Neighborhoods and Citizen Involvement

Abstract

ASPA can have a leading role in helping to change the Man's System. ASPA needs strong minority participation to help build a really long-lasting System that belongs to all of us one which works for minorities, too. Community organizers are concerned with concrete gains. We hope that this article is not simply a futile gesture, a credit on our resumes, or an action which succeeds only in making whites feel momentarily guilty, but not guilty enough to act positively. We want to participate in the strong changeagent role ASPA might play. As pointed out earlier, the name of the game is shared power, how to get it, and how to control community destiny at the local level. This is exactly in the middle of mainstream American political philosophy. ASPA can give the tools and knowledge which would help to effectively distribute that power, to help allocate more fairly those scarce resources. There is so much that ASPA can do. We are proposing that our recommendations be actively pursued by the Society and its local chapters. It has to be done. For a Society with such skills and connections not to help would be disgraceful. We as active members of ASPA would have it no other way. Otherwise, what good is the Society to its members, its clients, and the citizens of our nation? It already has been too late for a long time. We, together, have a lot of work to do to catch up to where we should have been right after the Declaration of Independence.