"Oh, you know, ten percent will go to affordable housing."
But affordable for whom?
♪
In the meantime, when you have a single mother with children,
and you're throwing them in the streets,
and they ended up at the soup kitchen or the churches with us,
nobody seems to have any responsibility for that.
♪
SANDRA ALEMAN-NIJJAR: Most of us here can't afford living
in any of those apartments.
Oh, Joanna. Right here. - There's so much stuff.
ALEMAN-NIJJAR: And I just have felt like, "Okay,
"this is not a place for me to live anymore,
I want to move out," but I can't.
I feel like I am so rooted in here and my children, too,
and now I have the soup kitchen and I have all these friends,
all my neighbors that are
depending on this day.
MORALES: You're taking the fundamental necessity
of food security, of shelter.
These are the most elemental things
that any family of any color, of any creed,
should be able to have in America.
How can this be legal?
We know it's not moral.
♪
WOMAN: Welcome to the Boston City Council's committee hearing
on planning, development, and transportation.
MORALES: When you go the meetings
sponsored at the city of Boston, it's nothing but
a kangaroo court.
Our objective is to build a vibrant,
transit-oriented, environmentally enlightened,
mixed-use community... MORALES: And it's not lead
by the commissioner, but it's lead by the developer, 100%.
In a supply-constrained market,
where we desperately need more housing...
MORALES: This is them promoting the development,
This is not... there's no sense of,
"Oh, let's hear the pros and cons of what would it mean."
Nothing.
♪
Fifty, 60% of the population is Latino.
None of this was circulated in Spanish.
These folks expecting them to read, in English,
East Boston Times and The Herald?
They gotta be kidding me.
But I got a whiff of that,
and suddenly they have Latinos
speaking in Spanish, and they were not prepared for that,
they were not prepared, they were scared.
PAUL JOHNSON: And they held up signs, you know,
in Spanish and English,
with regard to, basically, "Don't displace us."
MORALES: Because of how the community's responding,
it's like, "We're sick of this."
"You're not listening to what people are saying."
And it's not just him,
it's the government and our political representation is,
like, painfully absent. - Yeah,
it's up to us, those of us in the neighborhoods,
to protect our own interests.
♪
MORALES: All of this is the cost of a few people
earning a lot of money very quickly
without any care for what the cost.
INTERVIEWER: Who owns all of these yachts?
MORALES (laughs): No idea!
I know a lot of people in East Boston,
I can assure you, not one of them owns any of these yachts.
It doesn't bother us that there's people with nice boats.
But it's like, "Where is the support for our people,
the community?"
(voiceover): There are no rich people like them,
powerful people like them, without people like us.
We feed you, we build your homes.
we wash your fancy cars.
There is no you without us.
♪