Taking matters into their own hands - citizen self-help groups - Rebuilding America: A Citizens' Guide

National Review, May 28, 1990 by Susan Mandel

As soon as several of the inhabitants of the United States have taken up an opinion or a feeling which they wish to promote in the world, they look out for mutual assistance; and as soon as they have found each other out, they combine. From that moment they are no longer isolated men, but a power seen from afar, whose actions serve for an example, and whose language is listened to.

Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America

TWO CIVIL-RIGHTS groups in Detroit, inner-city residents in Philadelphia, homeless men in Denver, church members in Chicago, former welfare mothers in Washington state, and prison inmates in Tennessee: each of these groups came together with a different goal in mind but they are all part of the same larger movement, the self-help movement. Through it, ordinary citizens across the nation are accomplishing on their own what various levels of government haven't been able to despite years and billions of tax dollars of trying.

* Focus Hope, a Detroit-area civil-rights organization, operates one of the few programs in the country targeted at helping black men emerge from the underclass. Focus Hope's Machinists Training Institute began in 1981, when a local machine-tool company donated a nearby complex it was closing down. Since then the school has placed seven hundred people in auto-industry jobs. After a few years, machinists can earn $40,000 a year with overtime, a substantial amount of money especially considering that MTI trainees have been out of work an average of three years before they enroll in the eight-month course. The school boasts a 96 per cent placement rate.

Seeing that only one out of every eighty applicants for the MTI program meets the minimum entrance requirements-tenth-grade math and a ninth-grade reading level-focus Hope began a preparatory course to help people get into the institute. While the job training is largely government-funded, the prep course is paid for entirely with private donations. The group's next project is intended to take MTI graduates to the forefront of technology. The Center for Advanced Technology will be the first in the country training people to work with the next generation of manufacturing equipment, computer-programmed flexible machinery. Focus Hope was the only organization of any kind (not just the only organization helping the underprivileged) to qualify for the government-sponsored demonstration project, considered critical not only to U.S. manufacturing, but, according to the Defense Department, to our national security as well.

Focus Hope is also developing minority-owned businesses specializing in the manufacture of auto parts, Which they sell to the major car makers. One company, High Quality Manufacturing, staffed by former third-generation welfare mothers, recently received Ford Motor Company's highest quality rating and expects to receive $4 million in business this year.

* Parents against Drugs was organized three years ago by three women who grew up in a neighborhood that is now one of the worst parts of Philadelphia. Drug dealers were terrorizing the community, fire bombing homes and killing children. In reaction, resirallies outside of crack houses, bringing along crews from the local TV stations. At first, many of the protestors came from other parts of Philadelphia, because people living in the immediate area were too intimidated. But their fear didn't last long. Residents soon began conducting their own raids on drug houses, running addicts out of the neighborhood. "People jumped out windows and out back doors," says PAD president Frances Walker.

Once they got rid of the crack houses, Parents against Drugs decided to do more, namely create an alternative to the drug culture for local kids, many of them the children of single welfare mothers themselves addicted to drugs. Neighborhood volunteers now run a youth center near two housing projects where kids can come after school for tutoring and to learn martial arts, chess, soccer, golf, and photography, hobbies inner-city children don't usually get to pursue. Center volunteers discuss the children's report cards with them and meet their teachers, the kind of personal involvement that is critical for kids like six-year-old Abdul Mohammed, whose mother is addicted to crack. Without it, he would almost certainly have never scored 100 per cent on the recent city-wide tests in English, math, and science, and 95 in social studies.

* While other organizations are offering free food and shelter, Step 13 in Denver, begun by four homeless men, is the only one aimed at helping homeless people get back on their feet. Ninety-five per cent of the men who enter Step 13, located in the middle of skid row, are hard-core alcoholics whom other shelters and alcohol-treatment programs refuse to deal with any more. In order to stay there, residents have to give up drinking, submit to regular urine tests, and work or go to school full-time. The men are put on Antabuse, a drug that makes you sick if you drink alcohol, and are given odd jobs at $4 an hour. They have to prove themselves before the shelter will help them find work at nearby companies, with pay ranging from $7.50 to $14 an hour. Residents pay Step 13 $120 a month and do all their own cooking and cleaning. The rest of the money needed to keep the shelter going comes from private donations. Step 13 doesn't accept public funds, explains program director Bob Cote, a former alcoholic: I'd have to have three psychiatrists and ten therapists to tell me why these people are homeless. I know why. The problem is alcohol."