Posted on 04/21/2004 6:28:06 PM PDT by FourPeas
BENTON HARBOR -- Former President Jimmy Carter told a cheering crowd in downtown Benton Harbor the city can change its image, which was marred by fiery riots last summer.
"When I come back next year, I would like to see every lot cleared of trash and gardens planted," the Noble Peace Prize winner said of his planned visit to Benton Harbor in June 2005 for Habitat for Humanity. "This could be a beautiful town.
"How much does it cost to pick up trash? How much does it cost to clean up a vacant part of a lot and pick up a hoe and plant a garden?" he said.
"We can be poor, but we do not have to be dirty," Benton Harbor Mayor Wilce Cook said after Carter got a standing ovation from the 500 ticket-holders at the event, held at the shuttered State Theater.
"Awesome. He generated a spirit of community," lifelong resident Harold Hampton said.
Habitat plans to build 220 houses in Michigan and Windsor, Ontario, during one week in June 2005, using about 3,000 volunteers and loads of community support. Each year the Jimmy Carter Work Project chooses an area to blitz with a week of home construction for poor families.
Tuesday's events, including the rally in Benton Harbor and banquet in downtown Detroit, were to kick off efforts to enlist volunteers and sponsors, and accept applications from families seeking the homes.
The annual weeklong building projects bring the former president and first lady to the construction sites, where they pitch in alongside volunteers. A different site is selected each year; in 2003 it was held in Anniston, Ala., and LaGrange and Valdosta, Ga., and the year before it was in Africa.
Carter said he chose Michigan for his 2005 work project in part because he sympathized with Benton Harbor, where two days of rioting destroyed 22 homes last June.
"The first I knew about Benton Harbor recently was because of the violence," said Carter, the nation's 39th president. "So I thought (the Habitat program) ought to be right here."
Some neighbors skeptical
Danethel Whitfield, who was in Tuesday's audience in Benton Harbor, called Carter's appearance "inspiring."
But a few blocks away in a neighborhood with charred trees and empty lots where houses once stood, few had tickets for the rally, and many said it would take more than new houses to heal the city's problems.
"Those people who were in the rally don't have trash in their lawns," Kevin Hunter said as he emerged from the rally. He was among those who pointed out that the ticket-holders appeared about 60 percent white, although Benton Harbor is 92 percent black, according to 2000 census figures. Hunter, a carpenter whose well-kept home is in the midst of where most of the homes were burned in the riots, saw few of his neighbors at the rally.
"If the community could have felt that inspiration, who knows what could happen," Hunter said.
A bus brought 26 students from St. Joseph High School, which is almost all white, to the rally. There was no bus from Benton Harbor High School, although the school's band accompanied Carter to the theater after he met with city officials nearby.
"What rally?" said Mike Lewis, 18, a student at Benton Harbor High School who was playing basketball with friends at a city park on Pavone Street, a few houses down from where the two nights of rioting began last June. "They don't send the real people to the rally. They send the bands."
Lewis and his friends said things were "getting worse" in the city since last summer.
There's no movie theater nearby, and if they go to one in the suburbs they get stopped by the police, they said.
"It's fine Jimmy Carter has come to town. We do need housing," said Howard Cousins, principal at Benton Harbor High School.
"But what has to happen in Benton Harbor is that people need to make the change themselves."
Cousins and others in the neighborhood say fights among students, especially girls, have risen sharply this year.
"Nights and weekends, there's nothing for youth to do," Cousins said. It was a common complaint last year in the wake of the riots.
'Searching for love'
Despite the money and attention focused on Benton Harbor in the last year, there have been no new parenting programs, no new programs to try to get youths to stay in school, and no other youth programs, Cousins said.
"There is nothing," he said "The community has tried to do things, but then facilities get damaged."
Parents bear responsibility too, he said.
"You could get $10 million coming in" for new programs, Cousins said. "But if we as citizens don't step up as individuals, nothing will happen."
Elder Yvonne Hester, director of Benton Harbor Street Ministries, said the city has yet to really come together to solve its problems.
Hester and Hunter both resigned from a community task force formed after the riots, feeling there was too little being accomplished and too many divisions. Two recent meetings among the churches of the city, however, are promising, Hester said.
She agreed with Cousins that Benton Harbor's problems are more than economic.
"It's not just about jobs," she said. "Our children are searching for love and acceptance and a place to fit in. They don't know who their fathers are. We need to embrace them with mentoring, with teaching."
Until then, "we have to brace ourselves" for more problems, she said.
Then, start cleaning and start digging, you ugly socialist creep.
Lol, Mr. Malaise lifts spirits. If there ever was a glob of spit in punch bowl, it is Jimmy Carter.
Carter can continue his Michigan trip and help paint and improve the sound system on the Bangladeshhi al-Isla Mosque.
You did something good, Jimmy. It's a pity Jesse Jaxon and Al Sharpie don't say this sometimes.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.