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哈維‧米爾克 (HARVEY MILK) 由街道組成的城市 A City of Neighborhoods 美國夢是從街道開始的。 哈維‧米爾克(1930－1978)是第一個被選入舊金山市管理委員會的公開的同性戀者。三次競選失敗後，米爾克於1977年代表卡斯楚區──一個不同種族的人雜居的地區──入選市管委會。對許多當地居民來說，這個區就像一座小城。他們不歡迎市區再建。尤其不歡迎用推土機剷平街道，代之以高樓大廈的做法。米爾克的選民們對是否能保存他們生活的特點，避免發生在其他大城市中已毀了街區的衰敗現象感到疑慮，憂心 忡忡。米爾克意欲為同性戀問題以及美國城市街道復興而大聲疾呼。然而1978年11月27日哈維‧米爾克和喬治‧莫斯肯市長被一名心懷仇恨的前市管委會成員暗殺。 哈維‧米爾克在就任市管委會職務後不久在一次募集基金的宴會上發表了以下這篇演講。 ……對這－點我們可別弄錯：美國夢是從街道開始的。如果我們要重建城市，我們就必須首先重建街道。而要這麼做，我們就必須認識到，生活的品質比生活的標準更重要。坐在門前臺階上──不論它是－座小城住宅的遊廊還是一個大城市住宅的混凝土門廊──與我們的鄰居閒聊，要比擠坐在起居室的躺椅上看一個顏色失真的虛假世界重要得多。
進步並非美國的唯一事業──當然也不是它最重要的事業。隨著技術的發展，生活的品質下降了，這豈不是咄咄怪事? 哦，洗盤子更容易了。正餐本身也更方便了──只須加熱，端上飯桌，雖說若是我們吃了廣告扔掉食品，營養或許更豐富。當客人來訪時，我們再也不怕玻璃器皿上會有污點了。但是，當然囉，也沒人來做客了，因為我們的朋友怕上我們家來，我們去他們那兒也不安全。 我不必多費口舌告訴你們：在那十九或二十四英吋的世界圖像中，清潔早巳使神聖黯然失色。所以我們將個個散發出清潔的氣息，顯示出清潔的外貌，簡直像實驗室一般一塵不染，從裏到外皆無菌。我們是完美的消費者，身邊全是最新式的用具。我們是完美的觀眾，坐在比賽場週邊的座位上幾乎能看到世界上任何競賽專案，無臭、無味、無感覺──孤孤單單、鬱鬱寡歡地呆在我們各自起居室的荒原中。我認為我們真正需要的應該是褲子後檔多沾上一點灰土，坐在門戶階上再次與鄰居談天說地，享受著夏日的閒暇，那時大蒜的氣味比音速傳得還略快些。 我們乾淨整潔的生活缺少某種東西。這種東西是在華盛頓的我國領導人絕對無法用簡單的法令提供的，也是電視廣告從未宣傳過的，因為尚無人發明一種方法用瓶子、盒子或罐頭將它裝入。我們所欠缺的是生活的觸感、溫暖和意義。《時代》 週刊的四色整頁廣告無法代替它。電視上三十秒鐘的廣告節目或華盛頓一場安撫人心的記者招待會也不能代替它。 我在華爾街和蒙哥馬利街度過多年，因而完全瞭解那些大公司欠了它們的股東多少債務、多少責任。我也完全瞭解紐約、克利夫蘭和底特律都市如戰場的實情。我看見城市失業者以及可能會失業的人的臉。我看見唐人街、常聚集小偷和賭徒的獵人角、西班牙人聚居區、妓女和嫖客集中的娛樂區人們的臉……而我不喜歡自己看到的這 一切。 奇怪的是，我也回想起一個商行所能構思出的最棒的口號：顧客永遠是正確的。 娛樂區和獵人角的人被忘掉了。街上的那些人正是顧客，當然是潛在的顧客，他們應當被當作顧客對待。政府不能對他們置之不理，商業界也不能無視他們的存在。倘若潛在的顧客買不起產品，生產產品又有何意義呢? 這不單是價格問題，它是個購買力的問題。對於一個身無分文的人，從一點二九美元降到九十九美分仍是一大筆錢。 美國商業界必須意識到，股東們總是第一位的。但緊接著便是對他們的顧客的關切和供應問題，他們對顧客和該顧客所在的城市負有債務和責任，對商業本身在其中生存壯大的城市負有債務和責任。拋棄一個把你從幼童培養成人的老年公民是錯誤的。一旦你的商業發達了便對一個城市任意處置是同樣錯誤的，甚至更加目光短淺。 不幸的是，對於那些欲逃避城市問題的人，城市的問題不僅限於城市。在我們的城市周圍並沒有護城河將這些問題封鎖在城內。在紐約和舊金山發生的事最終也會在聖何塞發生。這只是時間遲早的問題。就像流感，它傳播得越廣情況就越糟。我們的城市不該被遺棄，它們值得人們為之奮鬥。不只是那些城市居民，產業界、商業界、工會，所有的人都該為之奮鬥。不僅因為它們代表過去，而且因為它們代表未來。你們的孩子，而且很可能還有你們的孫子，將住在這些城市裏。為了實際效果，從波斯頓到紐瓦克的東部走廊將成為一個規模宏大的長條形城市。從密爾沃基到印地安那州的加裡也將如此。而在加利福尼亞，由柏油路和霓虹燈構成的繁華的新月狀地帶將從聖巴巴拉一直伸展到聖疊戈。城市枯萎病是否將順著快車道的動脈蔓延呢?當然會這樣──除非我們阻止它。 因此80年代的挑戰將是如何喚醒工商界的覺悟，使他們認識到在拯救曾養育他們的城市的工作中應起什麼作用。每家公司都懂得，它必須不斷地向自己的工廠投資以保持健康發展。而城市是那工廠的一部分，城市居民是城市的一部分。這些因素相互關聯，一損俱損，一榮俱榮。 總之，生產一種產品成本最低廉的地方若是使你的顧客丟了職業，也就不可能有什麼成本低廉可言，倘若美國的顧客沒錢買電視機，在日本製造電視機便毫無意義。產業界應積極僱用失業者，培訓身無一技之長的人。「勞動集約」不是一個骯髒的詞，並非每件工作都是機器幹得更出色。產業界的任務不僅在創造產品，而且也要創造顧客。 代價高嗎? 我不認為如此。碼頭上堆滿貨物無人問津，這問題造成的損失大得多。那樣做還有別的好處：犯罪率降低，福利負擔減少，而且可以讓你們的朋友和鄰居坐在煥然一新的門廊裏。 許多公司感到，援助城市是慈善事業的一種形式。我認為把它視作經營上的部分費用更確切，應把它作為未來分期償還的款項入帳。我希望工商界這樣考慮問題，因為我認為工商界比政府有更大的創造力，或許能力也更高一籌。我認為工商界不但可以把市場區以南的地方變成工業區，而且可以把它變成一個街區。請允許我編造一個雙關語：我們太多的城市有綜合企業，事實上有太多的綜合企業。我們不需要另一個混凝土建築物的叢林，當你們夜晚熄燈後，它便死去。我們需要的是一個街區，人們能在那兒步行去上班，養育他們的小孩，享受生活的樂趣。 我們的城市將得到拯救。我們的城市將得到治理。但它們將不是由三千英里外的華盛頓管理，不是由州議會管理，尤其不是由那些已逃到市郊的提氈包的人們管理。你們不可能讓不住在城裏的人管城市，正如你們不可能讓不住在城市的人組成有戰鬥力的警察力量。在這兩種情況中，你得到的都只是佔領軍而已。…… 我們的城市將不會被這種人所拯救，他們覺得住在這些城市活受罪，迫不急待地想遷往馬林或聖何塞、埃文斯頓或韋斯特切斯特。我們的城市將由熱愛它們的市民拯救。這些人在街道商店和商業大街這兩者之間更喜歡前者。他們去劇院看戲，去餐館吃飯，去夜總會跳迪斯可；這些人即便自己無子女也關心孩子們所接受的教育。 那將不只是未來的城市，它是今天的城市。它意味著新的方向，新的聯盟，對古老的問題的新穎解決方式。擁有兩輛汽車和二點二個孩子的典型美國家庭不再居住在那裏。這種情況始於若干年前。人口統計數字現在不同了，我們都明白。我們的這些城市成了獨身男女的城市，年輕夫婦的城市，成了退休老人和窮人的城市，成了說多種語言、膚色不同的人雜居的城市。 我們的城市將自我管理，將自己創造解決問題的方式。區級選舉不是結束，而只是開端。我們將解決自己的問題──依靠你們的幫助，如果我們能夠做到；不靠你們的幫助，如果我必須做到。我們需要你們的幫助，我不否認這點。但是你們也需要我們。我們是你們的顧客，我們是你們的未來。 我正騎馬奔向那未來世界，坦率地說，我不知道自己是戴著曼布裡諾的虛構的頭盔，還是頭戴理髮師的銅盆。我猜我們頭戴各自想戴之物，同我們想與之搏鬥的物件搏鬥。可能我看見了幾條凶龍，而那裏其實只有風車。然而有某種跡象告訴我，那幾條龍是真的，如果我捨得用一兩支長矛投向旋轉的葉片，或許能逮住 一條龍。……
昨天市管委會一位可敬的同事說，我們不能只靠希望過日子。我懂得這一點，但我深深感到，關鍵不在我們不能只靠希望度日。而在於沒有了希望生活就失去意義。如果說唐‧吉訶德的故事有什
麼教益，它告誡人們：生活的精神和生活的實體同樣重要。一個別人眼中像理髮師的銅盆的東西，你我卻明白那是一頂珵亮的傳奇般的頭盔。 附註：
. . . Let's make no mistake about this: The American Dream starts with the neighborhoods. If we wish to rebuild our cities, we must first rebuild our neighborhoods. And to do that, we must understand that the quality of life is more important than the standard of living. To sit on the front steps－ whether it's a veranda in a small town or a concrete stoop in a big city－ and talk to our neighborhoods is infinitely more important than to huddle on the living-room lounger and watch a make-believe world in not quite living color. Progress is not America's only business－ and certainly not its most important. Isn't it strange that as technology advances, the quality of life so frequently declines? Oh, washing the dishes is easier. Dinner itself is easier－ just heat and serve, though it might be more nourishing if we ate the ads and threw the food away. And we no longer fear spots on our glassware when guests come over. But then, of course, the guests don't come, because our friends are too afraid to come to our house and it's not safe to go to theirs. And I hardly need to tell you that in that 19- or 24-inch view of the world, cleanliness has long since eclipsed godliness. So we'll all smell, look, and actually be laboratory clean, as sterile on the inside as on the out. The perfect consumer, surrounded by the latest appliances. The perfect audience, with a ringside seat to almost any event in the world, without smell, without taste, without feel－ alone and unhappy in the vast wasteland of our living rooms. I think that what we actually need, of course, is a little more dirt on the seat of our pants as we sit on the front stoop and talk to our neighbors once again, enjoying the type of summer day where the smell of garlic travels slightly faster than the speed of sound. There's something missing in the sanitized life we lead. Something that our leaders in Washington can never supply by simple edict, something that the commercials on television never advertise because nobody's yet found a way to bottle it or box it or can it. What's missing is the touch, the warmth, the meaning of life. A four color spread in Time is no substitute for it. Neither is a 30-second commercial or a reassuring Washington press conference. I spent many years on both Wall Street and Montgomery Street and I fully understand the debt and responsibility that major corporations owe their shareholders. I also fully understand the urban battlefields of New York and Cleveland and Detroit. I see the faces of the unemployed－ and the unemployable－ of the city. I've seen the faces in Chinatown, Hunters Point, the Mission, and the Tenderloin. . . and I don't like what I see. Oddly, I'm also reminded of the most successful slogan a business ever coined: The customer is always right. What's been forgotten is that those people of the Tenderloin and Hunters Point, those people in the streets, are the customers, certainly potential ones, and they must be treated as such. Government cannot ignore them and neither can business ignore them. What sense is there in making products if the would-be customer can't afford them? It's not alone a question of price, it's a question of ability to pay. For a man with no money, 99*" reduced from $1.29 is still a fortune. American business must realize that while the shareholders always come first, the care and feeding of their customer is a close second. They have a debt and a responsibility to that customer and the city in which he or she lives, the cities in which the business itself lives or in which it grew up. To throw away a senior citizen after they've nursed you through childhood is wrong. To treat a city as disposable once your business has prospered is equally wrong and even more short-sighted. Unfortunately for those who would like to flee them, the problems of the cities don't stop at the city limits. There are no moats around our cities that keep the problems in. What happens in New York or San Francisco will eventually happen in San Jose. It's just a matter of time. And like the flu, it usually gets worse the further it travels. Our cities must not be abandoned. They're worth fighting for. not just by those who live in them, but by industry, commerce, unions, everyone. Not alone because they represent the past, but because they also represent the future. Your children will live there and hopefully, so will your grandchildren. For all practical purposes, the eastern corridor from Boston to Newark will be one vast strip city. So will the area from Milwaukee to Gary, Indiana. In California, it will be that fertile crescent of asphalt and neon that stretches from Santa Barbara to San Diego. Will urban blight travel the arteries of the freeways? Of course it will－ unless we stop it. So the challenge of the 80s will be to awaken the consciousness of industry and commerce to the part they must play in saving the cities which nourished them. Every company realizes it must constantly invest in its own physical plant to remain healthy and grow. Well, the cities are a part of that plant and the people who live in them are part of the cities. They're all connected; what affects one affects the others. In short, the cheapest place to manufacture a product may not be the cheapest at all if it results in throwing your customers out of work. There's no sense in making television sets in Japan if the customers in the United States haven't the money to buy them. Industry must actively seek to employ those without work, to train those who have no skills. "Labor intensive" is not a dirty word, not every job is done better by machine. It has become the job of industry not only to create the product, but also to create the customer. Costly? I don't think so. It's far less expensive than the problem of fully loaded docks and no customers. And there are additional returns: lower rates of crime, smaller welfare loads. And having your friends and neighbors sitting on that well-polished front stoop. . . . Many companies feel that helping the city is a form of charity. I think it is more accurate to consider it a part of the cost of doing business, that it should be entered on the books as amortizing the future. I would like to see business and industry consider it as such, because I think there's more creativity, more competence perhaps, in business than there is in government. I think that business could turn the south of Market Area not only into an industrial park but a neighborhood as well. To coin a pun, too many of our－ cities have a complex, in fact, too many complexes. We don't need another concrete jungle that dies the moment you turn off the lights in the evening. What we need is a neighborhood where people can walk to work, raise their kids, enjoy life. . . . The cities will be saved. The cities will be governed. But they won't be run from three thousand miles away in Washington, they won't be run from the statehouse, and most of all, they won't be run by the carpetbaggers who have fled to the suburbs. You can't run a city by people who don't live there, any more than you can have an effective police force made up of people who don't live there. In either case, what you've got is an occupying army. . . . The cities will not be saved by the people who feel condemned to live in them, who can hardly wait to move to Marin or San Jose－ or Evanston or Westchester. The cities will be saved by the people who like it here. The people who prefer the neighborhood stores to the shopping mall, who go to the plays and eat in the restaurants and go to the discos and worry about the education the kids are getting even if they have no kids of their own. That's not just the city of the future; it's the city of today. It means new directions, new alliances, new solutions for ancient problems. The typical American family with two cars and 2.2 kids doesn't live here anymore. It hasn't for years. The demographics are different now and we all know it. The city is a city of singles and young marrieds, the city of the retired and the poor, a city of many colors who speak in many tongues. The city will run itself, it will create its own solutions. District elections was not the end. It was just the beginning. We'll solve our problems － with your help, if we can, without it if we must. We need your help. I don't deny that. But you also need us. We're your customers. We're your future. I'm riding into that future and frankly I don't know if I'm wearing the fabled helm of Mambrino on my head or if I'm wearing a barber's basin. I guess we wear what we want to wear and we fight what we want to fight. Maybe I see dragons where there are only windmills. But something tells me the dragons are for real and if I shatter a lance or two on a whirling blade, maybe I'll catch a dragon in the bargain. . . . Yesterday, my esteemed colleague on the Board said we cannot live on hope alone. I know that, but I strongly feel the important thing is not that we cannot live on hope alone, but that life is not worth living without it. If the story of Don Quixote means anything, it means that the spirit of life is just as important as its substance. What others may see as a barber's basin, you and I know is that glittering, legendary helmet. |