Transcript
Sessions:
Introduction and Opening Remarks
Panel #1: Perspectives on Locally Based Community Development
Panel #2: Passing the Torch: The Next Generation of Urban Problem Solvers
Luncheon Discussion: A Conversation on Solving the Urban Crisis
Panel #3: Global Approaches to Fighting the Urban Crisis
NOTE: [PANEL STARTS IN PROGRESS.]
H. Dorsey: ... to utilize those practices and bring them to bear in ways that oftentimes is not among the textbooks. And so community development corporations is what I advocate. There is a lot of discussion now that has gone on since this process has been in place for about thirty-five years even though it hasn't been evenly distributed throughout the United States and particularly in the southeast. That maybe the time has passed where we have to wrest control from the community development corporations and look for another avenue. I say that that time has not passed because the community has to decide for themselves what is best for them. And we have got to figure out as so called leaders out there how to assist in the process rather than dictate how is has to be done. And so that's one of the things that I want to leave. I know we are running out of time so I don't want to take my full ten minutes. But I invite you to come back to a new renaissance called Atlanta, Georgia.
C. Milloy: Thank you. Thank you. All right, Mr. Smith.
L. Smith: Well, I'm here today I think as a — Joyce invited me as chair of the City First Bank of D.C.N.A. We are a new and the first community development bank ever established in the District of Columbia. We have opened in November. Our goal by the end of this year is to raise through deposits and other instruments $20 million to $25 million. We made our first two loans in the community. We've made three loans and we are now looking to open up for retail.
But prior to that I worked as what I would call the executive director, CEO of Marshall Heights for eighteen years, a worker in the vineyard, not per se necessarily a leader, but following what the needs and the dictates of my community was. Marshall Heights is different than these others that you've heard today in that we cover an entire ward in the city of Washington, D.C. And the community is the owner and the director of our program. We don't have a political agenda per se. We're about doing what's best for the community and what they say they want. We have the largest board in the world — a non-profit. We authorize ninety members and we have an average of seventy members on the board of directors. And many people want me to conduct a seminar as to even just how to handle that many board members. And it's relatively easy if you have an agenda. If you have an agenda and everybody understands your agenda, you don't have a lot of things to argue about in board meetings. Our board meetings are auditorium style. They're relatively smooth. What Marshall Heights has tried to do over the last eighteen years is become independent of the District Government. We have less — we have over $5 million budget but I doubt whether we have federal and district contracts that amount to maybe twenty-five to thirty percent, okay. So the District has not always liked us because we don't, totally not dependent on them so when they call, we're not going to do that. So we're not led by them. We're led by the people. So we don't have some of these problems. We cover an entire ward. We're not overlapping. We're not fighting with other organizations. We are trying to even find ways to give money away to groups in our neighborhood and can't find enough groups that can qualify to take the money that we get from a particular foundation. All right. So it's not about that. We are looking for partners, you know, and that kind of thing.
We invented — you've heard a lot about the holistic approach but it was never talked about until back in the eighties when Marshall Heights decided to do a holistic approach to community development and that's basically what we do. We do a little bit of practically everything because there was no one else to do it. Not because we wanted to do it, we went out here seeking this but there was no alcohol and drug abuse program, prevention program going on in the community. There was no treatment for it and so we were approached by people that said, "you've got to do it. You're the only ones who can do it." This started in 1989-90 and so we've been doing it ever since.
We find that it's necessary, in other words to help people get jobs, we've got to get them cleaned up. And we've had people who have been separated from their children, who have been on drugs, who have lost their jobs and everything. We've gotten them back, gotten them reunited with their children, gotten them jobs and they've gone on to work on advanced degrees and things like that. So we do that.
We do political things as necessary. But we do more or less planning and finding ways to get resources in our community. We are trying to do training education, higher education, reduction of crime, housing, economic development, business development, light industrial development. We have a first community school funded by Freddie Mac in the community. We try desperately to get the churches involved and that's very difficult. We have over a hundred churches in our community and it's very difficult to get them involved because sometimes they see somebody affecting the tithing manifestation. So it's very difficult and everything.
City First Bank, I worked on that four years and part-time while I was running Marshall Heights because I'm looking at access to capital. We're here to talk about global approaches and global approaches. The Civil War began because of economic concerns. The Civil War was about the possibility of freeing the slaves because most everybody that owned slaves net worth would go from one hundred percent down to about ten or fifteen percent. Because only thing they would have left is the land that they owned, which is probably ten, fifteen percent of their net worth. Thomas Jefferson could not, unlike George Washington, could not free his slaves because he was indebted to everyone. His creditors would have not let him free his slaves even if he wanted to. So this began, and it is still an economic issue in the community. It's empowerment. It's getting resources. It's the piper. The person who pays the piper calls the tune. So what we have tried to do is tried to find ways to empower, get our folks jobs, get them into businesses, get them into homes and home ownership in terms of the biggest investment and the biggest investment that you've ever had. Some of you may not know but Monday we had a big court hearing here this week. We're still fighting for voting rights here in the city. So that we can vote for the House and Senate and I'm a plaintiff in that suit.
We recently had a coalition for economic, a coalition of citizens east of the river that — I've lost more friends in the last few weeks than I can count. People I thought were my friends they called us southeast knuckleheads. I've been — I live in Southeast Washington, which is if you go to a cocktail party or Joyce may have a party and we go up Northwest and they'll say to my wife, "Where do you and your husband live?" She'll say, "I live in Southeast." "You live in Southeast." I mean really that's like saying you live in the depths of whatever it is. And so that's another thing. So recently we have tried to find ways to get the city government for the last twenty years to bring some resources east of the river. Just like Sandtown, I've been to Sandtown, Winchester and just to bring some resources and commit some resources. One of the resources, we wanted higher education. You would think we had said a bad word — UDC. And you probably read about it all over the country. It has been in all the papers and, you know, and everything like that. But we want them but they don't want us. Okay. And so it goes on and on and on. So I'll just stop right there, Courtland, because you can see the picture here.
C. Milloy: A hand for — okay. No, this is very stimulating to me and I want to let the audience to what extent they may want to hear more from different people on this issue. I certainly welcome any questions.
Dr. Ladner, how — it's 2:35.
J. Ladner: You can take questions.
C. Milloy: Okay, all right. Yes.
Participant: I have a question for Allen and Susan.
C. Milloy: She's good. Give her a raise.
Participant: I was interested in hearing a little bit more about Eaton jobs and I was wondering if you have a training component. And if so, what kind of training do you offer?
S. Tibbles: We do. I'm going to let Allen address that because he work — he's on the board for Eaton in particular and works more closely with what they're doing.
A. Tibbles: We actually do not do training. We found that so many Sandtown residents had training. And really the people we're looking for was a job. And so we do job development and placement, whatever network of job opportunities exists. So it's really on the job training once you're on the job. The main thing for us is the job and indeed being placed in a job.
C. Milloy: Yes, we'll take the gentleman here and then Dr. Ladner.
Participant: Dr. Stafford made an interesting point about the small sized not-for-profit groups in New York City. And so I'd like to take that and actually ask a question to the Tibbles and to Dorsey. I have several friends you are very interested in creating not-for-profit community development corporations. I've read several articles. We've talked about basically the importance of having these institutions in the community because either the federal government or corporations simply won't make that commitment. I would like for you to explain or give advice on what are some of the challenges I should, as well as others, consider when trying to create community, not-for-profit development organizations?
H. Dorsey: We support and fund community development corporations. And the key to their survival as Dr. Stafford said is operating support. And the funds are very hard to come by because of the fact that the public sector, especially in Atlanta, Georgia, does not support that. In fact, up to ten years ago there was virtually no support from the foundation community or the public sector side for supporting community based activities. And so this gave rise to the fact that the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership engaged in a fund raising strategy to build a pool of resources by which to redistribute it back into neighborhoods. And I say back to neighborhoods because it has to be neighborhood driven. It could not be just an individual who decides that they want to form a CDC.
But the will of the neighborhood dictates that, as Lloyd indicated just a few minutes ago. It's the neighborhood that says they want to make it happen and through bringing that consensus together forms a CDC. And then we can provide that because of the fact they have a notion of where they want to go and some mechanism or idea how they want to get there. And we provide the resource base in order to get them there. It is money intensive. I would say that what Lloyd indicated with reference to raising money and having the resource base in order to make it happen is boggling, mind boggling. But on the other side, necessary. But once it begins to take hold, the resources follow. It's like the foundations sort of seek you out. The funding world finds out what you're doing. It's like what Sandtown is experiencing. They find out what you're doing and they try and buy into that process. And so it's a track record you have to build. You have to, unfortunately, develop what I call the tangible evidence of your being able to do something as well as the intangible side that is organizing, fighting for school systems and fighting for some other issues that are also a part of it. It is holistic but it's also very tangible.
W. Stafford: I think it is important to distinguish between CDCs and the regular non-profits. I mean, particularly the CDCs have a different kind of history, different type of structure and are much more aligned to some degree as Hattie was saying with the business community. A large number of the non-profits, the smaller non-profits, are not aligned at all to a large degree and they are necessary to a large degree. I think it's also important to understand about at least in New York City, I'm going to talk about New York City, but I suspect it's true of other places also, that most of these non-profits don't have very good fund raising mechanisms. I mean, they're young. When I say they're young I mean they haven't been around that long.
I remember a story of one woman who told me a story where her mother was on a fixed income was writing checks. And she was writing this check to an organization, a white organization, and she said, "Why don't you write me a check? You know, I have this organization, too." Her mother said, "Well, you never asked me." I mean, you know, one of the things that happens. I mean, how many times of day do you receive anything in the mail asking for money from any of these non-profits. I mean, you know, they're young. They haven't been able to do it. But I do think you have to be able to distinguish between CDCs, which get a different kind of money, and the non-profits, which deal with much more social service type issues.
S. Tibbles: I think one of the subtle differences about what we're doing at New Song, we didn't move into the community to start a Christian community development organization. We really moved in to be neighbors, first. And we lived there and we got to know people in the community and then, Allen didn't tell you all of the R's of Perkins philosophy but concept of redistribution, not only relocation but redistribution and reconciliation, that we feel compelled — the white community has moved away from the black community. If reconciliation is really going to take place, white people have got to make an effort to move back into black communities and unbelievably to us, the black community has been very gracious in receiving us. And what we found is over the years, as people have become our neighbors, our friends and then they express a need, it is compelling to us. And this goes back to what I said earlier putting a name and a face to it. So when I fight for education, it's not because I ever perceived myself as being an educational reformer but simply because there are children who I want to have a decent education.
And so I think coming in as Allen said earlier with a servant attitude, with trying to understand the needs of the community, you were saying this earlier, not imposing on the community, several people said this. But listening to the community. What are the needs? How do you think that they should be addressed? Having the community involved from the beginning in the process of addressing those needs. I think that that's what makes something work. And then all of a sudden you find yourself, like we do, sitting on top of five ministries and millions of dollars of budget and saying how did we even get here. This was not something that initially we said we going to have this formal structure. And if anything it's the reverse with us now. We're actually getting to a point in our size where we're having to say we do need to be a little more formal about the structure because it can no longer be the mom and pop thing. There's so much going on. We don't always have time to communicate all the details to one another.
And I would say another challenge is if there's one thing that I have it's kind of a pet peeve as a community resident is that so often people come into communities, like Sandtown, and make promises. "We're going to do this for you and we're going to do that. And we're going to organize you and we're going to give you funds. All these big promises are made and then they don't happen. And then the people in the community are left, once again, feeling more defeated and more hopeless than before. And so if you're going into a community to do something there has got to be a real commitment to stay, to deliver on what you promise and to do what you do with excellence. Because I have a kind of a, it's a personal thing that I have about inner city programs for children that look like inner city programs for children. And whenever people come in our building, they always comment on how bright and cheerful and clean and organized it is. That's a real priority because I don't want — we can hand out little flyers to our children and say we want you to be the best you can be and have good self esteem and "I am somebody." But if you put a child in a second rate environment, then I don't care how much you tell them they're a first rate citizen, it will still be communicated to them they're worth used torn books. They're worth peeling paint. They're worth being stuck in a basement somewhere that's dark and, you know, barely meets the needs.
And we're right now getting ready — we've launched a capital campaign, a $5 million capital campaign, for what we'll call New Song Center. And it will provide thirteen classrooms for our school and space for community meetings and other areas that we intend to get into in the future. When we say this to people and they see all the programs they think okay, these are people who are capable of doing this. I can tell you I don't know how to raise $5 million but somehow or another between January and today, we've raised about 1.8 million. And so as we continue just day by day to keep working at it and always driven by the need of the community, you make the CDC come about.
C. Milloy: Dr. Ladner, you passed on? Okay, here and then we'll get it to you. Okay.
T. Mann: Well, just to follow-up and it's really a question about how you finance this extraordinary range of activities at New Song. And the fact that you're church based, does that make it more difficult for you to get public resources, for you to get corporate support? Do you rely a lot on individuals and private foundations? I just have no sense how you're able to finance this extraordinary range of activities.
A. Tibbles: Well, actually all of what you say we do, you know, from individuals to a lot of congregational support, a lot of corporations, foundations and then public funding. And really each of those organizations are not, "Christian" organizations. So in other words, you know, the church obviously is the foundation, each of those is separately incorporated. Like the learning center, for example, is not incorporated as a Christian or religious non-profit. Habitat for Humanity now receives a lot of public funding, nationally. So for us as an affiliate locally — HUD just recently did $25 million in something called shop funds that go directly to Habitat affiliates. Habitat is clearly, you know, nationally and internationally a Christian organization. So I mean I think a lot of that is going to be challenged over the next few years, but right now faith-based is very much in vogue and public funding is, you know, a part of that equation as well right now. But, I mean, really the majority of fund raising very few of us do. You know, we're not slick and we're not high-profile and I think people just say, "Look, they're people with a lot of passion. They're getting a lot done. They're being effective and so therefore support it." And we always act like we have funding. People don't find out —
S. Tibbles: And they believe us.
A. Tibbles: You know, people are going to fund what is funded. They're going to fund what's effective. So we present that we're effective and we have funds and as a result, you know, I think the funding works. We work very hard. And every single day we do fund raising. But yeah, I mean, it's intriguing to me as to how all this happened too. So I would agree with you on that.
S. Tibbles: We get a lot of the pity vote.
C. Milloy: This gentleman has his hand up.
D. Dennis: I just want to go back to what Walter was talking about earlier. There is a real problem with some of our groups around this community organizing piece or community development of specialized education when you begin to challenge the system. When we talk about the fact that it takes community reform to bring about school reform. The greatest organizing people challenged the system.
The program I work with, the Algebra Project, we would do well with funding as long as we were sticking to training teachers and talking about moving and bringing the parents together in our schools. But once that organizing took off — but by now we have parents who are really raising questions about where is the money, how is the money being used and how to best get programs into schools, our funding began to really do this, down, down.
To give you an example of that is that one funding group was funding us and they decided that — we were the only black group being funded by them over a three year period. And so just recently they decided they weren't going to renew the funding because they wanted to spread it around to more black groups, they said. Although we cover the entire South with this program and they're still desperately looking for a group to replace us. But to see how bad that was is we over a two-day period, three-day period we let our constituencies know — that is, the groups within the South — know about this. So they all decided to sign a petition to this foundation to say to reconsider refunding. And in doing so the chairman of the foundation would not open up the package sent to him that had over a thousand signatures of young kids from around the South.
So it's that kind of stuff which also gives comparison to what happened in the sixties. In the sixties as long as we were working with BEP, Broader Education Projects, getting people registered to vote, we were okay in one sense. But as soon as we began to organize to challenge the system or devise a free and democratic party, we became too political and they cut out the funding from underneath the people who deal with this.
Coming up with innovative ways to raise money and I think that there has to be a way of that, as I think Walter was touching on that. There are groups, black groups and others out there, who have money. All these athletes with millions. How do we begin to tap these sources to fund because you're not going to get the people whom you're challenging out there to give you money to challenge them. I'm saying that because some of the foundations are in conflict of interest in terms of what they're saying they're after. What I mean by this is that some of the same foundations that were funding in the fifties and sixties I'm talking about are foundations now supporting groups who are saying just the opposite of what we're saying. We say all kids can learn. They're saying that all kids do not want to learn so we need to get out of the public school system those kids who do not want to learn and make space for those kids who do want to learn. And they're using old clichés of integration, bringing in kids from private schools back down to these other schools and creating what they call alternative schools. And also remedial educational centers for these kids who "don't want to learn" so they say. So these kind of things I think are really — we're looking at what we call the gatekeepers to [Inaudible] happens to be some of the funding groups that we have been relying upon to fund the programs that we're talking about.
C. Milloy: Fascinating.
W. Stafford: I think that you've said it all. I think the non-profit, the black non-profit, movement right now represents a new stage in democratization. I think that's true. And we don't have enough time to deal with it today but the question really is, it seems to me, is how does this new movement also relate to black electoral politics. You know, what does it mean that you also have blacks on city councils and black mayors and you have these black non-profits and CDCs coming along at the same time and what can be done and what's possible to be done. I don't know. I haven't read the literature. I've read most of the literature and I haven't seen anybody really address that issue as of yet. And the other part of it as you said is the fund raising piece. I mean, the fund raising piece is simply that. The foundations clearly are not going to put that kind of money in anybody who's going to begin to challenge them within that framework.
And the final one I keep bringing up, I think is that relationship between the black church and the black non-profits. I mean, unless people really start talking about that as they get — considering the civil rights movement came out of black civil society and eventually black people had to bring along the black church in various ways and the black church had to bring along everybody else. But it seems to me if you're going to talk about non-profits and black civil society as part of a structural movement then that piece is still a missing element, at least in New York. I'm a stickler for that, I know.
C. Milloy: I'm ready for you.
J. Ladner: Let me just thank everyone for participating especially for those people who travelled from distant places. I think all of us are — there are six degrees of separation between us. Billy, all of us who have known him thirty years call him Billy, Walter Stafford and Dave Dennis and I go back to the early sixties in Mississippi and Alabama and Louisiana when we were running around as college kids in SNCC and to see — and I've known Hattie Dorsey for twenty-odd years from the Coalition of 100 Black Women. And many other people who have spoken here today, June Johnson, sitting in the audience is another person who was along side us back thirty-five years ago.
And I think what's important is that these issues that each generation has to define its mission and the issues continue to crop up in slightly different forms for each generation. I was very, very moved today listening to the young leaders talk about the issues. I was very moved by their compassion and their engagement and especially by how well trained they are and how well they could articulate complex paradigms based on their understanding of the multi-layered issues that they're working with. So I want to especially thank them for participating.
We've learned a lot about what's effective. We've learned a lot about a broad range of programs operating at different levels around the country. My only wish is that they could all be replicated. This project — with regard to this project we're writing, close to finishing a first draft of a book that's based on interviews we've done with most of the participants here today as well as other people who were not on the panel. And organizing this conference has really been a labor of love. One of my main motivations for wanting to have you come here to speak today was for you to tell other people your stories as you told them to us when we interviewed you. I just felt that you had such compelling issues with which you were working that it was important to share this information.
I want to thank Bob Margolis, in the back of the room, who is my research assistant, who did just about all of the leg work on this — operations and logistics — he's also done some of the interviews; Bob Dabrowski from our Office of Public Affairs has done a yeoman's task; and Tom Mann, the director of my department, government studies, who has given us very, very strong support for the work that we're doing. I also just want to recognize another person who just came in the room, Charley Cobb, who is writing the history of the Algebra Project. And I'm not sure how far along that is but working with Bob Moses there's no telling how long it will take. Bob couldn't be here today because he's preparing his students to take their exams and he wanted to be sure. I mean he is first and foremost the teacher so he wanted to make sure that they score as high on their exams as possible.
And, again, I want to thank all of you for coming. All the panelists have left us with much food for thought, and please travel safely.
[END OF EVENT.]
Also Available:
Introduction and Opening Remarks
Panel #1: Perspectives on Locally Based Community Development
Panel #2: Passing the Torch: The Next Generation of Urban Problem Solvers
Luncheon Discussion: A Conversation on Solving the Urban Crisis
Panel #3: Global Approaches to Fighting the Urban Crisis