The Cornerstone
"The plight of the cities," Kennedy declared at the December mass meeting, "--the physical decay and human despair that pervades them--is the great internal problem of the American nation, a challenge which must be met...If we here can meet and master our problems, if this community can become an avenue of opportunity and a place of pleasure and excitement for its people, than others will take heart from your example, and men all over the United States will remember your contribution with the deepest gratitude."
If true, of course, that would be pretty important to Kennedy around 1971 or '72. But it may not be true. There is reason to wonder whether the whole thing will succeed--or even get off the ground. What if residents don't like the idea of putting aside what little money they have for rehabilitation projects and the like? As one Kennedy aide puts it, "This won't work if the community doesn't come through." He thinks it will.
Even so, and even if a large number of jobs are created, a lot of people in the community will still be relatively poor and unhappy about it. "I think it's a shame that we'll be starting off by just putting in a couple of new parks," sighs one consultant. He concedes that there are more direct ways to deal with poverty-like giving poor people money through a negative income tax--but he insists that physical renewal and comprehensive planning is a good idea anyway. "Just about every community in this country could use planning like this," He says. "You have to start somewhere, and a place like Bedford-Stuyvesant has the greatest need."
That still doesn't mean a program like the Bedford-Stuyvesant one could be organized anywhere else. No other city has New York's wealth, and it has been the Kennedy name, as much as anything, that has gotten the big money involved in the risky business of anti-poverty. Whether a less prestigious politician in a less affluent city could bring businessmen, bureaucrats, and poor people together for any length of time is doubtful. Concedes one Kennedy aide, "It's not going to be the sort of thing that will produce a handbook that anyone can follow."
III.
IT WAS a brisk February day when Robert Kennedy visited Bedford Stuyvesant. His hosts, leaders of the Central Brooklyn Coordinating Council, nevertheless insisted on taking him on a walking tour of the area. He was appalled at what he saw, and impressed by the demands and sophistication of the CBCC spokesmen. With reason: the women who dominated CBCC have had a lot of experience in drawing up plans for their neighborhood, and they knew pretty much what they wanted.
They had worked closely with a couple of planners at the Pratt Institute (located on the northeast fringe of the neighborhood) in drawing up a proposal for coordinated community development. That plan, published in 1965 and sent out to a large number of public officials, is widely credited as the prototype of the Model Cities program. It set the guidelines for the current project.
For chairman of R & R, the natural choice was Civil Court Judge Thomas R. Jones, a shrewd and articulate politician who has won four elections in the community (most recently as judge and as delegate to the Constitutional Convention). Jones emphasizes the thanklessness of the task he took on. "They told me the reason they wanted me is that I have everything to lose," he says. "If one penny is misplaced, I'm dead as a judge."
But the chairmanship of Kennedy's community corporation is a position of potentially immense prestige, and there could be an important election in the near future: for the area's first Congressman. Right now, because of gerrymandering in the Republican-dominated 1961 state legislature, Bedford-Stuyvesant is split among five contorted congressional districts. Residents have filed a suit challenging the districting, the city joined with them on it, and a decision is expected in the next few weeks.
The possibility of a congressional seat up for grabs has no doubt prompted some of the sniping the judge has faced. "Anything that has Jones in it is bound to have trouble," growls an attorney who is also considered to be a congressional aspirant.
The congressional districting is important in the current infighting be-