AN URBAN MARSHALL PLAN?

...then with dignity retrieves The cat, thanks the interviewer, retreats Within dark doubledoors of tallwood Behind dense blinds, an unidentity Digiting down to two, to one, Digiting toward the infinitude of none...

...The composition of black and Hispanic families, for example, is not a matter of social insignificance...

...Father Greeley should have asked whether Christian theology and liturgy will be able to make Christians aware of the awesome mystery and paradox of this gift and give us the sense of direction, purpose, and humility to discern and follow goodness without creating a crutch, a fantasy, escapism, that allows us to avoid responsibility for good and evil...

...That over a third of black households are female-headed has serious economic repercussions due to the generally lower economic status of such families...

...NANCY G. WESTERFIELD THE MAN WHO SAW UFO'S Emeritus, where once he tumbled Chains of his equations and the real numbers, Now he is interviewed, porchborne, Outside the disheveled household of his widowerhood, And tells, with hands like toads, warted, Fidgeting, how even the cat hackled At one of them three houses wide, Unbattening its azure portholes over the end Of the street...

...In the present context, it is difficult to suggest an urban crisis or dramatic turn of events of sufficient gravity to inspire an analogous response...

...that enactment will require presidential and Congressional persistence and generosity in the face of inevitable and potent resistance...

...Can Christianity find a broader criterion for morality that will bring goodness closer to the loving that frees others from selfconcern to love in their turn, as Jesus did...

...By the end of 1946, industrial production in the United Kingdom, France, Belgium and the Netherlands had attained or was approaching prewar levels...

...Contrarily, one would scarcely suggest the equally valid, but generally discredited, terminology of a renewed "War on Poverty...

...Shortly after the publication of her article, Daniel Webster, one of the inmates of North Carolina's death row, took his own life with a razor blade, dramatically illustrating his own suicidal drive [News & Views, Dec...

...More generally, persons who are older, younger, or marked by color, risk being outside the economic mainstream, earning less than the national median...

...The original Marshall plan,, enacted in 1948, has long basked in the MANOLD X.CONNOLLY, the author of A Ghetto Grows in Brooktyn (NewYork University Press), is currently doing research at I,Walter Thompson in Manhattan...

...One such recurrent topic is the plight of America's cities, and the consequent need/hope/desire to develop a comprehensive national urban policy that would bring relief, if not salvation, to these battered hulks of brick and glass and humanity...

...of program abuses and dollars being siphoned off by professional poverty merchants...

...Ten years later the two figures were at parity...

...Secondly, while acknowledging the existence and validity of other urban problems, it is probably wiser to marshal one's forces and concentrate attention and resources upon a single critical issue rather than losing precision by diffusion of resources...

...To the Editors: The article by Sister Lois Spear in the November 25 issue underscores one of the frequently neglected arguments against the death penalty, namely, that it most probably induces some persons to murder...

...No form of rhetorical salvation for the nation's cities is more appealing, even more useful for analytical purposes...

...The anticipated and real pains will simply continue to outweigh the putative pleasures...

...One American ambassador, in assessing the "phenomenal progress" of his assigned country, stated: "Even in the year of the most massive Marshall Plan aid (1949), it amounted to only three percent of the gross national output of the participating European countries...

...Most of the sixteen participating countries had already ate tained an advanced state of industrialization before the war...

...The issue of welfare reform and financing, for example, has elicited particular attention, especially from New York City representatives...

...In suggesting the above, I am of course aware of the existence of constraints—perceptual, political geo...

...It was scheduled for four years, with appropriations to be...

...Why dwell so lengthily upon this line of thought...

...Such proposals are secondary, peripheral, not directed to the primary problem as defined above...

...marilyn kramer ______Death on Demand_______ Raleigh, N.C...

...Secondly, the prolonged prosperity of Western Europe's economy lends a certain credence to the notion that the Marshall Plan was not merely instrumental but crucial to its achievement, that it generated this economic miracle...

...This requires the existence of a large number of varied employment opportunities for urban residents who will thus achieve upward mobility through the normal path of work...

...I expect that this kind of desperation and frustration lies at the base of much popular and legislative support of executions...

...Thus it is of critical importance that median family income in New York City relative to the national median, for example, has been shrinking noticeably since at least 1959...

...COLLINS KILBURN Director of Social Ministries North Carolina Council of Churches 159...

...Few images could indeed be as universally appealing...

...It did not promise to rid the world or Western Europe of Communism or hunger or poverty, though it was directed against all three...

...New York is one of the few regressive states that imposes upon its cities the heavy fiscal burden of funding locally a significant proportion of its welfare expenditures...

...While the Marshall Plan was not extravagant in its appropriations, neither was it ungenerous...

...that a domestic Marshall Plan of sufficient scope will cost big money since an effective urban program on the cheap is self-contradictory...

...Herbert Hill, former national labor director of the NAACP, recently warned that unless major changes occurred soon, "the ghettos will explode once again with terrible consequences for American society...

...that anything else, however wellintentioned, will divert scarce human and fiscal resources to less vital areas...

...In the contemporary urban context, this means that one must undertake an analysis, without mercy, of the urbanan malaise...

...Nor should one settle for palliatives, no matter how immediately attractive and beneficial they mi|gnt seem...

...Indeed, this approach constituted one of the primary philosophical underpinnings of the urban renewal legislation of the fifties and sixties...

...It is not possible to divorce a city's economic status from the composition and structure of its populace...

...The crucial problem confronting New York or Buffalo or Detroit is ultimately quite simple to describe, if not to remedy...

...The continued disintegration of New York's economy would certainly not lead one to argue that this downward trend has been reversed...

...If this assumption is correct, then the only viable, alternative solution would appear to be the middle classing of a significant proportion of the current central city population...

...An official British publication acknowledged this debt: "There is not a single industry or district in the country which has not benefited in some way from American aid.'* The dollar credits and loans from the United States enabled the European countries to purchase essential goods—food, stuffs and raw materials especially—but it is well to recall that these resources were grafted onto a Europe of substantial vitality and internal resources itself...

...One in six jobs present in New York in 1969 no longer exists...

...More fundamentally, welfare reform does not approach the central issue of urban decay...

...It is well to recall also the Marshall Plan's modest expectations...

...In cosmic sums, cosmic geometries, he expounds, With reference to the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, What signs he sees, pointing to floor And heaven, what unidentifieds, What luminosities...

...Together, They have stumbled upon a darkness That humps itself beneath the porch floor And the pavement in his street of happy endings, Golden weddings, porch swings lamplit Under the trumpet vines...

...But obstacles, while they need to be acknowledged, are not the focus of this article...

...Whether a similarly temporary program can remedy America's urban ills is, however, questionable...

...While acknowledging the economic and psychological impacts of the assistance, Paul Hoffman, American businessman and administrator of the program, reminded us that "97 percent of the tatigibi effort which produced that recovery was put in by the Europeans themselves...

...At this point in time, it does indeed matter what urban strategy is pursued, and that strategy depends upon one's perception of the problem...

...Unlike the Europe of 1947-48, poised on the edge of recovery, the condition of many major American cities in 1978 verges on economic decline or even bankruptcy...

...All this will not of course be inexpensive in dollars nor devoid of psychological discomfort and dislocation...

...an impending Italian election wherein substantial Communist gains were anticipated...

...It is doubtful, however, that some new underfunded housing scheme, or a few additional policemen on the street, or mass transportation subsidies, will tempt many such persons to return to the urban Gomorrah...

...ticular field of combat without noting the strengths and positioning of his opponent and then planning to achieve his ends anyway...

...Thus the European economy in 1948 perhaps need, ed the boost provided by the Marshall Plan to push it over a temporary hump, but in many ways it was essentially sound...

...138 It seems probable that the rebuilding of these urban centers will require more patience, persistence and expenditures than such a limited approach connotes...

...Bits of money and programs for a multitude of purposes may be good porkbarrel politics, but it is ineffective public policy and will not begin to solve even the problems they are ostensibly designed to solve...

...of much report and legislative writing and little appropriations...

...They will not, of their nature, produce many, if any, jobs, whereas a jobs program will coincidentally alleviate welfare costs and render other problem areas moot...

...At that time, New York's level of $6,091 exceeded the national figure by eight percent...

...All this is not to suggest that Marshall Plan aid was irrelevant to European recovery...

...What I am saying is that if one is interested in beginning to salvage the central cities of this country, an extensive jobs program is the most effective primary approach...

...The notion of a national urban policy conjures up, at least to this observer, images of despair—images of a yawning, disinterested public...

...But, we cannot discharge this responsibility without the knowledge of good and evil, and the traditionalists' claim to this knowledge is being seriously challenged by those who clearly see the evil in the unloving consequences of what the traditionalists call good...

...Can the same be said for the present economic state of America's major central cities...

...There is real danger in accepting uncritically such post hoc ergo propter hoc logic...

...It conjures up a panoply of positive images and virtues —nobility of purpose, concern for the temporarily downtrodden, a helping hand extended, prosperity, and, perhaps most critically, success...

...the plight of the cities must be perceived as critical to the national purpose and to survival...

...Hence they were rich in such human resources as experienced management and skilled mechanical workers...

...Or will Christianity remain a haven for those who want the comfort of a commitment to the loving Jesus without the discomfort of a commitment to help and share with their fellowman, a platitude to justify selfinterest, with love distorted into the self-righteous duty to save the world for our own personal salvation, becoming a force for evil rather than good...

...In an ideal world it should not matter whether or not Detroit or Newark is predominantly black and Hispanic, but it is an undeniable fact that demographics does indeed affect economics...

...Quite simply because it is a matter of centrality...

...Ten such patches will prove far less efficacious than a single tourniquet...

...Thus a city that is heavily minority in population is economically vulnerable for that basic reason...

...Prior to the Marshall Plan, much of Western Europe, outside Germany, was already exhibiting signs of economic recovery...

...The people are demanding it...

...The suggestion that Washington should enact what Felix Rohatyn, Vernon Jordan and others have felicitously christened a domestic "Marshall Plan" evokes a very different reaction...

...It is argued, with some justification, that since welfare is essentially a national problem, it should be addressed and financed at lion level.Federalization would reduce by nearly a bilits dollars New York City's expenditures, thus easing form is fisal burdens.But to many cities,such welfare ra rrelevant...

...Presumably such an appropriation would be in addition to the substantial sums of federal dollars already expended in urban America...

...Nor should one attempt to gloss over this real and potent opposition...

...The words come trippingly, alluringly, to the tongue...

...When on June 5, 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall first publicly broached the concept of providing economic credits and loans to Europe, the idea was not greeted in Congress with overwhelming enthusiasm...

...In such urbanized, industrial states as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio and Massachusetts, local units of government do not contribute to the cost of AFDC and Medicaid...

...What ultimately made passage inevitable was a growing public concern about certain events...

...In other words, it required a certain crisis mentality, real or fancied but broadly held, to create the necessary momentum to assure the act's passage with appropriate appropriations...

...In an era grown increasingly cynical in part from excessive expectations and rhetorical posturing, such modesty is not unbecoming...

...Elsewhere about the Northeast and Midwest especially, and even beyond, central city economies have contracted, offering fewer employment opportunities to their residents and tax revenues to their government...

...In other words, solve the income deficiency and much else will be provided...

...It demands far more ingenuity, resources and persistence to turn around the latter situation than to move in concert with the likely trend of the time...

...Large numbers of persons still labor therein, but for the past several years this work force has been diminishing or remaining stable at best, and in a dynamic, expanding economy, absolute stability is tantamount to relative regression...

...Elsewhere, in St...

...a Russian-engineered coup d'etat in Prague in February, 1948, that cemented Czechoslovakia's absorption into the Russian sphere of influence...

...graphic—upon passage of any urban program ap...

...The Marshall Plan was successful in part because it aimed at achieving fundamental economic recovery and not temporary relief...

...On a most elementary level, it could provide for some two to three million jobs at an annual remuneration of some $10,000, perhaps not munificent but certainly worthwhile...

...In Europe there was a widening breach between East and West about the proper treatment of defeated Germany...

...A state senator said to me several months ago with regard to capital punishment, "We do not know if it is a deterrent or not, but we have to do something...

...Financial reform of welfare might benefit hard-pressed state finances but not necessarily those of decaying cities, like Detroit or Philadelphia, which contribute little, if anything, to the cost of local welfare...

...Would renewed urban mass violence of the sixties genre be likely to hasten such legislation, or would it simply eventuate in increased surveillance and security, greater white and/or middle class flight, further erosion of the urban economic infrastructure, all to the further demise of the city...

...Since June 1969, the number of jobs in the City has declined by over 650,000...

...During the four years of its existence, non-military aid to participating countries averaged about 1.5 percent of United States' Gross National Product...

...140 lost forever the fairy tale land of Eden...

...The Report submitted to Marshall in September, 1947, by the Committee of European Economic Cooperation which detailed Europe's needs, repeatedly referred to the "temporary" nature of its paralysis of production and the dislocation of its transportation system...

...By exercising his freedom to choose, man becomes responsible for good and evil and can never be free of this responsibility to live the childlike existence of Eden...

...We do not know how many murders are motivated by a desire to destroy themselves, but there have been studies which document increases in homicide rates before and after highly publicized executions...

...No city can long remain healthy that is disproportionately inhabited by lower status people who are living in a society that is predominantly middle and upper status...

...To be sure, this resurgence was foundering somewhat in 1947, but by the second quarter of 1948 (recall that the Marshall Plan was adopted only in April), industrial production levels surpassed those of 1938, a not insignificant accomplishment...

...Such a substantial annual outlay might indeed go far towards alleviating urban ills...

...Legislation aimed at welfare reform or mass transit subsidies, however well intentioned, misses the kernel of the matter...

...Moreover, the beginnings of agricultural recovery were evident in all countries in 1946...

...proaching adequacy...

...No intelligent gen eral or tennis player or policymaker enters his par...

...Newark's problems, for example, include the fact that the city is well over 139 half black, and blacks, statistically speaking, are more likely to be poor...

...A contemporary commitment of similar magnitude to America's cities would amount to some $25 to $30 billion per year...

...To whatever factors—demographic, educational, sociological, political—one attributes such a condition, it is central to our understanding of the urban malaise...

...Are Americans willing to expend such amounts of tax dollars in order to help "save" their cities...

...It sought, in President Truman's words, "to bridge the temporary gap between European needs and war-diminished European resources...

...Implicit in the preceding is the thesis that urban viability requires a certain middle-class presence...

...Thus, in our outrage at violence, we collaborate with it and encourage it...

...and most especially, of previous public policy failure...

...This represents an economic catastrophe...

...When urbanists suggest an urban Marshall Plan, it is essentially in terms, real though vague, of a commitment of will and resources by the national government to a particular problem...

...The cat beside him, Staring fixedly into the floorboards, Confirms or denies nothing...

...The Marshall Plan, was essentially limited in scope and appropriation, and temporary in time, a virtue not to be overlooked...

...Louis and Boston, Baltimore and San Francisco for example, the income of residents has declined significantly, relative to national figures, between 1959 and 1976...

...New York City's fiscal difficulties, clearly the most drama-laden, publicized, and still continuing of recent urban problems, appear not to be of the magnitude or broad base to prompt the enactment of a new comprehensive national urban policy...

...It might, therefore, be instructive to reexamine, with constant awareness of present urban applications, some elements of that earlier Marshall Plan...

...The most crucial lesson which a domestic program might glean from the initial Marshall Plan derives from 118 emphasis upon fundamental economic recovery rather than simply temporary relief and rehabilitation...

...voted annually...

...His eyes Are cowled, his forehead is tiers Of questions, his ears hollowed With listening: mousers, both of them...

...The fundamental problem is poverty, not race, but that differentiation is not always perceived and made...

...warm approbation of both liberals and conservatives...

...By 1972, a decline of disastrous proportions in New York's income vis-a-vis the nation's had occurred, so that the local level ($10,039) was ten percent below national standards ($11,116...

...HAROLD X. CONNOLLY Lessons from 1948 With what seems to be the regularity of the seasons, or of the appearance of some new strain of flu, ce-tain public policy issues surface for periodic airing...

...Cooperative efforts on hunger and poverty are encouraging, but certainly Christianity is failing to meet this challenge in the abortion issue...

...It has called for a "sustained, multiphased, multipurpose, coordinated Administration response" to the country's current urban problems...

...The legislation wended its way slowly, even tortuously, through Congress and in early 1948, the issue still remained less than certain and the level of Congressional appropriation quite problematical...

...In the face of incidents like this, it is hard to see how proponents of the death penalty can continue to believe that it is effective as a deterrent...

...Implicit in such a view is the expectation that an analogous domestic program would produce similar results...

...The draft recommendations of President Carter's Urban and Regional Policy Group, a Cabinet-level panel headed by Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Patricia Harris, have helped to refocus public attention on this problem...

...Can Christian love become the impetus for a sharing, cooperating world...

...In recent years New York City has dramatically exemplified this process...

...Yet analogies are slippery creatures...

...The common theme of these events, as publicly per137 ceived, was Russian (Red, Communist) intransigence, even aggression, which had to be vigorously combated...

...The public policy graveyard, however, is littered with schemes designed to retain or reattract middle income families to the city...

...The endless, specious arguments between pro- and anti-abortionists serve, merely to solidify these positions, while obscuring the one approach on which the majority could agree—cooperative efforts to reduce the need for aibortions...

...While 1938 had been a recession year in the United States, it was a reasonably prosperous (in anticipation of war) period in Europe...

...Awareness of the existence of a problem is not sufficient cause for legislative action...

...But the pattern is not unique to New York...

...visions of reborn, prosperous central cities dance in the head...

...Thirdly, income is the single most consistent and reliable predictor of a host of other socio-economic variables including educational outcomes, quality of housing, level of personal health...

...Too many cities suffer from the impoverished status of their resident populations...