Brooklyn Community Foundation’s Resident-Led Investment Program Targets Challenges In Brooklyn
Forty people sit in a circle. Most are residents of Crown Heights, a dynamic, culturally rich neighborhood in the heart of Brooklyn that is too often defined by one fateful week in 1992 when racial tensions exploded and the community erupted into three days of violence.
On that Sunday afternoon in September, the spectrum of people who came together included a young Jewish man who had moved to the neighborhood just a month before and an African American woman who has lived there for sixty years. All were there to answer the key question, “What is our shared vision for Crown Heights?”
Over the next three hours, they built community, talked about moments that made them proud to live in in their neighborhood and named the challenges they saw preventing everyone who lives in Crown Heights from thriving. Last, suspending skepticism, they imagined new solutions...