I was working on a federal grant application yesterday regarding DNA analysis for criminal cases, and one of the Chiefs mentioned that the murder count to date for this year is 53. Last year on this date, it was 43. In 2006, we had the highest number of murders in ten years. And we’re on the way to break that record this year. So, things aren’t exactly going that well out in the post-industrial slums of Newark and its surrounding cities (Irvington, East Orange and Orange).

That bit of info made me reflect on my former life as a crypto-activist in Newark, i.e. my 2 years as a loyal volunteer and my 10 years of employment at New Community Corporation. New Community got started about 15 years before I got there, and reached its peak in terms of size and achievement during my tenure. But unfortunately, it never really got close to its lofty goal of “converting the neighborhood and then the city”, into a functional working-class environment where every child has a good chance of leading a fulfilling and productive life.

In fact, New Community unintentionally contributed to Newark’s ongoing urban tragedy by building and clustering thousands of low-income apartment units. These were designed to be humane, low-density alternatives to the many high-rise “New Jack City” towers that were built in the 50s by the Newark Housing Authority (and hundreds of other urban HA’s). But as unionized entry-level jobs left Newark in the 70’s and 80’s, and the schools fell apart in the 90’s, this housing served just as effectively as the old “projects” to breed a nasty way of thinking and an unpleasant way of life amidst those who couldn’t get out. New Community was imitated in its heyday by a variety of other Newark community agencies, who sprinkled thousands of additional low-income apartments throughout the town. Together with the extraordinarily large inventory of developments built by the Newark Housing Authority, large swaths of Newark have been “locked in” to poverty culture by these buildings for the foreseeable future.

And so, the gangs, guns, drugs and killings continue in greater Newark, despite valiant and innovative efforts on the part of both local police and my boss (the county prosecutor) to combat them. You could say that I’m now helping to mop up the mess that I helped to make. But please believe me, the road to this hell truly was paved with the best and most heavenly of intentions. I missed the formative days, when the spirit of Christian social justice at New Community was “so thick you could cut it with a knife”. However, the dream (and the illusion) had not fully died when I got involved with NCC in 1988. We still believed that we could disassemble urban poverty by weaving a thick net of housing, daycare, job training, youth programs and health services. We really didn’t anticipate that the surrounding economy and political culture would change so much; it happened while we weren’t watching. We couldn’t have imagined that as things got worse, an angry “f*** it” attitude would take hold amidst the young. Yea, this attitude sells plenty of rap music in the suburbs, but it ain’t no entertainment in the cities. Mopping up after the latest shooting is no fun, or so I hear from the guys at work who actually do that stuff.

Newark is not without hope. If you listen to Mayor Booker, there are plenty of things to be hopeful about in Newark these days (although Booker recently gave a rather despairing speech about the murder crisis). The downtown area is still getting better, a new professional sports arena will open soon, and thousands of new homes have been built and sold to valiant young families who are pushing the gang-bangers off their blocks. There’s nothing like owning property to inspire people to get involved in crimewatches. I even helped to develop about 300 or so of those houses during my final years at NCC. But there are still tens of thousands of impoverished single-parent families going from apartment to apartment (with boyfriends drifting in and out) throughout greater Newark. As welfare reform showed, the women usually find some kind of crappy, unpleasant work to keep their kids going. However, too many of the young men refuse to bite that bullet, and get caught up in the cycle of drug involvements, jail and gang affiliation. It’s nice that there are so many stable working families who are buying up all of the new houses, even on some of the worst streets. But the gang-bangers who they push off of those streets aren’t going to be going too far. No other towns will take them.

In my Some Urban Thoughts pages, I have outlined my vision for a new kind of urban anti-poverty effort (actually, a “regional” effort) to respond to the realities that let all the air out of my earlier idealism. But right now, I don’t see anyone with a new and more realistic vision making any waves in the cities and amidst the halls of power and wealth (as New Community’s founders once did). So, I’ll stay where I am, helping to mop up the mess that our spiritual justice inspirations ironically helped to create. But I still hope to live long enough to see a new spirit of urban activism, one that learns from our mistakes and builds on our failures. As I point out, it’s not going to be a bootstraps operation, as NCC tried to be. It’s going to directly involve suburban areas like where I live. That’s gonna be a tough sell. Still, you never know when a new generation of neophyte saints and prophets are going to come out of the woodwork. One must keep their hope alive.