Continued...

Lifting the Blues

For the first time in 17 years, Memphians have elected a new mayor. A.C. Wharton has demonstrated a strong commitment to urban neighborhoods and participatory policy-making during his career. This, along with the new economic and community development funding being made available by the Obama administration, provides a new opportunity for local CDCs to move from the margins of the urban development process to a new leadership position within the city and region. To do so will require them to, in the words of Tanzania’s founding president, Julius Nyerere, “run while others walk.”

In the Memphis context, this will require serious consideration of consolidation to achieve greater program efficiency through economies of scale, as well as the reorganization of the CDC sector to promote improved program effectiveness through specialization. It will also demand greater presence of a national intermediary to enhance regional access to national and international investment funds and the initiation of an aggressive state legislative program to expand the range of financing tools available to local CDCs. Finally, it will necessitate support for grassroots organizing to challenge the current development policies of local government, which undermine the revitalization work of local CDCs.

Can the Memphis CDC community successfully undertake these organizational development, advocacy, and community organizing activities while maintaining their current level of economic and community development work? Anyone who has watched the leaders of this sector guide their organizations through the extremely challenging urban policies of the Bush administration era would be confident that they can do so. But as Ringo Starr of the Beatles wrote and sang, “You know it don’t come easy!”