Thanksgiving brings the Macy’s Parade down Broadway, Labor Day is for the West Indian Day Carnival on Flatbush, Halloween brings costumed processions down a number of neighborhood main streets, and it seems every Sunday sees an ethnic parade to Fifth Avenue. But the third weekend in June brings a parade most unlike the others. The Hunts Point Fish Parade is a rare combination of collective art project, community celebration, and environmental protest that honors residents of the Bronx neighborhood and mobilizes them in the fight for its future. This year, the parade’s 21st, participants marched under the banner of snaking eels, floating jellyfish, and shoaling fish from THE POINT CDC’s headquarters in the shadow of the Bruckner Expressway, through the residential neighborhood, and past industrial facilities to the Bronx River, where they joined a daylong arts festival. Youth groups, community groups, representatives of city agencies and elected officials, artists of all persuasions, and even passersby were swept into the collective celebration. The vibe is open, almost spontaneous, but the parade is also the product of planning that begins in January, and an expression of year-round mobilization at THE POINT, the community arts and development organization that stewards it.
As artist-in-residence at THE POINT, Hatuey Ramos-Fermín took over the parade’s coordination in 2022, spearheading its revival after the disruption of Covid, and launching a multifaceted project to document its history. The Hunts Point Fish Parade offers a case study in how local environmental advocacy, art, and culture intersect to become a “brave vehicle for change.” Below, Ramos-Fermín shares excerpts from a rich visual archive and two oral histories that interweave the story of THE POINT, the Hunts Point neighborhood, and the Fish Parade. This abridged history captures and honors a unique tradition and shares its lessons with others seeking to move joyfully and creatively together to transform environments long marked by adversity.
2024 marks the 21st anniversary of the Hunts Point Fish Parade and Arts Festival. In the spirit of this year’s theme, “Rebirth: Intergenerational Collaboration to a New Beginning,” THE POINT Community Development Corporation (THE POINT) joined forces with the citywide network Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts NY (NOCD-NY) to celebrate some of the community members who have shaped the parade over the years.
An oral historian at Bronx Community College, Cynthia Tobar, conducted oral histories with past and present leaders. The artist Danny R. Peralta, who produced the parade from 2010 to 2019, conducted art workshops and story circles to tell the story of this unique event. Some of this work came to life in the 2024 Fish Parade. Danny’s large format portraits were wheat-pasted around the neighborhood and made into signs carried in the parade. QR codes link neighbors to audio clips of Fish Parade stories. The portraits will be exhibited at THE POINT through the fall of 2024 and online.
The Fish Parade begins at Bill Rainey Park with a small procession of a large eel puppet and drummers. As the procession crosses from Longwood into Hunts Point — symbolically connecting two neighborhoods that were split in half by the Bruckner Boulevard in 1973 — it joins up with the larger parade at THE POINT and makes its way through residential streets. Like shoaling fish, the community marches together in a vibrant, family-friendly celebration featuring banners, costumes, and puppets representing an aquatic ecosystem. The parade culminates at the Bronx River in Hunts Point Riverside Park and THE POINT’s Riverside Campus for Arts and The Environment next door. There, it is received by a festival with live performances, food, artisans, and art as well as environmental justice activities.
The parade uses arts and culture to build community and facilitate embodied conversations about the environment. Everything that goes into it supports that. The parade offers a glimpse at what the neighborhood could be: a place where people are free to be themselves and celebrate who we are. A place where we can be familiar. A place where we can move and breathe.
The third weekend in June is more important to me than other holidays that people celebrate. I think about it very seriously. I wake up to it, I go to sleep to it. It’s very unique in that regard, it really just celebrates this neighborhood.
– Danny R. Peralta, former Executive Director of THE POINT CDC, led the coordination of The Hunts Point Fish Parade and Summer Festival from 2010–2019
Over the years, there’s been this wave of smaller ones and bigger ones. I think last year was the best one we ever had. It’s quite an anchor, and it’s a great way for people in the neighborhood to understand what THE POINT does inside its walls, because it’s outdoors.
– Carey Clark, Visual Arts Director, THE POINT CDC, and Fish Parade Grand Marshal
The unique thing about this particular parade is that it combines the elements of a parade — the walking and the music and the costumes — and at the same time, also has elements of protest in it.
– Hatuey Ramos-Fermín, Creative Director of Arts and Education at THE POINT CDC, coordinated the 2023 and 2024 Fish Parades
The success of it is a metaphor, the Fish Parade. How you move a neighborhood, this fluid thing, people coming together, not being perfect, but moving together. The name of it alone is so wacky that it just lets it kind of be open.
– Danny
The idea that culture is this elitist thing — that only certain people have access to, or the means to produce — this event reinforces the opposite of that. This is something that belongs to people here in Hunts Point, and that anyone can be part of.
– Hatuey
It’s not about fancy decorations, it’s not about big trucks coming through that make noise. It really is just about a bunch of young people and families marching up the hill, going around in a circle, and coming back to these parks. To me, there’s nothing like that. It’s so valuable, so necessary when you build communities out.
– Danny
Last year, we were marching, and we had many little cardboard cuttings that we designed. Whoever was watching from their home, we were like, “Come, join us! Here’s the thing!” Some people actually did join us. And it’s kind of cool to have that spontaneous reaction.
– Hatuey
A beautiful part about it is the honorees, and creating a space to march behind these leaders of all ages and races and ethnicities and worldviews. They march together, and they lead this procession of people.
– Danny
It’s a parade to celebrate, and also so people come together to advocate and fight for environmental issues in Hunts Point. It reminds me a lot of Puerto Rico, because there’s protests all the time there, right? I remember meeting some tourists one time in San Juan, they were asking, “Is there a festival going on? There’s music and the people dancing on the street, and shouting and singing.” And it was like, “No, that’s actually a protest.” It’s this way of being angry and advocating for yourself and for your community.
– Hatuey
THE POINT CDC was founded in 1994 by Maria Torres, Paul Lipson, Steven Sapp, and Mildred Ruiz-Sapp, along with neighbors, educators, artists, and activists. The founders aimed to create an arts and cultural space that offered youth-based programs for the Hunts Point community. The mission later expanded to include environmental justice-focused community development and policy initiatives. Today, it aims to improve the quality of life for Hunts Point residents by working with local and statewide coalitions while using the arts to nourish the imaginations of local youth.
The Hunts Point Peninsula encompasses a heavy industrial area and the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center, the largest in the world. People who live in the small residential area where THE POINT is located face serious health consequences due to air pollution from truck traffic and industry, as well as from the Bruckner Expressway, which cuts off the peninsula from the rest of the Bronx.
Over the past 30 years, THE POINT and its coalition and campaign partners have won a series of victories including the closure of a polluting fertilizer plant, the redesign of the Sheridan Expressway, and the closing of the Spofford Juvenile Detention Center. It has also made progress on the plan for a South Bronx Greenway. Many other visions and plans are underway. One of THE POINT’s most visible successes is the development of green spaces and parks along the waterfront, including Barretto Point Park, Hunts Point Riverside Park, and Garrison Park where there was once no safe public access.
I’m born and raised in the Bronx. The Bronx is my heart, and so is THE POINT.
– Rachelle Fernandez, former Chief Financial Officer, worked at THE POINT for over 25 years before retiring in 2023
Hunts Point is this vivid residential neighborhood, surrounded by this very industrial neighborhood. Barretto Point Park, which is one of the jewels of the city, looks over the East River and North Brother Island, and the Manhattan skyline. But anybody who gets there has to go through a daunting industrial neighborhood.
– Carey
You can tell when you walk into the neighborhood how marginalized it is. It’s surrounded by highways. You can tell that this is not a mistake, that things like this happen here.
– Danny
Air quality is one big issue in Hunts Point. That is because of the food distribution center that feeds the tri-state area, and there are thousands of truck trips every day with all the exhaust pipes and stuff on the trucks and all the other industry that’s around. There are issues around access to affordable, good-quality food. The irony of it is most likely the food that you get from your grocery, that you eat in a restaurant, comes through Hunts Point. But that food that you might get in, you know, Brooklyn, or whatever, is not the same food that people can get here.
– Hatuey
The neighborhood was built by many families, by a lot of mothers that fought to keep asthma at bay and to keep the trucks out. They’ve accomplished so much, but they can’t afford to live there. And so what does that mean? That’s definitely something that was a challenge for me as a leader in the neighborhood. And the idea of THE POINT is, how do you address that? How do you address development without displacement, as we call it? Very challenging.
– Danny
THE POINT’s the place where everything comes together: your politics, education, or your ideologies, your aspirations to make art and your place where you actually get to teach and meet young people, and all those things come together in that beautiful messy way.
– Hatuey
When I got to THE POINT, it was like this village of people behind this wall where all this stuff was mixed, and they weren’t apologetic about it. They were artists, they were teachers, they were gardeners, they were this, they were that. They had no boundaries. And the space — even though it is bound to I don’t know how many square feet — it seems like this boundless place.
– Danny
This is the thing about THE POINT: that you come to this space, and you can’t not be inspired by it. It’s really hard not to, because the story is so powerful about how this organization came to be, and all the great impact of the work that’s been going on for 30 years.
– Hatuey
You travel the world, and you’d be surprised at the impact that a place like THE POINT has on organizations and other communities. It doesn’t have to be a Fish Parade, but maybe it can serve as a model for other neighborhoods that are trying to galvanize everybody together and do something nice and powerful.
– Danny
We wanted THE POINT to be more than just this place that you go to read a poem or see a production. We wanted to be a part of the fabric of changing and be a part of people’s lives. Things like the Fish Parade put us out there and got us to reach people that you can’t reach all the time, ’cause you know we’re on a great block, but it is off the beaten path and not right in the middle of Hunts Point Avenue.
– Maria Torres, Co-founder, President, and COO of THE POINT CDC
Depending on who you ask, there are multiple stories about why the Fish Parade started. Sometimes these stories clash with each other, nevertheless, they are all true. Ever since the Fish Parade began in 2004, three community needs have been clear: 1) a collective outlet to express creative talents and celebrate local culture; 2) increased safe access to the waterfront and green spaces; and 3) a just and environmentally equitable Hunts Point shared by residents and industry. All of these factors come together in the Fish Parade, which is a protest as well as a celebration. Here’s one version of the story:
In 1992, two years before THE POINT was founded, a local coalition of organizations began an almost 20-year campaign to close the New York Organic Fertilizer Company (NYOFCO) Plant in Hunts Point, which emitted harmful gasses in the process of converting wastewater into fertilizer.
In the late 1990s, THE POINT organized the Hunts Point NOT Dumps Point Parade alongside local schools and organizations. During this parade, “Participants displayed vibrant costumes and floats expressing the creative talent of the community as well as their intolerance for becoming the City’s garbage dump. The goal was to utilize the community’s artistic assets to educate other residents about waste issues.”
Around that time, the City of New York began to consider relocating the Fulton Fish Market from Manhattan to Hunts Point. While some neighbors celebrated the creation of new jobs, many others were concerned that the fish market would increase truck traffic and worsen the already poor air quality.
In 2003, THE POINT led a campaign to protest the planned move of the Fulton Fish Market to Hunts Point, raising environmental concerns about the large commercial enterprise coming to the area. In 2005, the market opened.
The South East Bronx Community Organization (SEBCO), with which THE POINT had deep ties, started a summer festival in 1990 that moved around to different locations and included live performances and food competitions. In 2004, inspired by Brooklyn’s Mermaid Parade, the first Fish Parade took place in collaboration with SEBCO’s summer festival, the Fulton Fish Market, and many other local organizations, schools, and businesses.
The community had been working to clean up an illegal dumping site near the Bronx River. In 2004, New York City broke ground on a new park there. The next year, the City began remediation of a brownfield near the East River reclaimed by the community, known as “La Playita” (little beach). Both sites re-opened in 2006 as neighborhood parks, Hunts Point Riverside Park and Barretto Point Park, becoming the destination of the Fish Parade.
THE POINT ultimately changed its position on industry, aiming to advocate for environmental justice while working with the industrial sector, not against it. This shift was the result of the community’s emphasis on the importance of local, living wage union jobs, as well as the sense that industry provided a “natural buffer” to gentrification.
NYOFCO finally closed in 2010.
The neighborhood was known for many years as kind of like the place where you wanted to put the industry you didn’t want.
– Danny
Truck routes were a big deal, and the parade was a way to own the streets. There were no trucks when there was a parade, and that was a nice thing, and the fact that the parade also went along the water highlighted early on the idea that nobody had any waterfront access, that we were still trying to get parks.
– Paul Lipson, Co-Founder of THE POINT CDC and Executive Director, 1994–2004
When you don’t own much, you own the things that you can own. One thing I tell people who come to the parade is, this is your parade. They like that it’s weird and it doesn’t make any sense, but it is theirs, you know, and that they can own that. That’s so powerful.
– Danny
The Mermaid Parade always was kind of fascinating. That’s Coney Island, that people come out for, and everybody comes to see, and so Hunts Point, here we are, waterfront community, you know. Why not have something like a Fish Parade?
– Maria
It wasn’t like any other neighborhood where you just have a park and you grew up around it. People fought to have these spaces. You have to celebrate it, but you have to get people there. You have to have people fishing there and playing volleyball on the sand, using the amphitheater, that was the goal and you couldn’t do it alone.
– Danny
I believe for the first two years it was a collaboration with the Bronx Museum. I think they had some money, and they had Paul’s vision of the Hunts Point Parade. And it was pretty spectacular those first couple of years in the way it featured incredibly talented local artists and performers. And we had the Bronx Academy of Art and Dance, they were much featured in those early years.
– Carey
The first years when we did the parade, we shut down Hunts Point Avenue to do this, and we had a huge stage in the middle of Hunts Point Avenue.
– Maria
We collected old shopping carts and gave them to every organization we worked with, and we asked them to decorate it around the theme of fish, and SEBCO did something really extraordinary the first year. That was one easy way to make it a challenge for each of these organizations to be creative.
– Paul
There’s power in culture. There’s power in people coming together. There’s power in celebrating the culture, and there’s power in fighting for environmental justice.
– Hatuey
Photos from the 2024 Fish Parade. Click images to enlarge.
Over the years, participants in the parade have included everyone from neighbors to city agencies, local businesses and organizations, schools, artists, artisans, and elected officials. Starting in March, in preparation for the parade, THE POINT hosts weekly “art build” sessions, where high school students and other community members make flags, banners, puppets, floats, and other parade decorations.
Past collaborations include BEAM Center and Bronx International High School students making an eel puppet and a jellyfish float; local school groups leading dance performances; The Bronx River Alliance providing watershed science demonstrations; Rocking the Boat hosting community rowing on the Bronx River; The Hunts Point Community Network team demonstrating their community WiFi network; and BxArts Factory facilitating art activities.
We’ve learned through the years how to reel people in and to organize them. It is a lot of work involved. It doesn’t get easier, but we do have all the pieces in place, and it’s just a matter of rinse and repeat. Maintaining the relationships and reaching out to new organizations and maintaining relationships with the old ones, with the community planning board, with local politicians, with the local neighbors. The neighbors on the block of Manida Street are very important. We would not have been able to do as much if they were not helping us, if they were not with us.
– Rachelle
I just believe so much in the arts as being a tool for justice, and in that sense that it moves away from the kind of nuts and bolts organizing, phone calling. If you bring performance and visual arts into all of that, it’s so enlightening to the soul, and it makes the work bearable, I think, and very poetic.
– Carey
Nobody was getting paid for this thing. We were looking for ways to support it and get the sponsorship so that we can do bigger things with it. But really, it comes from everybody contributing to it in a unique way and putting aside their own mission and their own financial issues, to do something together. That’s very powerful. That’s the mission of THE POINT and a lot of these other organizations.
– Danny
There’s a shared document that has everything, all tabbed out, and if you just follow that, you know from the beginning you will be successful. We’re talking about 20 years of doing this.
– Rachelle
It’s not just us leading it. We facilitate a conversation. Yeah, we do a lot of the back work stuff, but really we facilitate a process for others to kind of lead it. And I think that’s very powerful.
– Danny
We’re bringing out the DJs, we’re bringing out the salsa performers from the neighborhood, we’re bringing out all the local vendors. I wanna give a shout out to people from Mom-and-Pop Barbecue, Father-and-Son Barbecue, right? They make the best food, and they sell it in one day with our folks in our community.
– Danny
It is hard, because sometimes people say, “I’ll be there! I’ll be there!” and then they don’t show up. It’s not like we’re giving them money or anything like that. But that’s part of it. You have to plan for those things. But sometimes people that show up, show up more than what you would expect, and so that kind of balances it a little bit.
– Hatuey
Every year you meet different people that want to be a part of it. How do you leverage all these networks and create a space for them to hang out and celebrate for once?
– Danny
On any other day of the year, the streets might not show evidence that the Fish Parade has taken place. However, it is alive in the memories of those who experience it and the stories shared about it. After 21 parades, it was important for us to look back, document, and share this story of perseverance, joy, and love for the people and the environment in Hunts Point. The story needed to be told by those who made it happen, in their voices, in their way, and on their terms. Because if we don’t own our narratives, someone else will. The parade belongs to the people of Hunts Point, as well as the stories we preserve. As we get ready to organize future Fish Parades, we keep these stories alive by sharing them among ourselves and with the next generations. These stories live in the visions and dreams of the people of Hunts Point. These are ways to continue to weave intergenerational bridges and keep communities tight. The Fish Parade allows us to take a break and reflect on how far we’ve come while letting us feel and envision the future now.
Folks growing up experiencing the parade and being part of it and then suddenly, like, “Oh, I’m in it,” “I’m gonna perform,” “I’m gonna show my work.” It’s important that there are spaces for all this intergenerational exchange to continue happening, not only politically, but also on the community and cultural level. Those bonds have been broken because of Covid-19, because we lost that connection, and so rebuilding those connections and strengthening those connections, it’s important.
– Hatuey
Any time you get a large group with signs giving a message to the community, that is impactful. Once you see something, it kind of stays in your head, and maybe it’ll make people aware of something that they haven’t really given much thought to. Sometimes that message has to be constantly given to make an impact. That’s what we’ve been doing year after year.
– Rachelle
I think we have the chance to, instead of being a sort of local secret, to be a thing that resonates throughout the city, with this idea that it’s not just for fun, but there are lots of other things going on in terms of trying to figure out how to make a planet that we can live in for a long time. I mean, the dread that young people feel about the news of environmental decline must be so terrifying, and the only tool that you have is to make fun of it somehow or fun about it, and just keep struggling with that becomes a way to influence policy.
– Carey
It’s been a great place to experiment and bring another flavor artistically. I’ve been doing posters and banners and things that I would never have done before. It’s not like it belongs to me. It’s about creating this thing together with young people, with neighbors.
– Hatuey
Everyone needs to do something right now. We’re in a climate crisis. The fight for environmental justice has been going on for a long time, Hunts Point’s been fighting for a long time. THE POINT has been fighting for a long time. We all need to do our part in whatever way we can.
– Hatuey
Hatuey’s job is to fuse our environmental justice campaigns with the arts. The joy of art-making gives this strength to carry on in more and more dire circumstances. He’s been in the community and working really hard with a vivid group of young people, and they’ve been making banners for protests in Albany, and they’re developing a whole printmaking studio which will enhance the visual aspects of the Fish Parade.
– Carey
My hope for the Fish Parade is that it will continue to be led by artists, activists, and young people. I love that it’s led by people that are already there doing the work, and it’s not an outsider coming in to make it happen. You know there’s never enough spaces for artists to lead, to do this kind of work. Gentrification has hit the neighborhood. It’s not coming in ten years: it’s here. That’s another thing that comes up a lot, the changes to the neighborhood. Who owns the neighborhood, who gets to enjoy this neighborhood moving forward?
– Danny
There’s a lot of new people moving in. The Peninsula development is going to bring 740 new apartments, 200 of which I think are online now — or will be shortly — on Tiffany Street. There’s a whole new group of people who don’t know anything about Hunts Point, because more than half of the people who move into that development are from other parts of the city. This could be a way to introduce them.
– Paul
It always bothered me that I didn’t have enough ways to honor what it means to be a resident of Hunts Point. It was never enough for me, to be quite honest, which still bothers me now. But again, one of the successes, one of the things that keeps the parade going, is that kind of challenge: How do you celebrate people? How do you thank them continuously, even if it’s not with a million people behind it? Why is that important? I would love to do a fish parade with, just like a billion honorees. Everybody should be honored.
– Danny
For me, it’s that it just continues, and that it just gets bigger and bigger with more participation and more youth involved. The young people we have involved will ensure that it will continue year after year.
– Rachelle
Carey Clark has been the Visual Arts Director at THE POINT for over 25 years. Clark is a painter by background with a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. The experience of working collaboratively in public art and as a set designer in theater has led to a commitment to make a “theater” of painting where artists of all ages and professional artists, participate in a grassroots scene where a work of art becomes not just an end in itself, but an integral force in creating community – through shared imagination. Clark has developed a visual arts program at THE POINT for local and visiting artists and students. She oversees The Village of Murals, a POINT urban design initiative, and has directed several major commissions by local industries, Sims Metal Management and McInnis Cement, which employed some 50 artists, and a large number of students.
Rachelle Fernandez was born and raised in the Bronx. She was a Community Event Coordinator, and former Chief Financial Officer of THE POINT CDC. Fernandez worked at THE POINT for over 25 years before she retired in 2023.
Paul Lipson is an urban solutions consultant and community development practitioner with a specialization in food systems, renewables, and clean transportation solutions for metropolitan areas. He was a co-founder of THE POINT CDC. He is currently a Principal at Barretto Bay Strategies. Barretto Bay’s recent clients have included a national developer of affordable housing pursuing a strategy of industrial job creation in a new $300 million mixed-use development; the owner of a former shipyard exploring industrial redevelopment strategies for a site that once employed 50,000 shipbuilders; and a global architecture firm that successfully competed for a share of federal “Rebuild By Design” funding to revitalize the world’s largest food distribution center.
Danny R. Peralta was born and raised in New York City and uses multiple mediums to tell stories, examine relationships, and elicit dialogue. Danny has been leading community development using the arts and culture for over 20 years. As former Executive Director of The Point, he helped lead the coordination of The Hunts Point Fish Parade and Summer Festival from 2010-2019.
Hatuey Ramos-Fermín is an artist. He is the Creative Director of Arts and Education at THE POINT CDC. Hatuey was artist-in-residence from 2022 to 2024 at THE POINT CDC and Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts New York. He is also a recipient of Creatives Rebuild New York’s Artist Employment Program grant. He has organized projects at sites ranging from small businesses and community centers to churches, streets, galleries, and museums.
Maria Torres is the President, Co-founder, and COO of THE POINT CDC. Ms. Torres was born and raised in Valley Stream, NY. She pursued a career in community development in Hunts Point. In 1993, she launched the Neighborhood Internship Bank for at-risk youth, the first employment service of its kind in the South Bronx, while working for The Seneca Center Inc. Ms. Torres also established La Marqueta, an outdoor community market aimed at lowering the barriers to the marketplace for neighborhood entrepreneurs. In addition to her duties at THE POINT, Ms. Torres serves as Chair of the Economic and Municipal Services Committee for Bronx Community Board 2.
