Activities and Investigations from Twenty Years At Hull-House
From civicintelligence
Activities and Investigations from Twenty Years at Hull House
- "For the club women who had finished a long day's work of washing or ironing followed by cooking of a hot supper, it would have been much easier to sit on her doorstep during a summer evening than to go up and down ill-kept alleys and get into trouble with her neighbors over the condition of their garbage boxes. It required both civic enterprise and moral conviction to be willing to do this three evenings a week during the hottest and most uncomfortable months of the years. Nevertheless, a certain number of women persisted, as did the residents, and three city inspectors in succession were transferred from the other ward because of unsatisfactory services." (P.12)
- I find this passage to be a key point to the physical reality of enacting civic intelligence within a community. Regardless of the issue being faced it requires a physical expelling of energy, on all levels. It demands that individuals take time from their lives to dedicate to the mission at hand. Could the evolution of civic intelligence mean that this would be part of life rather than taking from it? or will it always take the spark, conviction, inspiration and sheer will power of one person to unite the rest of a community? I would argue that a requirement of the actions of civic intelligence, would be good health.
