COMMUNITY ACTIVISM IN OAK PARK: COMPETING AGENDAS ...

Often times, when these programs fail in helping the poor, the lower-income are
blamed for their inability to change their own social circumstances. In the aftermath of
both finished and unfinished gentrification and urban renewal projects, the poor are often
left to fend for themselves in a changing environment. The poor are then perceived as the
creators and facilitators of their own social problems. Steadily, the poor are being
presented as a mere aggregation of personal cases and are increasingly severed from the
society, economy, and polity that in fact determine their social circumstances (Wacquant
and Wilson 1989:9).
Initiatives created to solve community problems can be characterized as
epiphenomena, in that they are usually created after middle-class residents move into
neighborhoods and notice social problems. Reform follows crisis, and whether the
reform is political or economic or physical revitalization, reform efforts seem to only
occur after neighborhood deterioration has become pronounced (Hanson 1986:101).
Community problems, for the most part, have long been occurring in low-income
neighborhoods before initiatives to improve the quality of life for residents are
introduced. Hanson (1986:101) further explains that
The hardest thing to achieve in the urban polity is prophylactic
action and transformative leadership in time to facilitate a smooth
transition from one state of affairs to another. Projects to revitalize
communities occur after a neighborhood has deteriorated, and not
usually while they are in the process of deteriorating. This is
because institutions are, by definition, ways of thinking and acting
that are embedded deeply in the collective experience of those who
make them up.
The middle-class, who are the creators of community groups and the drivers of urban
renewal projects, don’t usually perceive there to be community problems until they affect
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