As stated on the bio on my home page, I worked for many years for an urban, non-profit community development corporation. It was, and still is, led by a Roman Catholic priest (a monsignor, in fact). Working there seemed like a way to make something real out of abstract religious and spiritual notions. It really seemed like a way to make the world better.

I use past tense verbs in that last sentence because after a while, it didn’t seem like a way to make the world better. After a decade, I finally realized that the place was an urban political machine, and the monsignor in charge was really a ward boss. Sure, the organization provided low-income housing, social services, job training, business development, pre-K schooling and alternative grammar schools, and other services that helped the disadvantaged in the city. And I’m glad that I helped to get some of that going. But only later on did I see why the big chief really wanted all that stuff. It gave him power and influence in his corner of the city. It let him push the mayor and councilmen around, or try to anyway. He could allow or block a certain politician from appearing on his property to hand out flyers, and offered space in his freebie newspaper to those he liked. He could make sure his tenants and employees make it to the polls on election day, and could make sure they know who he thinks is worthy of their vote, and could even encourage certain employees to volunteer their lunch hours and after-work time to a favored candidate. And if that wasn’t enough, he controlled certain for-profit subsidiary corporations (that never really made a profit) that could and did make campaign contributions.

That’s not how I feel the urban poor should be helped. I know what the good monsignor’s theory is. His theory comes largely from Saul Alinsky, the famous Chicago organizer. His tactics come largely from Mayor Frank “I Am The Law” Hague. (In fact, the good monsignor grew up just a town or two away from Hague, when Hague was still in power). The monsignor feels that the poor are only going to become unpoor when they organize and get political (per Alinsky). And since they seem to have lots of problems doing that on their own, he feels that he has the mandate to do it for them (per Hague, maybe also Lenin). He shakes the political tree, and the money flows down to his machine, where he shares most of it with the poor (although he does skim a bit for a lot of travel expenses including fancy hotels and restaurants). But he keeps the power.

Maybe this made some sense in the 1930s and 40s. But this is the 21st Century. The global free market is the basic working presumption these days. Globalistic capitalism is cruel and leaves too many people in the gutter, but the alternatives seem to leave just about everyone in that gutter. Sure, lots of people still seem to think they can better their lot by trying to shake the system down, to hold it hostage to its liberal traditions and conscience. But it seems to me that such an approach only transfers wealth, without creating any. Sure, there are too many people in America these days with too much wealth, which they didn’t really sweat to create. But I don’t think it makes sense for the poor (or their self-appointed trustees like the good monsignor) to put all of their energies into conniving ways to shake some of that wealth loose for themselves. Instead, they should figure out how to create some new wealth of their own.

That’s why I think that the world of “CDCs” (community development corporations) needs a new paradigm. Right now, the good monsignor and his machine represent the gold standard of community development. Just about every other CDC is trying to do what he has done, and are adapting his methods. The monsignor himself teaches classes at a prestigious university, telling young MPA students interested in community development how to get tough in the political world. I think it’s wrong. I think the CDCs need to take their smarts out of politics and put them instead into economics and human psychology. They’ve got to get back to understanding the dynamics of being poor, and what it takes to change that dynamic given the realities of the American economy. Sure, politics will never go away. But if a CDC could really figure out how to break the cycle of poverty (despite all the fame and glory, the monsignor’s ground could never claimed this and doesn’t), if it could allow formerly poor families to make it in the economy of today, it wouldn’t need to rely on politics. If the powers that be in the CDC’s home city tries to shake it down, it could always find another city that would welcome it. In other words, it could compete. It could survive in a free market.

That’s what I’m trying to get at in the Some Urban Thoughts section of my home page. I dream of a whole new kind of community development corporation. Smarter, more innovative, in tune with economic and social realities of today, ready to move beyond the urban organizing and ward healer tactics of 50 to 100 years ago. I wish I was the kind of person that could put something like that together. But I’m a student at heart, not an entrepreneur. I’ve got a dream, an idea, based upon my studies. But it’s gonna take someone else who knows how to take dreams and ideas and can make them work in the real world before the new kind of CDC sees the light of day.