Henrietta Perkins Interview: 5/1/26
So first can you introduce yourself and tell me how long you’ve lived at Red Hook West houses?
H.Perkins: Henrietta Perkins: I came back in 2000 after my mother passed. I adopted her three grandchildren and they were entitled to the apartment. That’s how I got the apartment.
How do you think things have changed for people here in the past 20 years? How do you see people relating to each other, specifically older, younger residents? How do they treat each other within development?
H.Perkins: Yes, because from me being a kid and being watched, now I’m watching the children. And it’s a difference. We were respectful and the children today, they’re not respectful. So I mainly just say hello, how are you, be careful, have a good weekend, go on about my business.
What do you see as the reason for kids acting in a different way now, being maybe less respectful or acting out?
H.Perkins: Family is not the same. There’s no two parents. Sometimes there’s none. And it takes a toll on the child that has none is acting out to the child that has. And they can’t come together and share and they don’t like each other because of the living situation or the parent situation. Like when we were kids, you didn’t have a father or you were adopted. We didn’t know all of that. We just played, swimming in a pool and running around the projects, not caring, enjoying ourselves. Like it’s what you have. Like a lot of our friends didn’t have both parents, but we didn’t ponder on that. We just accepted one another and we were all going to school. We were all kids. Now they have the clothes, the phones. If you don’t have one, then you’re not in my clique. It’s too much pressure on the kids.
It sounds like it was much more communal back then. And that even if you didn’t have family, you’d rely on each other for that family.
H.Perkins: Plus a community was raising us. Exactly. Everybody. They looked out the window. Yeah. “I’m gonna tell your mother.” I had two parents, but my father remarried. So my mother, she remarried. So I had double parents. It was annoying. Sometimes I wish I was the kid that they only had one to answer to. I had four and then grandparents and then double aunts and uncles. These kids is, they don’t listen. I guess they feel unloved.
And I want to talk about the police and the role that they play in these developments. Have you seen any changes in the way that police treat young black and Latino kids in the projects?
H.Perkins: I saw on TV where they beat that man. I mean, they killing us again. Seems like every time Trump get in office, these cops go crazy. My son used to have a problem with them because he had a Mercedes. The same corner every day, stopping him asking him for ID. And he got on his hospital gear. And you’re still stopping me. And you’re the same cop that stopped me the night before. But that wasn’t out here. That’s on Rockaway and Church Avenue. But they’re still the same no matter where they are. We should get rid of them because people are killing people anyway. They’re not stopping nothing. So why we need them? And paying them a big salary.
How did you react during the most recent mass rebellions against police murders, for example, in 2014 and 2020?
H.Perkins: And like that drove me crazy because they didn’t make them pay for what they did. They let them because of that uniform. They didn’t even take them off the beat. What? So that made others think they can do the same damn thing. Yeah and out of state, they’re killing them. How’s somebody gonna get hung and there’s no chair or ladder there? Yeah. And the black person is hanging from the damn tree.
And they’re saying it’s suicide.
H.Perkins: Black people don’t commit suicide. That’s not in our nature.
So why do you think there hasn’t been another mass rebellion since 2020, even though police murder continues every year?
H.Perkins: I think because they don’t do nothing about it. So you’re wasting your time. Then you vote people. Then you vote people in the Congress that say that they’re gonna do it. And then when they get in there already have an agenda to do and they don’t do what we asked them to do. I don’t even want to vote no more. And the Democrats just sit there. I’m a Democrat. They just sit there and let them people walk all over them. And how when y’all got the same rules. It’s like they’re really Republicans.
I want to know about this group that you had called “Occupy Red Hook”. What was the initial purpose of starting this group?
H.Perkins: Okay, this guy named Reggie. Big guy in Red Hook. He used to be in PS 15. And he’s a white guy. Well known. He give plays and help the children always talking to the kids and stuff like that. So the Occupy Red Hook was started by him. And we had an office on Van Brunt and Richard st. We used to meet there once a month to discuss what we’re going to do. How we’re going to help people. And this was in 2013. And we used to just help people that walk in, need help with the projects or their home or something like that. Just helping the community. It was nice.
So you say you met once a month and you guys were helping people out with their issues in the projects. What are some of the problems that you guys dealt with and how did you solve them?
H.Perkins: Just by telling people what to do. Some of the problems was they couldn’t pay their rent. So you go to office and you talk to them. Tell them you can’t pay your rent. They can’t put you out. They got to give you some kind of solution. And fighting people fighting. You want to fight them, kill them. But you know, you can’t do that. So try to be more calm when you’re talking to people, your neighbors. You can’t holler at them. They’re not your children. You know, stuff like that. Little stuff.
Were you able to actually stop some of these fights from happening or escalating?
H.Perkins: Yes. A lot of them. Because the people change their mind once they see that there’s another way. Because once you get mad, you only got one track mind, kill or hurt. But once you talk about it, then you open up that other cell in your brain and it shows you you don’t have to go to jail to accomplish what you got to do. And you’re not going nowhere. You’re not leaving. You can’t run us out of here. So you got to live together.
How long did Occupy Red Hook last?
H.Perkins: I think we lasted maybe two years. And Reggie moved to Wisconsin. He got a great deal on a house out of town and he moved. And once he left, everybody just, nobody wanted to be at, do it anymore. Yep. So I do it anyway by myself.
I would like to know what it would take to bring something back like this, because I think it’s really, really needed.
H.Perkins: People. People that want to help other people. That’s all it takes. I used to have a, I don’t know what you call it, the kids, we had about 30 kids and we would meet in the park house once a month to listen to their problems or help them. Do you need homework help? You know, stuff like that. It was me and my cousin. And then they said we couldn’t use the park house no more. So it fell out, fell apart.
There’s definitely obstacles that get in the way.
H.Perkins: Yeah. You need a place. You don’t have no money to pay for one of these storefronts. They are crazy out here.
And you have all these community centers and you have these places, but do you feel like they’re actually for the people here?
H.Perkins: Well, the community center on one up there. Well, I don’t know the name of the street. It’s ninth street, right? They were owned by the city and then they moved to Good Shepherd. Once Good Shepherd took over, they made their own list of what they will accept and what they didn’t. So it’s not easy to just walk in there and ask, can I have a room for such and such a date? Because you got to go through all of this for what?
It’s very common that we’re seeing these community centers that are for the projects that actually get privatized even before the development.
H.Perkins: Yep. A lot has changed. And it wasn’t for the good of the people, but they made the pockets bigger all the time. I noticed your mayor that I voted for. I liked him because he was different and I figured we need something different. As soon as he opened the door, he’s in with real estate. Like you couldn’t wait till on the way out. Didn’t even pretend. Lost all faith. Lost all faith.
How was growing up in the late eighties, early nineties when drugs were pouring into the projects?
H.Perkins: The drug was dope, them people was asleep. They didn’t do nothing but stand on the corner and nod or either nod in the house. They were quiet. They didn’t even get in trouble. But that other drug, what is it? Another drug came after dope. Yeah, that’s the one that messed everybody up. That one was crazy. People couldn’t sit still. They want to rob you. They want to kill you and choke you. They want to do everything with that crack. And how when the boy is standing on the corner selling the weed, all of a sudden now it’s in the store. You can go buy it legally.
And you still got people in jail from that.
H.Perkins: Everything’s not adding up no more. Because everything is about that dollar. And to keep the black people down. I used to always say, I think I was 20. And I’m saying, why do I feel like a slave? I didn’t learn history, because my temper is too bad. And I didn’t know how to control it. So me in history, I could not learn it because it was hurtful. And it was a lot of pain. So I didn’t learn history, because I couldn’t. But I kept saying to myself, without me knowing about the history, why do I feel like a slave? I’m 20, 30, 40. And where is this going from? I’m still a slave. I’m 80. And I’m still a slave. Black people don’t own nothing. Because I had a business, stationary plus mail in service. That means buy a product from a white person. I want to make my black person rich. So I was selling stationary pens, dolls, cards. There’s nowhere to buy that from a black person. If I buy it from a black person, he bought it from a white person. It’s no businesses that are owned. What the hell that’s why I feel like a slave because I still am a slave. I’m still working for white people in a different category. I got my own business. Yeah, I don’t have no chains. Yeah, my own business, but I’m still making them richer. I was eight years old. My brother was six and my great-grandmother lived in Virginia. So my mother used to send us down there every summer. So we were riding our bikes and this white man kicked my brother’s bike. I got off the bike and kicked him. South would have been different either. I would have been dead or the south would have been different. Sent me back and told my mother don’t send her back down here. I knew that I didn’t know then what she was thinking but she was thinking that they’re gonna kill my grandchild because she don’t know the rules my grandmother knew but she said I didn’t know and I was crazy. So keep her in New York where I could do that. I’m not going back down south. South would have been different either. I would have been dead or the south would have been different.
I think in the process of Occupy Red Hook what you guys were doing was building the authority of residents and handling their own conflicts. How do you think that that can play a part in rebuilding the movement to end police brutality?
H.Perkins: I have no idea Because there’s bad wherever you go and it’s not a lot of them and the black ones that get in there follow the white ones so it’s just nasty work. So I don’t know I have no idea. They need help. And they’re not being corrected no time in any state. I don’t know. People have marched. I don’t march. People have marched throwing stones and died and it is still in effect. Yeah so just get rid of them. We could handle one another it’s more of us than them. So we take care of each other why we need them we don’t kill. Well, we do kill but we try not to kill but you can’t even call them if you got a mental problem and you got a knife They’re gonna kill you. Yeah, and you see the police and you are mentally ill you already get excited not to kill but just I’m excited you throw your hand up with the knife in it and they shoot you. You don’t even point it at them.
They will shoot somebody and they will handcuff them and they will continue to to brutalize them even after they’re already dead or already handcuffed
H.Perkins: On the ground see with George Floyd. I couldn’t stand there and let that man have pressure on his shoulder like that. I would be in jail, but he would be alive. Yeah, because I’m not standing there filming you killing this man I don’t ride the train because I’m too I don’t think I just react and I might get killed trying to help somebody so yeah, I haven’t been on the train since the ninth grade.
But I think your reaction of you, you know we’re seeing it with ICE to where people are just filming people getting kidnapped rather than stepping in like a human being and your reaction is what we wish as human beings should feel inherently is that we need to step in when we see one of our people being killed being kidnapped being brutalized.
H.Perkins: So we’re not human anymore. We’re not humans. Yeah, we’re just here. We’re just here eating and sleeping and yeah not progressing just here until we die. That’s crazy. Yeah, that’s not doing nothing not accomplishing that they’re not going to school not wanting to be nothing not wanting anything. How you get like that? What are they building right now? I don’t see that there’s any progress for people all we can see is the money growing the pockets are growing and everything has grown backwards. Yeah I never thought to get to 2026 and have to start all over again. And another thing how come all these congressmen they can’t do nothing without asking you for $3. What’s up with that? You get this big salary, but you want $3. Yeah, why right? Just ask me if I’m in and I’ll say yes, but don’t ask me for $3. That pisses me off. Yeah, you got the salary you got the job. This is what you’re supposed to do. Yeah, and I’m too old to fix it. Y’all are the young ones.
Well, we need to learn from people like you who took a stand. It’s good. You call them out though. They got to think about that behavior, you know, if nobody says anything They’re gonna just keep doing it over and over again.
H.Perkins: Yeah, I say something. That’s my fault. But I don’t really care. One time I was coming out the building, cops was surrounding this one person. They said he stole something all the way from downtown. So y’all follow him on the bus all the way over here so they looking in his bag. They don’t find nothing stolen. So now I’m standing there because y’all are wrong. What are you gonna go? I’m making sure that you’re not beating him. Yeah one of the cops called me a bitch. I was on the phone and she said something about “these cops are m’fers they always doing what they’re not supposed to do.” So he didn’t see the phone or he thought I said it. So he told me you’re a bitch. I took him to this civilian review board. And they made him apologize and he still stayed I used to see him every day. Yes teach you a lesson. Yeah, you don’t call me a bitch. Yeah he told me the officers don’t mess with her you don’t play.
What you did is very Inspiring and thank you for talking to us.
Thank you.
Dare to Struggle 