Ryan J's essential question

I was unaware of all the racism and poverty of the immigrants in Boston before this trip. Most of the Chinese community in China town has underpaid paid jobs and live under strict circumstances. All of their money goes to their bills and food. China town is the dirtiest neighborhood in Boston because there are some many people living in such a small area. When the city built a highway that connects to south station they demolished a big part of china town so that meant that all 1,000 people had to move into the rest of the neighborhood. There are a lot of organizations in Boston that are trying to help the over populated community. One of the places that we toured was a building that Chinese boys and girls go to after school to hang out and socialize with other kids from their community. They can get a tutor for help in their academics, research on the internet, or play games like ping pong. The other place that we visited provided housing for the Chinese community. All these organizations help out the community a lot by giving them nice apartments for a very low price so they can still pay for taxes and support their family.

Most of the problems are the Puerto Rican community is the violence. When we visited Via Victorian they showed us the neighborhood that they renovated. They provide premium condos for Puerto Ricans who are under paid and related to drugs and gang violence. Our tour guide was very good and he knows everybody in the community and is friendly with everyone too. When he first arrived to work for the community the first day two people were killed related to gang violence. All of the violence in the community is targeted towards certain people. Now there is close to no violence in this community and they run a pre-school and day-care center that provides the kids with breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There are also cookouts frequently for everybody who lives in the neighborhood. These neighborhood get together are good because everybody knows each other and it is like a big family.

The Dominican neighborhood in Jamaica Plain didn’t seem to have too many problems. There are many outdoor markets and bodegas that sell Dominican foods and other things that are imported from their country. We visited a hospital that was on the edge of Jamaica Plain. They provide health care for immigrants who don’t make enough money to pay for insurance. We took a walking tour of the whole Dominican part of Jamaica Plain. We visited a lot of interesting places like a corner store bodega, a outside market (that sells vegetables for the Dominican), and a music store that has all kinds of cultural music.

I learned a lot on JUA; I had always knew about poverty and violence in the cultural communities all across the states but I did not know how hard it is for them to adapt and earn money to support their families.