Posted by
Scott Ott on Monday, August 03, 2009 6:16:21 AM
The Washington Post calls it "arguably the most ambitious
social experiment to alleviate poverty of our time."
Geoffrey Canada's $70 million per year
Harlem Children's Zone cobbles together 20+ programs and a school to take poor inner-city children from pre-natal to post-graduate in a 100 block area of New York City. Much of the budget is privately raised.
However, President Barack Obama's plan to replicate this project in 20 cities (backed by $10 million of seed capital from your wallet) will utterly fail. As a result, what the president calls 'Promise Neighborhoods' will remain part of the federal budget for decades to come. (That's right. With government entitlement programs the price of failure is ever-increasing funding.)
Why do I make these outrageous statements? It's not out of cynicism or partisan rancor, but out of historical experience, common sense understanding of human nature and genuine concern for the people of America's inner cities.
The jury's still out on the ultimate success of the Harlem project, but the key element that President Obama and others fail to grasp is why the Children's Zone works as well as it does.
His name is Geoffrey Canada.
He grew up in the South Bronx, in a troubled neighborhood. He is, as leadership guru Peter Drucker used to say "a mono-maniac with a mission". And the reality of life is that nothing significant gets done anywhere without such driven, passionate leaders, who love their mission more than they love food or sleep. Geoffrey Canada will talk to anyone, go anywhere and do anything to see his dream fulfilled. And he won't bow down to bureaucracy that would bleed his vision pale.
Our great cities were designed and built by people of vision and determination. They were populated with immigrants from many lands who "burned the ships" so to speak, and made an all-or-nothing commitment to seize the American dream. They endured hardship and want, often for decades, as they taught their children the value of integrity, industry and responsibility. They knew, if they were to succeed, they would have to work incredibly hard for a long time. However, in America, unlike the lands from which they came, no one placed a limit on the rewards of their labor.
These are the thriving communities that industrious dreamers built. This is the heritage of liberty.
But today, as you drive through those same magnificent neighborhoods you see decay, blight, garbage, graffiti and lethargic people of working age parked on porches, wandering about, or "up to no good".
These are the destitute wastelands that government built. This is the heritage of entitlement.
What Geoffrey Canada has done with the Harlem Children's Zone, government simply cannot do. Nor should it try. No matter how good the president's intentions, his intervention and efforts to fund, staff and regulate 'Promise Neighborhoods' across the land will spawn nothing but increased dependency on government, rather than independent individuals who transform their communities. Mr. Obama's neo-colonialism will not only fail, it will make matters worse.
The answer to the problems of our troubled inner cities can be found only among the indigenous people in each neighborhood -- among the people who have a personal stake in the outcome.
If the Harlem Children's Zone is worth replicating, the way forward is to allow aggressive altruists from across the land to read the book, study the model, tailor it to their cities and pursue it with their own passion. Oddly enough, starving them of federal government funding will increase their hunger to accomplish the vision. They will reach out in their locales and connect with others. They will get money from businesses and individuals in their own communities who have a vested interest in seeing the downtown transformed, and they will succeed beyond the wildest imaginings of ambitious politicians and beneficent bureaucrats.
The only problem with this model is that politicians will not be able to claim credit for it. But what it lacks in media attention (because 'the news' is so often spoon-fed from politicians to journalists) it will more than make up for in actual lives transformed and neighborhoods saved.
Mr. President, if you love the children of America's inner cities, use your bully pulpit to praise Geoffrey Canada, but please keep the government out of it.
Scott Ott is candidate for Lehigh County Executive, twice-weekly columnist for The Washington Examiner, and co-host of Trifecta, a weekly current affairs show on PJTV.