How do the co-ops in the ghettos of Indianapolis run themselves?
Regards,
Shodan
For those who don’t know who Geoffrey Canada is or what he represents: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem_Children%27s_Zone
He’s got it right.
A billionaire could also provide free drug re-hab for anyone who asks for it; and a low-priced grocery store that only carries fresh, healthy food.
There is no amount of money you can pour into a ghetto to “fix it”. As one who was born in Harvey Illinois, has lived right next door to Gary Indiana for 20 years, and for half my life drove back and forth out of Chicago every single day, there is nothing except razing the worst parts and dispersing the inhabitants to other areas.
Resources, time, money, volunteerism, great ideas, experiments, free medical, health, abortion, family planning, and housing services, etc etc…Nothing to date has eradicated ghettos. You can only dismantle the worst parts, this was done for example Cabrini Green and Robert Taylor homes in Chicago (the consequence was to merely move crime and lower property values in other locations, albeit less concentrated. I would take a WAG and say ghettos have always existed throughout all civilized cultures.
Community buy-in. Community involvement and partnership. Community education.
There may, however, be a problem with getting to clinics and the local hospital, and many “ghetto” clinics are struggling financially. As in, “employees need to bring their own toilet paper to work this week” and “don’t deposit your paycheck for two days or it will bounce” type funding problems (I speak from experience on this one). So donating to those clinics to improve the health of the locals, and perhaps providing free or reduced cost transportation to health providers could be of great aid to the local disabled and seriously ill population.
I wouldn’t suggest throwing money around randomly, but the notion that money is useless in such neighborhoods is just… bizarre. The trick is, as always, to spend wisely.
I also question the notion that “most are on Medicaid or Medicare”. Neither of those programs covers healthy adults without children, a population that definitely needs preventive care to avoid becoming the disabled/ill. Even people on Medicaid/Medicare might have trouble paying for prescriptions - my county has a fund to help out folks without insurance with medications, but maybe you could fund an initiative to help out those on public aid as well?
Free or low-cost dental care is often sorely missing in such neighborhoods, and restorative dental services, like dentures, even more lacking. It’s not that poor people think the gap-tooth look is wonderful, it’s that they can’t afford to get decent and properly fitted dentures (never mind dental implants).
I disagree somewhat - around here, the library system is an integral part of the community, even in poor neighborhoods. It is also the main point of internet access for many people around here, as well as job searches, tax seminars, and community meetings. In my county, when there was a proposal to cut library hours there was an uproar. The end result was an increase in library hours. Then again, we don’t have a bookstore in my county any longer so the local library is the source of new books these days for many of us. Also DVD’s, e-books, and they have a free music download service as well now.
So… in some locations greater funding of the library may have significant positive effects. It depends on the community and the library.
Funding after-school/summer activities for kids is generally a positive, local sports teams, as well as funding job/training opportunities for young people around high school age. Sponsoring scholarships to local colleges and trade schools will help the ambitious young people escape the cycle of poverty.
Fixing deteriorated streets, street lighting, sewer systems, and other infrastructure would benefit everyone in the neighborhood. Does the fire department need new equipment? Can you help fund more police presence and/or community policing in the neighborhood?
Can you help out any struggling businesses that are still existing in the area? Does anyone have a great idea that lacks funding? Loans and outright grants can be of great help if carefully applied, and surprisingly small amounts of capital can do interesting things. Simple things, like bringing buildings up to code, or helping repair a leaking roof.
Finally - “ghetto” neighborhoods tend to have people who are, for lack of a better word, destitute. Are there soup kitchens that can use some extra funding? Shelters? Build and SRO and rent the rooms cheap enough so that the working homeless (and they do exist - two of my current co-workers are homeless and living in shelters) can transition to independent living even at minimum wage paychecks. Such places are also in dire needs of not just food but things like personal toiletries (one of the humiliations of being a single woman living homeless and getting just food stamps is that you might not be able to afford menstrual supplies and spend your period wadding toilet paper down your panties and washing out lots of blood stains from your limited clothing - whoever set up public aid seems to have forgotten that soap, water, toothpaste, deodorant, shaving supplies (for men), and menstrual supplies (for women) are not free!) Yet there is no provision made for obtaining these, the homeless and destitute are frequently utterly dependent on charity for much of that, or using public facilities, or shoplifting that stuff when they need it (yes, I know of women shoplifting tampons because they didn’t have the money to buy them - food stamps only cover food! And able-bodied adults without children do not get any cash benefits from “welfare”.)
People have to remember that every “ghetto” area has people who do not have a “ghetto” mentality. You may be one of the few people on the block who cleans up the trash around your stoop and sends your kids to school with a sense of agency. But all this does is create peace in your house. Outside of the house, you and your family are punished for being poor and being a “ghetto-dweller”.
Despite the fact that you make sure your kids do their homework every night, your kids are sent to inferior schools and are constantly reminded that they are not good enough for challenging coursework.
You have to wade through trash to get to the bus stop, even though you clean up your own yard.
You and your family have to dodge bullets and drug-dealers and gang members, even though ya’ll go to church every Sunday.
You have to shop at the over-priced Mom and Pop liquor store for groceries, even though you know the offerings are unhealthy.
The tragedy of ghettos is that the environment often overrides all the best intentions. Your kids make friends with the bad-ass kids next door, and that’s it. You’ve lost them. And it gets to you too. If that trash keeps blowing into your yard, you see the futility in cleaning it up. Once it’s your son who’s a gang-member, the gun you see him toting around begins to seem necessary.
You can’t view people as monolithic. You can’t think that the girl with the pregnant belly is the same as the other girl with the pregnant belly–and that they are both hopeless. No, one of them probably has a grandmother at home who taught that “girl better than that”, and that girl knows it and wants to do better but just doesn’t know how. She’ll be the one who fills out the application to work at a new grocery store and she’ll be the one who signs up for the GED program. The other one, maybe not. But maybe her kid will be the one who gets put in the Head Start program and is recognized as gifted and he’ll be the one to avail himself of services.
Libraries do get used by “ghetto” residents. There was a library around the corner from where I grew up and all the kids in my family used it. As did a ton of neighborhood kids. Far too often it was a de facto babysitter, which the librarians hated, but at least it was a place where we could go to. I grew up in a middle-class home, but without that library there would have been plenty of horrible homework assignments turned in. Maybe I wouldn’t have been able to college without it, and I would have been another black woman barely keeping her head above water? I don’t know. I’m just saying that you’ve got to live in the ghetto or know some folks from the ghetto before you can really start talking about how hopeless it is.
Since our society can’t be arsed to provide such basics as affordable housing, basic healthcare, and so forth, then mocks the poor for lacking teeth when they have no access to dental care, I see relieving misery as a worthy goal.
We don’t have to provide “middle class” lifestyle, how about just basic shelter, food, and if you have a health problem means to get the medical care you need to keep living?
No, you’re not going to save everyone. So don’t go in with that expectation. Relieve what misery you can, and keep the door open for those who DO have some ambition and want to work their way up the social ladder. What’s wrong with that?
It just disgusts me the way everyone less than middle class is considered worthless and criminal by the rest of the US for the simple “crime” of being poor.
Safe green spaces shouldn’t be overlooked. I walk through some projects on my way home, and the kids are always playing catch on the sidewalk. On a very busy street. These are little kids, like five or six-years-old. Their mothers will be sitting on the stoop watching them, but all it takes is one phone call to distract them, and suddenly you’ve got tragedy. These kids should have at least a grassy median or something to play in. But they don’t even have a front yard.
Why do you have a problem with an enterprising captilist purchasing goods at a low price and selling them at a higher? Remember, the Benevolent Billionaire isn’t doing this to profit, but to help the community.
Maybe open a warehouse of lower-price goods to supply the local “Stop N Rob” and liquor stores so they can sell their goods at lower prices and still profit?
Yeah, yeah, yeah - but oddly enough, I had stereotypical “ghetto dwellers” snapping up my excess garden greens last year. Our local Aldi’s keep expanding their vegetable and fruit offerings. Someone in these neighborhoods are buying healthy food when it’s availalbe.
Maybe you shouldn’t go in with the mindset you’re going to save everyone. Maybe just making it available to the (WAG) 10% who want it is enough. Maybe you don’t need to have the store open 7 am to 10 pm, maybe just four hours it the afternoon when your limited clientele can get to it is enough.
If ghetto dwellers are so opposed to fruit way does every gas station and liquor store around here sell oranges, bananas, and apples?
Yeah, Shodan doesn’t seem to understand what a coop is, outside of his parents’ church’s shitty experience. You sell memberships to those that can afford them, subsidize the membership for those who can’t, and sell at reduced rates for members. Someone abuses their membership, you kick them out.
Yeah, and it’s not like anyone has ever heard of black people eating things like collard greens, sweet potatoes, and black eyed peas! Those are rich white people foods, don’t you know!
My mother ran a non-profit to help poor people–almost all black–obtain food. She ran a big-ass garden and plenty of people would scoop up the fresh fruits and vegetables.
When they are there and they are cheap, people will eat them. People eat Doritos and McDonald’s because they are there and they are cheap.
Oh, and while I agree reaching the kids is key for long term, you have to pay attention to the adults, too. Not everyone grew up in the ghetto, a lot of people are temporarily poor.
If you do nothing for those already grown up you’re essentially saying they’re hopeless human trash and throwing them away - nevermind that a certain number of them used to be middle class and wound up there through various reasons, which could be as simple as being laid-off in one’s mid-40’s and viewed as “too old to hire, too young to retire” by corporate America. Remember that a certain percentage of the shop lifters, thieves, and troublemakers are adults - if there is nothing to help them, if society treats them as hopeless, why the fuck would they give a shit about their neighborhood? Give them a means to climb out of the hole, though, and certain percentage will take that opportunity. Again, not all of them - you can’t go into this with an all-or-nothing mind set. But if you can get a former high school drop-out to get his or her GED, get a job, and start giving a shit that, too, makes the neighborhood a better place. It sets and example for the kids that yes, that does make a difference
And yes, you’re going to have to make provisions for the gang-bangers and convicted felons. If you don’t give them an alternative to crime then they’ll survive the only way you’ve left them to survive. On the other hand, if there is a way for a former gangbanger or felon to get some sort of employment again, a certain number will leave the ranks of the bad guys.
The thing is, there is NOT a magic one-shot solution to ghettos, poverty, and crime. You have to attack the problems on all fronts and not have the illusion you’re going to have a total victory. The best attitude is to go in with the idea you will save who you can, you will improve what you can, and not give up because the world isn’t perfect. Make it a better place, even if you can’t make it paradise.
Nobody really “starves” in this country. That is to say, the biggest problem with the ghetto isn’t that people don’t have enough food to eat.
Being poor isn’t just about not having any money. It’s about lack of opportunity and access to resources. Ghettos, trailer parks, shantytowns, favellas and other destitute communities fall into a vicious cycle of poverty. They are typically undesirable neighborhoods to begin with for one reason or another - bad location, high crime (which is both a cause and a symptom, proximity to NIMBY facilities like airports, industrial facilities, etc, ethnic isolation, or they are just poorly designed buildings/neighborhoods no one really would want to live in. Because these areas are undesirable, the only people who live there do so because it is the only area they can afford. Which means in addition to regular hard working poor folk, you also get drug addicts, drunks, criminals and other assorted fuckups who can’t or won’t get their shit together. Those people aren’t exactly known for taking care of their living areas (where they typically rent or squat illegally). And there isn’t much of a tax base to pay for infrastructure improvements so all of that further brings down the neighborhood.
Most of this is covered under “broken window” theory. If you make it “ok” to just leave your window busted, then neglecting every aspect of taking care of the neighborhood becomes ok.
Since money is no object to the OP, here is how you would improve a ghetto neighborhood:
[ul]
[li]Fix the roads, water, sewer, trash collection and other basic infrastructure[/li][li]Hire private security to shoo away panhandlers, loiterers, petty criminals, and other undesirables who have no business being there.[/li][li]Fix up or demolish abandoned or derelict buildings.[/li][li]Clean up public spaces like parks[/li][li]Provide transportation to and from downtown areas and central business districts[/li][li]Provide education and vocational training[/li][/ul]
Of course it’s easy to do this if you have an unending supply of money. It’s harder to get these neighborhoods to a place where they are self sufficient enough to build up enough of a tax base and competent community leadership.
It might be cheaper to just bus in waves of gays, artists, hipsters, and yuppies!
One real challenge is helping the rural poor, especially Native American on reservations. The living conditions on some reservations are worse than the most neglected neighborhoods in America…by far. No plumbing, no/limited transportation, miles and miles to food (no healthy options) rampant alcohol abuse, and no jobs. I’ve been to Pine Ridge in SD and was shocked.
Both cities and rural areas have unique challenges in combating poverty, but at the very least there are structure in places in cities. I don’t have a cite, but I guarantee per capita much more is spent on urban poor than rural poor.
Personally I would start a supermarket with plenty of healthy options, cooking classes, childcare and a living wage for workers. In this way you are directly benefiting many people and also hopefully influencing habit and lifestyle in positive ways.
I’ve always thought that Trader Joe’s should expand into high density urban neighborhoods. Even if an individual store has a lower profit margin (compared to a store in a more affluent area), the benefit for the community is tremendous and even initial costs or losses are not going to dramatically impact the bottom line.
It’s not a question of “worthless” or “criminal”. I despise people who try to demonize the struggling poor. People are people and everyone is trying to survive as best they can. Within each group of poor there is wide range of attitudes, and some may reach for the brass ring if it is offered, and some will not. I have a very acute appreciation of personal failure, and thinking “There, but for the grace of God and a middle class education, go I”.
Having said this the baseline reality is that entrenched, multi-generational poverty is a primarily a lifestyle and attitudinal issue that becomes entwined with toxic values. You can throw gazillions of dollars at these attitudes and little will change as people’s adult attitudes and behavioral modes are fairly entrenched.
We’ve had generations of well meaning people and government programs wanting to do good by throwing themselves, and in many cases substantive resources, at the entrenched issues of the ghetto with little to show for it once the money tap is turned off and things quickly revert back to squalor. The reason is not complicated, you’re not really changing people’s attitudes. You’re enriching their lives with the resources while the money tap is open, but this doesn’t change work ethics, attitudes toward being better parents, and the cluster of values associated with being successful economic actors.
We’ve been playing around with this for over 50 years. There is NO magic bullet. Unless you can can effectively remove young kids from that environment (effectively take them away from their parents) before those attitudes take hold nothing substantive will change. That’s not demonizing the poor, it’s a baseline sociological reality.
Which appears to be one data point that supports my community garden idea.
I just wanted to promote this. So much truth here. Vanessa Siddle Walker, the historian, talks about what integration “cost” Black communities and schools.
I’ve had the opportunity to share the dais with Mr. Canada… he is a force of nature. There are tons of good ideas here, but I think the fact that Canada is from Harlem, and everything about him is Harlem gives his message validity. I’ve written about how Black low-income families tend to reject both the aims of middle class society and the means on how one obtains that level of “success,” because, well, it hasn’t worked for them. So somebody who has overcome these challenges from the same background carries much more weight.
monstro’s point is so true. I grew up in a semi-barrio/'hood situation - working to middle class neighborhood, so in a place like Austin, people are like, “whoa, you came up rough.” Not really. And 'hoods like Houston’s Fifth Ward back in the '90s are a whole different level of gully. So even to those kids I was an outsider that didn’t get what it was like growing up in “The Nickel.”
But so many of my students were being raised right, had intact family structures (maybe not a mom and dad married, but responsible adults raising them), and would fit in perfectly behavior-wise in a Leave it to Beaver episode. Yes, there is a criminal element, but they’re in my suburban neighborhood too - they’re just engaged in white-collar crime. The image and influence of those who do wrong just tends to blot out those who do right.
Don’t you think it’s strange to throw up your hands about fixing inter-generational poverty while admitting we’ve only been trying for 50 years? What, since Johnson’s programs? That’s not a long time. That’s not even the lifespan of your average Baby Boomer.
But you know what? Black people HAVE improved over this time. I know it must be easy, if you are not black, to assume most black people are poor and uneducated and living in the ghetto. But believe it or not, most black people are middle-class. Even with the horrible economy. This was not the case 50 years ago. So things have changed for the better.
Fifty years ago, it was possible to starve to death in this country. Parts of the country, particularly down in the Deep South, were right out of the Third World. Kids would go to school barefoot because they couldn’t afford to wear out their shoes. Poverty back then was as close to abject as you can get in an industralized society. And not only did you have such overwhelming poverty holding people down, but you also had overt racial discrimination. And not just in the South. My folks come from Indiana. After reading about Indiana’s racial history, I ain’t got much love for the state and I’m actually grateful they moved down to the South instead of remaining there.
The fact that we can say that it’s hard to starve to death in this country should be used as evidence that society can do things right, when it enacts good institutional policies. We have a safety net that did not exist fifty years ago, and we can praise Johnson and Nixon (yes, Tricky Dick) for this. What I’m seeing are people who want to call the whole thing a failure just because we still have poverty. Well, duh. Even Jesus predicted that. To measure success, you have to look at the past. If you can see that we’ve made progress since the federal government decided to actively do something, then it shouldn’t be hard to imagine that progress continuing for another 50 years. It certainly won’t get better if we stop trying.
Unless you invent a way of creating a secure and decently paid job for everyone who needs one - not just in your neighbourhood but throughout the country and across the post-industrial world - you’re only going to be treating the symptoms, not the disease.
Which is still worthwhile, but it’s not going to end the cycle of unemployment and misery in even one city, let alone worldwide.
I got nothing to add, but I wanted to say I enjoyed reading the parts in Barack Obama’s autobiography “Dreams of my Father” where he describes his two year stint as a social worker in the Chicago ghetto trying to do many of the things described in this thread.