Hiking across the country I gathered many stories revealing important community lessons. There was one story I often gave at my talks about a community I visited before the ADT journey. During a mission trip to Philadelphia I visited the impressive Puerto Rican community at Norris Square.
Norris Square was once riddled with drugs and crime. Being a particular ethnic enclave they received little to no attention from the city police. If things were going to change in that neighborhood, community members themselves would need to be the cause.
They came up with a brilliant strategy. A group of community members started hanging around where the drug dealing was happening. They did not confront the dealers; that would have been stupid. No single individual did the loitering; that would have been stupid as well. Yet simply loitering in mass around the drug dealings made the dealers uncomfortable, and they moved elsewhere. If still in the neighborhood dealing, community members shifted along until the dealers finally went outside the neighborhood.
This was a Phase One. Phase Two for Norris Square involved growing community gardens in abandoned lots and painting tasteful, cultural murals on the walls facing these abandoned lots. Norris Square was a vibrant, safe place by the time we visited; they became a destination for church groups and other community-oriented folks to witness their success story.
Here are the lessons I take home from this. People often cite urbanization as a barrier to community, yet this was an urban neighborhood. People often cite electronics and the information age as a barrier to community, yet this success story occurred recently. What they achieved was incredible, not a tweak here or there but revitalizing the whole community without any assistance from paternal sources.
During the journey I accumulated other stories revealing the importance of community of autonomy, but Norris Square still stands out for slamming home two important points: anything is possible with community and no excuses! Urbanization and the information age are overcome by simply belonging to others in community over belonging to other things first and foremost.
