- people like me don t normally make it to congress. i m just enormously grateful to give back to my home, the bronx. - right, right. cause what is it exactly, what you want to give back to the bx? - my passion is housing. - mm. - so i, you know, spent almost all my life in the bronx in poverty. i was raised by a single mother who had to raise three of us on minimum wage, which in the 1990s was about $4.25 an hour. so i grew up in conditions of mold and mildew, leaks and lead without consistent heat and hot water in the winter, and the mission of my life is to improve the living conditions in public housing. - now, you ran an unconventional campaign. - i was an openly gay candidate running in the south bronx, which has an element of social conservatism. so i won on the strength of door-to-door, face-to-face campaigning. i went into people s homes. i heard their stories. - it s so old-fashioned, so analog. - it s grassroots. - yeah, yeah. that s grassroots. - and, you know, people woul
know is you played the pastor in in the movie hip-hop classic. tell us about your activism work as it relates to the hip-hop community. my whole life is the civil rights movement. hip-hop started in the south bronx in the early 80s. i wanted to build a bridge between civil rights and hip hop. i got involved in russell simmons, run-dmc, queen latifah all the early players. and i wanted to be an advocate for hip-hop. because as a young person, i saw the world in music and culture. supporting the civil rights movement and i saw hip-hop as being that extension of the cultural manifestation of what it means to fight for freedom, justice, and equality. i m still a strong advocate of hip-hop today. it s global and is part of the culture. you corresponded with the great
tonight, the best story i have got to share this year. leaping to success. i recently had a chance to meet with stephen melendez, new york theater ballet s newest artistic director. he shared his incredible story of going from living in a homeless shelter as a child to the top of the dance world today. take a look. the closing shoulder coming. around as its new artistic director, stephen melendez hopes to lift new york theater ballet. but his own movements within the company go back almost a lifetime. i join the organization of american theater ballet when i was seven years old. were you interested in dance? no i wasn t. i was every cliché of puerto rican boy in the south bronx with a single mother. it wasn t at all part of my life for my vocabulary or my mother s idea of the way the world could be. at that time, steve and his mother and sister lived in a homeless shelter. a world far away from
the company go back almost a lifetime. i joined the organization of american theater ballet when i was seven years old. were you interested in dance? no i wasn t. i was every cliché of puerto rican boy in the south bronx with a single mother. it wasn t at all part of my life or my vocabulary or my mother s idea of the way the world could be. at that time, steve and his mother and sister lived in a homeless shelter. a world far away from pirouettes and ballet slippers. at first he didn t like it. that is until a production of the nutcracker. i was cast in a very, very small role, mouse number two. and the costume had a really big mask, you know. you couldn t even see my face. and at the end of the show, i got to take a bow. and i thought it was the most incredible thing that all of these people in the audience were clapping for me. they probably weren t clapping for me, they re probably clapping for the professionals. it marked the beginning of a career as a professional da
making it the most respected institution in the country. he was the youngest chairman in the history of the joint chiefs. the first black chairman. the first black national security adviser. the first black secretary of state. his life was one of firsts. when we think about colin powell s life, it s worth pondering where did such a man as this come from? and the answer is from jamaica. his parents were jamaican immigrants who settled in the south bronx so when we have debates about immigration, his mother was a seamstress. his father was a clerk. this is a country that can produce greatness from seamstresses and clerks. and so this man s life, which