City Lights

...During the Babylonian captivity we are told that "the craftsmen and the engravers departed out of Jerusalem...

...returned, converging on the parkways chinery of money called trade...

...observation of Clarence Darrow, "History repeat itself...

...minority spokespersons combined the moral authority of their Yet I can understand their reluctance...

...toward each other, toward a complica"Still the center...

...Only then can the city be an organic whole...

...And then, here was the nation's high- est law enforcement officer, Civiletti again, coming on the tube on Thursday night, all networks, to explain that in re Billy Carter, "No, I don' b'leeve we'll prosecute...

...When God was a distant God, people found him on mountain tops and in lonely forest shrines...

...That's PETER STEINFELS way to make cities whole again...

...Their affluent do their business and find the but they have been sung enthusiastically radios rang with the Westchester invita- source of live entertainment and the in- by so many because to so many these tion to stay there, to bring their business spiration of the arts...

...East the country and on the shore, back from the old wander like ghosts and the young Side, West Side, all around the town...

...I write all" this as an outsider to Theology in the Americas, In view of all this, I should be pleased that the coalition of although only after extended conversations with a number of minorities and women resisted the rush to affirm some vague knowledgeable participants (I did not reach the official or- "socialism," and that they insisted that the directing vision in ganizers, all of whom, I was told, were on vacation...

...But if the self-destructive...

...Re- duced to a narrow economic base, they are the keepers of the poor and the old...

...Even Kansas City has its song...

...Washington, our most-planned city, is only now, after two centuries, CiTY LIGHTS beginning to think of itself as an entity...

...ABIGAIL McCARTHY r Ill Judge Civiletti will put you in jail, It's hard, it's hard...

...They must think of They have lost community but they still tion of the experience of life that trans- that, and wonder how long, as their have the place...

...Louis, Louie, meet me at the side towns...

...He could presum- ably subpoena the attorney-general him- self, assuming Civiletti still has the job, and question him closely about those statements...

...If their run in predatory packs...

...I hope so, but I also recall the most important--a moral dead-end...

...To begin with, and victim status and charges of racism (now sexism is added) to this should be stressed, every person I spoke with, including gain greater leverage in various organizations...

...tered in dark doorways love the city...

...It is not the whole city...

...Meet from Newport and the Connecticut sea- But at the heart of the city there is still me in St...

...It is a yearning shared by those who have only heard tales of the city and by those who are exiled from it...

...They are, as Mayor Koch noted, the as- similators of the least-skilled and most oppressed of the new immigrants from abroad...

...There is a Theology in the Americas did not reflect the complexity or the considerable danger of misemphasis in such an outsider's concreteness of social injustice as their constituencies experi- view...

...The eighties are not the sixties, and maybe some least to Detroit, strikes me as an intellectual, political, and-- lessons have been learned...

...The road it has been traveling, at elsewhere...

...The frosting on the cake was Civilet- ti's attack of memory lapses, apparently one of the health hazards of the office, shared by John Mitchell, Richard Klein- dienst, and (you could look it up) Harry Daugherty in the really good old days...

...The boundaries of any city should take in those who have moved to its fringes and suburbs--the businesses as well as the people...

...The core city is no longer doing all the things which makes the city a city...

...According to John Herbers writing re- cently in the New York Times, the "cities are performing a more limited role...

...I mean, the law has been fulfilled, why be vindictive...

...as a practi- conference, thought that Theology in the Americas was, is, cal matter, the consequences almost always seemed to be and promises to reraain a valuable undertaking...

...still the commercial center of the aerie-like offices and the homeless shel- The pull of cities is the pull of people world" but to be free of its problems...

...If today the middle class has fled the cities, the rich live there in luxurious ghettoes behind guards and bars, and the poor live in decayed shells or on the streets, the fault is not in what makes the city...

...Quel temps fait-il Paris...

...On the face of it, the registration resister, when finally tracked down by Javert-Civiletti, can reasonably plead that he reasonably assumed that everything would be hunky-dory if he agreed at last to register just as the Justice Department,as it is strangely called, was ready to sock it to him...

...Cities were the places where people wor- shipped together and to which they jour- neyed together in pilgrimages...

...The great civilizing city-states were built on, and grew from, trade--Florence, Ravenna, Padua, Siena, Genoa...

...from all these places they glitter and government and the ma-fair...

...About the ulti- those in disagreement with the organization of the Detroit mate justification for such claims I need not argue...

...There is III something organic about the rise and fall of cities...

...Judge Civiletti won' t give you no bail, It's hard times in the Carterville jail...

...Great religions have their holy cities-- Rome, Mecca, Benares-on-the-Ganges, and the epitome of all, Jerusalem, Jerusalem the Golden, David's holy city--the metaphor for cities to come...

...that, like Rome of old it exists where its far-flung citizens are...

...It can help one get hold of matters of principle...

...Unfortunately, the reports movement's public reputation...

...And in a way I am pleased...

...I don't know about judges, especially those appointed by the presi- dent with the advice of the attorney-' general, but I can't imagine a jury outside the Pentagon that wouldn't turn the kid loose...

...And trade builds on peace...

...The They are manufactured songs, of course, through Westchester County...

...They are back at work in the where tattered curtains flap through the snatches of song and verse: "Paris in the ty--back from summer places in broken windows in the high-rises, where springtime, Paris in the fall...

...Heaven forfend...

...San Fran- Shore, from Cape Cod and the Islands, as to greed...

...One friend even warned me of their "takeover" also provoked in me a sense of dJjd vu...

...That can Of several minds: Abigail McCarthy probably never be done by plan...

...Experts say that for the foreseeable future the cities may have to resign themselves to their limited role and hope that somehow the larger society will assume more of the burden of caring for the poor and the old isolated within their boundaries...

...But, most fundamentally, they were places of exchange, a systematizing of a discovery lost in the mists of the history of humankind: that we can benefit from and enhance our lives by satisfying each other's needs, by exchanging goods and services...

...and that what radiates from the center must be returned in some way to renew the core...

...cisco, open your golden gate...

...But when God spoke through men, cities became holy places...

...And the poor and cities were the center of life and move- there--td be near that city which, so the homeless make its streets their own...

...From them came trade...

...These discoveries were discoveries of what it is to be human...

...They must take in all those who draw their sustenance from its trade and exchange...

...A premium was put on a species of manipula- distance of an outsider risks distortion, it can also provide tive rhetoric--popularly known as "mau-mauing"--and in perspective...

...Why indeed...

...The answer to the when me and Mamie O'Rourke danced city is New York they came from Maine, South Bronx has been to run away or to the light fantastic on the sidewalks of from Vermont and New Hampshire, destroy like the arsonists whose fires may New York...

...Hand in hand with that ancient discovery must have gone another--the joy in work which is called craftsmanship, and the joy of sharing that work with others...

...Le ciel est-il bleu ou gris...

...so cities were places of learning, of order and government, and places where artists and writers gathered...

...ELL, IT WAS funny, any way you look at it...

...Trade binds us...

...But people find that which transcends their solitary limitations not only in the holy, but in truth, in justice, and in beauty...

...You, boy," he said to my ear, which, I readily admit, colored his speech with the tones of the people he hangs around with, works for, and de- fends at all costs, "'You, boy, you get yo' ass down to the Post Office and register, right now, or I'm goin' th'ow yo' ass in jail and you'll never get out...

...You see, dere, when a fella fails to register after we been beggin' him for two years and then, when he hears we are thinkin' ofprosecutin' he finally does register, why, we don' normally prose- cute...

...In the past (and for m~my of E PRIVILEGED have returned by blasted canyons of the South Bronx, us still), the very names of cities evoked ow...

...What I see in all this is that the things which built the city were good things, things which were humanizing, no matter how materialistic their aspect...

...And we must realize that every city, like Jerusalem of song and story, is an idea as well as a place...

...To do this we must, of course, abandon our old geographical concepts of where a city is...

...Of several minds: Frank Getlein I l~[ml SAVING THE GENERALS HOW CONSCRIPTION INDUCES INSANITY But why boundaries...

...In ment, of variety and texture, of bright radio voice cheerfully assures them, is some queer way both the rich in their lights and heightened experience...

...the cool mountains and beaches...

...It that publishing criticism of Theology in the Americas would reminded me of events I witnessed in the late sixties, when give comfort to Michael Novak...

...MAKING THE CITIES WHOLE AGAIN Cities, growing from the way their people came together, have personalities of their own...

...Chicago, Chicago-- from the Berkshires, from the North be as much a response to ataVistic instinct that wonderful town...

...Hear me, boy...

...If we could find the con- cends the individual...

...The young streams of traffic filter through the nection between them we might find the Quechua boy in an isolated village in the Commonweal: 486 high Andes who told a visitor that he did not know what heaven was like but that he was certain that it was a city, was giving voice to an age-old yearning...

...the end both whites and minority members who were afflicted And I am persuaded that there are some matters of principle with any degree of intelligence and self-respect grew repelled that need to be candidly faced and honestly resolved about by these psychological games and took their concerns Theology in the Americas...

...Meanwhile, we must assume, Jimmy 12 September 1980:487...

...Here was the nation's ighest law enforcement officer, Civiletti, coming on the tube on Tuesday night, all networks and who knows how many rock 'n' roll stations, addressing all reluctant registrants for the Carter con- scription...

...yet many of the insiders are reluctant to undermine their enced it...