Justice : The Role Of The Community (1974)

thank you hey here I am again the Common Man and there you are the silent majority huh hey I want to tell you something I wasn't so silent last week we got this street that the kids have to cross on their way to school and it's a pretty busy corner you know well A kid got hit there last week and uh well he's going to be all right but it was like the last straw so a bunch of us went down to Police Headquarters and we really raised a lot of hell then we went down to the aldermans we did the same thing and you know what we're gonna get a crossing guard on that corner yeah we're gonna get our Crossing car you know it's sort of like this crime thing in a way hey look look I'm no dummy I read something else besides the sports pages and all that stuff on TV it's not that simple there's a lot of reasons why people get into trouble or break the law okay I don't know I had a couple of close calls myself when I was a kid besides what do you do if you can't trust the people who are running things huh what do you do if they're crooked or they won't listen to you hey I don't know I don't have the answers all right all right maybe I should get involved ah maybe I could do something about it but I also got a family to take care of I work hard I come home at night I'm tired and I pay taxes and I expect to get something for it especially protection huh I just don't know anymore you know it's one thing to get a crossing guard but what's one person going to do against a whole bunch of politicians huh well I think the time has come now and I'm I'm hoping that more people would be a concerned neighbor and as I often have said to many Community groups that where our parents you know would say you know don't be a nosy neighbor I think we're all praying that we would all be so that we should be concerned forget the nosy and um it's not bad now I think that we absolutely have to be concerned about the guy next door you don't have to love them you don't even have to like him but you have to help him and he helps you do you do this on an individual basis do you do it on a community basis are there groups one can join what do you do well we'll start with the individual it gets together with people in their building or on their block and they say look we all know we have this problem it you know he gets the word gets around somebody's been hit over the head of girls been chased or whatever and from the individual he goes uh you know sort of connects up with his neighbor being friendly and saying now look there's there are problems what are we going to do about it well a person is in trouble the community can respond in many ways at Aunt Martha's a volunteer staffed Youth Services Center in Park Forest Illinois that response is often simply being there how you doing and listening is there anything wrong she was on a really bad trip and it was her first time tripping she looked really downed out and all alone I'm not in contact with anything everything's here but I can't feel it she thought she had lost her head so I told her to use her hands and feel that it was there still there Green Grass and sun and the sky then we talked about things that she wanted to talk about that she liked she got her head together and became calm and more realistic I walked her home and put her to bed she thanked me and said she felt as if we together had just conquered hell and in our field in criminal justice we don't listen to the clients okay and almost every study that was ever done uh kids have said repeatedly that the most important thing to them is employment and yet out of 250 probation officers at the Juvenile Court we can only afford to assign one probation officer to find jobs for 23 000 petitions a year okay the biggest need that we have in in any Community is a job situation if our job situation is going to open up there's so many of people that come through this courtroom that I have found guilty that have skills that can be used almost anywhere uh and yet there's a reluctance on a part of most of our business uh Community to hire uh people with the criminal records and yet I feel that particularly when they're on probation there are better risks than uh not having been convicted uh they've got a they've got to live up to certain terms and certain rules and regulations that are set by the court how many years have you been driving the truck all together I've been driving a driver's seat about 15 years put them all together did any Interstate travel all in the states you are watching a rehearsal for a job interview the man being interviewed is a recently released ex-convict uh do you would you be willing to work on your own I'd be willing to work anywhere the company wanted me to work yes I'd like to work on the road uh you know he has two primary needs the need to be accepted and the need to work the interviewer is a job development counselor with operation dare a chicago-based support program for ex-offenders education [Music] or sixth grade I didn't have too much of an education see why I come up I had to do most of the work I lost my father and I had to help work and take care of the other kids so I got the sixth grade in grade school and take it there even though I was asking you know if uh for our road job it requires a considerable amount of reading and do you think do you think you could handle that well I would be willing to give it a child that's the only you never know what really you can do until you try it some those jobs are easier than the ones that you you know have in the city as long as you can read write and read signs of the highway you just read them roadmap you can get where you're going but like you said some companies have different types of jobs more people working others and then then if I couldn't handle it right away I'd be glad to let you know that too you know there are many types of people that come out of the institution having only one thing in common in some cases that is that they've both done time in my particular case when I came out I felt that I was kind of afraid of what I had to face when I came out it wasn't that I wasn't academically prepared it was just that I didn't know after having been locked up and I was locked up for seven years in the state Institution it was a feeling that after being away seven years you know how do you react when you got out to come out and you'll find in the city that you've known all of your life that the streets have changed buildings are not there your inability to travel and you only have fifty dollars I can remember thinking that I must have been insignificant because the world was still going on when I came out and there was no welcoming committee there was no group of friendly faces and of course I had to make my way through you know from Downing Statesville where I did my time into the city of Chicago I had to report to a parole officer I just had seven years of being told what to do and I was only running into one other person that was going to tell me what to do there were no agencies around that one could go to that would talk to an employer for you to tell you to explain to him that you really wanted to go straight so in my particular case I felt uh that one of my first main objectives would be to try to remove the fact that I was an ex-offender which means that I sought jobs trying to cover a seven year Gap feeling more and more depressed because my application didn't look too healthy at this point you know in a session like this and here and you're coming from operation there you should realize that we've already alerted the employer that the person that we will be sending isn't expect and the employee has already said that send them anyway so it's not a matter of not having contact with that particular employer he knows this and he's willing to hire anyway so when you go there there's no need to try to hide the fact that you've had a record because he's already he's already alerted to it now he may not know the nature of the crime one thing that we try to caution everyone against is indulging maybe the employer in a lot of the details of the situation because it's really not necessary [Music] during its three years of existence operation dare has obtained jobs for over 1600 ex-offenders and involved some 300 citizens as volunteers only seven percent of its clients have returned to prison coming overhanded things I've been around a long time in these prison so uh I think the best thing for any man whether he's young or old in or out of prison these should work whatever it is work might be you know official or whatever and uh smart thing to do is just tell you for a couple minutes about another part of the program that herb and I are involved in along with job coaching this is our citizen volunteer program which is what I I think you thought before that Larry was talking about and this is where people from the community who through speeches that we give through situations like this through some articles that we've had in the newspaper have expressed an interest in becoming involved in criminal justice and what we're asking some of our clients to do if you're interested is to work on a one-to-one friendship basis with one of these people they're primarily businessmen business women Housewives professionals but mainly they're people who are interested in finding out more about criminal justice and if they can offer you some assistance in showing you available Community Resources that kind of thing are other alternatives to the ways that you found to solve problems in the past you know this is what they're all about and at the same time I would hope that each one of you would share with them some of the feelings that you have about criminal justice you know so that we can begin to educate the public on what's happening within our institutions what's happening on the streets you know everybody is concerned with crying but it doesn't seem a lot of times like people are too concerned with the reasons so maybe if we get some of these Personnel people business people professional people a little bit involved so they begin to understand then we'll have the means to exert change the average cost of keeping a man in prison for one year is about five thousand dollars if his family goes on welfare because he can no longer provide for them the cost is likely to double the average cost of rehabilitating him through the operation dare program is 331 dollars and 41 cents the Modern urban complex we call a city is actually made up of four socio Geographic cities it's downtown it's inner city its neighborhoods and its suburbs but on Chicago's West Side a new Urban model has been created by its citizens a fifth City the human City [Music] when Iron Man Go Marching In there'll be a new day tomorrow when Iron Man Go Marching In when city five has come alive when City Falls has come alive there'll be a new day tomorrow when city five has come alive back in 1964 people residents of this community with some residents from The ecumenical Institute began planning uh what a new community would look like or what a human Community would look like so we used to meet on Wednesday afternoons and what we call commissions uh two three four hundred people after several months of uh meeting and discussion uh we began to plan to build a model a social model for the inner city we had many problems here and out of the problems uh the problem solving which lasted from 64 to 68 out of those problems The Fish City organization came we had five presuppositions that is that we would have a delimited geographical area to deal in that we would deal with all the problems that we would deal with all of the um uh ages and that we would deal with the deaf human problem or the ghetto problem uh the I can't do it kind of image and that we would deal uh with symbols and we would use symbols to recreate or to bring back into the consciousness of individuals uh what they really knew about their lives [Music] oh Andrea you can't read [Music] Michael you can't right you can't know nothing about the world you can't know nothing about this city you can't know nothing about Chicago [Music] the Food City fair is uh basically done to uh sort of get massive uh involvement from the community in one spot which helps to sort of build the community and get people to know each other and that kind of thing and we'll be also sort of celebrating and symbolizing by this massive uh grouping of people and many diverse things going on uh the next 10 years and uh where there is real community there is little room for crime because crime grows from the frustration of a hopeless situation in fifth City the citizens are taught to shape their own Futures on the types of programs we have that's what the state thing is all about uh finally not to have fun and and to sell things but to finally just allow people to understand that they're being cared for and that they can participate in that process I started messing around with the games of 14 about um 15 years old I was the leader of the Peewee Vice Lords here on the West Side of Chicago and of course our main activity was uh just uh ripping off you know like snatching purses uh drinking wine partying and then having our little fights with other games at that time we didn't use guns or even knives we just basically boxed a little bit later on I learned how the Box real good and everything and and I used to go all over Chicago boxed to notice when I was about pretty close to 16 years old and so I don't know gang gang banging at that time was uh just a way of expressing that I was here and I was tough and then I shifted uh to a Consciousness that uh something had to happen in the world in fact my community and that was uh when I decided to get married I was uh 17 years old I had given up the gang life and I felt that even marriage wasn't enough and I wanted to get into uh something greater and I I began to sell newspapers for the Black Panthers and go to their political science or workshops and I even pick it and demonstrated with Martin Luther King SCLC uh and after that long experience of doing those kinds of things I sort of realized that that wasn't even getting it so I ran into fifth city which was in my own local community a group of people about 13 had sort of decided that something was going to happen on this west side of Chicago and they had talked to me and so they thought maybe I would be interested so I volunteered my time in the beginning and we started to build for the city as a local community with 16 blocks and 5 000 people and our main concern was bringing into the community of the kind of Human Services that every Community needs such as the health Outpost for health problems that people have preschool for infants and Kinder school and that kind of thing was just basically preschool so that the mothers can get out and work instead of being on welfare even and just having a sort of an organizational structure whereby decisions in the community could get made by the people of this community one of the things I think you'll notice that makes the city unique is in attempt in every one of the 15 programs to create particularly with children as well as adults an openness to new situations a new environment so that uh young people will be able to respond creatively and not be quite as uptight I think you'll find here we've begun to reverse the trends of fear which is so prevalent in a ghetto I have limited and you have limited I have blocks and you have lost but I can read and you can read for my future and your future [Music] is possibilities great possibilities [Applause] one of the things you've probably noticed in the preschool is uh is an attempt to uh present them with various images of various cultures [Applause] [Applause] [Music] there's an attempt to uh celebrate the gifts of oh the Red Man the yellow man the tan man as well as the black and the white man uh through uh songs of various countries through languages through celebrations through food I had various festivals that go on weekly [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] ah how I got started was that um Leela camel she's not here now but anyway she came by the house one day and um knocked on my door and said how would you all like to have a preschool you know in this city I said what you mean have a preschool you're going to just give us a preschool like that it's all gone I don't want to even hear what you got to say so she kept coming back you know and finally I came over and we had uh meet you know like leaving said and little steak meeting guilds you know and we started meeting and talking and so um then she said um you know how many children we had in the community and things like that and I told her we had about 25 000 people you know at all and I don't know how many children so and then later on they began a preschool and I began volunteer time even all the all the major events we had we invite the police to come and uh sort of make sure that we could keep order uh The Gangs have sort of you never really get rid of the game you got to realize that but they've been transformed into something meaningful relative to um defense City programs they are working in the health Outpost they are working with the political Guild in terms of organizing the community telling people about the meetings we have informing about the kind of events we have and that kind of thing so we didn't get rid of the gangs we just sort of converted them and uh actually we didn't convert them history soil converter they got tired of seeing people getting killed unnecessarily and we constantly were making them aware of this being not the way to go so that once we had the vehicle or the structures for them to plug into then they saw it it was significant to help build this city four years ago this city began to move in the area of housing in terms of rehabbing old abandoned buildings it was only after eight years of work with the total Community We Begin rehabbing housing ten years ago we began with creating a community identity creating Community Pride which I think is key I believe if we started with housing we would have failed and a package was put together where eight buildings that comprise the 102 units were selected in an architect and contractor and a mortgage banker and lawyers and FHA and HUD officials all got together and yes was said now these villains are 100 occupied largely because of the success of package one in the first eight buildings we did we've been asked to do a second package are now in the middle of rehabbing four more buildings one of the indications of the community sport is the way that the community is has guarded the buildings that were in the process of being rehabbed none of the Billings have ever suffered both in pack one and pack two from any kind of vandalism or a rip-off to tools that the construction workers left from one day to the next the community themselves has taken the kind of Pride to see that those buildings are kept up nobody can believe this including our insurance company wants to cancel our policy because the building isn't being boarded up completely every night as the workmen go home [Music] oh yeah [Music] [Music] family [Music] the final commitment to fifth citizens is to take their motto to the world what they are doing here they are helping to duplicate in cities and villages in India Korea Japan and the Philippines and the Marshall Islands and they firmly believe it can be done anywhere there is the will to do it [Music] [Applause] [Music] let us come to terms with life let us give the Broken City to the world tomorrow [Music] [Music] what is your name what is your name what is your name what is your name [Music] my name is [Music] say what is your name my name is my name is Mrs Carter what is your name we have looked at our system of justice and we have looked at ourselves the only conclusion we can reach is that if people are scared enough or determined enough or informed enough we may someday realize our cherished goals of equal justice under the law until then we will have to be content with those other Immortal words from Pogo we has met the enemy and he is us