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(birds chirping)

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(boat motor)

(distant city ambiance)

(airplane taking off)

(electronic music)

A few years ago I started boxing by accident.

I was exploring the edges of Boston,

scouting locations for a fashion video.

I was looking for places a little out of time,

outside of the corporate landscape enveloping our cities and towns...

Where everything is a chain store

and you could be anywhere everywhere.

I found myself in East Boston,

and the neighborhoods surrounding Logan Airport...

A mix of small businesses,

long-time residents, and new immigration.

I was struck by the views out onto Boston Harbor:

the sky, the ocean, the islands.

In contrast was the relentless sound of airplanes...

Up to 120 takeoffs and landings per hour.

This juxtaposition somehow made the natural beauty of the landscape

all the more poignant.

I wandered over to Winthrop, a town on a peninsula

jutting out into Massachusetts Bay on the northern edge of East Boston.

(airplane engine roars)

I realized that for years, flying in and out of Boston,

I had seen these neighborhoods from above.

I had marveled at how we barely skimmed over the houses and backyards.

(airplane engine roars)

You enter Winthrop by crossing a bridge over the Belle Isle Reservation.

It is the last salt marsh in Boston city limits.

All the others were filled in and built on long ago.

Old houses hug the water,

there are dramatic views of Logan across the harbor.

Downtown Boston is off in the distance — and the planes...

Constantly, the planes…

I learned that the poet Sylvia Plath had spent her early childhood in Winthrop

in the late 1930’s.

She once wrote:

“I lived on the bay side of town, on Johnson Avenue,

opposite the Logan Airport,

and before I went to bed each night,

I used to kneel by the west window of my room

and look over to the lights of Boston

that blazed and blinked far off across the darkening water.

The sunset flaunted its pink flag above the airport,

and the sound of waves was lost in the perpetual droning of the planes.

I marveled at the moving beacons on the runway

and watched, until it grew completely dark,

the flashing red and green lights that rose and set in the sky like shooting stars.

The airport was my Mecca, my Jerusalem.

All night I dreamed of flying.”

(ambient music)

Driving through Winthrop a storefront caught my eye:

“Bartolo’s Boxing Club.”

From the street, I could see inside.

The walls were covered in old, framed photographs of boxers.

I hesitated before going inside — But the old photographs intrigued me.

And so I went in.

There I met Sal Bartolo Jr.

He was gruff, but cordial.

He became less cordial though, when I asked if I might film

a fashion video at his gym.

No, no, no he said. No filming, no photo shoots.

He had a bad experience once before with a fashion shoot,

where models in bikinis and high heels went parading around his gym

and ruined the floors in the boxing ring.

No, this was a serious place, only for boxing.

No, no, no. Never again.

But I was still interested in the photographs so I asked him:

well, even if he wouldn’t let me shoot a video in his boxing club,

could I take a walk around the gym right now

and get a closer look at those photos?

That was fine, he said...

And then he started showing me the photographs.

A photograph of his father, Sal Bartolo Sr., was centered over the ring.

Well, my father was a fighter, he was a world champion,

my uncles did some fighting and I just kept on doing it, I liked it.

Sal Sr. had been the National Boxing Association Featherweight Champion

from 1944 to 1946.

Gillette presents Willy Pep and Sal Bartolo in a 15-round featherweight match

for the Championship of the World.

He was known as “The Pride of East Boston.”

To his left was a portrait of Phil Terranova...

Whom Sal Sr. had beaten to win the title in 1944...

And to his right was Willy Pep, who had taken the title away from Sal Sr.

In 1946.

…And Bartolo’s down from two rights to the jaw.

4, 5, Bartolo on his back, 6, 7, 8

Pep won that fight in a twelfth-round knockout

that landed Sal Sr. in the hospital with a broken jaw.

There was a photograph of that, too.

And now they’re... Ray Arcel and Bobby Brown are carrying

Bartolo back to his corner. He’s back on his feet.

It was in dead mid-range, sensational knock out.

Make your opponent do what you want him to do.

No! Slap it down...

I asked Sal about boxing training.

What was it like,

were there any women training at his gym?

He said yes there were — his gym had women, men, kids...

People of all ages and abilities.

...his right hand is going to come out, now step back. No, pay attention...

Anyone could box, it was just a matter of putting in the work:

the cardio, the strength training — things like push-ups.

I said I had been trying to do a push-up for years

and still couldn’t do a single one.

Hit, hit, hit, hit. Bang!

It’s so easy. Damn!

He said of course you can,

and before I knew it he had ordered me down on the floor

to show him my push-up.

I was amused, so I obeyed.

Then he started barking instructions at me

like an Army Sergeant, which, as I found out later, he was.

Breathe through your nose, not your mouth.

Even with Sal’s instructions,

I still couldn’t manage a decent push-up,

but Sal offered me a free boxing class

and said if I worked at it, eventually I would be able to do one.

But it’s all mental. It’s a mental game.

Relax your mind, there isn’t anything you can’t do.

Hit, bang bang.

Throw the uppercut. I love that shit...

Right hand comes up, block, parry, hit, hit!

It’s so easy. Go!

I thought, no way — even if it is free,

I can’t even bear to watch violence in films.

I had my eyes covered for half of “Raging Bull”...

There is no way I would ever do boxing.

I thanked him and left.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about the gym.

Sal’s description of the rigors of boxing training,

and his stories about the photographs had intrigued me.

So I decided to take that free class...

Even though I couldn’t imagine punching someone,

and I certainly knew that I did not want to be punched.

And, in the back of my mind,

I hoped that maybe if I attended one of his classes,

Sal might trust me a little more,

and change his mind about letting me use the gym

as a location.

I asked Laura, who was going to be the model

in the video, to join me for the class.

I thought it would be a good idea if Sal met her

and saw she wasn’t going to prance around his gym

in a bikini and heels.

Sal showed us no mercy,

and at the end of class, after a brutal two hours,

Laura and I were dripping with sweat.

We’d each lost three pounds.

It’s an exhale every time the arms come out.

I asked Sal again whether he would let me film at the gym.

Sad.

Slide the balls out. I’m depressed. Get up,

get some water, even though we didn’t earn it.

You’re killing me here.

This time, he said yes.

(ambient music)

(punching sounds)

Sal was helpful during the video shoot,

even appearing in it,

and he seemed pleased with the result.

But what surprised me is that by the time

we finished making the video, I was fascinated with boxing.

See how the hand is down here,

you stopped at the object, where’s the bag?

He’s still standing there. You want to go through it.

I kept returning to the gym to take Sal’s classes.

First once a week, then twice a week,

until I was going five nights a week.

You can hear the difference.

See how it is going all different ways,

you’re not controlling it.

Again, what are you seeing here?

You got the right hand, you’re in an orthodox position.

Right hand is coming out,

but what about the rest of your body?

Cause I’m not... it’s square You’re square, exactly.

Now, what have you got your legs doing?

Absolutely nothing.

(music)

I would head down towards the gym

an hour or two before class, and poke around

the neighborhood with my camera.

I liked exploring the edges,

where the city met the ocean;

where the domestic met the industrial.

See you’re fighting like you’re afraid of it.

Wait can you do that again?

You’re here, hit...

People would come out of their houses

and ask me what I was doing.

And then they would start talking to me…

Hi, my name is Larry Venezia.

I’ve been living in this house for sixty-five years.

…telling me stories about the neighborhood...

And, about the airport.

So there was actually hangars we used to play in.

We used to go in — and we used to drive our bikes...

Like Sal, many of them had lived

in East Boston or Winthrop their entire lives.

...go underneath the plane wings. Drive around...

The only thing that you could grab at a hangar those days was salt tablets

and so we’d grab a salt tablet from the dispenser...

East Boston was originally a group of islands.

Since the 1830’s, the water between them

had gradually been filled in.

Jeffrey Field, the predecessor of Logan Airport,

opened in 1923 on the tidal flats.

In the early years, the airport was a novelty...

And a point of pride for the neighborhood.

(music)

During WWII, any inconveniences from living next to an airport

were set aside for patriotic reasons.

But after the war, in the late 1940’s,

tension between Logan and the surrounding communities started to grow.

Politicians and the business community

saw Logan’s expansion as necessary for Boston’s economic growth.

But the only direction it could grow

was into East Boston.

(airplane engine roars)

Noise from the airport had been steadily increasing,

but in 1959, with the introduction of jet engines,

the noise levels suddenly became extreme.

The new jets were more than twice as loud

as the older, piston-engine planes.

They also needed longer runways.

So in the 1960s, Massport — the Logan Authority...

Started exploring further expansion.

In particular, they needed a way to extend Runway 15/33.

About those mysterious runway numbers:

have you ever stared out the window of a plane,

while stuck waiting for takeoff,

and wondered what all those numbers mean?

They seem so arbitrary, but of course they aren’t.

Each runway has two numbers,

indicating the runway’s orientation on the compass.

One is used when the plane is traveling in one direction,

and one is used when it is traveling the opposite way.

The numbers go from 10 degrees to 360...

But, for efficiency, the final 0 of the number on the compass is dropped:

so runways are numbered 1 to 36.

Runway 15/33 pointed straight towards

an East Boston street called Neptune Road.

If you think of the older industrial city...

The city of railroads and ports and factories

and low-rise workers housing, that city...

The boxing gym was one of the institutions that

formed the backbone of the neighborhood.

So the union hall and the saloon and the church

and the synagogue… and the boxing gym was one of those institutions.

Every neighborhood had at least one.

It was woven into the fabric of everyday life.

Carlo Rotella is a professor of English and Urban Studies at Boston College.

But he also has spent a lot of time at ringside

and has written extensively on boxing.

If you think about the boxing gym in the post-industrial city,

that is the city organized around handling information.

That’s the city of, you know,

airport, high-rise buildings, big suburban surround,

expressways so people can drive in and out.

That city, the boxing gym was a kind of esoteric leftover...

A way that the neighborhood was that doesn’t really exist anymore.

But the gym’s still left.

I was reading Katherine Dunn’s writing on boxing

and this passage resonated with me:

“If home and streets are fraught with chaos,

order still prevails in the gym.

The violence is ritualized and contained in the ring

where there are rules and bells,

protective helmets and a coach in the corner watching carefully.”

Her observation helped explain my surprising comfort with boxing.

In the boxing gym, there are rules to the violence.

You choose to enter the fight, it doesn’t just happen to you.

I also came to appreciate that boxing is not just about offense,

about hitting — but just as much, if not more, about defense.

So there are different kinds of defensive fighters.

There are defensive fighters who build a fortress out of their arms

and it’s just hard to get through.

But then there’s, to me, there’s an even higher art

of someone like Bernard Hopkins whose defensive genius

lies more in arranging so it’s never a good time to hit him.

Or, as Sal often tells us, “Never be a punching bag for nobody.”

This is all inside fighting.

You see I am using the ropes, bouncing off the ropes every time he hits.

Now look how fast his hands are and he still can’t get any punches in.

See what I mean, watch my hands.

Nothing’s getting in.

A large part of being in the gym is listening to Sal’s stories.

Sal makes no mystery of the fact that he comes from a background

populated by “wise guys.”

All these guys I was getting ready for the Gloves.

That’s Anthony

and that’s Gary,

both of them I got ready for the Marines.

He’s in jail now.

He’s in jail for attempted murder.

He used to be a wise guy.

And he went to make a collection,

and the guy screwed with him so he shot him in the ass.

Then he went to court

and the judge gave him like 90 million years,

so he picked up the chair and threw the chair at the judge.

And he gave him another zillion years.

Two tough kids.

I love these stories.

I know the wise guys are no laughing matter,

but they’re intertwined with boxing and with East Boston.

Sal will point to a photo of a boxer on the wall,

say something about his technique...

And, inevitably, which wise guy owned him,

or his bleak end…

Sal comes from a time when being a bookie was just another job.

In 1959 there was a widely reported FBI raid

of The Ringside Café, the bar that Sal Sr. owned

after he retired from boxing.

Sal Jr. was just a child at the time,

and doesn’t really remember it,

but he does have all the newspaper clippings.

I was a soda jerk,

and Bartolo’s cafe was right next to the drugstore...

As a teenager, Mary Ellen Welch

worked in the drugstore next to the Ringside Café.

…but they had, a big, let’s call it a “booking industry” there.

And they would come in the drugstore

and they’d use our telephone — we had a telephone booth...

They would use our phones to place their bets

because it couldn’t be traced on a public phone.

Or at least they thought it wouldn’t.

Along with boxing, Sal passes on other wisdom such as:

Hang your pants with the betting money in them on the wall.

That way, when you are raided,

the money is not on you, and can’t be used as evidence.

This is why bookies often worked in their underwear.

(clapping sounds)

One wall of the gym is covered with photographs from Sal Sr.’s life,

including photos of Sal Sr. with John F. Kennedy,

who was a family friend.

Family lore is that Sal’s uncle in East Boston

had been a bootlegger with JFK’s father Joseph.

And that when JFK and Jackie Kennedy would come to Boston,

JFK would ask that Sal Sr. be his personal driver

rather than his usual Secret Service chauffeur.

On the opposite wall of the gym is Sal Jr.’s life story.

His amateur and professional boxing career.

His medals and souvenirs from his years in the US Army

and with NATO peacekeeping troops in Bosnia...

Where he opened a boxing gym for fellow soldiers,

“Sal’s House of Pain.”

This gym here, that was in Bosnia.

So I’d play army in the daytime, do missions

and then nighttime, I trained fighters.

The last and longest wall in the gym

is covered with snapshots of Sal’s students over the years,

each dated, with their first names written in marker on their image.

And if you look over there, it’s all past students,

I got over 40 years worth of students on that wall.

Since I’ve been at the gym Sal’s students have included

an army officer on leave, an events planner at a hotel,

an airline pilot, a welder,

a tattoo artist, a grave digger,

a Secret Service agent, a guy just out of prison,

a 7-year old boy that had to stand on a box

to reach up to the speed bag,

and a middle-school girl who had wanted to be a fighter

ever since she was three.

Widen your stance, come down to his height.

Now put your stuff together — just body, no head.

In the gym, everyone had to spar with everyone else.

When there was a huge mismatch,

Sal would insist that the stronger, bigger person

had to adjust their fighting style so no one would get hurt.

Step over, step over!

Nice, pretty!

That meant I had to crouch

way down to gently tap the 7-year-old,

and so did the Secret Service agent when he sparred with me.

Throw that jab, go under it. Step, crack, crack, overhand.

Inside the gym, we formed a community...

Like a team, or members of a band.

Or sometimes, I thought, like members of a cult.

Many of the institutions that have shaped my life...

Libraries, schools, honky-tonks, blues clubs...

Are all like that, where you come in and you say:

this is a very specific and unique place,

it’s like all the other places in its category

that are distributed throughout the world

but each one is sort of like the mystical body of honky-tonks.

And anywhere you’re in a honky-tonk, you’re like hey,

it’s a honky-tonk, I know how this works. Right?

And boxing gyms are really like that.

And they have that real feel,

and as soon as you’re in one you feel at home.

If you feel at home in any boxing gym,

you feel at home in them all to some extent.

(bag punching)

Sometimes, after class, some of us would go for a drink

at Kelley Square Pub, John Mastrangelo’s bar in East Boston.

John is a former boxer himself. His career was in the 1960’s.

There are photos of boxers and local celebrities

covering the walls of his pub,

and a large signed photo of Sal Sr. right over the bar.

One night, Sal Jr. joined us at Kelley’s,

and at the end of the evening we discovered he had

secretly picked up the tab.

(music) (background chatter)

Driving to the gym each night,

I passed the Wood Island Park train station.

But where was Wood Island Park?

I didn’t see anything like a park anywhere around…

just the T station, the highway overpass and the edges of the airport.

It turned out that the park was long gone.

Wood Island Park opened in 1898…

Wood Island Park was what I would consider

a smaller version of Central Park.

…an ocean-side park overlooking Boston Harbor

and adjacent to the tidal flats that would become

Jeffrey Field and later Logan Airport.

It had, when I say rolling hills, I mean rolling hills,

surrounded by beach.

We used to sled, brave people would actually try to ski

with the old leather bindings and wooden skis.

It was 70 acres, as large as the Boston Common

and Public Garden downtown,

and was designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted,

the same designer of Central Park in New York,

and Boston’s “Emerald Necklace.”

It had ball fields, all kinds: baseball field, football field.

Wood Island Park had paths for strolling…

Every single day after school, we would get together…

…beaches, running tracks, a tennis court, and picnic areas.

...and you know, take a blanket or whatever and get a space.

So it was very well populated all the time.

In 1963 Massport announced plans to expand Runway 15/33

by demolishing Wood Island Park.

They went like after midnight one night in the state legislature

and under the guise of a bill to address mental health issues,

they snuck in the taking of Wood Island Park with eminent domain.

The neighborhood responded with protests and lawsuits.

Yet in April 1967, despite the public protest,

Massport took Wood Island Park.

And according to one historian, “In one day Wood Island Park

was graded to the level of the existing runway.”

Olmsted also designed Neptune Road,

a wide residential avenue lined with elm trees,

as a grand entrance to Wood Island Park.

After the park was leveled, the houses on Neptune Road

were less than 2000 feet from the new Runway 15/33.

Residents were subject to even more noise and vibration,

as the planes took off and landed directly over their houses.

One day I was filming the airport from Coleridge Street,

a small dead-end street,

where there is a row of houses with backyards overlooking Logan.

I was peering into one of these backyards, holding my camera,

when Donny, who lives in that house, came up

and asked what I was doing.

I told him about my interest in Wood Island Park and Neptune Road.

Donny told me that these five houses

were originally located on Neptune Road.

And it was moved back in ’78, 1979 to make room for...

Larry Venezia, Donny’s next door neighbor,

still lives in the same house he grew up in.

And, the planes that came in a little too low

used to knock our TV antenna down.

You can actually still see a broken TV antenna

up on this house.

Really, from one of the planes?

Yeah, it’s been there forever.

I can remember my dad, especially on a Sunday,

we’re having a spaghetti and meatballs, big Sunday dinner

and the planes would come.

So every four minutes, a plane would either takeoff or land

depending on the wind.

And he’d call up the airport tower and tell them

that he’s going to go up on the roof

and he’s gonna punch a time card

and sweep the bottoms of the planes with a broom.

That’s how low they were.

And everybody would laugh, but it was serious.

I swear, I’m half deaf because of the planes

going over so close.

I always slept on this side.

And that’s my only good ear now.

(gentle music)

(airplane engine roars)

In 1969, two years after they leveled Wood Island Park,

35 workmen with 35 chainsaws appeared on Neptune Road

and cut down 35 elm trees.

They also seized 720 feet of the road,

and four houses by eminent domain, evicting eight families.

Over the next few years, the remaining residents tried to hold out

and fight back against Massport.

Massport gave us a couple of choices.

Pay us market value

and knock down the house. And then you’re on your own.

Massport gave residents on Neptune Road a choice…

Or, this option...

…sell their homes to Massport, or have their houses moved.

And so they gave us — they didn’t give us — they gave us a deal

on this property, on the land,

and we had the house moved.

(ambient music)

Looks like a funeral march.

Of the original elm trees, a few survivors can still be found

at the outer edge of Logan, on the remnant of Neptune Road

which dead-ends into the wall surrounding the airport.

The people part of it was not even considered.

They said, oh, these people we’ll give them

money for their homes. But it was a minuscule amount,

and they didn’t value all of the things

that a truly diverse neighborhood can offer you...

How close families were, how you brought up each other’s kids.

If somebody was working, they watched the kids next door.

One day I met Nelson, a little boy who lives in one of these houses

that had been moved from Neptune Road.

He shyly watched me filming, circling around me with his bike.

I know a great idea for a movie, he said.

What is it, I asked.

“Me on my bike chasing you!”

So we filmed this great movie.

My thoughts after sparring for the first time:

I need to stay calmer, not be frantic.

Sparring, I had felt completely overwhelmed.

Half-frozen and unable to move,

and half wildly pawing at the air trying to box.

That night, after class, I thought about all the time

that I spent as a child unable to defend myself.

My father, who I adored, frequently would fly into rages...

Screaming and repeatedly hitting me and my brother.

It always happened after he and my mother had been fighting.

He never hit her. But in the aftermath of their arguments,

he would come to the back of the house,

where we were hiding, and hit us.

Then he would abruptly stop, and go away.

Later, we would all pretend nothing had happened.

I also thought about my mother.

Either I was the perfect daughter, or I was the enemy...

It depended on her shifting reality.

Often she wandered around the house at night, unable to sleep.

If I angered her, she would complain to my father,

and that would set him off.

I clung to my father’s affection for those other times with him,

the times when he was in a good mood

and would let me sit in the darkroom while he printed his pictures.

If I upset her, that would be lost to me.

It wasn’t until well into my adulthood

that she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

She was hospitalized during episodes of psychotic depression later in life.

I was afraid of the dark for so many years.

Only after I learned to say to myself,

“It is not the dark you are afraid of, it’s your mother”

could I walk down the hall at night without turning on the light.

As a child I had learned to be inert — to be stone cold,

to be non-reactive, to be as if I were dead,

to be as if I had no feelings,

to be as if I did not notice the craziness or the cruelty of it all.

“I tried to disappear, the only way I thought I could be with you”

went a lyric I wrote years later.

It was a survival technique.

I hoped that if I didn’t respond, didn’t exacerbate the situation,

my father’s mood might pass more quickly...

That he would finish hitting us sooner.

I hoped that if I didn’t react to her erratic behavior,

that my mother would not become angry or hurt.

The only thing that diffused the situation with her

was complete compliance.

That night, after my first sparring session,

I realized that I had been trained not to fight back.

I think about the first time Sal did pad work, a boxing drill, with me.

It was early on, maybe the second class I took.

He was holding out the pads,

telling me to punch them with my gloved hands.

I couldn’t.

I could only give his outstretched hands a half-hearted tap.

Come on, he said, punch it like you mean it,

like you are really angry.

I could only giggle and laugh nervously and barely punch the pads.

I wanted so desperately to punch them hard,

but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I felt like I was outside my own body, looking down from the ceiling.

I watched myself unable to control my uncomfortable stupid giggling,

unable to punch his hands.

As I watched myself I was thinking,

“If I can’t even pretend to conjure up anger

without embarrassment or shame,

if I can’t hit back even when I want to,

even when I am being told to do so,

I really need to learn this…”

(ambient music)

Boxing training is repetitive,

muscle memory as well as conditioning.

What else is held in muscle memory?

The flinch as the hand comes towards you when, as a child,

you cower in the furthermost corner of the closet,

or in the back seat of the car?

Can you learn not to flinch as a hand comes towards you?

Catch and counter says Sal,

you catch the hand coming out, stop it from hitting you,

and then, with split-second timing,

almost at the very same moment as you block that hand coming towards you,

you hit back.

I was introduced to Mary Ellen Welch by Regina Marchi,

a fourth-generation East Bostonian

and author of a book about East Boston history.

Regina told me that if I wanted to speak with someone

who had been a defender of East Boston,

I should meet her godmother.

She’s the most dynamic, strong...

She was a feminist before people were feminist,

before my own mother was on board with that.

But long story short, I said to her yesterday,

told her about you and said,

would you ever feel up to doing an interview?

When I met Mary Ellen, she was in the hospital...

Frail, but her passion undiminished.

I’ve been involved in East Boston

politics and community action since about 1965.

Mary Ellen Welch was a school teacher and lifelong activist.

In her second-grade classroom, she wrote the number to call

with airport noise complaints on one corner of the blackboard.

One of her students wrote to the head of Massport:

Dear Mr Davis, The planes hurt my ears.

When I do my work I get disturbed.

Miss Welch is getting mad.

Can you make the planes quieter? I hope so.

Thank you. Please make the planes stop. The end.

In 1968, Mary Ellen Welch was part of

the “Maverick Street Mothers” protest.

Dump trucks carrying landfill for Logan expansion...

Up to 600 trucks per day...

Had been speeding down Maverick Street,

a residential street

on the other side of the airport from Neptune Road.

The airport at the time was leveling

what was then called Bird Island Flats,

it had a hill and they were leveling the dirt

and taking the dirt away in these great big dump trucks.

And they were using Maverick Street as their way

to get back and forth, to take the dirt away.

And those trucks were massive.

The protest was organized around the kitchen table of Anna DeFronzo.

Anna DeFronzo was very much

a respected matriarch in the community.

She was a woman of the neighborhood

that everyone looked up to. And so her kitchen,

it was a natural place for organizing around this issue.

She was joined there by Mary Ellen Welch

and other neighborhood women.

People saw what was going on in the South on civil rights issues...

They saw people, young and old, going into the street...

And subconsciously, in my opinion,

people formed ideas that said,

Hey, if that’s a way to fight, we’re getting nowhere

writing letters and going to one meeting a year.

Maybe we should take matters into our own hands.

They decided it should be a women-only demonstration.

We didn’t want the men to, you know, be macho

and go against the truck drivers or the police or whatever.

So, mothers — with baby carriages, if you had kids...

We went into the street.

The Maverick Street Mothers showed up on the morning

of September 28, 1968 and blocked the street.

And so, when the first truck came,

they threatened, they were screaming and hollering at us.

Get out of the way, we’ll run you over.

They were tooting the horns, it was scary.

But the women didn’t move. We just stayed there.

And so they called the cops.

When they came, they got very rough with the women.

And they would like take her by the shoulders and shove you

from the street into like the steps of somebody’s house or the fence.

Very rough, because the women wouldn’t leave.

And so when they saw — the TV films

went right on the evening news at suppertime...

So a lot of people saw it, and got all up in arms.

As a matter of fact they use this alternate route

in the wee hours of the morning,

so if they can do it then they certainly can do it during the daytime.

And the politicians and the business people,

they said we can’t have that going on...

Women and children getting on the street?

And they went crazy when they heard it.

The protests continued over the next few days,

prompting Mayor Kevin White to come down to East Boston

and speak directly with the protestors.

...with Freddy Langone, with John Saltonstall

to try and provide

for the people of this area

free access on this street without worry of getting hit by trucks.

We’ve waited five years for this...

It’s all these promises…

The trucks won’t roll tomorrow!

(loud cheering)

And by the end of the week,

Massport had found an alternate route for the trucks.

When that happened, and the trucks went home,

we counted that as a significant victory.

When I first screened this footage,

I caught a glimpse of a familiar face

at the right edge of the frame.

I realized it was Mary Ellen Welch.

There she was in 1968

watching with satisfaction,

as the trucks backed down Maverick Street.

And so it spread from that small group of mothers

on Maverick Street,

from that emanated a lot of community action

to right the wrongs that were going on.

In the subsequent decades, Mary Ellen Welch and other activists

have lobbied tirelessly to bring more green space

back to the community.

They worked to establish the East Boston Greenway,

a linear park along the path of abandoned railroad tracks.

And they were able to turn East Boston from a neighborhood

that had the second lowest level of green space

in the city in the 1970s...

Aside from Chinatown, East Boston was the neighborhood of Boston

with the least amount of green space...

And today it is one of the neighborhoods

with the most amount of green space.

One of those green spaces,

named “Neptune Road Edge Buffer Park,”

is a sliver wedged between the highway,

the Wood Island T station, and the airport.

In homage to the Neptune Road homes that were destroyed,

there is a ghostly footprint in stone,

outlining the floorplan of one of the houses.

For many years, having an airport in their backyard

kept housing prices down in East Boston

and the neighboring towns.

Recently this has begun to change,

and now these communities face a new challenge

of how to remain affordable amidst a real estate boom.

And that’s what residents here...

Who had their grandparents living here, their parents,

they lived here, they want their kids to live here...

These types of long-term community residents

made all the difference in getting East Boston to become

this desirable place that now so many people want to move to.

And there are still a lot of long-term activists still here

who are hoping that some of the newcomer populations

will want to join some of these organizations.

They need some new blood to keep the fight going.

(gentle music)

But I guess…

I just have one more question for today, which is just…

the thing that struck me when I...

Cause I didn’t intend to start boxing...

I went there to use it as a video location.

Right. You said that.

And then I was really struck by this

idea of having to defend myself.

Having to hit back and how hard it was to do.

Right.

I was like, no...

Well, because you were brought up not to do that.

But that action, it felt to me at that moment

like that’s really an important thing to be able to do.

Yeah. You were hesitant to strike back.

As some people in the neighborhoods

might be afraid to go on the street, or confront the police,

or speak up on a so-called “controversial” idea.

They might be derided by their neighbors, or

their family, or you know whatever.

That’s all part of life.

And that’s why some people hesitate to speak out

or participate openly in something.

But it gets easier.

One night another gym came to our gym to spar with us.

It was a massacre.

Our guys didn’t crumble or collapse, they fought back,

but they were overwhelmed with the brawling techniques

of the other gym and they didn’t manage

to muster up all they knew about defending themselves,

about parrying the punches,

stepping around, moving their heads.

Since there were no women

from the other gym to spar with, I was spared.

Sal was dispirited in the days that followed.

Alternately blaming himself for not teaching us well enough,

and blaming the guys for not listening to his instructions.

Sal is teaching us to defend ourselves...

But that doesn’t mean it always works.

We’re boxers, they’re brawlers...

It’s a total different animal altogether.

Don’t get them confused.

A brawler, all you’re doing is standing and throwing punches.

Still, we should have beaten every one of those fighters.

It is easier to get

to a level of minimum effectiveness as a brawler,

and so a brawler with rudimentary skills

will almost certainly overwhelm a boxer with rudimentary skills.

Right?

Even if they’re at the same stage of development,

because the boxer is going to have to take longer

to develop into what they’re going to become.

Don’t be a punching bag for anybody.

Why should you be a punching bag?

What are you getting out of being a punching bag?

Here — go back to this fight.

It’s so hard in the moment, though.

It doesn’t make any difference.

You’ve got to get your head out of your ass when you’re fighting.

Either fight or go home.

What do you see?

Brawling... Left right, left right, left right,

not one is coming from the shoulder.

I’ve been boxing for two years now.

It all started with me feeling I had to learn to punch back.

But though Sal tells me many of the same things time and again,

they’re still not instinctive – not in my muscle memory.

But they are more than they were –

more than when I didn’t even know I needed to do these things.

I know now to keep my hands up...

But sometimes they aren’t even when I think that they are –

and I am surprised when Sal reminds me by tapping me

on the side of the head with his mitted hand.

There you go.

Now that’s all you got to do.

Take it down you pick up the point, he lost.

Take your time.

Think before you execute,

one step, one punch, combinations, one round.

Most boxing films end the same way:

against all odds, the underdog wins the big fight.

A neighbor, who is a boxing fan, advised me

“You need to enter a boxing competition...

And when you walk up those three steps to the ring

you will understand why you took up boxing.”

(airplane engine roars)

Cus D’Amato was a famous trainer known for his words of boxing wisdom.

I like this quote of his about boxing and fear:

“The hero and the coward both feel the same thing,

but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent,

while the coward runs.

It’s the same thing, fear, but it’s what you do with it that matters.”

I’ll tell you right now, that this film doesn’t end

with me winning the big fight.

If you think about the contrast between hurting people

and all the tenderness that you find in the gym,

it doesn’t strike me as weird.

You raise your kids with great tenderness and love,

but you also think it’s a big, terrible world out there

and you want them ready to do what they gotta do.

And of course it doesn’t end with the airport disappearing.

Because even if you can’t win all the fights in the present,

and even if you can’t go back and win the fights of the past,

you can find a way to use your fear.

In my opinion, all of those ways of protest,

they were used as vehicles to give people more integrity,

and more power to control their own destiny.

(gentle music)

Very soon after I first started going to the gym regularly,

I asked Sal if I could photograph him

in the style of the large portraits of boxers on the wall.

He was up for it.

My friend Allie, a cinematographer, wanted to come with me that day...

She wanted to document me taking this photograph.

Look in the lens... the way you would look at the opponent.

I need you to step half a foot that way.

Make sure that when you do the uppercut

you are still looking at the lens with both eyes.

Yeah, good.

How about a right uppercut?

But I need you to step back a little so you’re in the light.

Great.

Ok, great I think we’ve got it. We’ve got lots of great ones.

Sweet.

Scary?

It now hangs on the wall of the gym with the photographs of the other fighters.

All right, that’s it, time’s up.

(soft ambient music)