You Don’t Have to Move, to Live Better – Majora Cater
This session was sadly under attended. Majora Carter is an inspirational and upbeat speaker, and well worth seeing. I talked to some people afterwards who had purchased the SXSW ticket and drove from Houston just to see her talk!
You can see a couple of Majora Carter’s talks at TED.com, including her widely viewed talk on “Greening the Ghetto.”
You don’t have to move out of your neighborhood to live in a better one
The first part of the talk was bio information, read more at Majora Carter’s wikipedia page.
Carter grew up and lived in the Bronx, freeways were built over thriving working class communities. Red lining – red lines were built around area code no one would invest in. Landlords found it more profitable to burn their buildings than improve. This created something like a war zone. Carter’s brother Lenny spent two tours in Vietnam only to be gunned down in a nearby neighborhood. New York decides to place a sewage treatment plant in the area which would process 60% of NY’s sewage. Wealthier and largely white neighborhoods pushing onto the poorer ones. Young people who live near fossil fuel emissions are impacted – suffer learning disabilities.
The lower income neighborhood was targeted, because they had no political power or influence.
How do you create a more sustainable solid waste process?
What Majora has done
- Started the first green roof company run by a community organization
- Working with plants reduces stress levels- plants require patience
- created the apparatus to create the kinds of jobs the community needed
Created Home(town) Security
Homeland security is about fear. Home(town) security is not based on fear.
People want to see things happen in their own home towns.
People see development and all they see is gentrification. How will they afford the change? (Karin’s note – I think the difference here is whether the change comes from inside or outside – gentrification is led by outside developers, productive neighborhood development comes from community initiative and involvement.)
Several examples:
In syracuse, the mayor put in blue lights in the dangerous neighborhoods, but what does that feel like to the people who live there? This is the drama of local community development, and it will make good TV.
Tree People – Andy Lipkus is unpaving paradise
Coal Mountain Watch – Judy Bonds died of cancer from breathing in the toxicity after mountain top removal mining. Worked to turn these areas into wind farms.
I missed a couple of other examples.
Carter saying “I should be advising president obama” was met with applause.
Question: (From AARP representative) – How can we get state offices to fund services which will help older americans stay in their homes – transportation, walkable neighborhoods, etc, instead of packing up and moving to florida?
Answer: The nice thing about older americans is they vote. Livable cities are the kind of thing which will keep people around.
Question: Would grant writing workshops be useful?
Answer: Probably not. There are already community organizations, we don’t need more of them, we need to build up the ones that are there.
Question: How to engage community? Would social media be effective?
Answer: This is one of the reasons to start with community based development, it is easier to build support around. Also, “feed them and they will come.”
Question: (I missed this question!)
Answer: Work a bit by bit, pursue market based solutions. A lot of our tax money is used for social services. If we can turn expensive people receiving social benefits into working taxpayers, everyone wins. Most people want to work.
Question: How to be involved locally when one can’t afford to live local? This is from someone who moved out to the suburbs because he didn’t feel safe raising his children where he lived.
Answer: Community Policing can be very useful. Working with the police to identify areas which could use more foot patrols. Job creation is key as well – sometimes people would rather have a job than sell weed.
Question: How to address criticism that [community development] is not realistic or too idealistic?
Answer: Follow the money. They can’t argue with results. The world has enough pessimists. (karin’s note: And ignore them! Who cares what they say?)