Before you promise to change the world, it makes sense to do the hard work of changing your neighborhood.
I think the black community is no different from any other community. We need to take responsibility for how we live together. We need to be personally responsible for keeping our streets clean, our schools safe, and our houses peaceful.
I think a lot of things could be handled locally.
I believe that one of the most important things to learn in life is that you can make a difference in your community no matter who you are or where you live.
The Nation of Islam's main focus was teaching black pride and self-awareness. Why should we keep trying to force ourselves into white restaurants and schools when white people didn't want us? Why not clean up our own neighborhoods and schools instead of trying to move out of them and into white people's neighborhoods?
Real people do real things. A collective of a whole bunch of people who do things in their own locale, in their own neighborhoods - the sum is bigger than the parts, and the parts will grow.
I took it upon myself to give back to my 'hood.
Place-based initiatives can provide a useful framework to judge our progress in raising people out of poverty. They allow us to see whether or not a neighborhood is improving and its residents are living better.
After Yale Law School, I was proud to try to live up to my parents' example and began my career working for The Urban Justice Center in the streets of Newark, organizing residents to fight for better housing conditions.
I want to take Negroes out of the ghetto and put them in good neighborhoods in good houses.
Our cities need to change, fast. Tactical Urbanism is a guided tour of solutions created when local people decide they can't wait for politics to catch up before they improve their neighborhoods. This weathervane book deserves a place on any urbanist's bookshelf.
I was raised to believe that we all have a civic duty and a responsibility as Americans to improve our neighborhoods and our nation.
A lot of cities are making a real effort, neighborhood by neighborhood, to make themselves into a place where life can be pretty good.
I started my career as an urban planner, working for the city, doing what I would call 'do-gooder' things, particularly for low-income neighborhoods.
What's wrong with Hell's Kitchen? You don't change a neighborhood by changing its name. You change it by building a school.
I'm probably proudest of being able to lift a lot of us out of the 'hood. That's the biggest thing, that I've been able to employ a lot of people and give them opportunities.
Compton looks a lot of different. Residents are now able to go out and grab a bite, go to dinner, go to Target, Best Buy or a gym or Marshall's. We're now able to experience more amenities. I want to see that grow.
We're not really in the real-estate space so much as we are the community-building space.
I thought my parents were always having card parties - and they were - but they were actually also having meetings to organize people. My older sister would be part of youth organizing, and she'd have dance parties. People would be dancing and talking about how to improve their neighborhood.
You could move.' ---"Dear Abby" responds to a reader who complained that a gay couple was moving in across the street and wanted to know what he could do to improve the quality of the neighborhood.
I am not a hoodlum. I'm a community organizer.
Main Street is almost alright.
By the time I was in my early teens, we were able to move into a much more middle-class area. I had a comfortable adolescence.
You shouldn't have to leave your neighborhood to live in a better one.
Your job is to inspire people from your neighborhood to get out.
