Global Research Assembly

July 4, 1979

We bring you greetings from Fifth City and welcome you all to our lovely city by the lake, Chicago. We would like to give you some up­to­date data on Fifth City and we would like to do it in parts. I am Lily Fox. Lela Mosely will give you a brief history on Fifth City. Mr. Trice will report on key happenings and developments in Fifth City, and Mr. Glover will tell you something of the future plans for Fifth City. We thought we would report in parts so that several of us would get a chance to share ~n it. Then we would like to close our presentation by singing together the Marching Song of the Iron Man.

I. Fifth City, as you know, began a long time ago, much longer than some of us would really like to remember, but many things have been done in Fifth City: Preschool education, housing, and credit unions. The Fifth City story includes how we recruited by knocking on doors, how we went from missions to stakes and guilds, how we got geographical boundaries and how people came out to share in the thoughts of what needed to happen; how the visioning came into being, how the charts began to get drawn, and all that has made Fifth City what it is today.

We are very proud to report to you that Fifth City began with a mutual understanding about what local man needs to have happen within him in order to create the visible signs of community. It was a mutual understanding between the Ecumenical Institute and the people of that community. That, I believe' is the major key to what has happened in Fifth City and in the world over the last 20 years. Second, Fifth City began with the courage of the people who have given the deep thoughts of their hearts and their souls and their stomachs. They shared with strangers and caused) this happening in our community. Without the faith, without the inner spirit of the people who went out recruiting nothing could have happened. Thirdly, perhaps it was the positive thoughts that caused Fifth City to be what it is. It was not any one reaching to become famous; it was everybody reaching to be involved in what was and what had to be done in the 1960's. We also saw that building houses or preschool education or having teachers who are now able to administrate and to teach on an equal basis with any professional teacher in the world was not the most important thing that happened in those early days. I would say that it was the spirit within man that caused people to want to change their life style so they could become people of the main stream of the world. That is what caused Fifth City to be what it is, and that is what caused every other individual in this room to take a look at what had happened in Fifth City and see the possibility of it happening in his own local community.

II. My name is Verdel Trice and I work in Fifth City. I would like to say a word about the housing that has been rehabilitated in Fifth City. You can come into Fifth City and see the good job in upkeeping and taking care of the housing. You can just look at Fifth City housing and see the difference. That's the way it should be because if we are going to demonstrate to other people what we can do we have to stand out. We have a shopping center that was started a few years ago and it is just beginning to catch on and really do the job we had thought for it in the beginning. The people are starting to realize how important it is to have something they can call their own. This winter, during the time of the Human Development Training Institute we had the biggest snow in the history of the city of Chicago. You could not drive even three or four blocks for shopping and it is just a miracle that we had the food store there and had food in the store for the people. And the people have shown how much they appreciate that store being there. Community effort made the store possible. We have a small industry there. There are seven small businesses in that shopping complex.

Fifth City is a kind of incubator ­ we call it ­ for small businesses. There are seven new ones which employ young men who have gone to schools: automotive training, alarm systems, and TV repair. We have picked them up and brought them together and they have taken on the spirit that we have ­ that of working togethe r­ and we have accomplished a whole lot there. We didn't know how to do this when we first started. We took a piece of paper and started to draw what it might look like. That is really true. We didn't know where we would get any funding or how we would get the money. We just started to draw it. And I know that this is how you have started in other places around the world. We like to talk about that. We like to know that the thing we are doing in Fifth City you also are doing. That's really something to think about. When you're working in your community, you can see that in Fifth City we are doing some of the same things you are doing. And that's really the way it is going to have to be. We have some people working in Fifth City in business and they did not have a chance to come here. We'd like to work with each other so we have a chance to come and tell you some of the things they are doing there. They know what we are going to say. We work together, we pass on to each other what each of us is doing, and I think, that's the way it should be. We'd like not to think of Fifth City as our own; We'd like to think about Fifth City as a part of everybody here. And Fifth City is all over the world as Mr. Glover used to say. Our housing is going beautifully. Our commercial school is going to be funded for a four day per week program. I went to some of the commercial school graduation down town and to hear those young people get up and tell us about how the commercial changed their lives was really something! Here is a man who has no future and you pick him up and put him in school and when he comes out he has a job. I'd like to see the city of Chicago adopt our commercial school in training people. Our teacher can stand up and do a good job anywhere. I could go on and on but I won't take up any more of your time. I'm just glad to be a part of you and I know that you are glad to be a part of us.

III. You know there comes a time in one's life when one looks around the place and can only see one thing: Fifth City! That's all I see! I have so often been in the presence of so many of you here that I don't know whether this is just the beginning like I've heard many times before. Someone was questioning me "How did you get this way and that way, and how did Fifth City get this way and that?" But I know that deep within the deepness of the depth there is the beginning of the beginning and let me tell you this: it was in Fifth City!

Ladies and Gentlemen it's a pleasure, a real pleasure to be with you. I want to give you a little look of something that really happened to me just recently. I saw an advertisement on the TV. A little girl was messing with the peanut butter and jelly and the toast was poppin' up. Then I saw people from al] over the world appear and I said, "There is Fifth City popping up all over the world" Everything is coming right back to the same thing and this is it.

We are now looking into the future of Fifth City. We are planning the expansion of the shopping center. We have that now practically in hand and I think that within 1980 we will make the great move in getting that accomplished. That will create about 70 jobs just in that vicinity. We also have a marketing and industrial plant which will be expanded. This is the future that I am talking about. You can be expecting these things to happen there in Fifth City. We are also talking about housing and homes. Believe it or not, we are going to do something in the inner city. Fifth City is the only city within Chicago; we are going to build a home, a house in Fifth City. We are going to put up one building and then we are going to give it to the federal government and let them do something with the rest of the buildings. Another part of our outlook on the future includes a sport center around the commercial and industrial complex in Fifth City. Then the industrial area, the shopping center, the automotive center and the sports center will be one great mass complex. Also, our community center is now being renovated and will be completed very soon. The work plans are on the table and some of the work has already started. We are going to have an Infant Care Center for our new mothers. These are the insights into what is going to happen in Fifth City. And we want you to remember this: always come by, check on us, check us out, visit us, look us over, and bring all the information that you can from all over the globe back to where you got It ­ Fifth City.