Jane Jacobs

catwalkertexasranger

Clay you may want to check out a book titled Kill The Messenger by Nick Schou it is a follow up to Dark Alliance by David Webb. I didn't live in NYC in the 80's but I can only imagine.

clayfilms

thanks whatchuwant...i'm reading a book called "when helping hurts: how to alleviate poverty without hurting the poor and yourself" by steve corbett and brian fikkert and it's really giving me a lot of insight on this issue of addressing broken systems and ministering to people who are poor.

whynot_31

CLAYFILMS wrote: thanks whatchuwant...i'm reading a book called "when helping hurts: how to alleviate poverty without hurting the poor and yourself" by steve corbett and brian fikkert and it's really giving me a lot of insight on this issue of addressing broken systems and ministering to people who are poor.

Avoiding burnout is key in any helping field.

Cynics are not assets.

park place

Subject: Re:

CLAYFILMS wrote: [quote=Park Place]Also, please consider another viewpoint; in the early 1970's, the whites left in what was called the "white flight." The black who moved into the neighborhood destroyed it. They absolutely crushed it and it is just beginning to return to a desirable condition. You might not like that fact but it is the reality of the situation.

hey park place,

i must humbly disagree...and apologize in advance for the horrible grammar that is about to follow.

black people lived, raised families and worked in nyc before the 1970's..my grandparents (and many other african americans and caribbean americans came to crown heights after WWII..back when you could buy a mink coat on nostrand ave..lol).

also white flight in NYC started in the 1950's (not the 1970's) and was a result of racist policies born out the federal housing administration that offered subsidized mortgages that enabled millions of white nyc residents (of all classes) to purchase homes in the surrounding suburbs (peep long island) and flee the inner cities. these mortgages weren't offered to working class or poor black or hispanic NYC residents..lol

ironically, just a decade or so later, advances in the civil rights movement reduced suburban housing discrimination, allowing middle and upper class african americans (they did exist) to relocate to the suburbs as well.

as a result of this suburban flight, the remaining inner city-african american & hispanic communities lost a solid economic base...

now add to that the reality that between 1970-1985 tens of thousands of manufacturing (blue collar) jobs leaving NYC causing unemployment among the same working class communities to skyrocket (ex: restoration plaza on fulton st. used to be a milk factory..now you have a bunch of businesses that don't pay their employees a living wage)

then add to that welfare (which penalized people for working and rewarded them for having babies out of wedlock) and the advent of crack cocaine in the 1980's..and you have the perfect recipe for a economically, underemployed brooklyn neighborhood.

now i'm not making excuses for the bad decisions of (black) individuals who live in crown heights but what happens when you cram historically oppressed m uneducated, unemployed, relatively young human beings into housing project (built by robert moses and protested by my homie jane jacobs), take away the economic tax base, provide them with inferior education, health care and then pay them not to work? are you really surprised that we see violent crime, broken families, and drug trafficking?

worse yet, we end up with nihilism (which affects the wealthy and poor) because the broken social systems (racism, classism, sexism etc..) in inner cities do serious damage to people's worldviews. the nihilistic worldviews that you see in crown heights coupled with the broken systems that you see at work affect each other.

the answer? well i believe it's in my avatar..but that's another thread..

for a variety of historic and contemporary reasons , ghetto residents are embedded in system that are distinctly different from that of mainstream society. some of the systems are of their own making (out of wedlock children, substance abuse) but many of them are not. the irony of this entire thread is that b/c of the state of the economy that members of mainstream society are forced to live with ghetto residents even though they deal with different sets of societal systems.

i think a healthy starting point is to address the broken people and the broken systems and not just blame one or the other.

Hello Clay Films:

Lovely to see one who speaks their mind, leaves out the rage and appears to have no real axe to grind.

Your points are well taken but, one can argue culture, economics, politics and education for a million years. Perhaps I am too much of a bottom line person but the bottom line, for whatever reason, is quite simple. The whites moved out the and the blacks moved in. As a result, both crown heights as well as prospect heights, became almost unlivable from about 1980 until some debatable time in the last few years.

Some might find this to be racist but I can assure you it is not. If I were a racist, I would say so right here and now because I have no reason to lie. The unspeakable crime, poverty and brutality of the above mentioned neighborhoods during that timeframe has literally, cost us a generation of good minds and solid ability and amazing potential.

I remember it very well. The year was 1968. I was 16 years old. As my father said, the neighborhood was "changing" as he put it. It was a dangerous place to walk at night. Crime was rising and unlocked doors no longer existed. My father was a Bed Sty homicide detective so he knew a bit about crime. One day, he announced that we were moving to a foreign land called Canarsie. I was living in the majestic building at the corner of President Street and Franklin Avenue (1010President) . To this day, leaving the neighborhood was the most crushing thing to have ever happened to me. Divorce, no problem, death, it happens, car crash, I am just fine, but leaving your home because others said that you were not safe still affects me to this day. PS 241, Lefferts JHS, the Brooklyn Museum, GAP, the Gardens. These places were my life. Franklin Avenue was the place of dreams. Pizza, candy, hot dogs, and toys. Eastern Parkway on a spring day was as good as it could possible be! The list of my connections is endless. I sit here, close my eyes, and I can smell the warmth of the summer.

The move to Canarsie was like going to Mars. It was crushing. I do not expect you to understand but it was a knife in my soul. I knew no one and no one knew me. I was 16 and I was lost. I used to just walk the streets to pass the time and wonder how I got here. I adjusted slowly and made a few friends. It became, at its best, an OK place but it might as well have been Idaho. So once a month or so, I went back without telling my parents and I walked the streets where I knew every single crack and ate pizza with the people who remembered me. I remember being in Nino’s pizza on Franklin Avenue and Nino (the original Nino) asked me if I moved. All I can remember is that I started to cry right in the store. It was the most retched moment of my life.

I still go back about 6 or 7 times a year and walk the same streets. I am quite in love with the neighborhood and the round trip time to drive to Manhattan and get on the 2 train to Franklin is 9 hours. So as you can see, I have a first hand understanding of what is is like to see and live through the change that had taken place. Blacks wrong; whites wrong? I do not know and I do not care because I love everyone who is civilized and wants to make a contribution. If you want to be a criminal or a thug, I do not want you around, plain and simple.

On a more cheerful note, I can say that the neighborhood is coming back. It is alive and it is vibrant and it has the blush of a new day that is about to dawn on one of the best places in this country. (And I have been around...) I feel bad for MHA. I would love to have coffee with him on Franklin Avenue and try to understand his point of view a bit. I believe that I like MHA. For his grit and his native intelligence.

park place

Subject: Re:

CLAYFILMS wrote: [quote=Park Place]Also, please consider another viewpoint; in the early 1970's, the whites left in what was called the "white flight." The black who moved into the neighborhood destroyed it. They absolutely crushed it and it is just beginning to return to a desirable condition. You might not like that fact but it is the reality of the situation.

hey park place,

i must humbly disagree...and apologize in advance for the horrible grammar that is about to follow.

black people lived, raised families and worked in nyc before the 1970's..my grandparents (and many other african americans and caribbean americans came to crown heights after WWII..back when you could buy a mink coat on nostrand ave..lol).

also white flight in NYC started in the 1950's (not the 1970's) and was a result of racist policies born out the federal housing administration that offered subsidized mortgages that enabled millions of white nyc residents (of all classes) to purchase homes in the surrounding suburbs (peep long island) and flee the inner cities. these mortgages weren't offered to working class or poor black or hispanic NYC residents..lol

ironically, just a decade or so later, advances in the civil rights movement reduced suburban housing discrimination, allowing middle and upper class african americans (they did exist) to relocate to the suburbs as well.

as a result of this suburban flight, the remaining inner city-african american & hispanic communities lost a solid economic base...

now add to that the reality that between 1970-1985 tens of thousands of manufacturing (blue collar) jobs leaving NYC causing unemployment among the same working class communities to skyrocket (ex: restoration plaza on fulton st. used to be a milk factory..now you have a bunch of businesses that don't pay their employees a living wage)

then add to that welfare (which penalized people for working and rewarded them for having babies out of wedlock) and the advent of crack cocaine in the 1980's..and you have the perfect recipe for a economically, underemployed brooklyn neighborhood.

now i'm not making excuses for the bad decisions of (black) individuals who live in crown heights but what happens when you cram historically oppressed m uneducated, unemployed, relatively young human beings into housing project (built by robert moses and protested by my homie jane jacobs), take away the economic tax base, provide them with inferior education, health care and then pay them not to work? are you really surprised that we see violent crime, broken families, and drug trafficking?

worse yet, we end up with nihilism (which affects the wealthy and poor) because the broken social systems (racism, classism, sexism etc..) in inner cities do serious damage to people's worldviews. the nihilistic worldviews that you see in crown heights coupled with the broken systems that you see at work affect each other.

the answer? well i believe it's in my avatar..but that's another thread..

for a variety of historic and contemporary reasons , ghetto residents are embedded in system that are distinctly different from that of mainstream society. some of the systems are of their own making (out of wedlock children, substance abuse) but many of them are not. the irony of this entire thread is that b/c of the state of the economy that members of mainstream society are forced to live with ghetto residents even though they deal with different sets of societal systems.

i think a healthy starting point is to address the broken people and the broken systems and not just blame one or the other.

Hello Clay Films:

Lovely to see one who speaks their mind, leaves out the rage and appears to have no real axe to grind.

Your points are well taken but, one can argue culture, economics, politics and education for a million years. Perhaps I am too much of a bottom line person but the bottom line, for whatever reason, is quite simple. The whites moved out the and the blacks moved in. As a result, both crown heights as well as prospect heights, became almost unlivable from about 1980 until some debatable time in the last few years.

Some might find this to be racist but I can assure you it is not. If I were a racist, I would say so right here and now because I have no reason to lie. The unspeakable crime, poverty and brutality of the above mentioned neighborhoods during that timeframe has literally, cost us a generation of good minds and solid ability and amazing potential.

I remember it very well. The year was 1968. I was 16 years old. As my father said, the neighborhood was "changing" as he put it. It was a dangerous place to walk at night. Crime was rising and unlocked doors no longer existed. My father was a Bed Sty homicide detective so he knew a bit about crime. One day, he announced that we were moving to a foreign land called Canarsie. I was living in the majestic building at the corner of President Street and Franklin Avenue (1010President) . To this day, leaving the neighborhood was the most crushing thing to have ever happened to me. Divorce, no problem, death, it happens, car crash, I am just fine, but leaving your home because others said that you were not safe still affects me to this day. PS 241, Lefferts JHS, the Brooklyn Museum, GAP, the Gardens. These places were my life. Franklin Avenue was the place of dreams. Pizza, candy, hot dogs, and toys. Eastern Parkway on a spring day was as good as it could possible be! The list of my connections is endless. I sit here, close my eyes, and I can smell the warmth of the summer.

The move to Canarsie was like going to Mars. It was crushing. I do not expect you to understand but it was a knife in my soul. I knew no one and no one knew me. I was 16 and I was lost. I used to just walk the streets to pass the time and wonder how I got here. I adjusted slowly and made a few friends. It became, at its best, an OK place but it might as well have been Idaho. So once a month or so, I went back without telling my parents and I walked the streets where I knew every single crack and ate pizza with the people who remembered me. I remember being in Nino’s pizza on Franklin Avenue and Nino (the original Nino) asked me if I moved. All I can remember is that I started to cry right in the store. It was the most retched moment of my life.

I still go back about 6 or 7 times a year and walk the same streets. I am quite in love with the neighborhood and the round trip time to drive to Manhattan and get on the 2 train to Franklin is 9 hours. So as you can see, I have a first hand understanding of what is is like to see and live through the change that had taken place. Blacks wrong; whites wrong? I do not know and I do not care because I love everyone who is civilized and wants to make a contribution. If you want to be a criminal or a thug, I do not want you around, plain and simple.

On a more cheerful note, I can say that the neighborhood is coming back. It is alive and it is vibrant and it has the blush of a new day that is about to dawn on one of the best places in this country. (And I have been around...) I feel bad for MHA. I would love to have coffee with him on Franklin Avenue and try to understand his point of view a bit. I believe that I like MHA. For his grit and his native intelligence.

cool the kid

So Park Place, you hold a grudge with blacks because your dad made you move? Do you have any grasp of some of the socioeconomic failures that may have prompted the poor decisions and fostered the mentality that turned the neighborhood bad? It seems like you have no kind of empathy for people being shuffled around due to external pressures,or the effects such pressures have on people, despite having been shuffled around yourself.

park place

Hi Cool:

I have no grip with anyone.

All I am saying is that what happened is unfortunate and I can assure you that I was swept in its sad reality as much as everyone else.

As for empathy, I have that by the boatload. I have never held a grudge against any type of people except for the thugs and the looters and I can assure you that they come in all different colors.

whynot_31

For the most part, this has been three pages of intelligent writing about "how Crown Heights became what it is today"

(it's hard to sum up 3 pages in 7 words, please give me a break if your summary would differ)

That said, we -as a society- seem to be trying to change the conditions we've eloquently described through a conflicting combination of the Dept of Ed, ACS, Foodstamps, police, and prisons.

...or (as some would fairly argue) we are trying to MAINTAIN the conditions we eloquently describe through a conflicting combination of the Dept of Ed, ACS, Foodstamps, police, and prisons.

While these efforts and organizations seem to be needed, I think we'd be all benefit if we somehow increased our support of organizations like these...

http://www.bwiny.org/
http://www.jobcorps.gov/home.aspx
http://www.door.org/
http://www.thepoint.org/
http://www.camba.org/
http://www.childrensvillage.org/

no offense if your favorite isn't listed.... non-profit directories available elsewhere

park place

parkplace wrote: Well, there are different definitions of 'racist.' I'd say what you are taking about is prejudice, but that is different from racism (here's an article that shares the view that they are different:
http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/papers/caleb/racism.html).

hts for affordable housing for all, but we really can't reduce everything to class. Racism against black people is still a major and serious problem in this world.

I am not sure that it is as much racism as it is class warfare.

The well off want clean, quiet and safe. I can assure you that goes for people of any race.

park place

Hi Cool:

I have no grip with anyone.

All I am saying is that what happened is unfortunate and I can assure you that I was swept in its sad reality as much as everyone else.

As for empathy, I have that by the boatload. I have never held a grudge against any type of people except for the thugs and the looters and I can assure you that they come in all different colors.

redd

Clayfilms,

Kudos to you for starting such a significant conversation on this site. I liked your reference to your avatar in your most recent post and thought you may be interested in an association I belong to - the Christian Community Development Association. A lot of the content on their site is only accessible to members but the "philosophy" page will give you a good sense of what they are about. Send me a message if you would like more info. I've been a member of the association for about ten years and it played a large role in my husband and I moving to CH four years ago to raise our family here.

http://www.ccda.org/philosophy

clayfilms

Subject:

wow. thanks redd! i'm checking out the site now...it looks really cool.

mrs whynot

Subject: Re:

Park Place wrote:
also white flight in NYC started in the 1950's (not the 1970's) and was a result of racist policies born out the federal housing administration that offered subsidized mortgages that enabled millions of white nyc residents (of all classes) to purchase homes in the surrounding suburbs (peep long island) and flee the inner cities. these mortgages weren't offered to working class or poor black or hispanic NYC residents..lol

ironically, just a decade or so later, advances in the civil rights movement reduced suburban housing discrimination, allowing middle and upper class african americans (they did exist) to relocate to the suburbs as well.

The redlining policies Clayfilms is discussing actually started when the federal government first started guaranteeing mortgages under FDR. For those who haven't read the lending guidelines, they essentially prevented African Americans - and to lesser extents Hispanics and Jews (yes, Jews were considered bad credit risks - go figure how stereotypes change) from getting federally guaranteed mortgages. Without a federal guarantee, the mortgage was more expensive.

A second part of the regs that goes to the partial explanation of how New York's and other cities' neighborhoods became so segregated is that NO ONE could get a federally guaranteed mortgage if 5% or more of the neighborhood's population was African American - though I assure you that was not the term used.

Also curvilinear streets were preferred to grids. Hence new suburbs (not old railroad suburbs like you see at Babylon or Dobbs Ferry) were preferred to older places, which in the U.S. were all gridded.

It is also important to know that the redlining regs were not public. Hence people had no idea why they couldn't get certain mortgages in certain locations. The distorted mortgage market really forced the moving in and moving out of neighborhoods that happened for the next two and a half decades.

Hence most cities' neighborhoods were more segregated in the 1970s than they had been in the 1930s.

clayfilms

Subject:

sitting in breukelen coffee house on franklin..an middle aged black man walks in, orders some coffee and instead of hogging a table made for two, a young white guy wearing a smedium shirt and tight jeans offers him the seat opposite him and the next thing you know...they're chatting like old friends

while observing this..i saw a young woman come in and retrieve the keys that a friend had left with the barista for her while she was out of town

jane jacobs would be proud...

park place

Subject: Re:

CLAYFILMS wrote: sitting in breukelen coffee house on franklin..an middle aged black man walks in, orders some coffee and instead of hogging a table made for two, a young white guy wearing a smedium shirt and tight jeans offers him the seat opposite him and the next thing you know...they're chatting like old friends

while observing this..i saw a young woman come in and retrieve the keys that a friend had left with the barista for her while she was out of town

jane jacobs would be proud...

Humanity at its best. Is there hope for us after all?

mha

'...native intelligence'? Is that like having rhythm, or being a great singer???LOL, what the HELL is that? Please, I don't need your sorrow/pity Park Place, pity, to paraphrase Nietszche, is sublimated contempt.

You go all 'bottomline' with Clayfilms when he brings up the reason for the social dysfunction you see, as you go 'bottomline' for my own critique. Amazing...

Typical whitefolks, I tell you...

park place

MHA wrote: '...native intelligence'? Is that like having rhythm, or being a great singer???LOL, what the HELL is that? Please, I don't need your sorrow/pity Park Place, pity, to paraphrase Nietszche, is sublimated contempt.

You go all 'bottomline' with Clayfilms when he brings up the reason for the social dysfunction you see, as you go 'bottomline' for my own critique. Amazing...

Typical whitefolks, I tell you...

Clay Films...

You are too funny but the quote by Nietszche is a nice touch. A bit 1997 or so but a nice touch.

I do not pity you anymore then I pity us all. 45 years later and the rage still festers. However, at the moment, I do feel bad for you becasue if you do not accept native intelligence as a compliment from us white folks, you are so lost to your rage and your hatred of whites that there is no coming back.

To quote Dickens, "enjoy the life you have chosen."

So tell me, when do we get that coffee? One of us is wrong. Care to chat?

whynot_31

Park Place- I think you meant to address your comments to MHA, not Clayfilms. Likely a typo

park place

whynot_31 wrote: Park Place- I think you meant to address your comments to MHA, not Clayfilms. Likely a typo

Thanks so much! Head up butt today!

mha

Yeah Park Place, it's MHA not Clayfilms; also you're wrong about the hatred part as well. But as you have said, enjoy the life you choose. I don't know what you mean about 1997; I guess you're trying to place my mode of thinking within a time slot, which is weird again. I really don't know what you mean by 'native intelligence', but I have to let you know a major mistake whitefolks make is to tell Black people that they are smart (or well spoken). You might see this as tragic on my part that I cannot take a compliment, but this proves your social ignorance. You run the risk of being considered a racist because of this. Seriously. NEVER tell a Black person that you think they are smart. This rule is up there with picking your nose in public or farting audibly in public. It's just poor etiquette, quite frankly. If you don't get it, then I am afraid that it is YOU who has the problem. Ask your white friends about this. Maybe some of them can give you the answer. What say you, Clayfilms, whynot_31? Can you help Park Place figure this out, or do you not also see what I'm saying here?

whynot_31

Well, first one has to determine whether the compliment is said in the vain of "you are well spoken, this surprises me, because you are um, black"

Sometimes it is said that way.
Other times it is merely perceived as being said that way by the listener.

....two different things.

mha

RIGHT, whynot_31, and THAT'S why it ought not to be said TO a Black person for fear of it being misinterpreted. Ask ANY Black person about this. Ask! You absolutely NEVER tell a person of African descent ''Oh, you're smart! You just don't!

'Native intelligence'? How the heck can Park Place know that? That's like saying I am INHERENTLY good at basketball. Or,"I'm not surprised you can't swim well, after all, you're Black and your bones are heavier..." , or well you're well hung cuz you're Black. LOL!

whynot_31

which means I get the award of "pretty fly ....for a white guy".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Fly_(For_a_White_Guy)


http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=pretty+fly+for+a+white+guy+lyrics&aq=0&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=pretty+f&gs_rfai=

Jeffery, where are you?! We need an imbed.

MOD NOTE: Obliged thusly:





P.S. This song is NOT AT ALL punk rock. Stupid wikipedia.

mha

I've never met a fly white guy before...Sorry, I am not on that team.

But seriously, your flyness makes you astute. Kudos! I award thee with coolness. Were I to introduce you to my friends, before the hackles rise I would say, "He's cool, he's cool..." This would alert them to your racial astuteness. Heck, you might even get a sister out of it --which brings to the fore fodder for another conversation: BLACK GIRL, WHITE MAN! WTF?!

jeffrey

Park Place wrote: You are too funny but the quote by Nietszche is a nice touch. A bit 1997 or so but a nice touch.

Yeah, I don't get it either. That when you were in high school or something? (when one is occasionally called upon to study Nietsche)

And now for a musical interlude

whynot_31

Not on that team?

Damn, can't a white guy get a break around here? I am so disappointed.

give it me baby, uh, uh... uno, dos, tres,

(dances in office)

Note: Dancing in office has no correlation to the views expressed by MHA, nor should they be taken as an endorsement in any way. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Results not typical.

Whynot played by actor with permission of whynot inc.

jeffrey

void where prohibited.

whynot_31

Summary of today's posts...

In order to prevent the potential for misunderstanding, and honor the memory of Jane Jacobs (as well as all other activists and authors required to be read as part of a modern, fundamental education at CUNY and other colleges):

Whynot agreed to never to tell MHA that he was "smart or well spoken".

MHA agreed to never tell Whynot he was "fly".

park place

MHA wrote: Seriously. NEVER tell a Black person that you think they are smart. This rule is up there with picking your nose in public or farting audibly in public.

Never tell a black person they are smart?

How sadly absurd. You have kids? Want them never told they are smart when they do well in school?

OK, you are right and I am wrong.

If the day ever comes where you see yourself as a person as opposed to a black person, you will have a better life.

I offered you coffee and friendship. You offered rage and comments that are so far beyond belief, that I am stunned at the possibility that you might actually believe them.

I wish you well. We are done.

park place

MHA wrote: Seriously. NEVER tell a Black person that you think they are smart. This rule is up there with picking your nose in public or farting audibly in public.

Never tell a black person they are smart?

How sadly absurd. You have kids? Want them never told they are smart when they do well in school?

OK, you are right and I am wrong.

If the day ever comes where you see yourself as a person as opposed to a black person, you will have a better life.

I offered you coffee and friendship. You offered rage and comments that are so far beyond belief, that I am stunned at the possibility that you might actually believe them.

I wish you well. We are done.