“If you want to move people it has to be toward a vision that’s positive for them. One that taps important values, that gets them something they desire. And it has to be presented in a compelling way that people feel inspired to follow.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.

This profound statement offers a succinct guideline for those called to lead. Today, our cities, our states, and our country are faced with severe challenges. These challenges include overcoming the status quo, complacency, and a lack of creativity. Dr. King was a champion of overcoming such challenges. He utilized creative leadership tactics to inspire people to subvert the status quo and advance civil rights for all Americans. This would, he correctly believed, better enable them to achieve “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, and thus fulfill their potential. Barack Obama is certainly among those whose potential has been and continues to benefit from the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Among King’s most effective tactics was the practical use of civil disobedience – the active refusal to obey wrong-headed and/or unnecessary laws, demands, and commands of a government or other power, without resorting to violence. MLK’s heroes of civil disobedience included Gandhi, Henry David Thoreau, and that most famous of radicals – Jesus Christ – who advanced a visionary, progressive, counter-cultural, and freedom seeking philosophy.

Now, back to Barack Obama. Check out this video:

Jane Jacobs (1916-2006), for whom a street is named in I’On, was the author of “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” In the video, Obama calls it “a great book.” This book was Jacobs’ first. Published in 1961, it is heavily critical of modernist planning methods, particularly governmental policies such as zoning, Urban Renewal, and building highways through the middle of cities. These policies, she correctly pointed out, destroy community by isolating people and creating unnatural urban spaces. Jacobs advocated for dense, mixed-use urban environments like her beloved Greenwich Village in New York.

In addition to her success as a writer, Jacobs was also well known for organizing grass-roots efforts to block projects that would have destroyed neighborhoods. For example, Jacobs was instrumental in the eventual cancellation of the Lower Manhattan Expressway. Envisioned by Robert Moses (the infamous director of public works for the City of New York and a champion of the car culture) this 8-lane highway would have cut through the middle of the SOHO neighborhood of Manhattan. Upon moving to Toronto in 1968, she also became influential in the cancellation of the Spadina Expressway and the associated network of highways then under construction in that great city.

Too bad we didn’t have a Jane Jacobs in Charleston during the 1960s. If we had, the neighborhoods of the Neck area of Charleston might not have been torn asunder by the construction of I-26 and the Crosstown Expressway might not be the ugly chasm of asphalt that splits the Charleston peninsula today. Fortunately however, today we do have people like Dana Beach, Megan Desrosiers, Josh Martin, and Hamilton Davis at the Coastal Conservation League. I think Jane Jacobs would have been quite proud of their ongoing grass roots effort to stop the destructive, five hundred million dollar extension of 526 (the Mark Clark Expressway) to Johns and James Island championed by those of the Robert Moses persuasion .  Redesigning the Crosstown Expressway through Charleston would be a more constructive alternative to spending on far flung highway programs.  The Crosstown could become a beautiful multi-way boulevard and thus help repair the urban fabric  of downtown Charleston.

As a community organizer himself, it is no wonder Obama is a fan of Jane Jacobs and “Death and Life of American Cities.” While attending Columbia University in the early 1980s working toward his degree in political science, Jane Jacobs would have been among those Obama would’ve had to know. Let’s hope the public monies Obama advocates for spending on infrastructure take the thrifty, pragmatic and beautiful form of the traditional cities Jane Jacobs championed rather than the outlandishly expensive, de-humanized, anti-urban Robert Moses type infrastructure that has lead to so much destruction over the last five decades.

Barack Obama would do well to read Jacobs’ last book – “Dark Age Ahead”. Published in 2004, Jacobs warns of tough times ahead for our economy, culture, and civilization if we don’t begin to mend our ways. In “Dark Age Ahead” Jacobs identifies two principles upon which sustainable civilizations depend:

(1) Fiscal accountability – the principle that institutions collecting and distributing taxes work most responsibly when they are transparent to those providing the money.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Treasury, Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae would set an example for private banks and other institutions by embracing this principle? Fortunately, Obama has been outspoken about the need for fiscal transparency and accountability. Let’s hope his actions speak as loudly as his words.

(2) Subsidiarity – the principle that government works best, most responsibly and responsively, when it is closest to the people it serves & needs it addresses.

A difficult word with roots in the Catholic Church, subsidiarity “holds that government should undertake only those initiatives which exceed the capacity of individuals or private groups acting independently. Functions of government, business, and other secular activities should be as local as possible.”

Referring to the spiraling decline of ancient Roman civilization, Jacobs writes: “The cities of the Roman Empire had lost these advantages [of fiscal accountability and subsidiarity] in the desperate years before the collapse, when the imperial treasury extorted from them as much as it could and disbursed the money for schemes and needs according to its own, frequently crazed, priorities.”

Despite the pessimistic outlook suggested by the title of the book, Jacobs concludes “Dark Age Ahead” with the hopeful attitude Obama likes to express. She wrote: “At a given time it is hard to tell whether forces of cultural life or death are in the ascendancy. Is suburban sprawl, with its murders of communities and wastes of land, time, and energy, a sign of decay? Or is rising interest in means of overcoming sprawl a sign of vigor and adaptability in North American culture? Arguably, either could turn out to be true.”

Finally, at the risk of being politically incorrect, I’d like to point out that today – January 19th – is the 202nd anniversary of the birthday of Robert E. Lee, another great American. Among other capacities, Lee served as General-in-Chief of Confederate forces. Those prone to selective indignation might look sideways at my raising the fact of Lee’s birth during the week we celebrate Dr. King’s birthday and Barack Obama’s inauguration. But it’s timely to remember this man of renowned character and integrity. Despite the historical focus on slavery, the War Between the States was to a large extent over the size and power of central government. Opposed to secession and arguably to slavery, Lee nevertheless turned down an offer of senior command of Union forces by President Lincoln, out of loyalty to his beloved home state of Virginia.

In a famous correspondence after the War, a British Champion of liberty, Lord Acton wrote to Lee:

“I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. The institutions of your Republic have not exercised on the old world the salutary and liberating influence which ought to have belonged to them, by reason of those defects and abuses of principle which the Confederate Constitution was expressly and wisely calculated to remedy. I believed that the example of that great Reform would have blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom purged of the native dangers and disorders of Republics. Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.”

Lee responded:
“I can only say that while I have considered the preservation of the constitutional power of the General Government to be the foundation of our peace and safety at home and abroad, I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people, not only essential to the adjustment and balance of the general system, but the safeguard to the continuance of a free government. I consider it as the chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.”

We have certainly ventured far from the integrity of Thomas Jefferson’s ideal of a free society composed of a hierarchy of self-governing entities – “the elementary republics of the wards, the county republics, the State republics and the Republic of the Union, forming a gradation of authorities.”

The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution states “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” This is a restatement of the Constitution’s principle of Federalism, which embodies the ideals of liberty championed by Jefferson, Acton, Lee, Jacobs, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is my personal hope that when he takes the oath of office tomorrow, swearing to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States”, Barack Obama will be doing more than going through the motions of ceremony.

Good luck to our future president and to us all.

Vince

Barack Obama and Jane JacobsThoreau and Civil DisobedienceDeath and Life of Great American CitiesAlternatives to 526 extensionDark Age AheadActon-Lee CorrespondenceMultiway boulevardVince Graham, New Urbanism

Filed under: I'On Group, I'On Village, Mixson on January 19th, 2009