Red Hook Voice - The Heart of a Neighborhood

Red Hook Winter: The backstory of the Human Empowerment Network

I began work in Red Hook, Brooklyn, along with my business partner William Keltie (who specializes in finance and economics), in December 2012, right around the holidays.  It was encouraging, while also humbling; it gave perspective to a grim reality. Many people living in traditionally isolated and poor communities see the cold and dark of winter as a harsh reminder of their isolation, of the struggle and hardship they live and breathe on a daily basis.  It is as if winter becomes a symbolic multiplier of this reality, intensifying the sense of hopelessness, of being left to fend for themselves in their weakness, forgotten by much of the better equipped outside world, particularly after Hurricane Sandy.  During this time of extreme difficulty, Red Hook lay between the terrifying reality of the flooded East River waterfront, its waters submerging first floors far into the neighborhood, and the physically and culturally segregating reality of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.  This superstorm, and its physical, economic, social effects on entire communities, from Brooklyn and Long Island to New Jersey, was one of the most hurtful disasters this country has ever seen. The infrastructure and delivery of services was overwhelmed.  Government funds were slow or drying up, budgets were cut in hurtful ways, neighborhood businesses were closed down from the damage, jobs were becoming even more scarce, and the vicious cycle of socioeconomic hardship – and ultimately of frustration  and despair - was in full swing. 

 

We started with a research plan and ethnography platform developed from my training and experience in the military and thereafter, both abroad and where I lived in the States.  It is based on understanding the human layer, the particular social terrain, and the sociocultural and economic 'battle space' in which a war on poverty and hardship must be fought.  Neglecting to understand this terrain has led to failure time and time again, even when seemingly endless sums of money are involved.  By contrast, understanding it can make even the smallest amount of money have a real impact.  Grasping the human layer of a community is absolutely fundamental.  Everything starts and stops with the local residents themselves; their destiny should be defined by them, not by outsiders, ourselves included.   This is not us coming in and telling the neighborhood what’s best for them.  Rather, we are seeking to help empower them to build their own community and define their own future. 

 

Nobody likes naïve do-gooders; we are seeking to make real impact through a real understanding of the human and social terrain.  Connecting with a community on its own terms, through its own schemes of sharing, discussion and decision-making, of dispute resolution and simple camaraderie, almost always proves to be the best approach.  The impact then comes from people’s ‘human capital’ – their skills, talents, abilities and knowledge, almost always under-appreciated or underutilized by today’s economic climate. By effectively getting to know these people, we discovered the massive wealth of skills and talents, of knowledge and spirit to be found in these public housing projects, something outsiders rarely get a chance to appreciate.  Essentially, the community becomes what it seeks to be, by helping define and participate in the solution rather than being passive recipients of a solution imposed on them.

Despite many setbacks, an impressive and respectable wave of grassroots volunteerism, relief and rebuilding came to Red Hook, and was most effective and timely when it was transparent, self-organized, and working directly with the needs of residents. William and I, through our Human Empowerment Network, are working to take this concept to the next level, making this a means of sustainable growth - a way for these same residents to improve and build their own community long after the storm.

Definition of ‘bad or hurtful policy'

'Bad or Hurtful Policy' is defined by this project as policy which is certified by universally accepted standards of non-partisan logic, facts and evidence to be hurtful to private citizens as well as counterproductive to its original aims.

More specifically, ‘bad or hurtful policies’ are both (1) regressive or hurtful to the American people (especially job-seeking, working- and lower-income), and (2) ineffective or counterproductive to the stated purposes of the policies themselves, as certified by basic standards of facts, empirical evidence, common experience, and logical reasoning.

In summary, such policies are not only hurtful to the private citizens they are supposed to serve (especially lower middle class and working/job-seeking poor), but are also counter-logical and counterproductive. They fall short of justification on non-partisan rational grounds, even by the standards of the average persons reasoning. This is due to obvious conflicts of interest (often due to public-private lobbying, private influence, or other reasons) in which there is a strong mismatch between their stated goals (such as reducing crime and drug use, deterring DUIs, increasing employment or reducing poverty) and their actual effects on society. In other words, they conflict with their openly-stated purpose and thereby fall short of basic standards of logic and reason. 

Such policies are, more often than not, exempt from any strong or rigorous standard of self-justification. This reality runs in direct contrast to most other spheres of professional activity. 

Examples of bad or hurtful policy:

(1)-Many tenant / landlord policies may be unfair or corrupt due to unrealistic expectations of tenants in a job / income-constrained environment, especially in light of recent Hurricane Sandy damage to residential buildings;

(2)-Many cases of mismanaged or diverted funding and budgets aimed at helping local communities, in which the funds do not go to their intended recipients in the manner or degree they are supposed to. 

(3)-Many law enforcement  policies such as stop and frisk divert resources-both police as well as tax payer money-away from real threats and into 'legal rackets' such as soft drug sentencing or other non-violent crimes.

(4)-Much of our legal system, nationally as well as locally, revolves around the money a person is able to pay rather than an objective procedural assessment of their guilt or innocence. In such cases, the consequences the person faces-even for smaller misdemeanors-is tied less to the severity of their act or crime and more to the level of disposable income they are able to access.

(5)- Many of our legal and judicial procedures are hurtful and regressive on people with lower (and often, even middle) incomes, they often displace a person from their job and important facets of their life. This often leads to unforeseen 2nd and 3rd-order consequences on the persons life, which can reinforce the problem in question to begin with. These unintended consequences are not calculated by our judicial system.

 

A great number of public policies, especially the ones which are the most irrational, counter-productive, and harmful, are immune from having to explain themselves to the public on rational grounds. This is due in large part to the fact that public figures do not have sufficient incentive or pressure to give a rational argument for the existence of these public policies.

The purpose of this movement is to create that pressure, and force public figures to hold their programs and policies to the same basic standards of rational argument, explanation and fact-based justification expected in other professional spheres of life.

 

Existing and Emerging Models of Fighting Poverty from the Ground Up

Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD): The Asset-Based Approach- A new paradigm for empowering residents. () The heart of ABCD is a capacities-focused approach that seeks to empower the community and-by extension-mobilize citizens to create positive and meaningful change from within. Rather than simply focusing on a community's needs, deficiencies and problems, it helps a community become stronger and more self-reliant by discovering, mapping and mobilizing all their local assets. Do you realize how many assets a community has? This forum allows Red Hook residents to enter into a shared, open conversation on how best to build Red Hook - as well as other American communities - by tapping into our untapped potential. Among the assets in a typical community include: The skills of its citizens, from business owners to the homeless, youth to disabled people, from thriving professionals to starving artists; The dedication of its citizens associations —ministries, churches, CAC meetings, culture groups, social clubs, neighborhood associations, giving circles; The resources of its formal institutions — businesses, schools, libraries, community colleges, hospitals, parks, social service agencies (many of which are private); Through an asset-based ‘all-in’ approach, we can work together to fill much of these budget gaps in needed social services, mainly by increasing the reach and scope of grass-roots community outreach, philanthropy and common-man volunteerism. This is not just about numbers and budgets, but about proving the idea to our city and the entire country that compassionate conservatism can work when applied from the ground up

Here is an example: A Labor Opportunity Network-Individual Level (informally termed 'Neighbor-to-Neighbor/N2N' level) Key Example: Painting A Neighbor’s Fence. Imagine a scenario in which a resident of the Red Hook neighborhoods wishes to have her fence painted. She lives in a middle-income bracket and would like to make a charitable contribution to the wider Red Hook community, however modest. Instead of contracting a corporate entity to paint her fence, she decides to have a friend do it for a lower price, and is thinking of who to call up. She is then informed by her local (church/CAC meeting/neighborhood association/newspaper/landlord/etc) that the Human Empowerment Project works to supply such ‘side jobs’ to poor people in need of financial stability. She is told that such people would be both trustworthy and in genuine need; that they come from established ‘solidarity networks (also called 'reciprocity networks') based on the building of trust and responsibility, and that these small networks work along similar lines of micro-finance/micro lending-that is, the participants know each other or are indirectly linked to each other based on credibility, demonstrated responsability and word of mouth. She then decides to have two people from a local solidarity network paint her fence, and for half the price of a corporate contractor; the HEP looks at an ‘asset inventory’ of people in one of these networks to see who has done paint work before. It then links them over to do the paint job. She saves money and makes a charitable ‘donation’ to her community by providing two (trustworthy, responsible, pre-vetted) lower-income or otherwise struggling people with a dignified source of some side cash, all of which was earned. Based on her feedback to the HEP, the two individuals would likely become more solidly ingrained into the trust network based on proven responsibility and desire to work.

The Purpose of the Red Hook Sharing Network-An Asset-Based Community Approach

The purpose: To enable Red Hook residents to share the best ideas, trade their financial and human capital, talents, skills and knowledge to solve problems, and build their community from the ground up. There are (1) things that need fixing, there are (2) poor people in the community with the talents, skills and abilities to fix them, and there are (3) ways to discover these people and empower them to fix their community, thus connecting them with pathways of work-and by extension, financial stability. Most importantly, paying or assisting struggling residents in need of help in return for their community services acts to add value, not only the the residents but to the wider community. If we can use a pool of neighborhood funds (from the local church and neighborhood association, for example) to pay ten struggling, in-need Americans to renovate an impoverished section of a neighborhood, employing their skills and labor for a third of the price of a corporate contractor or unionized government service, then value is created from within the community, and peoples lives are more stable.