For Robert Woodson, self-help begins in the neighborhood

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 4, 1997 | by Stephen Goode

I feel neighborhood leaders have led the way and invented all the remedies that we need to rescue everyone in this society from moral free fall, including those white kids who are so morally bankrupt that they would crush the skull of an infant. That's a scary thing because some of these young people have all of what society requires in order to succeed. So I believe that people in innercity communities, in some of these crime cesspools, if these people can thrive in the midst of this despair and not just survive, but thrive, then maybe they carry some antibodies that ought to be exported to suburbia.

Insight: Have you always seen religion as the best last option?

RLW: My grassroots leaders led me to this. Within the past four years, we have had something called "What Works and Why" town meetings. I went throughout the nation for two years to seven different locations and flew in grass-roots people and brought them in by buses and cars from a 500-mile radius. Instead of asking "What's dysfunctional?" we asked them what works and why does it work. Some of my closest colleagues are people of faith and they said to me, "I hope you are ready for the answer," and then I knew what they meant.

Insight: Are you a man of faith?

RLW: I am now. I am now.