almost overnight the neighborhood changed i had never seen anything that come from the top of a human down to a model so fast it was frightening it was really scary reached a point where you felt uncomfortable going outside you felt comfortable sitting in your house with the shades up and the lights on there were dark so then of course everybody was up in arms we had like seven houses on this block that were occupied or condemn we had the gang halls which was really going hot and heavy so when i decided i didn't decide i just said to the neighbors are we going to put up with this i know people that live in the suburbs that say what do we need a block solution for we don't have any crime and i want to see a neighborhood thriving  community thriving as well that i can bring my kids appear think this is a great way and it is being threatened i think the greatest threat to our communities or to our neighborhood is our our inability to  quality of life that we have enjoyed change is possible in our neighborhood all across the country people are getting together in neighborhood block associations to solve problems and establish friendly and  l working relationships like associations help members become a certain users of existing public services and by working together citizens can and should expect positive results from the neighborhood problems to block his residence working together decide to solve problems in their neighborhood everything from a barking dog to a crack house the solution is getting them together to discuss it and taking whatever  that are necessary to resolve it utilizing whatever resources are available from the city but on the other hand recognizing the importance of the residents themselves taking responsibility in remedying if possible and certainly not sacrificing their personal safety in doing so the first step is always the hardest sometimes you do feel like you're all alone and maybe having to deal with the problem solver yourself but i think anybody would be amazed at the amount of good people out there in the neighborhood who want to get involved who want to know you and who want to make their neighborhood a better place to work and it takes a certain amount of risk a certain amount of that you know who knows what's going to happen one of the things that i've done to suggest well come on you gotta give it a try is that thoughtful kind of like body you know you have a stake in things and and give it a shot just once you will have times when you get together for fun and you also get together to accomplish something that needs to be done one person is designated volunteers is asked to be the block leader and every block in our neighborhood has a block leader and our block happens have to because they are two people who work very well together and we they will get us all together maybe three or four times a year for informational educational type meetings we'll have the police come out and tell us about what's going on what we should watch for how we as citizens can keep our neighborhood stable in terms of crime i didn't know how successful the meeting was going to be but i got i would say at least maybe ten different households all our black people that i just would not expect that w come out homeowners as well as renters everyone you know they didn't know what to expect and i didn't know what i was going to talk about it was very informal and we also had the money from the city council that was there to kind of help and guide us to tell us what a block club was about and we had anywhere from as they say a small meeting of four five people is to many is maybe one hundred meeting or neighborhood recreation centers of those building is always very helpful because of their size and their location and the availability for parking near general now it also gives us a better chance for reform or if we can bring more than one city official to that meeting and probably deal with more than one issue at a given time which cuts down on the number of meetings people have to participate in and they appreciate that so it's a very informal event but we think it here again gives us the capacity to  coalesce as a group of people caring about one another because we really do but you have to do something to reinforce that caring particularly new people come into the block and they don't feel is comfortable here is us oldies do so we want to do that to do some activity where that we can you know confirm the caring that we have for one another and that we will be concerned if if somebody needs us for any reason but we also have lots of fun together my role as a leader or their color black leader is rather new i've only been at it for a month or so but by what i've seen other black leaders do is mainly the nitty gritty stuff of keeping in contact with the community council leaders and knowing what the issues are in the neighborhood and we do that through a flyers usually i'm kind of a contact person for people on neighborhood and being that our neighborhood is used to having involvement i have people coming up to me and say i'm available for this if you need any help that's a diagram of my neighborhood it has all the houses listed on there the other things that we asked people on the questionnaire that was sent out a month before this diagram came out was what animals they own and what vehicles they have in case their animals are loose and case their vehicles out when a snowplow was coming so we wanted to get all the appropriate information so that this could be set by the phone and people could see it immediately know who was living exactly where how to contact them instantly and if need be we also have a monthly newsletter we call it the eavesdropper here in our neighborhood and that's delivered to every house once a month and we have news in they are so that if this something important going on in a block we can put it in there i really believe in passive things which are positive you know making sure that there's somebody out there by the bus stop and that's that is a block club thing making sure that moms go out there dads are seniors who are working at that time you know going out there and waiting for kids on the bus to make sure nothing happens the kids feel safe that's a really positive passive thing you can do is a neighbor i think the whole key do it if there is doubt problems call the dog bunny whatever it is you networking and there were these agencies are all listed in your phone box or you can call your consular line or whatever you know all your alderman whatever you have and get a list of all these agencies but you do it you can expect somebody else to fight your problems because they don't live there and they don't know what your problems are if i picked up the phone and called downtown to city hall to complain about the garbage spilling out of the house down the alley or spilling out of the garage of that house that i'd just be one more one more guy calling that my call would go into the hopper and some clerk would take it down and put it on a piece of paper and set it on that stack with all the other people who had been the sole individual to call about some particular problem around the city and what we realized through the block club was that if you got ten or fifteen people together to call about a single problem that it has more weight rather than one person calling and you have ten people calling in and not just calling in for one day but calling in for four or five or six days  running because you've all made this deal with each other that you're going to keep calling until something gets fixed and i think our experience was that on those days when we were calling we became the biggest squeaking wheel in the city and that  the things we wanted to get done got done because people saw it was important there were a number of people who were concerned in the would probably turn on questionably wasn't the biggest problem in the city on any day we complain i suspect that's what it seemed like downtown because there were so many people who were picking up the phone and calling to get something done i think we should nine  started and for the police to get involved i phone out you have to report things you can't just you know let it go and then the black they give you a list of who you report what to and if you do thi anything going on you have to write it down because like if something happens at two o'clock in the morning you write it down and you keep it up and you keep on complaining until something of done you can't back down otherwise it's not going to get to the police in a citizen have to work together in order to eliminate the neighborhood problem the police officer certainly has a law enforcement responsibility but the resident has the responsibility of bringing that information to the police attention the police if they get accurate information from the neighborhood neighborhood people certainly can better fortify their convictions or arrests and convictions and eliminate the problem for the residents i think from my point of view of the resident they're looking for a solution to their problem the police are looking for a conviction if you can put the two together then you've got a great partnership and they would certainly has some problems but we believe that our neighborhood doesn't have as many problems as it could have if we didn't practice in preventative measures the police tell us that there is no doubt that people who know each other and people who watch out for each other's houses you can cut down on crime significantly police cannot be everywhere but we as neighbors are everywhere we have twenty four hours a day in this neighborhood everybody's got this idea landlords are not helpful there are some very strict ordinances on the books for landlords to comply with certain problems and they're far more receptive to residents than you think and i've actually found that a landlord has got two properties near me has been my most helpful person yes he's told me exactly how to address the city who to talk to and things like that regarding you know like drug dealers and things like that and i just think that one should actually think about talking to a landlord about a problem before getting very angry with them first i think we've begun to work with the  landlord they have a notion that they can't just take anybody who shows up to rent their house that they've got to pay some attention to who they're renting to or the trouble is going to come back to them because we won't leave them alone tenants remedy act is a law where the courts can take the building away from the landlord have an administrator appointed to that queer them and the administrator comes in does the repairs on the building then the landlord gets the building back after the proper arrangements have been made for him paying back the loan if it's a vacated building and it's an eyesore to the neighborhood then the blo club if they're incorporated everything can do the t r a on the building they have to prove that it's in the you know that it's an eyesore well in a building that's boarded up is going to be an eyesore and there's always the pit possibility of vandals people getting into it and haven't dug parties in the vacant buildings in this kind of stuff so that's why they are now allowing block clubs to be the plaintiffs because of crack houses and drug dealers who are living in rental properties and dealing drugs out of these properties the state legislature got together and pass  legislation mandating that landlords who rent to drug dealers whether or not they knowingly rent to drug dealers and not but if a drug bust goes down in rental property that rental property is  and it makes landlords have to be more aware of who they're renting their property to it gives the neighborhood more control of who comes and goes in their neighborhoods and it makes absentee landlords responsible and that empowers the neighborhood and then empowers the people who hold property in that neighborhood who live there and that was a key legislation that we've bought and got passed in our state important and i hope that they do it on a national level very soon together we got rid of the gangs they were not there is sell and drugs anymore and after second drug bust at that house and after everybody there had to be fifty people standing out on the street watching is big dope dealers with all their big chunky jewelry land in the back can't trust cranks like babies i mean if it's just a thrill for a soft saw they weren't from big and tough and we took care of a little kid on the block we could find and took him up then said he'd get a gold necklace which also might get your chance to go where they're going to come right down to the basic i think is very important who used to be involved to to make him feel important or her important we'll if young people are out in the street they don't feel important i mean  they're not afraid to school and have someone look at our streets as somebody throws up not even the littlest kid will see you pick it up i mean they're learning responsibility and that's the next generation is going to be our leaders and there's where we got to start i remember not so much squealing or tattling but you have a sense of community someone seeing you doing something they would call your parents and let them know that you  up i like to believe that what we're doing for young people that you notice all the children around here that we're giving stability to these people we're giving some continuity to them we're giving some caring so that these young people with their children know that neighborhoods really do mean something there was a time i think probably in the sixty's and seventy's when they were we were so mobile that people really didn't understand the value of neighborhood we all moved every two or three years for lots of very good reasons but i think it caused some real instability in in communities i think we're going back it's are in our neighborhood i think represents the going back to the stability of community that i think has a great deal to say about living in the central city little forty by whatever it is hundred twenty fourth lot with a building on a home not of i'm not a prisoner in my own little property you know i'm a member of the community i know the members of the community i know the leaders in the community and a better feeling you got a choice you know if you enjoy being barricaded in your own home almost calling for a police escort when you want to go to the store reasons why but then basically in the bottom line is what sort of lifestyle do you want to live in to give a new brood myself i've never felt that i would  it come out come to a meeting voice your opinion voice you can say and let people know you're not going to take it anymore things don't always turn over as quickly as you would like them to and sometimes you want that well of progress to go just a little bit quicker and you get frustrated sometimes but in the final analysis even though slow being involved is very worthwhile and it's worth it for me patience is important because it takes a lot of hard work and quite a long time my case particular it took me nine we don't have to make it so sophisticated i think people get intimidated because they think oh if i get involved in this sort of i do this i have to have a master's degree to do it it doesn't take that it just takes some folk every day folks who have their hearts in the right place to get out here and get involved and make a difference in the neighborhood what we found here is that you know all of us really do want the same thing we recently had a day when we could get rid of all the garbage in our in our alley all the garbage in the brush and you know everybody came out to help on it the you know the black guys the white guys the  out helping to cut this stuff down and haul the trash away because it serves all our interests and when you can get a chance to work together with people like that people see that you do all want the same thing that you all really do want a place to be clean and to look nice and to be safe for your kids and that there are those immense barriers that you like to imagine there are between people when you're just sitting in your house by yourself and you get together with other people and realize that you are one more or less the same thing and that you can work together to get it when you have numbers you have power when you're talking when you're when you're a single voice it isn't heard as loudly as a united voice that's why a choir is always going to be stronger than a single vocal less you know it's just more power and that and that kind of power is what gets officials elected or voted out of office it's what gets the city ordinances passed it's what gives people an opportunity to make changes in their own lives and best well being part of the neighborhood block yes it gives you a sense of power to give you a sense of hey this is this is more than just where my house is this is my neighborhood this is my home in these people in this neighborhood a part of my family