An Unconventional Approach to Boston's Problems

(This is a modified version of a lecture Dr. Alperovitz, a fellow of the Kennedy Institute of Politics, recently gave to a number of Boston area groups interested in social and economic development in both the black and white communities.)

IN NORMAL times conventional ideas have tremendous power to hobble new thought. In times of crisis, however, man's tendency to retreat to the security of tradition can be over-whelming.

Even the most thoughtful can be blinded to opportunities for creative change--a lesson we in the Boston area are likely to learn the hard way we slip deeper into the urban crisis coming months.

The man most vulnerable to the p of convention, of course is the mayor of Boston, Kevin White; the problem is the obvious one of Roxbury--and the Mayor, though better than most Mayors, is not likely, despite his efforts, to be able to overcome the tremendous problems he faces. He will probably simply stumble along doing the best he can--until the next motion.

Consider the Mayor's first dilemma: he can undoubtedly use his prestige and influence to move the meager poverty funds still available into any of a number of directions. But funds are very limited--and has no way to get resources on the scale needed.

Again, even when he has funds, there is still the problem of what to do. As many socially concerned businessmen (and university professors) are now asking themselves--how do you decide which of the numerous groups in Roxbury have meaningful programs worthy of support?

Scarce resources on the one hand and competing claims on the other set the terms of the Mayor's dilemma.

Moreover, there are militants and pseudo-militants and moderates and private ghetto businessmen and gangs and a hundred would-be leaders -- each of whom has a political stake in a Mayor's decision.

How can one really know who represents the people of Roxbury? The various leaders all claim support; many deserve it--many do not. Most are not even known by the mass of ghetto people who carry on their day-to-day lives oblivious to names jockeying for space in the Globe.

IN MANY American cities these various dilemmas are conventionally resolved piece-meal, by helping any group that shows some potential for positive change -- and by choosing, helter-skelter, at any moment among conflicting claims to scarce resources. And, of course, ultimately by yielding to the group which can cause the greatest political problem for City Hall.

As the Mayor probably senses, no real solution of a city's problems comes out of this haphazard approach.

In fact, Mayor White, after his politically costly rejection of the United Front, is probably beginning to understand that the conventional approach is also bad politics. Its particular hazard is that when the Mayor chooses any one group and rejects the competing others, he makes one friend and a dozen enemies.

It is the same problem Congressmen face in patronage fights. The unsophisticated observer thinks Congressmen love to hand out patronage -- like postmasterships in small towns. The truth is they hate it. For, as one Congressman puts it: 'The day before you choose your postmaster, you have ten friendly supplicants and sycophants. The day after, you have nine violent critics--and one ingrate!"

The likelihood is, of course, that our Mayor--like most Mayors (and Congressmen)--will struggle through his term fighting dilemmas based on group competition instead of resolving them.

Each day he will get deeper and deeper into the bog of the conventional approach, doing a bit here and a bit there, but failing to solve the big problems; slugging it out, avoiding punches from both right and left -- ending up bruised and battered politically--like any man in the middle of a violent fight. Which is just what he is.

The tragedy is that there is an alternative--but it may be too unconventional for the Mayor, even though it has been tried elsewhere with great success, and even though its wisdom has been demonstrated in arenas other than the city.

The unconventional approach would do just what the United Front asks--hand over to the black community decisions about resource utilization. Quite specifically, an appropriate share of the funds for the various anti-poverty efforts which are now administered partly by the city and partly by the Federal government would be given to Roxbury to use as it sees fit.

Now the conventional-minded -- and especially the city bureaucrats who would lose control of resources--will point out a hundred problems. They will say the people of Roxbury, like children or underdeveloped countries, need to be brought along slowly to the point where they can help themselves. They will say that it is politically impossible.

The truth is that it is not. In fact, all around the country shrewd administrators understand that demands for Community Control which sound radical and revolutionary can also be wise administrative practice. McGeorge Bundy, for example, moved quickly in this direction in his recommendations for New York City schools (though his approach was severely limited in many respects).

But, of course, taken beyond schools, the concept of community control needs considerable definition. For instance, it is obviously a mistake to give funds to leaders whose claim to represent the community is nothing more than their own say-so.

HOW TO proceed?

The best example of the unconventional approach in action is in Columbus, Ohio. A humane and intelligent Lutheran minister, Rev. Leopold Bernhard, helped set up a "Neighborhood Corporation" in Columbus's ghetto with the help of Washington writer Milton Kotler. The Corporation is, in fact, little more than a simple legal line drawn around a neighborhood of 8,000 people. (Any good lawyer can set one up in a few hours--if a community so wishes.)

The difference between this corporation and others is that its "stock-holders" all live in one geographic area. And, above all, it is controlled one-man, one-vote by the neighborhood. Anyone in the neighborhood can become a member simply by signing up--and has voting power equal to anyone else.

In Columbus, the Office of Economic Opportunity and others interested in fighting poverty transferred funds directly to the Corporation--to be used in ways the community thought appropriate to its self-improvement.

Of course, mistakes were made (as they are in any organization--including the Mayor's office). But in Columbus there is a good way to correct mistakes. The final recourse lies in the fact that these are regular neighborhood meetings and regular Corporation neighborhood elections.

If any one group tries to run away with the community's resources, or to put them to uses which are less than first priority, that group must face the consequences in the open arena of neighborhood politics. There are plenty of community groups and leaders who keep an eye on each other--just as in any other political institution.

There is also the ultimate sanction: if funds are used irresponsibly in one period, they are not likely to be continued or replenished in subsequent periods.

The idea of local control is an old, old idea--and a traditionally American one--despite militant rhetoric which calls the same thing a revolution. Some recall that in the last century Roxbury was, in fact, an independent community--with power to decide many community issues itself.

The Community Corporation concept is only a rehabilitation of that idea; and it is already well-developed in parts of Roxbury. Its basic strength, of course, is the old truth that the only way to achieve self respect is to have true responsibility for the consequences of decisions that affect one's life.

And in that truth, of course, also lies the secret to unlocking tremendous energies for a variety of cooperative community self-help efforts.

The approach, some may note, is also reminiscent of General George C. Marshall's handling of American aid to Europe. Instead of attempting, from Washington, to decide how best to allocate Marshall Plan resources, the General told the Europeans to get together and come up with their own plans. In effect, he said, "Once you have come to conclusions about how best to proceed, we'll help you do it--but the decision is yours, not ours."

IN BOSTON, were the Mayor able to summon the courage to abandon the conventional approach and hand resources over to community control, he might also solve his own administive headache. He too could say: 'You people decidewhat is best for your neighbourhood. We'll help -- but it cannot be our decision."

Such an approach, of course, would also shrewdly pull the Mayor's own head out of the line of political fire which will develop from one direction or the other--no matter which way he turns in coming encounters.

The Columbus example has been tried in dozens of other communities--including New York's Bedford-Stuyvesant, in a project sponsored by Senator Robert Kennedy. But even if the Mayor were to follow the approach, in fact, he would be taking only a very limited step towards the wisdom of the unconventional approach, in fact, on its own it can end up as little more than "shrewd administractive technique" for routine antipoverty efforts.

It can solve much of the problem of "who to deal with"--and also the problem of "how to choose." But it does not solve the problem of "where to get the money." Nor does it speak directly, in its limited form, to a number of central issues of community participation, control, initiative and democracy.

But were the Mayor really inter- ested in change--and were he willing to experiment--he would see a great opportunity to begin to deal with such issues, too, right before his eyes this very moment.

One results of the riots, of course, is that whether they like it or not, white businessmen in the black community are becoming more and more interesting in selling their stores and factories to black residents of the community.

There are also adequate resources available, from banks, insurance companies, and the business community, to help the community buy these businesses at a fair price--and indeed to help the community establish new businesses, like the EG&G Company, as well.

There is no difficulty in raising funds for such purposes--for the businesses are not hand-out welfare operations like the poverty program but sound profit-making enterprises. They pay back loans--and banks know it. A loan to transfer ownership of a profitable business is relatively easy to arrange, given the present climate. (And new government aid programs are also available.)

The conventional approach of both the black and white communities is simply to arrange to let black entrepreneurs buy these businesses now. This is, of course, very much in the ordinary business tradition, and will probably occur.

The difficulty with the conventional approach, again, is that it passes up a tremendous opportunity for innovation. Once businesses are handed to black entrepreneurs, they, of course, will begin to pocket the profits made from doing business in the community. This is all well and good from the conventional standpoint.

But it means the profits will end up helping only a tiny handful of entrepreneurs--not the community at large. The approach will lead to their personal enrichment, and to their abandonment of the community from which they came.

There is a triple tragedy in this. Most important, it will mean the flight of profits out of the community -- probably into the suburbs as soon as the black entrepreneur can afford to use the profits to buy a split-level. It will also mean the loss of the entrepreneur's talent--for his creative skill will go into making his own fortune, not into helping the community.

And finally, it will mean the loss of an opportunity to develop real resources for the community's own self-help effort.

Everyone knows the poverty program has been cut back--and will in all likelihood continue to be reduced by Congress. There is little hope that serious resources from Washington will be forthcoming in the near future.

But the profits of the business already in the community (and new ones as well) are already at hand.

There is no reason--save fear of the unconventional--that the businesses could not be owned by the community--through its Neighborhood Corporation--partly as cooperatives, partly as corporations. The profits could then be plowed back into such community srevices as day-care centers, teenage centers, training programs, etc.

The community itself, in short, could provide its own anti-poverty or development fund--if the community as a whole owned its own businesses, or at least some of them.

Thus the Neighborhood Service Corporation, on the model of Columbus, would also own neighborhood businesses. Again, one man, one vote.

Examples of experiments which move in this direction also exist in New York, in Georgia, in California, and elsewhere. None is fully developed as yet; but all move towards using business self-help skills to provide an expanding source of funds--from profits--to develop the other aspects of the community's social service program.

(There are also some very interesting tax angles which are available to help facilitate the transfer of ownership of old or new businesses for such special community purposes.)

AGAIN, THE conventional mind can find a thousand reasons why such an approach will not work. But those with imagination can see that the community corporation idea--linked to an independent source of funds which can supplement and perhaps eventually take the place of anti-poverty funds--is a creative response to our present difficulties.

Morcover, loans to community-owned businesses are not hand outs. They are paid back. The result is a healthier relationship between the one who is helped and the one who does the helping.

And, above all, from the community point of view, a continued independent 0source of funds can transform the neighborhood corporation from a limited administrative form into a true arena for community action. Indeed, if we are serious about attempting to recreate democratic participation in America, community decisions are simply going to have to involve the attraction of real resources.

Once again, the Marshall Plan comes to mind. What we are talking about is helping communities get on their own feet--through the development of industry--and through an institution which can use community profits directly for community services.

In the Marshall Plan the political institution of the nation state--through its power to tax--helped to translate profits from industry into needed social services. In the American city the tax power is severely limited. A new democratically controlled institution, the Community Corporation -- which administers neighborhood services and owns some neighborhood industry--is needed to fulfill the same function and to respond to the local community as no centralized nation state can.

Such unconventional ideas, of course, sound very much like the rhetoric of the black miiltant who speaks vaguely of community control. The ideas are very much in accord with such thinking, though the black militant has rarely made the explicit link between community services and community industry. They are also the logical extension of the concept of decentralization. But the ideas need not be restricted to the black community.

If the Mayor were really prepared to innovate and invent, he would at once see that the poor white communities of Boston have many of the same difficulties as the black communities. There is no reason he could not help a solid but poor Irish neighborhood develop its own community controlled services and enterprises at the same time a black neighborhood is doing so.

Were he to apply the same program across the color line, of course, he might see that race conflicts which continually erupt into politics could be short-circuited--in part at least. For a program which met the needs of both the black and white communities, and involved loans, self-help, and very few hand-outs, could be the basis of a new politics--a politics which did not have to tax one group to give hand-outs to another--and a politics which could take a long step towards the political reconstruction of the ideal of community and cooperation.

Such an approach might even help American cities get beyond the crisis which threatens to pull conventional-minded leadership into the hands of violence, counter-violence--and the now all too conventional cycle of rebellion, terror and repression

Consider the Mayor's first dilemma: he can undoubtedly use his prestige and influence to move the meager poverty funds still available into any of a number of directions. But funds are very limited--and has no way to get resources on the scale needed.

Again, even when he has funds, there is still the problem of what to do. As many socially concerned businessmen (and university professors) are now asking themselves--how do you decide which of the numerous groups in Roxbury have meaningful programs worthy of support?

Scarce resources on the one hand and competing claims on the other set the terms of the Mayor's dilemma.

Moreover, there are militants and pseudo-militants and moderates and private ghetto businessmen and gangs and a hundred would-be leaders -- each of whom has a political stake in a Mayor's decision.

How can one really know who represents the people of Roxbury? The various leaders all claim support; many deserve it--many do not. Most are not even known by the mass of ghetto people who carry on their day-to-day lives oblivious to names jockeying for space in the Globe.

IN MANY American cities these various dilemmas are conventionally resolved piece-meal, by helping any group that shows some potential for positive change -- and by choosing, helter-skelter, at any moment among conflicting claims to scarce resources. And, of course, ultimately by yielding to the group which can cause the greatest political problem for City Hall.

As the Mayor probably senses, no real solution of a city's problems comes out of this haphazard approach.

In fact, Mayor White, after his politically costly rejection of the United Front, is probably beginning to understand that the conventional approach is also bad politics. Its particular hazard is that when the Mayor chooses any one group and rejects the competing others, he makes one friend and a dozen enemies.

It is the same problem Congressmen face in patronage fights. The unsophisticated observer thinks Congressmen love to hand out patronage -- like postmasterships in small towns. The truth is they hate it. For, as one Congressman puts it: 'The day before you choose your postmaster, you have ten friendly supplicants and sycophants. The day after, you have nine violent critics--and one ingrate!"

The likelihood is, of course, that our Mayor--like most Mayors (and Congressmen)--will struggle through his term fighting dilemmas based on group competition instead of resolving them.

Each day he will get deeper and deeper into the bog of the conventional approach, doing a bit here and a bit there, but failing to solve the big problems; slugging it out, avoiding punches from both right and left -- ending up bruised and battered politically--like any man in the middle of a violent fight. Which is just what he is.

The tragedy is that there is an alternative--but it may be too unconventional for the Mayor, even though it has been tried elsewhere with great success, and even though its wisdom has been demonstrated in arenas other than the city.

The unconventional approach would do just what the United Front asks--hand over to the black community decisions about resource utilization. Quite specifically, an appropriate share of the funds for the various anti-poverty efforts which are now administered partly by the city and partly by the Federal government would be given to Roxbury to use as it sees fit.

Now the conventional-minded -- and especially the city bureaucrats who would lose control of resources--will point out a hundred problems. They will say the people of Roxbury, like children or underdeveloped countries, need to be brought along slowly to the point where they can help themselves. They will say that it is politically impossible.

The truth is that it is not. In fact, all around the country shrewd administrators understand that demands for Community Control which sound radical and revolutionary can also be wise administrative practice. McGeorge Bundy, for example, moved quickly in this direction in his recommendations for New York City schools (though his approach was severely limited in many respects).

But, of course, taken beyond schools, the concept of community control needs considerable definition. For instance, it is obviously a mistake to give funds to leaders whose claim to represent the community is nothing more than their own say-so.

HOW TO proceed?

The best example of the unconventional approach in action is in Columbus, Ohio. A humane and intelligent Lutheran minister, Rev. Leopold Bernhard, helped set up a "Neighborhood Corporation" in Columbus's ghetto with the help of Washington writer Milton Kotler. The Corporation is, in fact, little more than a simple legal line drawn around a neighborhood of 8,000 people. (Any good lawyer can set one up in a few hours--if a community so wishes.)

The difference between this corporation and others is that its "stock-holders" all live in one geographic area. And, above all, it is controlled one-man, one-vote by the neighborhood. Anyone in the neighborhood can become a member simply by signing up--and has voting power equal to anyone else.

In Columbus, the Office of Economic Opportunity and others interested in fighting poverty transferred funds directly to the Corporation--to be used in ways the community thought appropriate to its self-improvement.

Of course, mistakes were made (as they are in any organization--including the Mayor's office). But in Columbus there is a good way to correct mistakes. The final recourse lies in the fact that these are regular neighborhood meetings and regular Corporation neighborhood elections.

If any one group tries to run away with the community's resources, or to put them to uses which are less than first priority, that group must face the consequences in the open arena of neighborhood politics. There are plenty of community groups and leaders who keep an eye on each other--just as in any other political institution.

There is also the ultimate sanction: if funds are used irresponsibly in one period, they are not likely to be continued or replenished in subsequent periods.

The idea of local control is an old, old idea--and a traditionally American one--despite militant rhetoric which calls the same thing a revolution. Some recall that in the last century Roxbury was, in fact, an independent community--with power to decide many community issues itself.

The Community Corporation concept is only a rehabilitation of that idea; and it is already well-developed in parts of Roxbury. Its basic strength, of course, is the old truth that the only way to achieve self respect is to have true responsibility for the consequences of decisions that affect one's life.

And in that truth, of course, also lies the secret to unlocking tremendous energies for a variety of cooperative community self-help efforts.

The approach, some may note, is also reminiscent of General George C. Marshall's handling of American aid to Europe. Instead of attempting, from Washington, to decide how best to allocate Marshall Plan resources, the General told the Europeans to get together and come up with their own plans. In effect, he said, "Once you have come to conclusions about how best to proceed, we'll help you do it--but the decision is yours, not ours."

IN BOSTON, were the Mayor able to summon the courage to abandon the conventional approach and hand resources over to community control, he might also solve his own administive headache. He too could say: 'You people decidewhat is best for your neighbourhood. We'll help -- but it cannot be our decision."

Such an approach, of course, would also shrewdly pull the Mayor's own head out of the line of political fire which will develop from one direction or the other--no matter which way he turns in coming encounters.

The Columbus example has been tried in dozens of other communities--including New York's Bedford-Stuyvesant, in a project sponsored by Senator Robert Kennedy. But even if the Mayor were to follow the approach, in fact, he would be taking only a very limited step towards the wisdom of the unconventional approach, in fact, on its own it can end up as little more than "shrewd administractive technique" for routine antipoverty efforts.

It can solve much of the problem of "who to deal with"--and also the problem of "how to choose." But it does not solve the problem of "where to get the money." Nor does it speak directly, in its limited form, to a number of central issues of community participation, control, initiative and democracy.

But were the Mayor really inter- ested in change--and were he willing to experiment--he would see a great opportunity to begin to deal with such issues, too, right before his eyes this very moment.

One results of the riots, of course, is that whether they like it or not, white businessmen in the black community are becoming more and more interesting in selling their stores and factories to black residents of the community.

There are also adequate resources available, from banks, insurance companies, and the business community, to help the community buy these businesses at a fair price--and indeed to help the community establish new businesses, like the EG&G Company, as well.

There is no difficulty in raising funds for such purposes--for the businesses are not hand-out welfare operations like the poverty program but sound profit-making enterprises. They pay back loans--and banks know it. A loan to transfer ownership of a profitable business is relatively easy to arrange, given the present climate. (And new government aid programs are also available.)

The conventional approach of both the black and white communities is simply to arrange to let black entrepreneurs buy these businesses now. This is, of course, very much in the ordinary business tradition, and will probably occur.

The difficulty with the conventional approach, again, is that it passes up a tremendous opportunity for innovation. Once businesses are handed to black entrepreneurs, they, of course, will begin to pocket the profits made from doing business in the community. This is all well and good from the conventional standpoint.

But it means the profits will end up helping only a tiny handful of entrepreneurs--not the community at large. The approach will lead to their personal enrichment, and to their abandonment of the community from which they came.

There is a triple tragedy in this. Most important, it will mean the flight of profits out of the community -- probably into the suburbs as soon as the black entrepreneur can afford to use the profits to buy a split-level. It will also mean the loss of the entrepreneur's talent--for his creative skill will go into making his own fortune, not into helping the community.

And finally, it will mean the loss of an opportunity to develop real resources for the community's own self-help effort.

Everyone knows the poverty program has been cut back--and will in all likelihood continue to be reduced by Congress. There is little hope that serious resources from Washington will be forthcoming in the near future.

But the profits of the business already in the community (and new ones as well) are already at hand.

There is no reason--save fear of the unconventional--that the businesses could not be owned by the community--through its Neighborhood Corporation--partly as cooperatives, partly as corporations. The profits could then be plowed back into such community srevices as day-care centers, teenage centers, training programs, etc.

The community itself, in short, could provide its own anti-poverty or development fund--if the community as a whole owned its own businesses, or at least some of them.

Thus the Neighborhood Service Corporation, on the model of Columbus, would also own neighborhood businesses. Again, one man, one vote.

Examples of experiments which move in this direction also exist in New York, in Georgia, in California, and elsewhere. None is fully developed as yet; but all move towards using business self-help skills to provide an expanding source of funds--from profits--to develop the other aspects of the community's social service program.

(There are also some very interesting tax angles which are available to help facilitate the transfer of ownership of old or new businesses for such special community purposes.)

AGAIN, THE conventional mind can find a thousand reasons why such an approach will not work. But those with imagination can see that the community corporation idea--linked to an independent source of funds which can supplement and perhaps eventually take the place of anti-poverty funds--is a creative response to our present difficulties.

Morcover, loans to community-owned businesses are not hand outs. They are paid back. The result is a healthier relationship between the one who is helped and the one who does the helping.

And, above all, from the community point of view, a continued independent 0source of funds can transform the neighborhood corporation from a limited administrative form into a true arena for community action. Indeed, if we are serious about attempting to recreate democratic participation in America, community decisions are simply going to have to involve the attraction of real resources.

Once again, the Marshall Plan comes to mind. What we are talking about is helping communities get on their own feet--through the development of industry--and through an institution which can use community profits directly for community services.

In the Marshall Plan the political institution of the nation state--through its power to tax--helped to translate profits from industry into needed social services. In the American city the tax power is severely limited. A new democratically controlled institution, the Community Corporation -- which administers neighborhood services and owns some neighborhood industry--is needed to fulfill the same function and to respond to the local community as no centralized nation state can.

Such unconventional ideas, of course, sound very much like the rhetoric of the black miiltant who speaks vaguely of community control. The ideas are very much in accord with such thinking, though the black militant has rarely made the explicit link between community services and community industry. They are also the logical extension of the concept of decentralization. But the ideas need not be restricted to the black community.

If the Mayor were really prepared to innovate and invent, he would at once see that the poor white communities of Boston have many of the same difficulties as the black communities. There is no reason he could not help a solid but poor Irish neighborhood develop its own community controlled services and enterprises at the same time a black neighborhood is doing so.

Were he to apply the same program across the color line, of course, he might see that race conflicts which continually erupt into politics could be short-circuited--in part at least. For a program which met the needs of both the black and white communities, and involved loans, self-help, and very few hand-outs, could be the basis of a new politics--a politics which did not have to tax one group to give hand-outs to another--and a politics which could take a long step towards the political reconstruction of the ideal of community and cooperation.

Such an approach might even help American cities get beyond the crisis which threatens to pull conventional-minded leadership into the hands of violence, counter-violence--and the now all too conventional cycle of rebellion, terror and repression