Select Quotes

 

Looking back we do not remember
ourselves but the neighborhoods
we lived in and the things there we knew
. . . How
much we belong to the past we learn
only when we have labored
to survive and prevail without it.

Richard Howard
On the United States, Considered as a Landscape

“Individualism finds its roots in the attempt to deny the reality and importance of human interdependence. One of the main goals of technology in America is to ‘free’ us from the necessity of relating to, submitting to, depending upon, or controlling other people. Unfortunately the more we have succeeded in doing this the more we have felt disconnected, bored, lonely, unprotected, unnecessary and unsafe.”

Phillip Slater
The Pursuit of Loneliness

“The neighborhood is not some panacea newly invented for a new crisis. The neighborhood is the way people have historically lived throughout the world. . . The neighborhood, at best, then, can be said to represent the way people live together. It does not represent a political theory. It represents human reality.”

David Morris
Neighborhood Power

“My frustration is not with the organizing—it’s more with the times. Not with the neighborhood people. The frustration of the times is when you move from a group of people getting together on E. 79th Street and want to do something about their street. I think it’s do-able. Most often it’s going to be winnable. It’s going to be something that has a timeline. It’s going to be something concrete that they’ve got resources for and the power to deal with. That’s a good way to develop people. You move them from a problem to an issue to action. I’m frustrated with the times because the same neighborhood people have problems that are much bigger than 79th Street. Problems with the economy, with plant closings, with federal budgets and dollars going to the wrong places and utility companies that only deal with the equation of profit over people. The frustration has to do with (understanding) what’s happening.”

Harry Fagan, former director
of the Commission on Catholic Community Action,
Cleveland Heritage Program Interview