marvin olasky
Marvin Olasky is editor in chief of WORLD Magazine and the provost of The King's College in New York City. He is the author of 20 books including Compassionate Conservatism and The American Leadership Tradition. Click here to read several of his books online. To read Marvin's biographical series, "A pilgrim's slow progress," and listen to podcast commentaries related to the series, click here.
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Beyond therapy

Our social economy, says Robert Woodson, discourages what it should promote: innovation and transformation | by Marvin Olasky

Robert Woodson, born in Philadelphia in 1937, has worked in cities throughout his lifetime. As president of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, an organization he founded in 1981,Woodson has led projects that improved poor neighborhoods by tapping into the talents of entrepreneurial individuals within them. He is the author of The Triumphs of Joseph: How Community Healers Are Reviving our Streets and Neighborhoods. Here's an edited and shortened version of our interview.

Q: In the 1960s you became a leader in the civil rights movement. Looking back, what did the movement do right? What did it do wrong? I led demonstrations against segregation in the schools. My disappointment with the movement was that many of those who suffered and sacrificed most did not benefit from the change. The civil rights movement was essentially a middle-class movement. It benefited primarily people like myself who had a college education . . . a kind of bait-and-switch game where you use the conditions of one class of people as the bait—and when the resources arrive, the benefits go to well-educated people.

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