Notes from Breakout Groups

(These sessions were not tape-recorded )

Housing

Facilitators: Nancy Denton, John Lukehart

Question: What can we do to develop, promote, and maintain stable, integrated neighborhoods? We've mentioned Shaker Heights and Oak Park.

Nancy Denton: There are more than Shaker Heights and Oak Park. Integration has become a dirty word, run into quotas.

John Lukehart: Work with church groups and others to organize around open housing, diversity.

David Wilson: I'm a real advocate of social engineering. Without intervention, there is no control over outcomes. For example, linking schools and housing: The amount of resources going to equal educational opportunity is going up. It seems simple. Make credit available in lower-income neighborhoods, then put the most desirable programs in those schools. Do it incrementally.

Promote stability, homeownership, and community. Maybe I'm nostalgic, but I grew up knowing my neighbors for thirty years. Put hard resources to work over time to increase stability and common interest in neighborhoods.

Allan Malkis: On linking regional and local efforts: Portland is a good example of devoting regional resources to localities where good things are going on. Local stuff goes on in a context fixed by the "outside." One item is the will to make use of the resources that are there. For instance, Rule 39 [policy 39, mandating suburban creation of a share of metropolitan low-income housing stock]: Those suburbs that built while the policy was enforced, and federal money was available have low-income housing. Those suburbs that built while the policy was unenforced, and no federal money was available, do not.

Question to Wilson: Some of what you are saying is based on a nostalgic view of neighborhoods. In an era in which people can expect to move many times in their lives, the kind of stability you are talking about seems impossible. Do neighborhoods look like that anymore? Can they?

Wilson: Maybe not.

Malkis: Probably not, with the McDonaldization of housing.

Roger Clay: What communities are we talking about anyway?

Lukehart: Good point. Where does housing fit locally, and in the context of regional strategies?

Wilson: The Twin Cities differ from other big urban centers in that the housing stock is primarily pretty good. It's a different thing to build public housing where people are integrated into surrounding areas than when they are concentrated.

Clay: Even here, terms are confusing. By public housing, do you mean section 8, or other subsidized? It's hard to imagine what strategies without knowing who we're talking about.

Trina Givens: We're [Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, ACORN] mobilizing in the community helping low-income families become homeowners. If you move to the suburbs you're still going to be poor. HUD doesn't help find places, vouchers don't build ownership. Our rates of default are lower than the banks.

Wilson: The S&L crisis didn't arise from lending in low-income neighborhoods.

Givens: Homeownership builds a stake. Low-income people are paying high rent anyway.

Malkis: But there's a serious low-income housing shortage.

Wilson: ACORN does full service lending; with prior, lending, and default counseling.

Lukehart: Our experience in Chicago is that historically African Americans were confined to a segment of the housing. We need to get a fair housing element, and expose people to a range of choices.

Givens: We're doing that.

Lukehart: People have been narrowly focused by prior experience with discrimination in the market before they reach the agency.

Question: The ACORN program sounds similar to the 30/50 program.

Malkis: 30/50 is a program aimed at getting 50 percent of African Americans in the community who are now 18 year olds to be homeowners by the age of 30.

Wilson: Given limited resources, how do we do more to encourage full-service lending?

Participant: I'm an older person. People should listen because I have experience. In the 80s, I was steered to the North Side, even though I wanted to be near [amenities and opportunities to contribute to the community].

Lukehart: What's going on with the settled lawsuit?

Wilson: The main focus of Hollman is to help assisted households move out to the suburbs, but there is a lot of resistance. I think the idea of ownership is crucial. We need to use foundations and financial institutions to create mortgages, then buy mortgages and find management which we can hold to articulated standards through mortgage-holding organizations; in effect, create private ownership as a regulated industry.

Givens: The settlement is pushing vouchers, but there is no effort to push ownership. The majority of the Hmong don't want to go to the suburbs.

Ron Hick: That's the genius of these public housing people. Do you know what relocation means to these older Southeast Asian people?

Wilson: The wrong people are running things.

Fred Smith: Hollman raises an interesting question for the policy of deconcentration. There has been strong resistance.

Wilson: In the Gautreaux program [which issues vouchers to assisted households concentrated in the south side of Chicago for use in urban neighborhoods which are less segregated, or for use in suburban municipalities] they have to provide counseling to move people to the suburbs. The problem with counseling, with having to convince someone to be a pioneer...

Lukehart: We operate Gautreaux. One element of the remedy was for the Chicago Housing Authority to build scattered site housing. The mobility program was the other. When it first started, there was not a lot of interest; but as word of mouth spread....

Smith: That plays out so differently in Chicago than in the Hollman situation, where people are being told they have to move.

Malkis: The empirical evidence, gathered in the Community Action of Minnesota Energy Assistance Survey, says 45-50 percent would prefer to live in the suburbs.

Lukehart: Remember the context in which choices are made.

Wilson: We're playing by their rules. Federal programs don't create affordable housing that's sustained over time. One good thing that HUD did was structure long-term mortgage programs.

Participant: Immigrants get good jobs. African-Americans are denied jobs by an unfair economic system.

Lukehart: The issue of access to the economic system is fundamentally what we're talking about. Fred, talk about building coalitions.

Smith: That's a frustrating question. Where folks live is a very individual choice. My experience tells me there have to be more organizations like ACORN that work with individual families and neighborhoods. Integration won't come from the market, or HUD policy. Churches, neighborhood organizations, etc. have to set up counter-market forces. We need to use testers, affirmative marketing, information availability. There are two southwestern neighborhoods that are virtually all white and they want to use NRP funds to promote integration. What should they do?

Lukehart: Who are they?

Smith: The neighborhood organizations.

Wilson: I really disagree that if you provide enough information, people will come. I think it just leads to excessive bureaucratization...

Smith: You didn't hear me. What can they do to get control over market forces that are operating in their neighborhood?

Lukehart: It's important, putting aside public housing for a minute, to challenge institutional practices that treat minorities in a discriminatory way. They have to be challenged. Neighborhood organizations and groups need to create vehicles to expand accessibility, and market them. They need to get people in and talk to them about a range of choices.

Smith: What are fair housing centers?

Lukehart: They are non-profits...

Hick: The first thing is a deliberate decision. What I'm hearing here is a shift. There was a time when everyone talked about block busting and disinvestment. Now, I hear about working with realtors to market diversity. This emerged from deliberate decisions. You need to set down principles, rather than strategy. For example, turning some of this [Hollman] public housing into a low-income co-op to allow people to stay.

Education

Facilitators: Gary Orfield, john powell

Barbara Bearman: There is no national identity in the United States. Political discourse and decision-making is less intelligent. Justice is an underlying theme. Everyone feels threatened, so the only thing that can bind us is if we can buy into certain things. We just cannot decide what they are. Justice and ethicsthese things are missing among politically elected officials.

Tara Jackson: In opinion surveys, there do not seem to be one or two things that come up consistently. A Washington Post survey, asking how people see issues, found just a fear of fragility of one's own well-being. There is not a concept like the American Dream to unite anymore.

Gary Orfield: The dream is for kids to do better than their parents, to have a home and a job. The dream is the same across races, and education is central. There is a fear that their kids will not go to college.

Paul Anton: If we were doing the Civil Acts Right today, it would be done based on public opinion rather than on principle. In working on a Lake Street redevelopment project, we found that in the Phillips neighborhood, 40 percent of the residents had less than a ninth grade education. That was the only statistic needed to identify the other problems and demographic information. Without a fair society, the rest is band-aids. Education and information are important to wealth creation.

Orfield: There is no public policy addressing adult education, especially education and immigration.

Bearman: Are there going to be jobs for people?

john powell: What holds this country together deserves a lot of attention, but its not there. The potential is there. It is the job of the intellectuals to help the world make sense, and it is the same with what holds people together. The danger of polls is that they deal with opinion rather than meaning. Part of the strategy is to figure out how to knit people together. We need to find common themes. In the 1980s I wrote an article on employment discrimination and how when a company discriminates, the punishment is directed to the white male workers. The labor union loved it. Those of us who are part of a civil rights movement have not been sensitive to those kinds of concerns.

Orfield: We need to acknowledge their hard work and go step-by-step through the concerns.

Todd Otis: It seems that the Left is always imploding and the Right had a few major ideas and stuck to them. Kids could be a theme for the Left and we could campaign on their behalf.

Orfield: It would be very effective to have kids themselves at press conferences.

Jackson: That is an issue close to the First Lady's heart and people are beginning to organize around kids.

Ron Krietemeyer: If the movement is generally for kids, kids of color will not be the focus. A piece needs to be focused on kids of color.

Orfield: That gets to the advantages or disadvantages of going to interracial schools. We have found that all kids agree that it is an advantage. That is why it would be so effective for the kids to bring the issues forward.

Thurman Tucker: People really identify with positive things, but we lock onto the negative. As a human race, we need to sidestep the negatives and allow a diversity of views. If we fail to do this, we do the same to other people that we accuse them of doing to us. Race is a part of it. We need to let kids come up with dialogue.

Steve Taylor: We need to have compassion for people who are different. It is both difficult and unfair to ask victims to have as much open-mindedness to people who are victimizing them. That is not fair. People who have more should sacrifice.

Tucker: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others are models for people from a lower position who have come up.

Taylor: It is more than disagreement, people are victimized.

powell: It is not appropriate that racism be reduced to personal relationships. There is a racialized distribution of resources. Hegel's piece on the master and slave is an example: The slave should not be nice to the master. It is not a personal relationship. We need to attack the structure. It's not that I disagree with Clarence Thomas, but that he is doing very destructive things. We need to challenge people who are hurting people. It is not a matter of whether we like each other.

Tucker: I agree on that, but disagree with the tactics. There should not be meanspiritedness. We need to acknowledge that we are all human beings, or we destroy trust and good will.

powell: When David Duke was running for governor, my kids were scared. Internal anger is self-destructive, but sometimes we have to take action to change the structure of how we relate to each other. I cannot legislate how people feel, but I can legislate behavior.

Sosamma Samuels: Racism builds on ignorance and fear. We need to build on justice and work as individuals to achieve justice.

Bearman: Not only do we as individuals need to act justly, but we as a community. We should stop knocking government and put honor in what government should do.

Matthew Little: In talking about those who control government, the legislatorshow do we educate legislators to do the right things? They depend so much on polls. How can we counteract that when the political wind is blowing in the opposite direction of what this conference is talking about? I only saw two active legislators here.

Otis: As politicians, we do not see the light until we feel the heat. Polls are important, but twenty angry phone calls can also be effective.

Tucker: But that approach is just perpetuating friction. We can do better than that.

Taylor: I think it is an example of exercising rights to freedom of assembly. At the University of Minnesota, if there had been a poll, the results would have said to shut down the General College. The students, however, marched and demonstrated and got a 9-1 vote from the Board of Regents. That is healthy. It is wrong to say it is confrontational, that is democracy.

Tucker: We should be beyond that. Why does it have to get to that level--that people do not do the right thing unless they are forced to.

Jackson: There is a link between education and poverty. Why aren't schools discussed with place-based programs? If people do not have access to good schools, people left behind will not have opportunity.

Orfield: There is a trial going on in St. Louis. Kids going to the suburbs had twice the graduation rates. We should link mobility with education as a poverty cure.

powell: Raising education does not raise income in all studies. It is blind to say that if everyone has an education, things will be solved.

Bearman: In the NAACP's lawsuit, we are asking for four things in remedy: a housing component, transportation, more resources for schools, and a metropolitan-wide remedy. This could mean fewer suburban school districts or redistricting, or it could mean voluntary transfers.

powell: It should be recognized as a predicate that segregated schools cannot perform. The city by itself cannot deal with the problems; the only way to address them is with a metropolitan solution.

Judith Pilz: Is it because of how the schools are run or because of the students?

powell: You can take the student out of the environment and the student performs. When schools are isolated, there are all sorts of problems, including disruptions in the classrooms. The state says nothing can be done, but the suit says if the environment is the problem, then the solution is metro-wide.

Pilz: The schools are run differently in the suburbs. Do not just change the schools, also change the teachers, the curriculum, and how students are treated.

Krietemeyer: We need to convince suburban people of the remedy, and whether or not it necessarily means more busing.

powell: We cannot keep the concentration in place. There are a number of ways to deal with it. The problem is the way in which neighborhoods are formulated, often in flight from the schools. We need to create integrated neighborhoods.

Little: St. Paul Schools Superintendent Curman Gaines said we want neighborhood schools, but integrated schools. Neighborhood schools have resulted in "'hood" schools.

Bearman: What goes on in the school is very important. We have got to do other things beyond mixing the kids.

powell: Where desegregation has worked best, it has not been predicated on popular support. It is not a voluntary process, that is counter-intuitive. You must force people to do it. Only two or three people are talking about it at the legislature.

Bearman: We spent three years trying to get desegregation discussed at the legislature. We had no choice but to sue.

Otis: Liberals are continually attacked for the instruments they propose, rather than championing a goal. They are attacked for busing rather than championing children.

powell: Neo-segregationists are getting a free ride in the debate without a good response.

Taylor: When schools and students are sorted by neighborhood, the resources do not get shuffled. School board representatives keep the resources with constituents who are politically connected.

Bearman: Crain's article talks about the fear of the unknown for kids of color and white kids. There is a spiraling down of factors.

powell: There is a response, but as a community we are not willing to talk about desegregation. We are not prepared with a good answer when asked why integration is important. Black mayors are the ones bringing in neighborhood schools.

Taylor: Those are black mayors who have to build a coalition with whites to hold office.

powell: People are framing the questions in funny ways, so that people who ought not to be supportive, are against integration.

Orfield: The study Sandra Newman cited was not reported accurately. Looking at life gains is clearer than looking at test scores.

Taylor: There is even an argument based on test scores where students' going to the suburbs increases scores.

Orfield: We also need to make sure it is known that integration does not hurt white students' scores.

powell: It is important not to get put on the defensive. We need to ask for examples of where segregation has worked.

Jackson: It is important to define a successful outcome so there are not unrealistic burdens placed on programs.

powell: Comparing poor black kids with middle-class white kids is not fair. They cannot close the gap. The discussion has been narrowed and set up for failure. The debate should be framed in terms of life chances.

Orfield: There is no evidence for vouchers and school choice. These policies are being enacted without evidence. Desegregation has evidence.

Jackson: That makes it more important to include definitions of success in the lawsuit to dictate the measurement.

powell: The Brown case did not require outcomes, it said that segregation was wrong and the purpose of education is to be citizens in a democratic society.

Orfield: Minority families want educational success, greater life chances, and for their kids to do well in an interracial society. There is also an advantage for suburban kids to be exposed to diverse students.

Participant: Could segregation serve to better educate black and American Indian students, or do you need to bring in white kids?

Orfield: If Native Americans had wealth and power, then whites would have to get Native Americans into their classrooms.

powell: We have tried to educate in segregated schools. We need to look at race and poverty within a school. A school with poor white kids also would not do well. You need community resources.

Taylor: The argument is not whether white students are needed. The argument is that if students from a higher income class are not there, the resources will not be there.

John Foster-Bey: Kids understand themselves to be inferior if they are locked into a segregated system.

Bearman: How can we justify to foundations that funding for a lawsuit is necessary and that the success of the lawsuit will help a foundation's goals?

Orfield: Tennessee business leaders support merged city-suburban schools because of the benefits they see.

Foster-Bey: Foundations cannot pay for lawsuits, because of IRS regulations. We can support research and data collection about why actions are necessary.

powell: Schools can help the health of the entire region.

Otis: We need changed concepts about neighborhood schools, to really get the word out.

powell: We should do a study about the impact on the business community of integrated schools.

Orfield: The business community really understands the issues well.

Government

Facilitators: Charles Smith David Rusk

Angie Bernhard: Curt Johnson spoke about the political difficulties in getting things done caused by perceptions-motivated behavior. Is this an excuse? Can we do better in pushing a regional agenda? How?

Charles Smith: A radio station in Canada discussing race, gender, and sexual orientation in an open talk show format in addressing a murder in Toronto further played up the sensationalist coverage of the press with the theme "Is the black community hiding the killer?" This is an example of the way that government policy directly affects the quality of background for everyone. The government can't ignore the media. We must challenge its effect on the public's perceptions about race. Our office recommended an investigation of the radio station for causing polarization.

A councilperson from a diverse, but stratified, district said that groups don't communicate; instead they get all their information from the media. The pressure on the police to fight Asian gangs stems from the media and constituents asking for what the media tells them they want. To interrupt this cycle, the government has no choice but to respond to media treatments of race, poverty, and gender.

David Rusk: Success in achieving regional policies is based on coalitions with common underlying self-interest.

Myron Orfield: Also remember you don't have to convince everybody; a sufficient coalition is all we need for progress. We may never convince Maple Grove, but maybe other segments will respond. People do respond to solid information and in that way we build our base.

Rusk: I haven't seen a good study on rates of social breakdown in black, compared with white, impoverished communities. What are the rate comparisons on crime, drugs, etc.? Are they the same? This kind of study could help destroy racial stereotypes. These stereotypes are directly fed by segregation. Concentrated poverty correlates with these social problems, but there are very few long-term white poor communities. Instead these communities are much more of a black and Hispanic phenomenon.

Smith: Another factor is racism in the distribution of public resources. Communities of color receive different levels of funding from white communities of similar income levels, so the white communities don't stay poor.

Roger Banks: Equitable distribution of resources never happens. Money from the Met Council is distributed based only on economic indicators and fails to address the whole issue of needs. The talk of a lack of resources is a cop out to keep the status quo. We need strategies to reduce these inequities.

Russ Adams: In social justice/church-based work, we try to find a way to build a public culture to embrace regional equity. People in the city are suspicious of regionalism, and how do we get the suburbs to change their views?

Smith: Regional government was argued as the best in Toronto to guarantee equity. The reality, however, is that local groups with control over tax bases will do well, while their neighbors will suffer. Sharing tax bases creates tension. Still, community advocacy groups look at regional government as the best guarantee of social equity. To ensure that, and to ensure inner diversity, we have to look at how public policy is made, and at how people get involved. We have to be tenacious. We must be dogged.

One success is that the government is creating various staff positions to engage with the community to work on understanding government policy--an "inside/out" strategy. Some of the effects of that, are that even in areas where the government staff doesn't normally work with the community, such as engineering, there is an effort to break it down to be clear to lay people, which brings in the use of community liaisons and different languages.

Change advocates need to be active at all times. As public policy changes, advocates disappear.

Rusk: A key point: Canada has a governance structure that had to address issues. There is feedback and citizen participation. Portland also has constant high levels of participation. There, candidates for city executive director discuss major issues. This points up a key improvement of that structure: away from government appointed structure where political loyalties sway back and forth, and a move to election of these agencies.

Banks: African American and American Indians are concerned with disenfranchisement in such elections as Rusk suggests. Communities of color worry when the health care services move to the county, away from the city, because they don't have the same access to them there. What are the incentives and motivations behind regional acts? The metropolitan desegregation act is problematic. The state legislature is proposing two for one per diem funding for schools, to replicate schools everywhere (magnets, etc.). The result is that the positions of power are being perpetuated.

Rusk: Minneapolis is a white city with a black mayor. So are Denver, Seattle, and Charlotte. The assumption that black politicians get their power from a black block vote is not so. The problem with maintaining these separate communities is that the greatest circumstance of disadvantage is entrapment. Entrapment can even be perpetuated by black politicians, if they fail to expand their leadership in the broader community, beyond the inner city vote.

In the United States, there are lots of single-member, winner-take-all districts rather than proportionate districts. We should support districting that creates responsive representation, especially proportional representation.

Adams: Some of the inner-ring suburbs are struggling. They could join the inner city.

Rusk: Yes, this is where we see the benefit of pounding on doors instead of gubernatorial appointment.

Taylor: I served on the Met Waste Control Committee, a sub-committee of the Met Council. The committee is made up of appointed members with staggered terms. It was a patronage dumping ground. Still, an elected body would limit citizen participation in other ways. Also, this idea of districting based on race and income is very problematic. South Minneapolis had a very active public interaction with us while I was on the Council.

Smith: Whenever there is an appointments process, people will lobby for positions. The way this affects the public can be dramatic. One example is Toronto Transit. The system's funding is 65 percent from the users, 12 percent from the provincial government, and 20 percent from the municipal government. In a recession, many people can't afford the transit fees. We suggested a re-examination of the model, in which businesses contributed a share, as they do to the transit system in Paris, which receives 30 percent of its funding from businesses.

This idea was ignored, even though ridership was down dramatically, even with frozen fares. Directly elected representatives hear better the people who can't pay the fares. Further, lobbyists lobby appointed officials, too.

Banks: I think there are quotas in the Minneapolis School Board. The DFL seems to have decided that they can't have two African Americans serving at once. So, regardless of the system, we need a large effort to correct the situation.

Adams: The Met Council's 1994 Blueprint Strategy called for a "broad cross section" to be involved, but the Met Council doesn't hire by that rule. Let's hold the Met Council to their cross section promise on all, but especially major, committees. We have to keep the flame under the feet of the Met Council. Most of their work gets done by subcommittees. We have to watch them.

Smith: We should try to depoliticize advisory groups to enforce government policies, make sure they're followed. They should not be subject to political interference. Our office has worked to ensure that the process included community activists. The staff became facilitators to community members. We have to agree at the outset on qualifications for advisory group members, so that everyone who serves is qualified. Without such criteria, how are members chosen? The process becomes too politically subjective. The criteria could also help ensure diversity.

Lezlee Matthews: Community-based organizations deal with so many day to day problems; it is hard to attend all the meetings. We need to build more coalitions, for strength, but also for efficiency. It is too far a stretch to require CBOs to meet with all these councils.

Rusk: Proportional representation could help in getting the elected officials to be more responsive. An example of how it could work in electing the Met Council is: For electing the seven members, each voter has seven votes. A person can cast all seven votes for one candidate, or split them however they feel best represents their interests.

In elections for the Cambridge City Council, each voter gets a preference list. This system elects a lot of people high on many people's lists. I am becoming a fan of this process to get equitable representation.

Taylor: Do we have evidence of the results of these?

Smith: A most important aspect of any government system is its ability to deal directly with people. This is why it is important to link regional and local strategies. Sometimes the grassroots community organizations can see the world within a block. This blurs their broader regional vision. Similarly, regional strategies need to encourage the involvement of grassroots members in order to have the knowledge base for distributing resources fairly. We know where poverty is, but we aren't directing aid well enough, with enough information or regional vision.

Matthews: What about the role of foundations? Chasing money can really detract from time available for other outside involvement for community organizations.

Rusk: If I were advising the foundations, I would tell them that when all their efforts flow to neighborhood activities, it's like running up a down escalator. Those who win this tough race leave. Everyone else goes down deeper. Most poor neighborhoods are there because everyone else has left. The foundations aren't trying to change the direction of the elevator. Housing and other vital problems are often ignored. This is surely at least partly because the foundation people are not comfortable attacking issues too close to the base of their support. It is hard for a foundation director to see his community as part of the problem.

Bernhard: Local strategies tend to be short-term, focused on meeting immediate needs; while regional strategies are more long-term. That's one reason they must be coordinated. Also, it bears repeating that desegregation raises everyone up.

Smith: Desegregation too often means taking people and moving them. It needs to be a two-way exchange. Choice is so important, sacred even. Choosing to live in the black community should not equal "no resources." There is cultural vitality to the black community that we don't want to lose. It is, for example, the birthplace of jazz.

Rusk: People who can choose, leave.

Smith: They leave because resources aren't equal. We must ensure that every area has adequate resources.

Rusk: We don't afford the opportunity to choose to those who need it most--the poor.

Smith: We need real choice. Choice now to low-income people of color means urban blight or outside the community. That's no choice.

Banks: I'd like to see more linkages between and among local strategies.

Economic Development /Employment /Community Development Corporations

Facilitators: Ellen Burzynski, George Galster, Roderick Mitchell, Avis Vidal

Some of the issues:

(1) The possibility of making community-based institutions and local governments more accountable to their constituents

(2) The wisdom of accepting the market as an institution that is compatible with community development

(3) Practical ways regional and community based strategies can be linked

(4) Addressing human development in tandem with economic development

Participant: The outside game (regional strategies) kills the inside game because of the growth of the region and because government and business interests misrepresent people of color. The outside game isn't reflective of the needs/interests of those playing the inside game. An example of how business interests don't pay attention to the inside game is a large chain store that pays $5 per hour to employees of a store in the city and $9 per hour to employees of a store in the suburbs, basically because the suburban people won't work for less.

We need to increase and strengthen antidiscrimination laws and enforcement, and mobilize politically to increase accountability of the government and business sectors so they will no longer be able to get away with attributing the inequities and inequalities to market forces.

Some suggestions to improve the situation for low-income communities of color in central cities are:

(1) Get the government (e.g. HUD) to invest in the neighborhoods to supplement the Southshore Bank-type operations.

(2) Redefine CDC beyond a geographic context so that their jurisdiction also includes inner-ring suburbs, which have many of the same problems. This will facilitate the building of coalitions and political mobilization.

(3) Eliminate disincentives in the tax structure to encourage reinvestment in these ravaged communities.

Mitchell: There is value in reaching out to/forming relations with politicians and the powers that be. Senator D'Amato is one of our CDC's biggest supporters. The advantage of this is that these politicians can then do advocacy for the CDCs among their less receptive colleagues. These state representatives also might have some influence on the willingness of local actors to support our efforts. The confrontational approach doesn't work when there isn't a constituency to back it up, as is usually the case for CDCs.

Participants: The entire discussion is problematic because it is predicated on the virtue and effectiveness of the market mechanism as an organizing or operational principle. The operation of markets creates inequality and capital outflow from the very communities we're trying to help. How can CDCs become more knowledgeable about how the market system functions to increase inequality, and how can we build coalitions to counteract this?

Burzynski: Market discipline ensures that community organizations will be competitive in the local environment. It is critical that resources be controlled locally. We need to couch things in economic terms: if society as a whole "benefits," things won't change; if society as a whole doesn't "benefit," things will change.

Question: How is "benefit" defined? Does it have to be defined in narrow economic terms? Moreover, by speaking in only economic terms, without trying to change the terms of debate, aren't we perpetuating the very modes of analysis and operation that created the problems we're trying to address (inequality, poverty, discrimination)?

Participant: Litigation is one of several mechanisms to effect change, but community mobilization must start and inform the litigation and enforce the subsequent enforcement. In general, though, we need a multi-disciplinary approach.

Question: Who is on the other side of the CDCs/in-place strategies?

Response: Organizations such as the Alliance for Metro Stability and the Met Council in the Twin Cities.

Question: Are Twin Cities community based organizations and local governments accountable to the needs of their constituents?

Participant: CDCs should not consolidate but should work in coalitions while focusing on their specific issue or area. The key is strategic alliances such as Phalen Village in St. Paul (3M, schools, St. Paul city, and residents worked together).

Participant: The role of CDCs should be redefined. CDCs should move beyond geography and build coalitions. CDCs must identify the local policies that influence economic development and determine what hinders their work. CDCs should be looking for ways to have an influence on development policies. There is a need for increased communication and information sharing. The discussion of a linking of regional and community based approaches must address the institutions at the regional level with which CDCs could forge coalitions.

Wealth Creation

Facilitators: Tim Bates, Paul Hudson

Tim Bates: Asian businesses (specifically Korean) are often compared with other minority businesses and held up as model success stories that other minorities have not achieved. The folklore suggests that there is some cultural characteristic that makes them more successful. Census bureau statistics show this to be a faulty comparison for the following reasons: The people starting the businesses hold advanced degrees in management, but often don't speak English well, so they end up "underemployed" starting up these small businesses. Also, they bring with them sufficient capital to start the businesses. The result is that the Korean self-employment rate is 28 percent higher than any of the racially defined groups in the census.

We cannot compare the success of someone with managerial experience, education, and household wealth to the lack of success of someone raised in poverty, with limited education and no household wealth. The comparison must be to college educated people. When we do this comparison, we see that college educated people of other racial/ethnic backgrounds are not taking these entrepreneurial jobs at the same rates, often because they are offered high profile management jobs.

Ed Lambert: The keys to success are access to capital and financial expertise. Another important factor in the success of small businesses is the free labor of family members. In bigger businesses, education is more important. There is a lot of money that is "shelved" for small minority businesses which is not being used. The funding organizations need to go one extra step beyond just providing the financing. They should find people and bring them together with the ideas. There should be a bank of people's names who can be contacted when there's a deal. One problem is that few people know this funding exists.

Community groups shouldn't tell financiers and entrepreneurs what to do, rather they should work to bring the two groups together. The harder issue is: What business can you create that results in viable products exportable outside the community? Perhaps communities should advertise to attract entrepreneurial talent outside the community to come in.

Land-Use Planning

Facilitators: Hazel Johnson, Ken Greenberg

Judith Martin: I'm interested in how to realistically control sprawl. What mechanisms can be put in place? The Museline didn't work. Is there any place outside Portland were sprawl has been successfully contained? I want to look at the economic and environmental effects of sprawl.

Ken Greenberg: I want to address the "vacuum in the middle" problem.

Nancy Halvorson: I want to know what works.

Dimitri Andrusesky: I'm interested in fostering community involvement in planning.

Marilyn Winfield: I'm a concerned North Minneapolis resident.

Scott Bollens: I'd like to discuss ways of bridging in-place and mobility strategies.

Jon De Vries: I grew up in a Minneapolis suburb, but do not like the suburbs.

Jill Myrom: I'm a journalist for a South Minneapolis newspaper. I am most interested in brownfields.

Peter Armstrong: I'm a Humphrey (Institute of Public Affairs) student, interested in land-use planning.

Eileen Troseth: I'm from the Citizens' League - for livable communities.

Robert Liberty: Portland has a fifty-year mandatory state wide growth plan. Two things we are still working on are: urban revitalization, on which we want to work with residents; and regional housing responsibility, getting a mix of income types.

Patti Tototzintle: I am involved in the St. Paul West Side district council, and the Riverfront development project, and the Wilder Foundation. I'm interested in ways to bring people into the process.

Hazel Johnson: I am with People for Community Recovery. The people who live in the center cities should have involvement.

We have a plan for a vacant school in Chicago, a landmark which has been abandoned for 15 years. We plan to make it into a conference center, laboratory (where people can get the training for how to clean up their communities, to deal with asbestos, lead, and underground tanks), and to educate people to get their GED.

Michael Munson: Sprawl is too vague a term, what are we talking about?

Greenberg: I would like to recommend that everyone read the front page article in the Kansas City Star, December 17, 1995.

Liberty: Portland did not appear to have consensus. But, the assertions of the suburban mayors of what their constituents wanted was proved wrong at the ballot box. Most citizens would rather have top-down planning than have the problems of cities such as Detroit. When it became clear that Metro had authority to accomplish its goals, things fell into line.

Greenberg: Should we create a mission statement of what our group comes up with? Intervention seems to be key, but working with communities, rather than throwing money at them.

Munson: People in outlying areas are going to want to keep their greenbelts.

Liberty: Polling brings in interesting results. When you ask people if they could handle more density, they say no. When you ask if they would be for a boundary line, they say yes. When you ask them if they could live with another house on their block, they say yes.

Munson: The market will determine when things are acceptable.

Liberty: Housing is regulated, therefore, the market isn't operating.

Armstrong: If we have a mission statement, we will need a social justice component.

Martin: We already require environmental review, why not a social/economic review: what will the impact on the metro area be?

Question: Also, who is going to be on the board, who will make the decisions?

Bollens: Part of the mission statement should be to create and adopt regional development policies which recognize the impact on individuals.

Munson: There should be a range of housing.

Halvorson: Say that a portion of the housing must be affordable. Brownfields should be addressed in the goal statement.

Johnson: In Chicago, it was the public officials who were letting the dumping happen. The community should be aware of what is going on.

Greenberg: Here I believe there is the Green Institute.

Winfield: What about training for people to clean up brownfields?

Johnson: Where do you get the money? I have looked, and it costs a lot to take the courses to learn about how to do environmental clean-up.

Greenberg: The cost of training is comparatively small. Priority should be given to community people for training and employment regarding clean-up of brownfield sites. What about the growth boundary issue?

Liberty: Having a boundary line contributes psychologically. Also, people who benefit from growth are not the ones who pay for it.

Troseth: What about all the outlying farmland? There will be leapfrogging unless we have a broader framework.

Liberty: You need either a state plan, or get metro to have enough power to do it.

Greenberg: Wisconsin will eventually need to be included.

Winfield: You were talking about just sending people out into the suburbs. What kind of support would there be? Health care, education, transportation, etc.

Troseth: In Toronto, there is one big school system. Here, the school system is a big draw for where people chose to live.

Greenberg: Have the schools in the metro area be equally funded, regardless of tax base.

Martin: A 1970 MN statute gave every school system equivalent money, but, there was no prohibition on municipalities adding more revenue.

Tototzintle: The school spending disparity keeps getting worse.

Johnson: People are moving out of Chicago because of the schools.

Bollens: We should make tax distribution, services (schools) part of our mission statement.

Greenberg: In the provinces, everyone gets the same amount of money, but they don't have to do the same thing with the money.

Tototzintle: That brings us back to the idea of community participation.

Greenberg: The conflict doesn't exist between the in-place strategies and regionalism.

Liberty: We have to have strategies, like bringing churches into it, to include people.

Bollens: Planning provides the bridge between community development corporations and regional factors.

(The Land-Use Planning group's mission statement, "Planning for the Livable City Region" is included with the Summaries of the Breakout Groups at the beginning of this section.)

Wrap-up: john powell

There has been some heat at this conference, but more light. One of the clear enemies of low-income communities of color that emerged is urban sprawl. This pointed to the need for regional planning to deal with urban sprawl and contain resources, but we realize that regional planning does not guarantee that resources will be directed to the communities about which we are most concerned. James Head cautioned us not to try to get to a single strategy. I agree with everything that Avis Vidal said, except that if the government offers you more money, you should always take it.

There are many parts to the solution. We should learn from each other. We should seriously learn from each other; where we fall short is where we don't. Saying that we are different communities means we should respect those differences, but it does not mean we should build walls against sharing information and learning from each other. When we talk about race, there are two common mistakes: One is to think that we are all the same, and therefore we don't need to talk to each other, because we know what each other thinks. The other is to think that we're radically different and therefore we can't talk to each other, because we can't communicate. There's a saying that captures that, "Because we are both the same and different, dialogue is necessary and possible."

One of the goals generally agreed upon is that there must be access to wealth and wealth creation in impacted communities. There were various proposals for accomplishing this, some conflicting, some complementary. One question was whether the focus should be on job creation. Some people refined that by saying that with many of the jobs just producing more and more working poor, we may need to look broader than just jobs--not because jobs are unimportant, but because job creation is not sufficient in itself. We also need to look at creating equity in these communities--wealth equity as well as other kinds of equity. Part of that means deconcentrating poverty. One way of thinking of that is moving people; another way, of course, is increasing the income flow in those communities.

John Foster-Bey pointed out that not only local and regional, but also national and international communities are interlinked, and that there's a synergy. We have to be aware of that synergy and play on it. Paul Hudson presented an example of that in his going public with a black-owned bank, and hooking up with the engine of the larger community. Given that model, the question becomes one of where we come in, and when.

There was discussion of choice. Sandra Newman raised it early in the conference. Avis Vidal asked how we can constrain choice. Normally we think of choice as an unmitigated good, but that's not always true. Constraining choice for the purpose of forcing us to deal with some of these problems can be a good. We frequently discuss how to do some of these things voluntarily. It raises the issue that voluntarily may not be the crucial factor. Tara Jackson, from Harvard, who has done studies on choice, suggested that choice is complicated. Even as society is presently constituted, the vast majority of blacks are willing to live in integrated communities. Mortimer Adler says "Society should afford as much choice as justice allows." It is important when we talk about issues of liberty and choice that we tie the discussion to justice. Unfortunately, in the political process, it's often not tied to anything, so we get almost a libertarian position--that it's just choice that we're talking about with no relation to justice.

As we leave the conference, I want to suggest that we continue the conversations we have had here; that we continue them both individually and institutionally. Institutionally, there are several places where we have opportunities to work together as catalysts in achieving some of these goals. One is in the communities of faith. These communities have been involved in almost every major struggle for justice in our society. Myron Orfield spoke of the importance in getting his bill passed of having the support of 400 churches and synagogues. We also need to reach out to labor. They see the changing demographics and economics, and there are ways to build coalitions, and a bigger base. Portland suggests that urban sprawl is an enemy of social justice. Historically, environmental and social justice movements have not been linked. This is a mistake on both our parts. Finally, we need to increase our networking capabilities through tools like the internet. The Institute has established a web site, and we encourage all of you who are doing this work to write to us there or on paper and let us make your information available at that site. Paul Hudson said he's energized rather than exhausted by this conference, and I am, too. Thank all of you for coming. If there is this work that has to be done, I can't think of a better group of people to do it with.