Critical Issue Paper

A critical issue that has significantly impacted community development has been community development corporation’s loss of focus on establishing community control in vulnerable neighborhoods, and the inability of CDCs to permanently secure employment and housing for the communities in which they serve.

In what follows, I will argue that a key element to the effectiveness of community development corporations, demands an explicit incorporation of community control, a strategy that involves the devolution of authority from the state to a more local public, and a better understanding of the role ideology plays in sustaining political continuities.

There are few organizations that has explicitly expressed this in its mission (e.g. PSL), as a means for setting the stage for effective mobilization of community members concerned with improving their quality of life.

By community control (of schools, social institutions, policing, etc.) I mean the transmission of authority directly into the hands of specified individuals in the community. The idea is that this would better position communities to respond more effectively to market failures and broken down local systems. “The ‘community’ ought to be given a chance to succeed, or at least to fail, and on its own terms.” This would indeed be a lengthy process, not some revolutionary event.

I am also referring to community control as the process in which the production and distribution of goods and services in a particular district, as well as the planning of social and economic programs, which are designed, implemented and evaluated by the inhabitants of that particular district.

A lack of capacity of CDCs to achieve these goals should not prevent these organizations from explicitly including it in their vision.

The ‘community control movement’ in the late 1960s was focused primarily on public education. And although terms such as ‘community control’ and ‘power’ have a relatively short history in terms of being central in the language of community activist, I feel that we may find these terms relevant and very useful again when applying them to community development efforts and goals.

Serving vulnerable populations often involves some form of political struggle. And because the process of political struggle often involves the co-optation of some element of an opponents strategy, community activists are faced with the challenge of constantly refining and clarifying their language in all stages of community development work.

It is for this reason that the evolution of the term community control has taken a peculiar course, which has often been characterized as a “concept” as opposed to an every day process. In some cases, practices and processes labeled as community control, can actually be viewed to function quite counterproductively to the goals of the definitions listed above.

For example, the Gallipolis Municipal Court has a Community Control Department which oversees all persons placed on community control as the result of criminal charges. The goal of community control here is to monitor compliance with the sentence imposed by the Judge thereby reducing the likelihood of further criminal activity. The Gallipolis Municipal Court Community Control Department is run under the direction of Chief Probation Officer Michael Smith

.

This characterization and use of ‘community control’ should be viewed as less empowering to vulnerable communities.

Typical community development corporation missions are described as such:

“The Community Development Department is committed to enriching the quality of life in our community. We accomplish this through open communication, building partnerships, and responsible, responsive, and creative solutions to the needs of our customers. We are dedicated to sustainable and orderly growth and an economically viable community for the benefit of present and future generations. The Community Development Department focuses on building and development issues through the actions of its Building Safety Division and Community Planning Division

”

“Harlem Community Development Corporation (“Harlem CDC”), a New York State agency, was created in 1995 to serve the greater Harlem community, including East Harlem, Central Harlem, West Harlem and Washington Heights, through planning and facilitating the development of a range of community development projects and revitalization initiatives that will restore Upper Manhattan as an economically stable and culturally vibrant community.”

The most significant limitation(s) I see in the mission statements above, is the absence of strategy to foster sustainable economic and political/social independence.

Glickman and Servon state clearly, that most long-term economic trends are beyond the control of neighborhood groups, due to the systemic and structural problems in the economies of cities.

It is no wonder that many CDCs are rendered ineffective, ‘letterhead’ organizations - sometimes providing obsolete technical assistance and often involving community-based organizations in major projects being undertaken by private developers, that have already been decided upon.

Initially conceived as vehicles that would use the market as a means to the end of community control and development, Defilippis observes that CDCs have now become vehicles for the market, in which the goal of community control is not even an issue.

To complicate matters a bit, Quadagno (1994) argued that racial discrimination played an important role in undermining the War on Poverty in the 1960s. She provided several examples where community development programs failed because of White opposition and unwillingness or inability of the federal government to overcome this opposition. When the CAPs (Community Action Programs) were formed, many were taken over by civil rights activists, who challenged many big-city mayors and political organizations. The Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) was sensitive to the criticism by local government officials that the CAPs had provided the spark for the urban riots of the 1960s. In 1973, President Nixon abolished the OEO

The absence of community control related goals is precisely why I view community development corporations, and similar organizations, as institutions who essentially utilize tools that are only equipped for managing poverty, as opposed to ameliorating it.

Even when new institutional forms do emerge, they quickly become routinized. Attention to their maintenance “displaces the fervor of the reforms that spawned them,” provoking opposition and the mobilization of new groups seeking change. This generation seeking another set of institutions - more responsive to “the people,” as defined by this group of reformers - will soon face another, creating a climate of futility.

According to this cycle, it is highly unlikely that CDCs, CBOs and other similar institutions who serve vulnerable communities will function as effective agents of sustainable change under this model - a model that is overly dependent on beaucracy and outside resources. As some have quipped, the revolution will not be funded.

A picture of the contradictions at the root of community development efforts can be seen as being parallel to the contradictions at the root of unsuccessful decentralization efforts by Ocean Hill-Brownsville residence to decentralize the New York City’s Board of Education system.

Although the characterizations of their missions are somewhat different, both illustrate a fundamental misunderstanding of the workings of the institutions that are intended to serve communities, and their being embedded in larger historical processes.

Tyack and Elmore diagnose this misunderstanding as a lack of understanding of the role of ideology in efforts to dictate change

. In other words, by better understanding the role ideology plays in sustaining political continuities, and becoming more familiar with the contradictions of democratic life, CDCs can envision better alternatives to some of the futile efforts that precede them (e.g. partnerships with corporations who’s primary concern is the ‘bottom line’ - profit.)

A better understanding of the role of ideology and the larger historical processes may create optimal preconditions for practitioners, to prepare communities for a long and tedious road to maximal feasible participation and independence.

The “de-politicization of community development that came with its split from community organizing in the late 1960’s

” should be viewed as a limitation of their capacity to effectively addressing historic and current inequities, policies and practices that block Black, Latino, Asian and American Indian people from opportunity and stability.

Evidence of this limited capacity can be drawn from research provided by (Applied Research Center) a recently published a 50-page report titled, Race and Recession - How Inequality Rigged the Economy and How to Change the Rules

.

It reports that in March of 2009 alone, over 340,000 homes went into foreclosure, a 46% increase from March 2008. ARC reports that a significant portion of these foreclosures were comprised of communities of color who were disproportionately targeted by predatory subprime lending.

One of the myths surrounding the housing foreclosure crisis is that it was caused by irresponsible wanna be homeowners. Not only is this false, this effectively limits the housing foreclosure discussion/debate, and inhibits the process of discovering appropriate solutions.

In fact, 56% of sub-prime loans were refinancing loans. They were sold to families, (in some cases dishonestly,) who already had equity in their homes. This calls into question some of the reports that has characterized victims of the housing crisis as irresponsible consumers.

In light of the current housing crisis, because CDCs have focused such a significant amount of its resources and capacity on housing production models, I think it is critical that CDCs now rethink how they should approach the revitalization of poor urban and rural communities, and how CDCs respond more effectively by reducing the vulnerability of communities that are highly impacted by housing and financial ‘crises’.

It is quite noteworthy for HANDS’ executive director Patrick Morrissy to state that “three decades of important neighborhood stabilization work is threatened and could be undone in a very short period of time” due to the severity of this crisis.”

Though the acquisition project dubbed Operation Neighborhood Recovery (ONR) is being touted as the first instance nationwide that a nonprofit organization has achieved that type of large scale bulk purchase of mortgages, I can hardly consider such agreements an act of “reinvention of community development

” that will repair the lives of millions of American families who will be disenfranchised for generations to come, nor do I understand how ONR will it effectively address the causes that precipitated the crisis in the first place.

I am in agreement Defilippis’ view that community development should be about creating the social relationships which allow mutual goals to be realized. This is work that cannot be undone in a very short period of time. And share his concern for the proposed antidote put forth as a “new paradigm for reinvestment”.

How can we not question the effectiveness of ‘securing bulk portfolios’ that include multiple redevelopment partners, where the assertion is that the role of the government has been is to “assist private firms to extract value from community assets

”?

While ‘careful collaborations’ are being held up as one of the solutions to restabilize neighborhoods, there is no explicit acknowledgement of the principles of the partners and stakeholders involved, nor are there clear antidotes being offered to address the root causes of this market failure of epic proportions.

Poor people and communities of color continue to be targeted for consumption of inferior products, and we have yet to see any reports of accountability on the part of the architects of these aggressively marketed predatory financial products.

Direct effective and sustainable services to victims of predatory mortgage packages does not appear to be on the horizon, (e.g. moratoriums on home foreclosure, to my knowledge, has not been a serious part of the agenda for federal, state or city officials, or community development corporations.)

In order to assist communities in breaking the cycle of vulnerability to market failures, it crucial that the work of community development corporations incorporate the goal of facilitating the capacity of communities to establish community control.

This might indeed be a step in the direction of reinventing the work of community development corporations and community based organizations.

An Urban Revoluion

Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’?

Then why are we not supporting a mayoral candidate who is clearly committed to socialism and liberation?

The mayoral ‘tale of the tape’ for the November 3rd election includes:

• an incumbent who has demonstrated (as Bush did for eight years) that his agenda is committed to the interest of consolidating wealth while implementing austerity programs (cutting much needed program) across the city;
• a democratic opponent who has presented himself as the prototypical lesser-of-two-evils in our anemic two-party system, and offering nothing more than temporary solutions to systemic problems (e.g. stop-and-frisk);
• a “green” candidate who is essentially running a protest campaign, albeit an interesting one, but one that has not quite resonated with NYC communities that are suffering the worst;
• and a single mother, activist and student, determined to put working people’s issues at the center of the social/economic development debate in New York City.

Because of the apparent media firewall that has insisted on making this a two candidate race, most of us have never heard of Frances Villar, - the Party for Socialism and Liberation candidate for Mayor. But she understands that this is not about her. Her candidacy is simply an opportunity for New Yorkers to start strategizing how to deviate from our current political road to nowhere.

Frances Villar’s journey through this electoral process is unlike the road traveled by your typical politician on the campaign trail. Frances, like most community activists who disagree with the inequities that have resulted from what the NYC government is trying to accomplish, is obliged to act now with conviction and the faith that we will support her.

If you think that this struggle does not apply to you, then I suggest you think harder about your everyday urban reality, and parts of our lives that chain us to some of the work and living conditions that are actually unnecessary.

Standing back a little and putting our local political landscape into perspective may allow us to recognize that this election, as well as future elections, has less to do with the candidates who are ‘running‘ for office and much more to do with the system that they must operate within.

Though we should not focus so much of our attention on our candidates that we lose sight of the agendas, one would expect that the first woman of color to run for mayor of NYC, where there is a significant population of people of color, would be news (good or bad). For me, this is far too reminiscent of the dismissal of Shirley Chisolm as a viable candidate in 1972 and the media blackout of Cynthia Mckinney in 2008.

But at this moment, it is not the attention of the Untied States of America we are vying for, it is the support of the everyday New Yorkers who are capable of coming together at a moment’s notice, as we have in the past, that we are trying to reach. Though conditions on the ground may not appear as devastating as it seems, the assault that everyday people are currently facing will only get worse, and will not end until we recognize our mutual interests and come together.

I guess the Party for Socialism and Liberation does have some pretty audacious and lofty goals. Like moratoriums on housing foreclosures, allowing every New Yorker access to free college education, again. These are agenda items which are ultimately aimed at building a functional civic infrastructure that optimizes the aggregate contribution of all residents and stakeholders toward creating a healthier and democratic urban environment.

This process, in my opinion, is applied community building. A process by which we collectively build habits of engagement to replace our deeply embedded habits of detachment.

For those whose sentiment is “socialism won’t work” you are surely missing the point. The crux of PSL’s main goal is to support NYC residents in the process of maximizing the value of place for themselves and their families. It is crucial to understand that socialism is not the end goal, but a means to achieve optimal democracy and freedom. Some simply use the term ‘socialism’ just for the sake of distinguishing a system of social order from capitalism.

The PSL folks, unlike our typical politicians, are young and older adults who are actively trying to organize themselves and their ideas, collectively, to try and synthesize them into achievable goals. Remember the freedom movement? Well its back. We got to be startin something.

Urban revolutions happen, says Henri Lefebvre. In a forward by Neil Smith in Lefebvre's "The Urban Revolution", Smith explains, “by ‘urban revolution’, Lefebre sought to connote a far more profound change in social organization than that symbolized by the momentary urban revolts of the 1960s.”

This “profound change in social organization” will manifest the most legitimacy through the electoral process. This is how we distinguish ourselves from neolithic societies - by putting the club down, our heads together, by ceasing to allow capital to run our lives, and begin to create a path toward maximum feasible participation.

For some time we have threatened, “don’t make me have to get up?!” And now its time that we do actually stand up. In the last NYC Mayoral election of 2005, 1,289,935 votes were cast (according to the Board of Elections in the City of New York as of November 29, 2005). Of 8.1 million people in NYC (2004 US Census estimates), only 4.3 million were registered voters (Board of Elections in the City of New York. I can relate to the voter frustration, but voter apathy will accomplish nothing.)

Our integrity as tax paying citizens in NYC has been put into question. This has been evidenced, at the very least, through the subversion of the people’s will, via extension of term limits (a process so insidious that even opponents of this action have benefitted from it).

And now the controls and levers of New York City’s government are up for grabs this November, and it really is a big deal. The mayor is the key fiscal decision maker and final arbiter of a $60 billion budget. How are we going to maximize the utility of this election? How will we engage ourselves in the governance and change that is taking place in our communities?

Even in the face of the deep-seated special interest machine politics, multi-million dollar guerilla marketing campaigns, or promises of economic plans put forth purporting to improve our communities, we must avoid despondency at all costs and understand the urgency of the real issues.

The current “debate” is a joke, where mayoral candidates are asked their positions on naming a subway station after Michael Jackson. Basic issues such as housing and police brutality are not even on the table. We have basically found ourselves listening to politicians, not leaders, who are negotiating with the uber-elite, the extent to which everyday people will exist with or without servitude to the market.

Each mayoral decision that involves fiscal matters can further institutionalize, and therefore enhance, her/his control, the causes and effects of centralization and control (e.g. mayoral control of education), and become cumulatively and mutually reinforcing.

Fortunately, the primaries did offer us some signs that New Yorkers have not completely checked out of this contest. In the City Council primary race, four incumbents who voted to extend term limits were defeated.

We can look forward to a couple of “firsts”. Margaret Chin, a Hong Kong born immigration activist, will be the first Asian-American to represent Chinatown, and Deborah Rose, a community activist, will become the first African-American elected to the City Council from Staten Island. Daniel Dromm, an openly gay school teacher, will represent the 25th district in Queens, and Jumaane Williams who ousted a scandal ridden incumbent, will represent the 45th District in Brooklyn.

Frances Villar’s campaign for Mayor of NYC is just the beginning of a charge led by leaders who are restoring unity in the everyday people communities of New York City, encouraging a more conscious public in terms of our civic responsibilities, and bringing NYC communities closer to autonomy.

Henri Lefebvre reminds us, that we have a long history of delegating our interests to our representatives, but that political representatives have not always played their part and sometimes their part has been eliminated. So to whom, Lefebre asks, should we delegate power and representation of practical and social life? Shouldn’t such power be delegated to each other?

This is indeed a very complicated and sisysphean task, but we are too big to fail and all we have to lose is our chains.

Visit www.votepsl.org to learn more about Francis Villar's campaign for mayor.

The Library

The Library

Been seduced once, or twice
The N.Y. Public Library raped me viciously
Assaulted my nose with book smells
Till I almost forgot
Revolution was a thing of the streets.
Men with herring bones and blue shirts
And thick rimmed glasses have signs on them
That point to Flatbush
And the rabbi insisted that scholars and crematoriums
Were comparable.
Young whites, pouring over books,
Memorizing but never learning
And I wonder how they’ll justify genocide
“I was in the library, honest to God, I didn’t even know.”
Don’t matter, the library temps me
Sometimes worse than a woman
With wide baby holding hips and thick calves
Sometimes I wanna sleep on it, in it, through it and
Wake up and say, “Good morning books.”
I’ve kissed books before, held them close to my brown skin
Learned why mother got mood at the end of every month
But they never taught me how to fight
Or how to run from cops sperm bullets
“zig zag, Butchy, zig zag, don’t run straight fool.”
Taught me to know, but not to believe
Moms believe in God
I believe in revolution
We both believe in something
Devoutly.
So.
I guess I’ll a;ways be tempted
And sometimes raped.
“Got to go now books. It’s ten o’clock
and your closing up.
God I wish I could fuck you. G’nite.

The Last Poets (1970)

Political Economy of the City Final (Part 2)

II. Your Choice.


Please choose one of the following questions to write on. Your essay should be no more than 3 double-spaced pages. The essay is worth 40% of your grade.


1) Fred Siegel (“Is Regional Government the Answer?”) writes that regionalists assume that “flight creates blight.” To what extent can you make this argument with respect to Detroit?



2) Dreier, et al. argue that A place matters@ in the American metropolis. What do they mean exactly? Show why this idea that A place matters@ can be a problem for people in cities and suggest what can be done about it.



3) Douglas Rae writes, “The timing of the black migration to New Haven was an economic horror: if the goal was to capture high-wage manufacturing jobs in and near central-city neighborhoods…the timing couldn’t have been worse” (p. 258). What is he talking about? Did this happen in other cities? What was going on that leads Rae to make this observation?

Infinite Culcleasure
Place Matters

What Dreier, et al. mean when they argue that the place one lives matters, is related to the quality of life that one enjoys or suffers from as a result of the determining factors associated with opportunity structures. In doing so, Dreier et al document the impact of economic segregation and urban sprawl on different areas of life (e.g. jobs and income, health, access to goods and services, crime, etc) and demonstrate how ‘ubiquitous, complex and difficult’ these “spatial effects” are to change.

Other things being equal, people are better off if they have real choices in life. Dreier examines inequality in light of how place shapes and constrains our opportunities not only to acquire income but also to become fully functioning members of the economy, society, and polity .

In terms of ‘spatial mismatches’, employment in entry-level jobs with moderate education and skill requirements is growing rapidly, but exclusionary zoning often prevents low-wage workers from moving closer to such jobs . The Chicago Gautreaux program provides evidence that housing has a significant effect on people’s ability to find work. Adults who moved to the suburbs enjoyed higher rates of employment, while children who moved to the suburbs were more likely to be in school, in college track classes, in four-year colleges, employed, and in jobs with better benefits and better pay .

Arguing that concentrated poverty is bad for your health, Dreier draws our attention to the example of affluent northwestern Washington and suburban Bethesda neighborhoods, where they have one pediatrician for every 400 children, while the poor black neighborhoods of southeastern Washington have one pediatrician for every 3,700 children .

A very common health hazard that is difficult to avoid are houses in poorer neighborhoods, which tend to be older, crowded, dark, and dangerous, with health and safety code violations, resulting in more accidents and fires .

As far as the “retail gap” and goods and services is concerned, studies show that poor people pay more for poorer quality goods, and have fewer choices (a family living in a poor zip code in NYC pays 8.6% more than a family in a middle-class area ).

Dreier et al offers a more nuanced view of the relationship between crime and place of residence, beginning with the observation that although police are known to discriminate on the basis of race, they also discriminate on the basis of place, viewing all persons encountered in bad neighborhoods… as possessing the moral liability of the area itself . Drier also points out the inefficiency of trying to move away from crime, due to the cost of high mobility and the likelihood of ‘crime following people to the suburbs’

Through the lens of such a ‘vicious circle of inequality’, Dreier et al ultimately demonstrates how the future of cities and suburbs are inextricably linked, regardless of the social and/or political tendencies to characterize these places as natural competitors.

Dreier also contributes to dissolving the myth that suburban residents are better off by pointing out that diversity between suburbs show that half the suburban population live in “at-risk” suburbs with high needs but low, and often declining tax bases. Segregated, at-risk, inner-ring suburbs are basically extensions of inner city ghettoes… when the urban ghetto spills over the city line, it causes nearby suburbs to decline. With more than twice the regional percentage of minority residents and only two-thirds of the tax base, such communities may be worse off than the central cities they border.

The increasing devolution of public functions from the federal government to the state and local government, Dreier observes, means that geographic location has become more important in determining what we pay in taxes and what public goods and services we enjoy.

In response to these looming problems, Dreier et al advocate for a range of reforms, including federal programs rewarding regions that cooperate on land-use planning, reducing the bidding wars between localities by subjecting local subsidies to federal taxation, supplementing place-based community development efforts with mobility programs, and setting up elected metropolitan councils through which each region can devise democratic and workable solutions to regional problems .

It is impossible for cities and even whole regions, Dreier posits, to reverse economic segregation and sprawl unless state and federal governments change the rules of metropolitan governance - posing yet another socioeconomic issue to be determined by political will.

Political Economy of the City Final (Part 1)

This exam consists of two essays that total 8 pages double-spaced.


* Everyone is to write a 5-page essay on Question I, Learning From History.


* You have a choice for your second 3-page essay.


These are strict page limits, so don=t waste space. Pay attention to your writing! And draw explicitly on the reading, where appropriate. That means saying, every now and then, “Jones points out…. (Jones, 2004, p. 57)” or something to that effect.


Try to write your essays in time to let them sit for a day or so. Then come back and edit them. Good writing is essential.


The exam is due in my e-mail in-basket (eisingep@newschool.edu) NO LATER THAN 6:00 PM on Thursday, May 14. Don=t wait until the last minute. Late exams will not get full credit.



THE QUESTIONS ARE ON THE NEXT TWO PAGES OF THIS DOCUMENT.



I. Learning from History


A New York Times story on Sunday, May 3 observed that President Obama “seems to be holding the New Deal and the Great Society models in careful balance.” The implication is that he is trying to take the best of those grand initiatives and avoid their mistakes.


We, too, spent some time this last semester trying to learn from that particular history. As the United States embarks on a policy and spending initiative that will surely rival the New Deal and the Great Society, we should think hard about what was good for cities about those earlier policy initiatives and what was harmful or poorly conceived as far as cities were concerned.


In a 5-page essay please draw lessons from the New Deal and the Great Society that President Obama should be aware of as he proceeds with his economic recovery plans. You might approach this essay by thinking about the following specific questions:


1. What were some of the core problems that the New Deal and the Great Society addressed, at least as far as urban America was concerned?
2. What were some of the central or guiding ideas or themes or assumptions behind the New Deal and the Great Society?



3. What lessons from these earlier initiatives should we embrace or take heed of and which should we reject in thinking about the urban future under Obama and beyond?

Infinite Culcleasure
Learning from History

The first lesson that the Obama Administration can take from the New Deal and the Great Society programs is that federal initiatives from both eras were quite limited in producing any lasting substantive change for some groups in America, especially in urban society.

This was due to a wide array of political economy challenges, including exogenous governmental priorities at that time (most notably WWII and Vietnam respectively). The effectiveness of both the New Deal and the Great Society’s programs, as far as cities were concerned, were also limited by the power of organized competing interests within the U.S., namely the emergence of the automobile, its highway systems and the creation of the suburbs.

A core problem that the New Deal had to address was poverty. As a result, the federal government created the CCC (Civilian Conservative Corps), the Public Works Administration, the National Labor Relations Act which established the federal rights of workers to organize unions in order to engage in collective bargaining and to take part in strikes, and extended immediate economic relief through the FERA (Federal Emergency Relief Administration) program.

The central themes behind the New Deal were ‘relief, recovery and reform’. Relief measures came in the form of putting Americans back to work. Recovery was pursued through federal spending (e.g. the PWA). An attempt at reforming the economy was evidenced through the creation of the National Industrial Recovery Act, but was scoffed at by the business community and ultimately dissolved by the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds of unconstitutionality.

Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society also waged a ‘war on poverty’, and made considerable efforts to address racial injustice. Lyndon Johnson’s Administration introduced legislation that included the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964, Food Stamp Act of 1964, Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, Higher Education Act, Medicare and Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act, Fair Housing.

Again, a major guiding idea behind the Great Society was to “cure the ills of inequity. Johnson, a protégé of Roosevelt, was determined to complete the unfinished business of the New Deal by tackling racial injustice – not only through laws but through social policy .” Though many Americans benefited from Lyndon Johnson’s attempt at tackling racial injustice, some backlash did exist from white citizens who had no interest in seeing their tax dollars used to aid poor blacks.

President Obama seems comprehend the importance of this historical footnote very well, and demonstrates his understanding of this delicate issue by not championing any particular group’s cause, by carefully announcing his intention to ‘help all people’ including the most vulnerable.

Looking back, we learn that some programs had better success than others in reducing poverty rates among some Americans. Between the most dramatic, Medicare and Medicare changed the lives of many Americans. Ironically, the issue of health remains a major national topic of debate.

While acknowledging the successes, it is also important to come to terms with the other realities on the ground – most initiatives undertaken by the federal government in past 76 years have not made the majority of Americans more economically secure, nor have they led a more egalitarian society.

Lessons from earlier federal government initiatives that we can embrace and take heed of should include recognizing that in our political economic tradition, many regulations are formulated for political expediency and do not reflect cost/benefit considerations and are rarely designed to capture long term benefits.

Another great lesson to take from Lyndon Johnson is his attempt to divest from the policies concerning “urban renewal”. This failure should inform the Obama administration that President Lyndon Johnson’s vision was undermined by the ‘increasing costs of the Vietnam War and urban discord’. Some of this urban discord was the result of the dismantling of urban neighborhoods and its landscape.

If the United States government cannot make the connection between the ways in which today’s U.S. foreign policy of expansionism might be negatively influencing our domestic relations the way it did during President Johnson’s Presidential term, the social costs could be as high or greater than what America experienced through the long hot summers of the 1960’s.
Being relatively young in historical standards, American cities have not been the target of ‘planned growth’ by the federal government.

Under the auspice of change, President Obama has laid out ambitious goals for our nations metropolitan areas and cities, and has signed an Executive Order establishing the White House Office of Urban Affairs. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included broad support for urban communities, which appears to the potential to exceed the efforts of any previous Administration’s plan to revive American cities.

Yet, some of the logic of Mr. Obama’s goals is disconcerting. In particular, President Obama’s regional approach promotes ‘enhancing economic competitiveness’ in one paragraph, and then seeks to avoid creating winners and losers in his urban agenda in the very next paragraph .
To his credit, what President Obama’s does seem to have already learned from past governance of metropolitan areas and cites, is the inefficiency of uncoordinated development. In his urban policy agenda, his ‘regional approach’ seeks to “disregard jurisdictional boundaries, setting policy that takes into account how cities, suburbs, and exurbs interact. President Obama’s urban policy agenda will use this integrated approach to enhance economic competitiveness, sustainability, and equity in our cities and metropolitan areas .”

Parts of President Obama’s urban policy agenda resemble some of the major New Deal initiatives such as pubic employment, and housing. It will be interesting to compare the results and/or impacts of the WPA program (a program that built libraries, sidewalks, national parks and a platform for the Arts) with those of the Obama Administration’s ‘promise neighborhoods’ and ‘livable cities’.

An important caveat from the New Deal, to be analyzed by the Obama Administration, is that the housing it created was a completely segregated system. Even today, other things equal, a prejudiced white prefers an all white neighborhood rather than one where some are black.

Lessons we should certainly reject in thinking about the urban future under Obama and beyond, is the idea that urban society is a malleable entity that can be shaped from the top down by federal policies.

American citizens should, almost always, be skeptical that the government can solve our problems. Looking to Washington D.C. to fix things is a way of collectively letting ourselves off the hook in our civic duties, while leaving ourselves vulnerable to exploitation and disappointment. President Obama has already warned fellow Americans on day 1, that we would have to take the responsibility of our citizenship seriously.

Finally, because history has taught us how recession prone the American economy is, I feel that the federal government should also take a deeper look at the fundamental characteristics of our economic system, because even when there are no market failures, failure of market outcomes often occur due to distribution issues, rationality problems of individuals, and violations of inalienable rights of individuals.

In recognizing such flaws, the Obama Administration should aim to set us on track to avoid having to resort to such major sweeping reforms like the New Deal and Great Society programs – while chartering a course for reinventing our social, educational, and financial institutions.

Political Economy of the City Midterm

Gentrification in Harlem

“It is, indeed, quite true that business enterprises in the (negro) community are in the hands of alien races. … While it is true that many white people would not live among colored people they do not find it difficult to trade with them in their own locality… Every effort of the colored man to conduct business in his own community is destroyed by the powerful competition of white businessmen”. – “Boost Harlem,” American Recorder, 8 December 1928

This has consistently been the case in Harlem, from its inception. In this paper I will discuss the ‘gentrification’ of Harlem, by blacks and/or whites, in the context of an inexorable function of the U.S. market system, which creates enormous socio economic inequality and serves to preserve a legacy of white supremacy.

In the case where the ‘gentry’ who are impacting Harlem’s character happen to be black, I purport that in participating in such gentrification blacks are actually facilitating a mechanism that preserves white hegemony – partly by conceding to the creature comforts of middle class status, at the expense of collective and/or systemic change.

In exploring the growth, evolution, adaptation, decline and assimilation of blacks in Harlem, we cannot fully understand Harlem today without understanding yesterday’s Harlem.

Before black Harlem existed, as we’ve known it throughout the days of its fabled zenith, most of New York’s black community was clustered in poorer housing in the West Fifties and Sixties. They were willing to move into homes others found undesirable, because segregation limited the choices for black renters .

Blacks would reach Harlem only after white immigrants abandoned it. Although “foreigners” themselves, white migrants benefited from the cohesion and support of old country traditions, white skin privilege, and eventually successful assimilation into the white power structure of New York City.

When the IRT (Interborough Rapid Transit) subway line reached Harlem in 1904, it provoked a flurry of speculative building there. At the same time, existing residents of Harlem, who were primarily Jewish, began moving into the suburbs as their economic status improved.

As if Harlem was spawned in a vacuum, apart from racism everywhere in the U.S., many accounts of Harlem, I feel, are often romanticized by focusing on the appearance of black success (e.g. the artists and musicians celebrated throughout the Harlem Renaissance.) Therefore, it is pertinent to begin the history of black Harlem with the fact that building owners in that area found it difficult to fill the new apartments with anybody else.

Soon after, a pioneering black real-estate agent named Phillip Payton, bought property on 134th street and Fifth Avenue in 1904 and opened good-quality Harlem buildings to black tenants for the first time. In spite of some white protest, several white real-estate owners followed suit.

The influx of blacks sped the process of white emigration. Faced with vacant apartments and with dwindling numbers of white tenants, landlords would not refuse blacks. When they did, blacks pooled their resources and bought the buildings themselves ”.

A community began to form at what is now Central Harlem at 135th Street east of Eighth Avenue. As the black population grew, the boundaries spread outward in all directions. Fewer than 4,000 blacks lived north of 125th Street in 1905. By 1920, 84,000 blacks were living there. They constituted the vast majority of the community’s population in the center of Harlem and a substantial minority at its edges .

Around this time it was the sentiment of many blacks that “through hard work and perseverance, many argued, blacks themselves would destroy forever the negative stereotypes that whites still held about their race”, but “this belief proved too optimistic. Economic and artistic advancement was not sufficient to dislodge entrenched racial discrimination or lessen Harlem’s widespread poverty. In reality, Harlem crumbled into a slum while optimists noticed only advancement. It lived in depression before the Depression

Economic Development and Opportunity

Contrary to the expectations of black migrants from the South and the Caribbean, blacks seeking economic and community development in New York City found significant barriers to acquiring wealth. It was a society that forced black women to line up every morning in the “slave market” in the East 160’s in the Bronx so that white housewives could bid for their services (between ten and fifteen cents per hour, with the cost of lunch deducted. It was also a society that made sure that Negroes would have to work for such slave wages by closing to them its trade unions, thus adding to their handicap in competing with white men for better jobs, and denying them the capital necessary to go into business for themselves (there was not a single bank in Harlem north of 125th street.)

Standard of living, as usual, was marked by “basic inadequacy of pay scales for menial work and the reality of segregation and discrimination”, which intensified Harlem’s housing problems.

“Because of the city’s segregation practices, Harlem landlords could raise rents without fear of losing black tenants.” As Judge John Davies of Harlem’s Municipal Court testified at a 1925 hearing of the Mayor’s Committee on Rent Profiteering: “It is common for colored tenants in Harlem to pay twice as much as white tenants for the same apartments .”

Given such conditions, black residents moved frequently within Harlem. Almost half the surveyed population had lived at their current address for less than a year. The most frequent reason given was the search for adequate housing.

With no mechanism for advocacy, Negro wage earners in New York receiving less than $850 per year and banks showed reluctance to provide loans to black businesses. These obstacles and barriers kept blacks out of capital-intensive businesses. It also meant black stores were more poorly stocked than most of those owned by whites, so prices were often higher, and credit less available to customers.

If blacks had had needs peculiar to themselves that only other blacks could provide (e.g. Jews who needed Kosher meat) black stores could have competed successfully against white, even higher prices. By and large, such was not the case. Beauticians, undertakers, and few others offered services the white community was unwilling to provide. At best, black restaurants offered Harlemites familiar cooking and an alternative to unpleasant treatment at white downtown establishments

Among the Harlemites who were able to achieve moderate levels of economic independence, many would sabotage their own success through conspicuous consumption and thus squandering their earnings.

The denial of social status concomitant with economic level often led to ostentatious spending by moneyed Harlemites, a phenomenon widely reported by blacks and whites of the period .

Such unstable economic conditions and lack of strategic orientation would only intensify existing substandard living conditions and frustrate other aspects of black life in Harlem.

Community Development

“Without community there is not liberation” – Audre Lorde

Black Harlem did expand geographically, but at a much slower rate than its population did. As in other cities with a minority population, residential segregation seemed to increase. Population in black areas rose, but the neighborhood could not expand quickly enough because whites in nearby areas resisted the spillover .

These social forces became the impetus for the climate of a black cultural and intellectual Mecca, and black political activity. Black political clubs flourished, as did an outspoken and activist black press

However, as is the case today, Harlem was not a monolithic community back then. Greenburg points out that in addition to strains between northern blacks and newly arriving southern blacks, “perhaps the sharpest tensions arose between native-born and foreign-born blacks .

There is evidence of a great deal of prejudice and resentment directed by American blacks at foreign-born blacks. Many resented the foreigners for being dismissive and overbearing toward other blacks and too radical politically. They called foreigners “monkey chasers” and “coconuts” and were called “handkerchief heads” in return .

Though centuries had passed since the institution of slavery had been legally abolished, its four hundred year legacy would persists to negatively effect the psyche of the ancestors of the African/Atlantic/Caribbean slave trade in the most peculiar ways. As illustrated in the in-group conflict above, Harlem was no exception to the lasting impacts of the destruction of the African family system, ties of kinship, and social organization that could perpetuate and transmit the African cultural heritage

The superficial appearance of ‘race pride’ and the depiction of Harlem as the “symbol of liberty and the Promised Land to Negroes everywhere”, only served to undermine any substantive and sustainable community development that would outlast drugs, crime and racism.

Beneath the veneer of the Harlem Renaissance, within the black Harlem community existed a crisis of collective identity, coordination and competency. Politically powerless, the problems of black Harlem would continue to be exacerbated by consistent dismissal from fair allocation of government resources.

Infrastructural and Institutional Underdevelopment

What was once considered the ‘negro problem’ was intensified by well-documented government apathy.

As far as that embodiment of society that was government, remarks Robert Caro, “the city government that was supposed to represent them as well as the white man, the attitude of that government was symbolized by public works.”

When La Guardia came into office in 1934, there hadn’t been a new school built in Harlem in twenty-five years (La Guardia’s administration didn’t get around to building one for four more years), and in all Harlem the city provided, to serve 300,000 people, exactly one clinic, built – with WPA funds – in 1937, equipped with substantial facilities for child care, and exactly one hospital (on whose executive staff there was exactly one Negro.)

Mothers and their babies died in Harlem at a rate more than double that in the city as a whole, more than one out of every ten babies born in Harlem died at birth .

Under the administration of Robert Moses, “master builder” of mid-20th century New York City, poor blacks and Latinos were effectively confined to Harlem.

Moses built 255 playgrounds in NYC during the 1930’s, just two playgrounds in Harlem by 1932 and one pool in Harlem, and he was determined that that was going to be the only pool that Negroes were going to use .

An explicit demonstration of systemic underdevelopment is evidenced by the use of budgetary funds by Moses. The development of the southern two miles of Riverside Park cost $16,300,000, or about $8,000,000 per mile. In contrast, the development of the northern 4.7 miles of Riverside Park – the stretch that included Negro Harlem – cost $7,900,000, or about $1,700,000 per mile .

Harlem Today

To simplify the process of gentrification with a community’s ‘Starbuck’s moment’ or the presence of Bill Clinton’s office, townhouses owned by celebrities such as Roberta Flack and Samuel Jackson, or the arrival of a Marriot hotel, is to risk misunderstanding the systemic process of gentrification.

The nostalgic quality of the Harlem Renaissance is what distinguishes Harlem’s gentrification from other cities and towns. But in Harlem, just like other gentrifying neighborhoods, “there is a spatial arrangement of buildings and places of business that attract people and show the use of and expansion of the economy .

In his book ‘There Goes the Hood’, Lance Freeman delivers a ground-up perspective of gentrification courtesy of indigenous residents who have been experiencing the recent changes throughout Harlem.

Freeman’s interviews include perspectives of the gentrification process that range from Harlemites who claim to have benefited from better public services in Harlem, to those who are bitter and resentful of the changes after having been neglected for so long, and those fearful of the possibility of being displaced.

The most pertinent debate, Freeman suggests, is how to strike a balance between “allowing the market to do its thing while correcting for some of the undesirable outcomes inherent in market capitalism .

In sum, I turn to Samuel Singh’s observation of gentrification as the most comprehensive understanding of gentrification in terms of its systemic impact on Harlem and other poor communities.

Singh explains gentrification as a process, which is made up of the activities of certain kinds of social agents or institutions. The politicians, landlords, developers, and banks all play key roles. To understand how both decay and gentrification of urban neighborhoods happen, all we have to do is look at the dynamics of the flow of capital as it moves into and out of the Harlem environment.

The housing market, Singh continues, tends to sort the population by income into different areas. If lower income residents increasingly fill an area, landlords have an incentive to not maintain their properties. If they were to invest in upgrades, they’d need to charge a higher rent to make this a profitable investment. People with higher incomes who could pay higher rents may not be willing to live in that neighborhood. So landlords simply drain the decaying buildings of their rent. By putting off repairs, they can save money to buy other buildings elsewhere. Low-income families and people in Harlem have no choice because anything else would be uneconomical.

According to Singh, one of the things about capitalism is that it generates a division of people into different social and economic classes. The social pyramid may have the tiny class on the tip and that group just happens to own the bulk of economic wealth. These people fill their need for control over labor is another class; the middle class who manages, plan and advise. Their class position is based on monopolization of skills, education and connections rather than ownership of capital. Below them are ranged the mass of workers who are forced to work under the control of this sort of hierarchy the working class. This class hierarchy in the economy generates great inequality in wealth and income and it is the structure, which is prevalent in Harlem and the world today .

Though Singh limits his discussion to a class based structure, through the historical accounts of Harlem listed above and the concentration of wealth among whites today, we see patterns of white hegemony. Thus, from my perspective, gentrification has served to displace people of color (including some poor whites), while overall preserving a legacy of white supremacy through market forces.

Having informally asked Harlem residents myself, the open-ended question, “What happened to Harlem?” I have gotten many different stories, but none of them conclusive. In most cases it is as if Harlemites don’t know what hit them.

Looking ahead, possible research questions that I fell will be relevant to gentrification issues in Harlem and beyond are; how has, if at all, the housing crisis effected gentrification? Or, has gentrification impacted the housing crisis?

Midterm

New York City and State Gate Keepers

Under supervision, Correction Officers maintain security within correctional facilities and are responsible for the custody, control, care, job training and work performance of inmates on detention and sentenced correctional facilities.

Nature of the Work

Correctional officers supervise inmate meals, visits, recreational programs, and other congregate activities; inspect assigned areas for conditions which threaten safety and security; conduct searches in order to detect contraband; complete forms and reports; maintain appropriate log books; communicate with other correctional officers to exchange pertinent information; issue verbal orders, announcements and explanations to inmates; observe inmates and make recommendations concerning medical and/or psychiatric referrals; safeguard Departmental supplies and equipment; escort inmates within and outside of the facility including their transportation in Departmental vehicles; respond to unusual incidents and disturbances; enforce security procedures in accordance with Department guidelines; request medical assistance for inmates when necessary; count and verify the number of inmates present in assigned areas; verify identification of inmates; supervise inmates of either sex; operate a motor vehicle; and perform related work .

Qualifications, Education and Advancement

Correctional officers learn most of what they need to know for their work through on-the-job. Qualifications vary by agency, but all agencies require a high school diploma or equivalent, and some also require some college education or full-time work experience. All institutions require correctional officers to be at least 18 to 21 years of age, be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, and have no felony convictions

Qualified officers may advance to the position of correctional sergeant. Correctional sergeants supervise correctional officers and usually are responsible for maintaining security and directing the activities of other officers during an assigned shift or in an assigned area. Ambitious and qualified correctional officers can be promoted to supervisory or administrative positions all the way up to warden. Attending college may enhance promotion prospects. Officers sometimes transfer to related jobs, such as probation officer, parole officer, and correctional treatment specialist .

Correction Officers are Peace Officers under Section 1.20 of the Criminal Procedure Law and positions are located throughout New York State in carious facilities of the NYS Department of Correctional Services, and are variously compensated.

Compensation

$34, 329 – hiring rate (increase expected upon completion of current contract negotiations)
$200 – Lump sum paid after eight weeks of training
$36,111 – 6 month salary rate
$41,348 – After compensation of 26 full bi-weekly payroll periods

Annual salary advancement is based on performance evaluations. Employees are also eligible for par raise as negotiated by their certified bargaining agent. Additional compensation is provided through a pre-shift briefing premium payable each payroll period in addition to base salary. This currently amounts to $66.43 per payroll period .

An inconvenience pay program is in place for evening and night shift employees .

Appointees who work in the five boroughs of New York City or in Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland or Westchester Counties will receive an additional $3,029 annual downstate adjustment. Appointees who work in Dutchess, Orange or Putnam Counties will receive an additional $1,126 annual Mid-Hudson adjustment .

In New York City (Riker’s Island); salaries increase to $70,717 after 5 ½ years of service, $1,524 per year holiday pay increases to $3,146 after 5 ½ years of service, a uniform allowance of $1,100 is paid per year, 13 paid vacation days increase to 27 days after 5 years, 11 holidays and health insurance are paid, and longevity pay ranges from $3,859 after 5, 10, 15, and 20 years of service.

Employment and Job Outlook

The New York State Department of Correctional Services is responsible for the confinement and habilitation of approximately 60,500 inmates held at 69 state correctional facilities plus the 902-bed Willard Drug Treatment Campus and is guided by the Departmental Mission .

The average daily inmate population of New York City Department of Corrections (DOC) fluctuates between 13,000 and 18,000. On a typical weekday, the Department logs more than 3,000 miles transporting inmates to courts in the five boroughs and to medical and other jails or prison facilities throughout the city and state .

Estimates in May 2003 reported that correctional state employees in New York ranked 4th in “states with the highest concentration of workers in this occupation” and 4th in “top paying States for this occupation”; employment – 37,660, hourly mean wage - $22.76, annual mean wage – 47,330, Percent of State employment – 0.456% .

In the same period, the “Metropolitan areas with the highest concentration of workers in this occupation” ranked 4th Glenn Falls, NY MSA, employment – 870, hourly mean wage $23.11, Annual mean wage – $48,080, Percent of MSA employment – 1.741%. Ranked fifth was Utica-Rome, NY MSA, employment – 2,060, hourly mean wage – $21.53, Annual mean wage – $44,780 Percent of MSA employment – 1.647%.

The trend for Correctional Officer job opportunities in New York City and State, versus opportunities nationally appears to be inverted. Whereas the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the job opportunities for Correction Officers are “excellent” due to the need to replace correctional officers who transfer to other occupations, retire, or leave the labor force, coupled with rising employment demand, will generate thousands of openings each year , this has not been the case in NYS.

While the projection data from the National Employment Matrix expects Correctional Officer positions in the U.S. from 2006-16 to increase from 500.000 to 582,000 (16 percent) , this is not expected to be the trend for NYS Department of Correctional Services.

Politics and Press

Friday, January 11, 2008, DOCS Commissioner said: “we are entering a new era in New York State Corrections where the trends are clear; declining prison population but increasing treatment and services for our mentally ill inmates and sex offenders. The treatment and services mandated by the courts and the State Legislature are both necessary and appropriate. These services, along with the added emphasis on reentry, are all designed to provide for greater public safety. All such efforts are costly. To help pay for them, closing prisons – particularly those with vacant, un-staffed dormitories – is the right thing to do .”

An article by Jim Dwyer in the New York Times last April reported:

A steady supply of criminals is the foundation of the economy of large swaths of New York State, which has 70 prisons that employ about 20,000 people as correction officers…

Since 1999, the state says, the number of prisoners has declined by 13 percent, to 62,500 from 72,600…

New York State went on a great surge of prison building during the 1980s and 1990s, continuing even after the rate of violent crime had created…

Prisons in New York are like military bases in other parts of the country, and closing them are just as difficult. In prison towns, schools, churches and Little Leagues all depend on the families that have built their livelihoods on the prison economy. Year after year, prisons survived during the legislative budget negotiations, which are always conducted under information blackouts…

“It’s really a jobs program for economically depressed upstate communities,” said Robert Gangi, executive director of Correctional Association of New York, a nonprofit organization that has oversight responsibilities for the prisons…

As of Spring 2008, with tax revenues in decline and every agency ordered to cut its budget, the prison machinery rolls on – less crime or not…

Contrary to the above assessment, according to the NYS Department of Labor report in October 2008, the State plans to eliminate approximately 200 corrections officer jobs and close dormitories at 17 medium and minimum-security prisons as part of a plan to trim $81.6 million in spending this year. Affected prisons in the Hudson Valley include Mid-Orange Correctional Facility, Otisville Correctional Facility (Orange County) and the Fishkill Correctional Facility (Dutchess County) .

This will not necessarily translate into current Correctional Officers losing their jobs. Commissioner of Correctional Services Brian Fischer plans to consolidate housing units and reduce approximately 134 correction officer positions primarily by eliminating vacant positions and through attritions of approximately 44 positions .

Possible challenges to consolidating/closing NYS prisons might also include what to do with high-level staffers such as wardens, simply because there is usually only one warden per jail, prison, or penitentiary.



http://www.nyc.gov/html/doc/html/job/job_opp.shtml (Application Form)
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos156.htm
http://www.docs.state.ny.us/jobs/CO_Exam.html
http://www.docs.state.ny.us/jobs/CO_Exam.html
http://www.docs.state.ny.us/jobs/CO_Exam.html
http://www.docs.state.ny.us/jobs/CO_Exam.html
http://www.dos.state.ny.us
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doc/html/about/facilities_overview.shtml
http://www.bls.gov
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos156.htm
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos156.htm
http://www.docs.state.ny.us/PressRel/prisonclosure.html
“Less Crime: No Reason To Shut Prisons” New York Times, April 12, 2008
http://www.labor.state.ny.us/
http://www.docs.state.ny.us/pressrel/AdditionalBudgetReductions08.html