The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind

by Raghuram G. Rajan

first order of action was to make the community more livable, which meant keeping it clean, ridding the streets of crime, and strengthening the schools. Residents were organised to hound the city sanitation department to do their job – clean the streets and collect garbage. People were urged to form block clubs and ad hoc groups against crime. They would walk out of their houses when they saw suspicious activity so as to crowd the criminals out, or jointly call the police so that the criminals would not know who to blame. The community campaigned successfully for a moratorium on city liquor licenses in Pilsen, got some especially problematic bars closed down, and worked with police, churches, and absentee landlords to target and close down known gang houses.8 Remedial education, after-school extracurricular programmes, and job-training programmes increased, enabling young people to get more from their schoolwork, and giving them a ladder to jobs. Parents were urged to get involved in the schools, and they did. New school programmes started – one example is the Cristo Rey Catholic School, which aims to give its students a quality education like that obtainable at St. Ignatius, one of Chicago’s premier Catholic schools, while keeping it affordable. Cristo Rey raised funds from local businesses, in return for which students work one day a week for their sponsoring business. The student attends school the other four days, getting both a good education and work experience each ...

Resurrection of pilsen local community