July 19, 1971
Page 25956
REBUILDING URBAN GOVERNMENT
(Remarks by Senator EDMUND S. MUSKIE to the American Jewish Committee, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City, May 14, 1971)
There are places where every concerned politician should speak – and the American Jewish Committee is at the top of the list.
For generations, the leaders of America have not only been talking to you, but learning from you.
Your innovative ideas and perceptive position papers have pushed and prodded our society toward something better.
You have probed for our failings and enhanced our potential for success.
And in 1971, the American Jewish Committee is still standing on the high ground of American life – for decency and justice, and for the compassion that can come only from a caring nation.
Any public official should be honored to visit with you. But when he comes, he better have something to say. I hope I can meet that obligation this afternoon. I know I have something on my mind that is high on your agenda. It relates to the crisis in our own country. But it is not unrelated to another crisis thousands of miles away.
Last week, an American in Israel told his hosts that they had suffered the agony of war and now they must suffer the agony of peace. His advice deserves an answer – and the answer is obvious: Israel has suffered enough. It is time for an end to the agony and the beginning of a just peace.
In my recent visit to Israel, I learned anew what a just peace means. It means security guaranteed by border adjustments. It means that those adjustments must be negotiated by the nations involved. And it means that the United States must do nothing to undermine Israel's bargaining position.
The American Jewish Committee has been Israel's staunch ally in seeking all of that. You have spoken up for a fair settlement – and you have labored for it, day after day; for more than two decades. You have been effective – and you have also been criticized. There are those who have questioned your right as Americans to work for the rights of Israel. They wonder whether you should care so much and fight so hard.
What they do not understand is that your concern for Israel is a healthy sign of how special our nation really is.
Here in America and only in America, can free men affirm a common patriotism by celebrating their roots in a hundred different countries and cultures. Handing away the heritage of the past is not the admission ticket to America. My father did not do that when he came from Poland to Maine almost seventy years ago. He was a tailor – and I still have a suit he made for me. I also still have the tradition he passed on to me. I have not forgotten it. And the members of the American Jewish Committee have not forgotten the tradition they inherited. That's why you care about Israel – and that's why you should care.
It is perhaps the essence of America's greatness that our national unity gains strength from our group diversity.
But today that unity is threatened – not by our differences in cultural heritage – but by dangerous social divisions. You can see the danger in this city – and in every part of America. We worry about whether we can continue to live together – black and white, longhair and hardhat, young and old.
And that danger is perhaps the greatest danger we face. Americans have always been able to overcome a crisis of substance. In our own lifetime, we have seen supermarkets built where soup kitchens used to stand. But seldom in our history and not since the Civil War, have we seen a crisis of the American spirit. In 1971, the real test for our country is not a test of our power, but of our people. It is a test of our pluralism and our tolerance – and of our ability to work together in the enterprise we call America.
So our first priority and our toughest task is to heal our land. It may take a long time. But we must begin now – at every level of government and in every sector of society.
Our elected national leadership must stop using our divisions to win our votes. A Southern Strategy is no substitute for American progress. And progress is the key to unifying our people.
We need progress in our economy – to still the fear that jobs for black people will put white working men and women out of work. We must give all Americans a chance to be partners in a prosperous economy, instead of rivals for economic scarcity.
We need progress in our cities – where federal inattention today creates group competition for services that are in desperately short supply. Neighborhood should not have to stand against neighborhood to get the garbage picked up or the streets cleaned.
And we need progress toward peace – so that we can win together in America what we can never win in Indochina – a better future for our own country.
The Administration tells us to watch what they do, not what they say. But what they are doing – and not doing – is driving Americans further apart. And what they are saying spreads even more suspicion and mistrust. In action and in rhetoric, the Administration now has one overriding duty – one promise that must be kept – the promise we heard three years ago: Bring us together.
Sensitive national policies are the best way to fulfill that pledge. But they are not the whole answer. In New York and Houston, in Seattle and in Portland, Maine, in every town and village in America, the ability of people to live together also requires the best energies of local government and private groups. The American Jewish Committee has already responded. At Fordham University in 1968, you sponsored the first National Consultation on Ethnic America. Since then, you have convened similar consultations across the country. And you have not stopped with a few conferences. You decided to establish – and you are still sustaining – the National Project on Ethnic America. Its progress and its publications have pointed the way, not to a mythical melting pot, but to a true cultural pluralism. And your committee has also worked to make urban government more responsive to urban people.
Of course, your ultimate success – and the success of other private groups – depends on whether public officials listen to what you learn. Only they can change the structures of power. And structural change is one reform our cities really need.
The efforts of the American Jewish Committee have given shape and direction to that reform. Your studies emphasize not just administrative decentralization, but political decentralization as well. That is a dry, rather technical term for a vital and exciting concept – putting power where the people are. It is perhaps our best chance to create livable cities.
Too often in 1971, the problems of people are at one end of a vast, virtually immovable municipal bureaucracy – while the power to do something is at the other end, beyond any citizen's reach. People feel isolated and helpless. A pothole in front of the house or a broken street light on the corner becomes what New Yorkers call a big dealand it tends to stay that way.
A complaint often commands too little attention – and even less response. More basic decisions seem even further removed. Usually, they are heard about only after they are made.
The inevitable result is resentment and angry resignation. The beginning of an answer is to give people some real influence over the choices which affect and alter their lives. We have seen some progress in block associations, neighborhood organizations, and community planning boards. But most of them give people nothing more than advisory authority. And that is not enough. In every neighborhood of every city, people must have an opportunity to dissent and to decide, to propose and to veto. We are told that there are issues inappropriate for community consideration – and that is true. But there are a host of other issues that should belong to the people, not to some distant public official.
Neighborhood voices should be heard – and neighborhood views should be heeded. And if they are, we will see different neighborhoods in different cities. We will see cities whose citizens again believe that they can make a difference. And we will see neighborhoods whose residents again work together and truly live together – instead of imprisoning themselves in the tragic solitude of houses, isolated each from each by frustration and suspicion.
I was brought up in a town with a population probably equal to the number of people who live between 78th Street and 79th Street on Riverside Drive. There is no way that block and Rumford, Maine, can ever be exactly the same. But that block should be able to have some of the good things I had in Rumford. Neighbors should know each other's names. They should meet together and decide issues together. And they probably should even talk about the argument two friends down the street had at the last community meeting.
I believe that urban neighborhoods can be that way – if we give urban neighbors a reason to learn about each other and work with each other. When you strip away all the bureaucratic and academic language, that's what neighborhood government is really all about.
But when we talk of the need for smaller units of government, some planners are quick to remind us that many of our problems require larger units than we already have. Anyone who lives in a city feels the impact of the surrounding region. Newark smog is also New York smog. Jersey City's pollution does not stay on the Jersey side of the Hudson River. And a housing shortage in Queens is invariably felt in Fairfield County.
In short, many of our local challenges are really regional challenges – and they require a regional response. But how can we create a metropolitan urban planning without destroying the hope for neighborhood power? How can we satisfy legitimate demands for local control without sacrificing our chance to control an urgent regional crisis?
I am convinced that we can answer those questions and I am convinced that the answer is in our own history. Americans have always believed that each public function should belong to the level of government that can carry it out effectively and efficiently. But in recent years, we have allowed our practices to slip away from our principles. Cities have ended up with power that should be assigned to larger units of government – and to smaller ones as well.
The only solution is a thorough structural reform of public power. As we approach the two- hundredth anniversary of our Nation's beginnings, we must make a new beginning in urban government. That may even require that we take another lead from our forefathers by calling a multitude of "urban constitutional conventions" – conventions where governors and mayors, legislators and community leaders can raise and resolve some of the hardest problems our cities and suburbs face. With a little luck and a lot of reform, we might end up with government subunits in every city and a government superunit in every metropolitan area.
That really doesn't sound very glamorous. It would require tough, tedious nuts and bolts work. But that is also the only way to make the system work for people. And that, after all, is the real meaning of American politics.
Of course, turning that meaning into a reality is never easy. Urban constitutional conventions would have to overcome the influence of special pleaders and the pull of vested interests. The stakes would be high. The struggle would take time and energy and commitment. Success would be as difficult to achieve as success at the national level in bringing people together.
But I think we can win both of those battles.
I think we can build a society good enough to be great.
I think we can create rational governments that pursue rational policies.
I think we can make ourselves again one people, each of us different and all of us united.
And when we grow tired or discouraged, we can always look to Israel. Surrounded by hostile forces, the Israelis have fashioned a nation where there was none before. They started with only an idea and a prayer. And there is no end to what they have accomplished.
Their example can help to light our way. And we can realize here in America the hope we also hold for the Middle East: a time of peace. Shalom.