"The solution to the inner city problems of our time is to be found only in a comprehensive approach to community reformulation. "
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II. THE FUNDAMENTAL PRESUPPOSITIONS


The Ecumenical Institute is firmly convinced that any effective attack upon the problems of the inner city must be comprehensive. We believe that any other approach is finally harmful to the situation and wasteful of funds and human effort. The fragmented approach with one project here and another there, unrelated by a common inclusive model, is but sophisticated benevolence, never penetrating to the real issues. Such methods only tend to put proud flesh over the deep wounds of the inner city. Over the last four years the Ecumenical Institute has developed a model program of comprehensive community reformulation in Chicago's West Side ghetto. The project involves a sixteensquare­block area called Fifth City. It is a port of entry for Southern rural­mincled Negroes who experience raw economicpolitical­cultural deprivation. Out of this experimentation certain operational principles, methods, and constructs have emerged. A description of some of these will indicate what is meant by comprehensive community reformulation.


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        1. Delimited area       The first operating presupposition has to do with geography.
                Comprehensive reformulation begins with a carefully defined
                area, set apart by clear boundaries. This reduces the sense of
                chaos created by the seeming impossibility of the task. It cur
                tails dissipation and duplication of effort. It enables penetration
                in depth that reaches to the last citizen. It makes possible a
                clear picture of the maze of problems that paralyze the citizens.
                The delimited area fosters a sense of community identity which
                is essential to the comprehensive approach.
        2. Depth human problem  The second presupposition demands that the depth human
                problem in the community be filtered out and radically dealt
                with. This is crucial to comprehensiveness. All other facets rest
                directly on this foundation. In the Negro ghetto this basic issue,
                as indicated above, is the self­depreciating image. Unless the
                imagination of these citizens is refurbished, reprogrammed, if
                you please, nothing else can lastingly be altered for the black
                disadvantaged of the central city.
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3. All the problems
The third operating principle is that all the human problems in the community must be attacked simultaneously and co­ordinately. Piecemeal approaches never get at the real issues and cannot create the needed morale for action. Indeed, they tend to cultivate the victim image. Though staggering sums are involved, the benevolence concept is devastating to the inner city spirit. Futhermore, ghetto problems tend to reinforce one another. In order to move one problem toward significant solution it is finally necessary to move them all. The education, economic, social, political, and cultural problems cannot be radically disjoined from one another if effective resolution is intended. Inner city folk are total human beings.

4. Every age group
Fourth, all age levels among the citizens must be dealt with at once. Just as community problems reinforce one another, so the postures of the various age groups radically influence each other. If the elders are neglected they will unintentionally communicate their images of submissiveness to the young. Programs must be created that will operate from the cradle; Io the grave. The comprehensive approach to community reformulation requires a network of interrelated and coordinated projects which deal with all the various levels and groups representing the beginning, rising, emerging, established, and elder generations.
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        5. Power of symbols     The fifth operating principle, the use of symbols, may be the
                most important even though its function is also the most diffi
                cult to articulate. One difficulty is that it cannot be clearly
                separated from anything else in community reformulation in
                that it permeates every principle, model, strategy, and         structure.
                Every effort that deals with a substantial body of people is
                deeply dependent upon symbols. In creating a community,         large
                or small, a sense of commonness in mission must be created.     A
        task and a corporateness relative to the task define community,
        and this is mediated through living symbols. These include
        songs, festivals, the geographical area itself, its distinguishing
        name, landmarks, art pieces, rites, insignia, local leaders and
respected persons and on and on. Symbols are crucial to the
morale and expectation that makes the difference between
social despair and creative society. Symbols are foundational  to inclusive social change.
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III. THE INCLUSIVE METHODS


In the brief compass of this statement the indication of a practicai solution must be even more sketchy than the analysis of the fundamental problems. Inner city reformulation, it cannot be reiterated too frequently, is "comprehensiveness" in both scope and depth. The underlying problems relative to self-image, social constructs, and local power must be met in the broadest and deepest sense. In June, 1968, the Fifth City Community Reformulation effort completed its first four­year experimental phase. During that time an impact and penetration has been made, ensuing in an awakening and commitment of a core of the citizenry. The imaginal education forms, the social constructs, and the community organization are established. The next four years of actualization hopefully will put the flesh and blood upon the experiment. The following is a description of this method of inclusiveness.
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        1. Imaginal education   Reformulation of the black inner city rests upon imaginal
                education. This is where the attack must begin. It is the crucial
                problem of tine' ghetto. It involves, first of all, de­programming
                the mind­set described earlier as the victim image. Secondly,
                there must be a re­programming with images of possibility,
                adequacy, and dignity. In brief, imaginal education endeavors to
                explode and expand the imagination to provide new tools
                whereby the individual can reconstruct an image of self
                significance in relation to his actual situation which will release
                his unique creativity into history. Imaginal education aims at
                motivating free, intelligent, responsible involvement in society.

                Such a process in the Negro ghetto involves the individual's
                becoming proud of his blackness and then moving on to grasp
                himself as a global individual participating in the formulation of
                the new world of tomorrow. It is a matter of being enabled to
                appropriate the limits, possibilities, and unrepeatable creativity
                of his own uniqueness. This educational endeavor must be an
                integral part of all formal structures of schooling in the
                community, and it must be undertaken through a multiplicity
                of extra­formal means.

                It is imperative that imaginal education begin early. Schools
                must be created for the infant in the crib and continue until the
                first grade. It must be an essential part of public schooling and
                occupy a signal place in adult education curricula. It is a must in
                all senior citizen programs in the ghetto. Perhaps even the
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extra­formal approaches to re­programming ghetto men are important. This has to do with the use of symbols described earlier. It is effected by their employment in a variety of situations through an almost unlimited variety of means including theatre, forums, assemblies, posters, community decor and the like. Imaginal education provides community motivation which is essential to the rebuilding of the inner city. It is fundamental to comprehensive community reformulation.
2. Social construct
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Second to imaginal education in import is the creation of the "grassroot" social construct. This begins with an inclusive analysis of the human problems in the area, the constant problem being a lack of adequate structures. In Fifth City a problem mat was constructed which identified over six hundred surface problem areas and organized them under five rubrics: economic, political, education, arts, and life style.
The next step was to bring into being a web of local social constructs to deal with the identified problems. Four such structures were created under each of the five major problem areas. Under the economic are the local Employment Out post, Community Redevelopment Corporation, Consumer Services Association, and Health Outpost. Under education there is a Preschooling Institute, a Public Schools Auxilliary, an Urban Citizenship School, and a Continuing Education Program. Similarly, four constructs exist under the political, style, and arts areas. This makes a total of twenty major local community structures. Each of these twenty has four projects under it, making a sum of eighty in the whole community. Finally, each of the eighty projects has at least four finely­designated functions.
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This complex is obviously crucial to the comprehensive reformulation method. These local structures are the channels whereby the benefits of urban society become available to the inner city. Here is the key to the local structures concept. They do not replace existing structures. They serve them. They make the broader machineries on the city, state, and federal level effective for the inner city citizen. For instance, the local health outpost uses the massive health facilities our total society has created. Or it brings them to the people and the people to them. It mediates between the broad public means and the local community. The same is true of the Redevelopment Corporation. This structure is a bridge between the great state and federal housing programs and the people for whom they were intended. One of the great tragedies is that the disadvantaged, do not even know about such programs let alone understand how to take advantage of them. Then there are the areas of education, culture, legal assistance, and endless other areas when you think comprehensively of humanness and the problems of the total man. Finally, these local structures give the people power to do something about what needs are not being met at all. This brings us to community organization.


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