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SEARCH RESULTS
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Keywords: 'Locus South Bronx'
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Curiosity
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1. Transgression. 2. The Right Track. 3. Longwood Avenue.
By subway to the Bronx: projection, state of mind, way of seeing, Longwood Avenue.
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Banana Kelly
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1. How “The Bronx” Was Born. 2. The Potts Strike Back. 3. Harry DeRienzo and the New Urban Pioneers. 4. A Lot of Little Changes Can Make a Big Difference. 5. Pearl White. 6. Housing and Volunteer Work in the South Bronx, in the 1970s. 7. A Father’s Day Letter, 1993
New York and “The Bronx” stories: urban renewal and city planning, Co-op City, Hunts Point, Kelly Street, “Don’t move, improve”, Harry DeRienzo. Grass-roots activists, public policy decisions, a new definition of politics. Life in the Bronx from 1969 to the end of 1977.
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May I Shadow You?
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1. A Beauty Salon in the Heart of Harlem. 2. Carlton Collier, Community Organizer. 3. A Visit to a Pilot Project Co-op, with Carlton. 4. Obie, the Superintendent. 5. A Mexican Family: Him, Her, the Big Surprise. 6. The Courthouse: Bucking an Eviction. 7. Fired!: An Arbitration, with Yolanda. 8. South Bronx Churches
Shadowing in action. A Tenants Relation Specialists for Banana Kelly: community organizing, never discriminate nor exclude, rules, nexus cultural-economic problems, potential for self-government, help to get back on own feet. Casita Maria social center: goals, programs. Visiting the tenants of a building: social rehabilitation to reach self-administration, helping build to be proud. Building’s superintendent: book keeping, public relations, and conflict resolution. “Increase the Peace” Association goals, how do you find a common interest in a conflict situation, perception, emotions, communication. The different roles of Welfare. The Legal Aid Society. The Churches of the South Bronx: Nehemiah homes, participation, sense of belonging and identity.
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Going to School on the Wrong Side of the Subway
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1. Daily Life at Elementary School, with Estela. 2. What Kids Find Interesting at Junior High School. 3. A Fortified High School, with Day Care Center. 4. On-the-Job Training for Dropouts, with Sara. 5. For a De-bronxification of Ordinary Social Life.
Shadowing in action. Primary school: emergency interventions, teacher to the child’s home, healthy diet, arts and crafts activities for parents. Middle school: classes of ‘special education’, opening hours, benefits for students, curriculum, the “Seneca Center” for parents. High school: personally involving to learn, ghetto culture, dependence, passivity, the day care center, the rounds. Banana Kelly’s on-the-job training programs for drop-outs. Desperate people into an insane asylum: kids and teachers, wounding and relationship misconceptions.
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Later: Change and Continuity
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1. One Year Later, by Marianella Sclavi. 2. Sixteen Years Later: Back to Banana Kelly, by Harold DeRienzo.
The policy of urban renewal: a better socio-economic balance in the area, new quarters, a grass-roots and anti-technocratic approach to constructing the community. Melrose Commons and the evolution of Banana Kelly.
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The Bronx and the Art of Listening
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1. Introduction. 2. Starting Points/Contact/Active Listening/Shadowing. 3. Paternalism/The Good Design of Decision-Making Processes/A Thousand Small Programs/The ABCD of Self-help. 4. The Cross-cultural Dimension/A Cross-cultural View of Body Language/A Cross-cultural View of Blatant Disturbance/A Cross-cultural View of Academic Success. 5. The Anatomy of Humor/Admiration and Respect/Double and Triple Emotions/Malign Envy and Benign Envy. 6. A Few Suggestions for a Humor-based Methodology for City Planners, Teachers, Sociologists and Administrators. 7. The Seven Rules of the Art of Listening.
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Politics and Democracy
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When the author first began his work in community development, he thought that he was undertaking a purer form of human interaction intended promote “change” since he equated politics as “dirty,” which it came to be seen by many in the post-Nixon era. But this perception of politics was short-sighted and counter-productive. Politics is exercised in all areas of effective community development all of the time and an understanding and engagement of politics, from the most local level to the highest levels of government is necessary for success in any community development effort. In this chapter, “politics” from all levels is explored as well as the implications of political trends over the past decades that have created a situation where political considerations are becoming harder to engage as government becomes more centralized and attenuated from the average citizen.
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Empowerment
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“Empowerment” is another one of those concepts bandied about in the community development sector without any sincere regard for the basis for accumulating and maintaining power. Often in the community development setting, “empowerment” means picking out one or two articulate residents and training them for “leadership.” Alternatively, local institutions have organized “visioning” sessions and through input that is restricted and reinforcing of isolation as opposed to integration, these same groups claim they are “empowering” local residents. But power, like trust, wisdom or even democracy, cannot be given. Power is the direct result of people who join together, with each giving something of themselves, for the purpose of attaining some collective goal. This chapter explores this concept in more detail, with examples of how empowerment has been exercised in a community setting.
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A Community Development Primer
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The reader is provided with an overview of the limited amount of literature dealing with the topic of community development, showing how as the community development sector has evolved over time, increasing its impact, funding and professionalism, so too have the institutions of that sector abandoned their missions and gone from institutions bound and accountable to the people they serve to institutions that are bound and accountable to outside funding sources. In essence, the institutions of the community development sector, the so-called “Community Development Corporations,” or “CDCs” have gone from responding to crises as vehicles of community empowerment to being paid for “managing the crisis” and in the process accepting funds from private and public sources of support to manage the very people they were set up to serve.
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Working Concepts and Definitions
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Too often we use words loosely and employ concepts in ways that do injustice to the goals to which we purport to strive. This chapter provides the reader with examples of how sloppy concepts and definitions of our words can lead to frustrating or even perverse outcomes. Following some of the simple rules outlined in this chapter will assist those with the right intentions to avoid the traps of unintended consequences. But the use of terms can also be purposely used to manipulate the very people we are supposed to serve in the name of pseudo-scientific social service theories that are specifically intended to foster dependency and justify funding and contracts for CDCs.
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Community and Neighborhood: Toward a Transformative Model
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Following up from the previous chapter, the author explores the loose and inappropriate use of the term “community.” Most define community loosely as a group of people with something in common. But commonality is only the first of three, inter-dependent and indispensable components of community. Having explored these in depth, the concept of community is contrasted to that of a “neighborhood.” Recent programs designed for “community-building” are described and critiqued. A “transformative model” of community-building is then described in light of past experience and in an attempt to remain true to what should be viewed as truly making up a community.
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Culture and Multi-Culturalism
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The concept of culture is critiqued for its use and common understanding. Is culture no more than the sum and total of linguistic expression, musical preferences, culinary tastes, and the passing of past history down through the generations? Or is culture the expression of people living and working collectively within a given environment as they attempt to understand, enjoy, explain, and ultimately transform their collective environment, and from these collective activities forms of religious expression, work modes, tools, games, and other forms of productive activity and needed distraction are developed, culminating in what can be explained as a particular culture? If the latter is the better definition, then true culture, as opposed to fabricated and mass marketed “culture, is dying and its death has implications for our quality of life and future hope for democracy.
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Social Capital
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This concept of social capital has found expression in the field of community development, but also in third world development as well. Its definition varies and is often viewed as a blessing: when people can improve their collective and individual qualities of life by providing for themselves what they could not attain in isolation. But it is also viewed as a potential curse by institutions such as the World Bank who see the potential for some limited form of local self-sufficiency becoming a barrier to comprehensive, all-encompassing free markets. In this chapter, the author explores this concept and settles on defining social capital as the “currency” of community.
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Community Organizing
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Too often, community organizing is undertaken in a way that uses local residents to advocate for an outcome that, though mostly in their collective interest, is defined by those who “know better.” When such is the format for organizing efforts, the organizing must be continual, with the needs, rationales and targets for organizing constantly reinforced and adapted. In other words, organizing, though often necessary to avert a local crisis, is no substitute for “community organizing” that has as its core goal the development of transformed social, economic, and political structures that change power sharing arrangements and are sustained by local institutional frameworks that are responsive and accountable to local residents. This chapter explores groups best known for their organizing prowess, their successes, and their shortcomings.
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Bias, Prejudice and Racism
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Understanding bias, a necessary tool for day-to-day survival, along with how to manage that bias effectively and relate it to the debilitating exercise of prejudice and destructive manifestations of racism, is necessary for organizing and community development within any area that is comprised of residents from multiple ethnicities or within any area needing to collaborate with those of other ethnicities. In this chapter, the author relates his own experiences in community development as they relate to these topics. Hard won lessons, including naive assumptions about not only how racism between Hispanics of different ethnic backgrounds can manifest, but how racism can even exist within ethnic groupings, are explored with a view of how to manage within such circumstances.
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Economics and the Inner City
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Understanding the economic context within which a community development effort operates is critical to success. Short of an organizing campaign that simply, successfully, and outright threatens the status quo, to achieve successful outcomes, organizing to impact on prevailing power sharing arrangements requires research and policy elaboration that makes the objective case for changes in public policy along with demands for any greater share of public resources for the redress of any social ill. In this chapter, organizing and research efforts are discussed regarding their rationale, the process undertaken, and the results attained.
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Public Policy
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Legislation is one of the primary outcomes of government. But as an expression of “public policy” how able is the average citizen to glean public policy from enacted legislative statutes and the regulation that accompanies legislation? This chapter explores policy making in more depth, demonstrating that public policy cannot be ascertained by looking at the “legislative intent” of a statute, but by studying the outcomes – who wins and who loses? Only by understanding how “free markets” cannot go hand in hand with true democracy; only by understanding how a “right to work” can result in a loss of workers’ rights; only by understanding how “choice” within a free health care market can result in limited access to health care, can we truly ascertain the true intent of any legislation, and by analysis, can we then ascertain the actual power-sharing arrangements within our democratic system.
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The Importance of Place
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Having lived through the devastation of the South Bronx the author experienced first- hand the impact such devastation can have on community and on individuals. Planning can be and has been benign or it can have pervasive and long-lasting negative consequences. How does a community developer work to mitigate the enormous impact exacted on a population that has been deprived of a stable, let alone, nurturing environment? What role does environmental psychology play in planning the redevelopment of a neighborhood? These topics are explored in this chapter.
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Banana Kelly Revisited
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Having organized the community development corporation, Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association, Inc. in the mid-seventies, and having become the first Executive Director of the group, leading it to its initial success and notoriety as one of the premier self-help housing groups in the country, after his departure, the author endured witnessing the transition of the group, seeing the group deteriorate into an organization with corrupt leadership, distressed housing conditions, and disempowered residents. This changed in 2002 when the New York State Attorney General forced the ouster of the corrupt leadership of Banana Kelly. This chapter briefly recounts the story of the group’s revival, a revival due in no small way to the perseverance of the residents and dedication of a small working board and staff.
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The Loss of Community and the Loss of Democracy
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The author makes the case that there is a direct connection between the loss of community and the loss of democracy. The thesis presented here represents a culmination of the points made throughout the book, but further focuses on the threats to democracy, positing that political structures, processes and power are directly derived from the dominant economy. If the economy is decentralized, with meaningful economic tiers operating at the local, regional and national level, then political power will be likewise decentralized. But as our economy has become more centralized and global, so has political power become more centralized and attenuated from the average citizen, who has now made the transition from public citizen to private consumer of government and private services, pronouncements of the glories of “democracy and free markets,” notwithstanding.
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“Over-Identification”: My Introduction to Community Development
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This chapter lays out the personal experiences of the author who began work as a volunteer at Casita Maria Settlement House on Simpson Street in the South Bronx in early 1970s; took a full time job there as a social worker in the mid-seventies; and moved into the area at a time when landlord abandonment and arson were destroying a culturally rich and vibrant community. While still working at the Settlement House, the author began organizing residents of the area, culminating in the creation of one of the premier self-help housing groups of that era: Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association, Inc. This group went on to develop over 1,000 units of affordable housing, train thousands of youth and adults in the construction trades, and provide valuable services to thousands of residents.
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