Ray offered me good advice, “Every month you need to read at least one book you do not agree with.” Since then, I try to do that. There is a whole world out there I’ll like to uncover it. Ray had mentioned to me that he had read about the 13 rules for radicals long before I had read them myself, although I had heard about them. On this day, he asked me, “I think there is a connection between rule #2 and the media. Rule #2 is: ‘Never go outside the expertise of your people.’ So, if you follow my thinking, the media fails to report facts when it is convenient to them, unless it sells.”
“Point well taken. Also, without filling in the whole truth, they keep your attention off the road, and looking at the ditch. They want you captive.”
“And now that you mention the radical’s 13 rules, with the rehab work crew and the Neighborhood Watch Program, we took the opposite approach to Alinsky. By recognizing that ‘diversity’ is a negative unless it is under a ‘unifying’ goal, we built our case around Family, Pride, and Hands as a unifying factor, and used housing and economy as our goal. Under that we organized old and new undertakings, using both tradition and creativity equally.
“Can you give me an example as to why the success?”
“Yes, to use hand-tools was not new, but the idea of a Tool Library was, and it fit perfectly into this Barrio. Saving the pool ourselves, building a park, hiring locals to do the rehab, old traditional style self-help housing, neighborhood associations, reality check, attending city council meetings, participatory planning, historic validity for the natives, morality, economics, work ethics, respect, board elections, safety responsibility, sub-recipiency, etc. Many issues are universal and traditional, but the timing, details, and priorities need to be creatively and specifically new to break the old negative patterns. Organizers will often use tools of intimidation, demonizing, ridicule, polarizing. This type of use will throw you into a ditch by the side of the road, and are more effective at destroying, but ours were intended to be effective at building up a community. We brought the police and the community together without the use of threats or intimidation.” Ray wasn’t at the meetings, but he told me he could see the difference it made on everyone. The key to what we were doing, includes the balance between tradition and creativeness, the Barrio had not done many of them before, and the emphasis on the individual. The final effectiveness would link the acceptance of a diversity of cultures into a unifying theme in an economic, political, and social chain. This unifying factor must be acceptable to all, strong enough to recognize that this country’s power is based on understanding, and recognizing self-sufficiency for everyone, while recognizing the differences, as well as the equality with equity, within individuals. It is in our recognition that each child and adult must learn and grow to do what is best for self, for family and then for country, in that order, by being the best they can be, for democracy to survive. As Kennedy said,
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
First, we must know what to do for ourselves in order to be useful to others. Totalitarian countries seek the reverse; that the individual is a subject of the collective, controlled by the authoritarian regime, forgotten and unimportant on itself once control is obtained, only as part of a collective does the individual remotely count, which is The old Trickle-Down Theory. Kennedy’s advice was liberal, todays elite are divorcing themselves from such thoughts in exchange for having the government provide the answers, “let he government do it for you”, which is equal to “control”. “Allow the government to control you”.
On this particular day, we had finished a friendly competitive baseball game. Sweaty and thirstily drinking beer and wine, we were sitting at a table in a local bar with several friends, Ray and I and a curious mix of kids of all ages and skills.
Next to me was a tall guy with a baseball hat, whose name I didn’t get at first, he was drinking wine. Then next to him was Manuel, a friendly college student, and next was Tito, after him was Max, who didn’t say much but drank more beer than all of us put together, then Ray and now on my other side sat Mike, who was in a bad mood. After a brief comment about the game, the conversation shifted to our different backgrounds, when one of the guys made a comment about new events in the Barrio and why the City was trying to take the funding away. Only Manuel and Tito lived in the Barrio.
Waiting for the first pitcher of beer to arrive, my tired arm was leaving a
puddle of sweat on the table edge, and taking a paper napkin I whipped it out, and replaced a clean napkin on the edge. The tall guy, with his baseball hat facing backwards, said with a tone of doubt; “I was at your meeting with the City Council for a reason having to do with our own neighborhood. Did I notice that it was the black council member who said, when voting in your favor: ‘It is good to see people lifting themselves by their bootstraps’?”
At that moment Manuel, a student at the university, pitched in with some fervor, “There is really no such thing as doing it by yourself,” he said. “Everyone gets help from other people.”
Why was he upset? His neighbor Tito, small, bonny, and energetic mixed blood, who had played an excellent game as a short stop, surprisingly barked back. “Bullshit! People who say what you just said are idiots, sour grapes, if you ask me.”
After that outburst, there was an instant of silence all around the dark wooden table.
“You can’t totally say that. There is some truth to it, but we all can use some help.” The tall guy with the baseball hat, whose name I found out to be Johnny, said trying to soften the tone. “And yes, as there is also some falsehood in saying that we need the help or else. Of course, you need other people, no one is an island, wise men say they are wise because they stood on the shoulders of those who came before them, but it must come from you. That is why history is so important.”
Tito added, “But only a coco-loco will divorce the concept of being wise enough to know when and where to get what you need. To pull with a push and a lift by your bootstrap and more important, how to pick yourself off the floor when you fail and try again, as compared to standing in a doorway with your hand out the rest of your life, hoping for others to give you a lift.”
That rough kid was smart for his age! Johnny, tilting further back his baseball hat, said again, “Agree. Yes, any citizen in the United States, regardless of birth, can get ahead in life on their own merit. It is to your merit to pick and choose what helps you and what doesn’t. Those that don’t, don’t. Since life by itself is not fair, or ‘Just World Fallacy’, you must be the one to make the difference. And people must be held accountable for their actions by those who see injustice done.”
“Bullshit!” echoed Manuel in disagreement. Manuel wasn’t looking so
friendly anymore. “That ‘Just World Fallacy’ means that there are too many racial barriers that need to come down before that statement can stand on its own.”
“Maybe so,” I said trying to prevent the conversation from falling into the volatility and disruptive racial opinion creeping into the conversation, “We all have our obstacles to overcome. I consider misdirected government interference, which we have just now encountered with the City, as the worst culprit.”
“But you guys have been using government funding to do what you are doing,’ said Max from the other side of the table half-heartedly. “Isn’t that what Manuel is saying? That you could not have done it on your own?”
“Who fought for the getting the government funding?” Asked baseball hat changing sides in this argument but supporting my attempt to divert from the previous issue. I was beginning to like this guy. I was sure he was going to end up supporting Tito.
“Bullshit!” Ricocheted Tito again, “That funding is nothing but a tool.” Tito was smarter than he seemed, without anger this time, but with spirit, he went on, “Like the Tool Library is a tool, and the swimming in the fountain was a tool to get the swimming pool reopen. If you take away the bootstrap, you take away the soul, the guts, the sweat, blood, and tears that made this country what it is, and you are left with mediocrity at best, and flops at worst. People need to do their part for themselves, teamwork is very important, but everything else is someone else’s deed, not yours. No one with a brain will ever say otherwise unless they are stupid. This is not to say you shouldn’t recognize and be thankful when someone throws you a rope, but you must be the one to grab it and pull. However, if you want to encourage people to learn to get ahead in life, teach them, and stop repeating again to me this crappy nonsense.”
We were all flabbergasted at Tito’s eloquence. He was a school dropout. I was reminded of Jose’s ability to do filming without any formal training. I was struggling myself with the fine line between individual effort and teamwork. Both crucial. But the fact remained that even good teamwork requires the individual capacity to pull, and the individual effort to work as a team.
“Tito, are you going to college?” I asked.
“No. I can’t afford it.”
Ray, who was the most serious of all of us, ended that conversation by saying in a quiet tone, “To lift yourself by the bootstrap is the key to the enjoyment of success in life, and you don’t have to be the only one pulling, but you do need to do your own pulling. No one can really do the heavy lifting for you.” 
He looked at Tito and said, “You’ll do well man. You played a mean game. I was glad to have you on my team. Whoever disagrees with you can move on to the team of losers.”
I thought long and hard about the conversation. It contained the essence of Barrio transformation. The Barrio had to be willing to lift itself up by the bootstrap, person by person, or nothing would work. They had done so despite government help and interference. I was beginning to distinguish between the meanings of the two words, “help” and “assist”. Maybe it is just semantics, but the word “help” to me implies ‘creating dependency’ while “assist” implies providing resources necessary so that the person can get ahead by doing it themselves. Maybe giving a fish is to “help” while teaching how to fish is to “assist”. I do know that helping other people, except in cases of crisis, can often do as much damage as good.
“To help” deprives someone of self-sufficiency and therefore deprives them from gaining necessary self-confidence. It is a killer. It is promoting slavery. Looking at it another way, to help becomes an end while to assist is to make available a means to an end, and the end must be the other person’s end, not yours. Hunger is not an end. It is a condition. Except in a crisis, you can’t help anyone out of hunger, only out of appetite. You must assist someone to find their way out of poverty and therefore out of hunger, but it must be their doing. This is the reason extended food stamps can reduce people to dependency. You kill their spirit and their body will follow. That is the treacherous trick. The desire to make everyone else dependent on others, on the government[xl]. Alinsky strategy is to make the group dependent on the organizer and his strategy.
Look closely. This amazing picture is to me symbolic of what I mean by ‘tradition and creativity’ at the same time, and ‘individualism and equality’ to create teamwork in a community. Every stone is different, none are equal, but full of equity and balance. For diversity to be a plus in a country, it must abide by common denominators that hold it all together; the constitution. This unifying factor must be acceptable to all, strong enough to recognize that this country’s power is based on understanding and recognizing self-sufficiency for everyone, and recognizing the differences, as well as the equality with equity, within individual teamwork. Not everyone finishes equally, but everyone finishes better.