TV Reviews : Five Communities Fight Back

The philosophy of “Never do for people what they can do themselves” is central to “From the Bottom Up,” a documentary airing at 10:30 tonight on KCET Channel 28. The program spotlights five U.S. communities--New York’s South Bronx, the west side of Chicago, San Antonio, Tex., an area along the Texas-Mexico border and the rural town of Embarrass, Minn.--where the vigilant actions of citizens’ organizations have reversed potentially hopeless situations.

The most dramatic reversals have been in the “colonia” or slum area along the Texas-Mexico border, and in the South Bronx. In the former region, Carmen Anaya and her Valley Interfaith organization worked for eight years to obtain funds for the running water and sanitation services her community had never had.

Amid the blight that the outside world has come to associate with the South Bronx, neighbors in the Mid-Bronx Desperados and Banana Kelly groups banded together and refurbished three tenements that were scheduled by city officials to be torn down.

Though the inspiring show, which was written and directed by Jeff Spitz, reveals major turnarounds in these locales, it stresses that financial assistance from the federal government will be required before urban and rural substandard living conditions can be eliminated.