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The Neighborhood Agenda
Ed Schwartz
The struggle to rebuild communities in America has grown in scope and
significance throughout the country. Most of what people now identify as
serious problems--crime, inadequate education, racial and ethnic
conflicts--are problems that we experience as residents of the places in
which we live. Even the state of the national economy is irrelevant to us
if our own local economy is in trouble. It's nice to read that something
called a "recovery" is taking place in America, but here in Philadelphia,
we continue to lose jobs at the rate of 1,000 a month. Economic decline
lies at the center of the city's problems, but fighting drugs and
illiteracy--community problems--will be central to the solutions.
There are all sorts of agendas being advanced in America today--
an environmental agenda; a women's agenda; a "family values"
agenda; various ideological agendas. But the people and groups
who are struggling to build community throughout the country have
yet to unite around an agenda of our own that would transform our
local efforts into a a major force in national politics.
I would like to suggest that we start working together to create
such an agenda--a Neighborhood Agenda--and that we see the
Internet as a logical place where its major elements can be
put togther.
The Neighborhood Agenda would be a program to address the
problems that we experience as residents of our neighborhoods and
communities.
We may not live in a dilapidated house ourselves, but if there's
a vacant house or two on the block, then that's part of the
neighborhood agenda.
We may leave our own trash out for collection, but if truckers
are dumping trash on a vacant lot around the corner, then that's
part of the neighborhood agenda.
Drug trafficking on the shopping strips or in the schoolyards is
on the neighborhood agenda, as is crime of any kind.
We may not have kids ourselves, but if the schools in the
neighborhood are so bad that people move out to avoid sending
their children to them, that's on the neighborhood agenda.
Mortgage and insurance redlining are on the neighborhood agenda,
as are racial and ethnic barriers of any kind that prevent people
from living where they want and can afford to live.
Finding ways to help the unemployed and poor people of a
neighborhood achieve the means to support themselves and their
families so that they can stay in the neighborhood is on the
neighborhood agenda.
These are all problems that we experience as residents of a
neighborhood or community--or that we share as citizens who
believe that every place in America ought to be a decent place in
which to live.
And when we see our problems in these terms, we gain a new
perspective on why our current politics seems so hollow.
Politicians appeal to us as individuals; they reach out to us as
groups; but rarely do they talk to us as residents or a community
prepared to work together to build a better life. Yet that is
precisely what many of us are trying to do.
Nor do the major political philosophies offer solutions to the
problems of our neighborhoods that equal to what needs to be
done. Liberals are more than willing to use federal funds to deal
with abandoned housing, crime, education, and unemployment, but
they rarely concern themselves with how these funds can be used
effectively within our communities to solve the problems.
Conservatives are more than willing to applaud successful
private, grassroots, people-to-people programs aimed at solving
neighborhood problems, but refuse to use federal money to suppor
them.
For those of us working on the Neighborhood Agenda, though, both
money and management, political power and people are needed.
Rebuilding neighborhoods is about partnerships among all those
whose cooperation is needed to make a community work.
There are hundreds of thousands of people working to build
communities in America today--in cities, in suburbs, in small
towns and in rural communities. Many have become active in local
politics. Years ago, I ran successfully for an At-Large Seat on
the Philadelphia Council on a "Neighborhood Agenda" which now has
counterparts in local communities all over the country.
But there is no "Neighborhood Agenda" in national politics--no
force of people working together to demand that the President,
the Congress, and leaders in our respective states support
people-to-people programs aimed at making every community a
decent place in which to live. The Community Development Block
Grant does a little bit of this now; and the Crime Bill might do
a little more. But rehabbing houses and fighting crime represent
only a small portion of what we need to rebuild neighborhoods and
communiteis in this country, as anyone working on these problems
will attest.
The one political virtue of working in a neighborhood is that
we all vote where we live--and if the people who live in a place
get organized--they immediately have built a power base their
represeentatives can't ignore. Neighborhood and community power
is the hidden reservoir of power in America which, if coalesced
around the country--perhaps through mailing lists like this one
--can provide an antidote to the top-down money-to-media politics
foisted upon us by political consultants and the candidates who
hire them all over America today.
The Neighborhood Agenda is about housing and trash and the
environment and crime and schools and jobs within reach of where
we live. It's about grassroots democracy--the sort of democracy
that a great many people talk about on Internet Lists, whether
they have to do with community issues or electronic community
networks. It's bringing to life what theframers had in mind when
they proclaimed that "we the people" were creating a government
to "insure domestic tranquillity" and "promote the general
welfare" and "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and
our posterity."
If you are interested in getting into this discussion, join the build-com email list.
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