Even as a new administration takes shape, there is a certain skittishness at the mere mention of our continuing urban crisis. Both Democrats and Republicans skirted the problems of our cities in their pursuit of suburban votes during the election; that’s how you get elected these days.
But now it’s time to pay attention-again. Time to recognize that America’s cities, even as they falter, remain the engines of our society. Time to remember that the cities are where ideas spark, where our culture comes alive, our business grows, our arts and sciences advance.
Time to remember that it is our cities, in all their glorious diversity, that define our nation-and that the cities must be made to succeed if America is to succeed. So far, we city folk have been grasping at straws from the new administration-hoping that programs for job retraining, public works, tax incentives and the like will trickle down to help New York and other urban centers.
In gambler’s parlance, that’s known as betting on the come-and that’s a lousy bet.
Instead of being incidental beneficiaries of new federal programs, America’S Cities must be the fulcrum by which the nation is moved ahead. To that end, there must be an all-out crusade by public and private sectors alike to rebuild urban America.
Every level of government-federal, state and local-must commit to the idea that what helps the cities helps the country. Mass transit, housing, public works, community assistance, welfare and health-care reform must all be conceived and designed on that premise. And President Clinton must mobilize the incredible power and diversity of the private sector to fuel this national effort.
Business and labor leaders, bankers and academics, church people and ordinary citizens must join with government to fight for urban America-just as they did in New York City’s fiscal crisis of 1975.
Here are a few ways people can join this crusade to save our cities-and our country:
Companies must take an interest in their communities, going far beyond writing checks to the favorite charities of a few top executives. New York’s business community, for example, is talking about a multimillion-dollar corporate fund to meet pressing city needs.
Companies must also offer incentives for employees to volunteer their time. They need to recognize the realities of urban life by offering their workers services like emergency day care. More companies should lend key executives for public service-and to wrestle with such thorny issues as industrial conversion.
Organized labor must awaken from its deep and dreamless sleep. It must lend its energy and vast human resources to the urban cause, while recognizing that productivity is more and more the name of the game. Labor leaders need to make sure that workers are being trained for jobs that are actually available-jobs in health care and administration, for example.
High schools and colleges must offer credit for public service such as feeding the hungry, volunteering in hospitals and visiting the aged and infirm. Colleges must help inner-city schools develop courses to prepare students for the increasingly sophisticated demands of the urban workplace.
Back in the ’60s, in the struggle for civil rights, Christians and Jews formed a massive coalition that changed the face of America. The same could happen now. All religious groups must add a political dimension to the work they’re already doing in helping the homeless, providing drug rehabilitation, caring for AIDS patients and healing divisions in our society. A case in point: thousands of low-income housing units have been built by religious coalitions in east Brooklyn and the south Bronx.
Too often our news organizations go for the violent, the sensational, the negative in their urban reportage-following the dictum of one TV reporter that “If it bleeds it leads.” It’s time for publishers and editors, for station owners and news directors, to balance the bad with the good and to banish the cynical, curled-lip school of journalism.
Just imagine the headline: THOUSANDS WORK TO HELP CITY. That’s exactly what is happening in neighborhoods everywhere as volunteers and dedicated professionals fight poverty, crime and drugs-but you wouldn’t know it from reading the papers or watching local television.
News organizations should sponsor town meetings and other forums to bring people together, to discuss public issues, to get folks involved. That could do wonders for the cities-and might just improve the media’s dismal image.
Last spring a quarter of a million people marched on Washington under the banner SAVE OUR CITIES! SAVE OUR CHILDREN! They assembled only three weeks after Los Angeles had exploded in devastating riots, and hopes ran high that attention would at long last be paid to the desperate needs of the inner cities. Nobody listened.
All eyes now turn to President Clinton. A generation ago, faced with an enormous challenge, President Kennedy declared that the United States would place a man on the moon within a decade. The nation met that goal.
As Mr. Clinton begins his term, he should set a similar goal. He should declare this the Decade of the Cities, and resolve to rebuild urban America within the next 10 years. By joining a revitalized political system with a strong private sector we can attain this goal, too. If we do, 10 years from now we will find ourselves walking the streets of our inner cities with all the confidence and joy displayed by America’s astronauts a quarter of a century ago when they bounded on the surface of the moon.
Let the decade begin.
