Burden of a Label

...I funded him and I will consume to fund him," promised Lawrence Spitz, the hard-talking former Steel-workers union leader who has moved into the top spot at Community Progress Incorporated "Fred Hams may have lost some stature during these past few days, but the funny thing is we want to help him get it back," said a second high-ranking official "We are available and will continue to be available to any group that wants a dialogue," Mayor Lee told reporters...

...But officials realize Harris is in a delicate position "We hired a lot of local people to work with the community, but as soon as they come with us they become Uncle Toms to their neighbors, and things we try to do become either 'bribes' or 'threats,'" noted a spokesman for the Redevelopment Agency...

...So tor the past 10 years Lee has been hailed as the short, slight, smiling ex-newspaperman from an Irish ghetto who put his hometown back on its feet And this bold beginning helped provide the momentum that has enabled New Haven to snare an outsized share of government and foundation funds earmarked for city problems Meanwhile, however, the areas of concern have shifted significantly A series of long hot summers has put urgent emphasis on human renewal the plight of the urban poor, meaning largely the Negro...

...four of them in The Hill section where the trouble started??but of the seven already built, only one is close enough to serve the neighborhood Within the school system itself, integration is hardly complete To the people on The Hill, and their neighbors in the semi-slum ghettos of Deswell, Dwight...

...Despite the fact that some 6,000 men and women have gone through chi??s Manpower Training Program in the last four years, minority unemployment remains more than double that for the population as a whole Fifteen new public schools have been scheduled for construction in the city...

...hap was founded five years ago by Latish white undergrads at Yale Today young white girls from nearby towns continue to work in the store-font headquarters under a large photo of Malcolm X, a huge sync poster and a sign that poi-claims, "The Black Panther is Coming " A few Yates serve in the summer, but the leadership is black and demanding Harris himself is a short, slight, almost shy 29-year-old native, respected around the neighborhood as a junkie who kicked the habit by himself through sheer will power Although pleased with the programs he has been given the money to run (two day camps, a vest-pocket playground, a job program tor unemployed men labeled "Operation Breakthrough...

...The question continues to be echoed across the nation Indeed, by far the most serious result of the outburst (though property damage reached the million dollar mark, there were no deaths or critical injuries) was the shattering of New Haven's image as a paragon of urban progress Yet that image of New Haven as a "model city," unfortunately, was something of a lyric overstatement spread by the mass media, albeit not maliciously, and eagerly accepted by liberals perhaps more to fulfill a psychic need than on the basis of accomplishments If answers to the most prism urban questions could be formulated in New Haven, there was hope for the rest of the country If New Haven could make headway, even on its David M Alpena and Edward Cumber batch ate a reporting team on the staff of Newsweek magazine own small scale, progress was at least possible...

...Harris wants the city to turn over gig eater sums to local groups "It's the only way we're going to learn," he argues "Sure we'll waste some and make mistakes—bus look at the mistakes the white man has made The kind to programs they've set up have no meaning for the community They do not relate to the people or their lives and are a new form of tokenism ". Harris overstates the case, of course This is the difficulty of dealing with the ghetto leader who lacks a real structure of support and, frequently, the personal ability to establish firm control He must "bad mouth" the city to stay in the forefront of growing militancy, then try to get concrete results by dealing with the power structure As a radical, he cannot admit to the slow improvements engineered by the Establishment "They are not working to change the system, Harris insists "I just have to answer to the black people, they make the decisions The people are my boss The black people have appealed to American morality for years and it has never appeared What do you do when you're oppressed...

...no message, no platform, no appeal, except what I have done What I propose, simply, is more of the same vigorous, dedicated leadership —eexcept that it will be with a greater sense of urgency than ever before, greater sacrifice than before, and greater determination than I have ever brought to our City Hall in all of my years as your elected leader ". The simple truth is that the appreciation of the ghetto will not increase with the physical improvements that are being made, and that "rising expectations," though now a clich?¦, may indeed widen the separation between the aided and the aiding For that matter, who is to say how grateful the Negro should feel for the slow elevation m his position of enforced inequality that has dragged on for more than a century Nevertheless, Lee is sincere m his efforts to provide new hope and opportunity for the people of The Hill and the other ghettos of New Haven If he sometimes oversells his programs, that is a minor failing for a politician compared to the staggering lack of funds for even the most promising plans being mulled over by a growing corps of urban specialists The commonly quoted figure for New Haven's share of urban renewal and poverty funds is $800 per capita But realistically the major portion of this money is now aimed at the poor, which makes the figure $3,733 for every man, woman and child in the city's ghettos And still it is not enough Like the not itself, this calculus only serves to point up again the enormity of the problem faced by even a "model city...

...The image may also have arisen because Lee, now 51, achieved his first success under a different set of criteria a decade ago The mayor was a miracle man who had revived his city with an urban renewal program that lured business back into a neat world of contoured concrete, glass and steel two new hotels, department stores, an office tower and what has been called, with a straight face, a "breathtakingly beautiful parking garage," designed by Paul Rudolph Only nine acres were upgraded, 1 5 per cent of New Haven's geography, but they came to provide more than 20 per cent of the city's tax income...

...It you don't build big, you just can't move as fast " Moreover, the scattering of modestly-sized new construction contrasts pokily with the gleaming downtown complex On The Hill and in other elm-shaded ghettos one does not hear praise to New Haven as a model city...

...Special care was taken, therefore, to keeping lines of communication open to Harris and hap A phone call from hap to Redevelopment administrator Mel Adams on the Wednesday after the worst of the disturbances prompted a quick response and prevented the eviction of hap advisers from a Court House office where they were counseling many of the 500 citizens who had been arrested The court itself had been expanded to three judges to cut the time behind bars for all those m custody...

...Still, in one important respect New Haven did serve as a model last month for mayors who must deal with outbursts of despair in the face of their best attempts to improve the quality of ghetto life It provided a fine example of how to deal with the gap between city fathers and grass roots leaders, who appear likely to grow increasingly militant even as tangible progress increases The focal point of this lesson was the grass roots Hill Parents Association (hap) and its president, Fred Harris...

...this depressing gap between bright promises and actual results is little moderated by the imaginative work going on at City Hall "Mayor Lee's done a beautiful thing downtown, but he's done nothing for the poor people, judges Norms E Pickles, an auto mechanic for a rent-a-car agency "He's a good mayor and he's talking tapir play, but he's slow on action ". In housing, the gap between promise and progress is even wider Since 1960 the Redevelopment Agency has put up almost 1,600 low, moderate and middle income units—bus none on The Hill Now that the area has been designated part to the new Federal Model Cities Program, 300-400 units are expected for occupancy by 1969, and that is a long wait While the city is justly proud of having persuaded private owners to rehabilitate some 2,800 units on The Hill (at a cost of $3 6 million), a mere 100 have been improved by the Housing Authority specifically for low income families Only 100 additional units are set for refurbishing, and just nine new units are to be erected by this fall Similarly, the pioneer Rent Certificate Program covers no more than 200 families across the city, with applications pending foe another 100...

...Not that Lee can be faulted for lack of flexibility Mitchell Spinoff blazed the trail for the nation's war on poverty with his development of New Haven's Community Progress Incorporated (chi), the Rent Certificate Program of New Haven's Redevelopment Agency is the prototype for the new Federal rent subsidy plan, and vocational, educational and recreational programs fill innumerable loose-leaf binders and colorfully printed pamphlets that are made readily available to visiting journalists But the plans and pamphlets have not come nearly as close to solving New Haven's human problems as did Lee's first project in shoring up a sagging economic substructure...

...And Richard Lee is the first to call the term "model city" a misnomer For years, he says, he has been squirming under the burden of that label "If we are a model city, God save the rest of urban America For everything we've done light, we've done five things wrong and left another five undone " But this modest note is sounded in the proud knowledge that at least New Haven leads those grappling with the urban challenge As July approached, Lee tacked the rumors of violence to come that trouble the summer sleep of all mayors, and he was careful never to stray far from City Hall Nonetheless, he and his aides were banking on the hope that their earnest efforts and growing accomplishments had made as much of an impact m the ghettos as m downtown New Haven, that the spirit of cooperation would stifle any uprising "I seriously thought something like this would not happen here," Lee said on the first night of the riots When it did happen, city officials were understandably frustrated "Maybe in the year 1967, it's just the thing to do," shrugged a redevelopment official after another sleepless night "It's like a disease that has spread throughout the country," said a Mayor's aide "You can spend 365 days a year trying to make the city healthy, and still the disease can strike ". In the aftermath of the August turbulence, the Lee Administration feels things would have been much worse if many on The Hill had not been reached by the city's efforts There is truth m what they say A visit to the ghetto, however, shows that the minds of the people have...

...Burden of a Label By David M. Alp me and Edward Cumber batch New Haven Mayor Richard C Lee is an accomplished political artist, but his tears seemed to flow from the heart on the second night of last month's racial violence in this city when he turned to an aide and asked, "Why...

...In its determination to avoid the ugly, towering housing projects, the Lee Administration is concentrating on "cauterization" of low and middle income housing, as well as coops which might offer the Negro his first chance to become a property owner "Our philosophy is not to build new ghettos, says a renewal official, who takes pains to explain that m the long run this concept will mean a more truly integrated city "But m the meantime," she admits, "there is no easy answer...

...In his acceptance speech, written in the midst of his not watch, Lee made not a single reference to "law and order" or the evils of "rebellion There was no catering to reactionary elements, to the grumbling in the business community and elsewhere about standing up to "all those people who show their gratitude this way after all that's been done for them...

...To a solemn convention audience Lee said "The events of the past five days have saddened all of the people in our city, regardless of neighborhood, race or ethnic origin It has been the most agonizing experience in my fourteen years as mayor??indeed the most agonizing experience of my life I have...

...Without detracting from New Haven's actual accomplishments, it seems clear that while there is a relationship between the success of its urban program and the relatively low intensity of its recent summer madness, both of these phenomena are more closely related to the single striking factor to New Haven's small size If it is not a "model city," it is almost a model of a city, with proportionately less compression, isolation and strain in the minority community—whitch makes it both more manageable for the energetic urbanist, and less likely to run amok on a big-city scale...

...In contrast to the tenuous hold Harris has on his people, Mayor Lee is the personification of political security He was sure of nomination to his eighth consecutive two-year term, and as he addressed the city's Democratic Convention (postponed three days by his own curfew order), he could totally foreswear the kind of tough talk that a Harris must adopt to stay in the saddle of leadership...

...New Haven officials come close to despising Harris for what they consider false charges and rumors City Hall was particularly incensed when he went about The Hill and persuaded 300 women and children to evacuate the area "They told us to leave because there might be violence tonight," said one of the evacuees "They told me there would be noting and fires tonight and that I should leave," said another...

...not been touched as deeply as the city would like to believe "Lee is lying," complained one man we spoke to "He doesn't identify with the poor people He builds projects but the Lents are so damned high the poor people can't afford them...

...and Newhallville...