Msgr. Geno Baroni
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Geno Baroni was born on October 24, 1930, in Acosta, PA, the son of Italian immigrants.
Msgr. Geno Baroni was among the first civil rights activists--Catholic Coordinator for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at which Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his I Have A Dream Speech and having marched with King in Selma --to perceive the bankruptcy of racialism and classism in the politics and policy of the late 1960s.
Baroni and his associates at the National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs (NCUEA) developed an alternative approach to urban economic and cultural contradictions. This approach implied a critique of the civil rights movement and its advocate governmental agency, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. At bottom this difference involved ethnic and racial culturalism versus a White v. Black/Majority v. Minorities vision of America and the relative importance and emphasis on place and community v. individual rights and the universal claim of social justice. These advocates for urban neighborhoods and cultural pluralism argued for the creation of a National Neighborhood Commission which would promote the renewal of urban life and more adequately address the pluralistic character of American culture. At the heart of Baroni's vision was catholic social teaching in action. This places him in succession with notables: Fr. Edward McGlynn of Henry George association, Msgr. John Ryan, Fr. Edwin O'Hara as well as Dorothy Day.
Baroni was a kind of godfather of the Catholic Church's Campaign for Human Development (CHD). In the words of Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-OH, Baroni was a "visionary and crusader whose concern was always human development." He spearheaded today's CHD when he gathered a group of people in 1969 to form an institution to study the underlying causes of poverty. Understanding the strife still prevalent in urban areas, Baroni, in 1970, convoked the first national conference of urban ethnic neighborhoods and inaugurated the National Neighborhood Coalition.
On the occasion of the ten year anniversary of his death, Baroni disciple Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-MD, noted: "If Geno were alive today, he would be asking us to develop not only economic capital, but social capital -- values and virtues such as trustworthiness, respect, responsibility."
"Geno was not a leader but an organizer," said John Kromkowski, current president of the National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs. "His real arena was to bring different ethnic and racial voices to Washington to give testimony and challenge federal programs." At the heart of Baroni's vision was catholic social teaching in action.
Baroni graduated from Mount St. Mary's College in 1952 and Mount St. Mary's Seminary in 1956 (both are part of what is now Mount St. Mary's University). He was ordained a priest in 1956 and first served in Johnstown and Altoona, PA, later assigned to Sts. Paul and Augustine parish in Washington, DC (1960-1965) ministering to the urban poor. Appointed executive director of Office of Urban Affairs of the Washington Archdiocese (1965-1967), then director of the Urban Taskforce of the US Catholic Conference (1967-1970).
In 1971, Fr. Baroni founded the National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs which is now headquartered at the Catholic University of America.
He wrote "Pieces of Dream" (1972).
In 1974 Baroni was one Time Magazine's 200 Faces for the Future: They noted:
'Geno Baroni, 43. "Unless you can understand the ethnic factor, you can't understand the cities," warns the director of the National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs, which runs programs aimed at developing skills and leadership. Son of an immigrant Pennsylvania coal miner, Father Baroni was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1956, served in working-class parishes in Altoona and Johnstown, Pa. Transferred to Washington, D.C., he became active in civil rights and in 1965 was among the first priests to go to Alabama for the Selma-Montgomery march. He helped launch Washington's Head Start program, and a decade of his community action programs culminated in the establishment of the Urban Ethnic Center in 1971.'
Father Baroni was instrumental in founding the National Italian American Foundation in 1975 and served as its first president.
In 1977, was offered position in the Carter administration as Housing and Urban Development Assistant Secretary for Neighborhood Development, Consumer Affairs, and Regulatory Functions.
Baroni's greatest legislative achievement -- the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act -- propped up revitalization processes in urban areas all over the country.
Shortly before his death in 1984, Geno explored the horror of South Africa’s apartheid townships and visited with Bishop Desmond Tutu. He died at only 54 years old on August 26, 1984 after a long struggle with cancer.
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[edit] Notable Baroni quotations
"People don't live in cities; they live in neighborhoods. Neighborhoods. Neighborhoods are the building blocks of cities. If neighborhoods die, cities die. There's never been a Federal policy that respected neighborhoods. We destroyed neighborhoods in order to save them."
"I used to think I wanted to save the world. Then I got to Washington, and thought I'd save the city. Now I'd settle for one neighborhood."
"We need to give each generation both roots and wings."
[edit] Baroni Principles of social justice and organizing
· Democracy does not happen automatically.
· The social-action approach begins in the individual heart.
· Work from idea, to committee, to coalition.
· People do not live in cities; they live in neighborhoods.
· The neighborhood is the building block of city planning.
· The neighborhood unit is the primary form of human settlement.
· Residential neighborhoods must be preserved over time.
· People in neighborhoods know more about what ails their communities than do outside social workers and urban strategists.
· Timing is critical. Seize a crisis, or if necessary, create one.
· Events do not happen until they are duly reported in the newspaper.
· Power feeds on news and news feeds on power.
· Programs brought into neighborhoods by outsiders are bound to fail.
· Neighborhood survival means parish survival; parish survival means neighborhood survival.
· Neighborhood organization needs clergy participation; the clergy know what is happening in the community and often have friends in City Hall.
· If you want to save the city, the country, and the world, you have to start in the neighborhood where people live.
· There is a connection between the deterioration of the neighborhood and the antecedent decline of the family, alienation of the individual from society, and the loss of moral standards. The primary places of identity are family, neighborhood, and community. Initiate empowerment here and then form effective coalitions.
· Interpersonal support systems begin in the family.
· Institutional support systems – churches, unions, fraternal organizations, for example – give strength to neighborhoods.
· When interpersonal and/or institutional support systems decline, the neighborhood is damaged or destroyed.
· Therapy groups are replacing neighborhoods as a source of support for the sick.
· If the cities are to be saved, ethnic and racial groups have to work with one another, not fight one another.
· Be aware of racial sensitivities, but don’t pander to racial prejudice. Understand its source and take the issue above it.
· Apathy and violence are cousins coming from the same font – despair. When there is a lack of opportunity, psychological poverty will grow, and that leads to continued apathy and despair. · You have to keep moving; not to move is to become stagnant.
· Information is power.
· Cultivate reporters; return their calls and give them leads.
· Politicians do not deal with problems until the problems are forced upon them.
· Action follows teaching by way of experience.
· Parents should be the first voices of justice for their children by way of example and experience. · The way to break down walls is to go around them by building bridges, forming coalitions, forging bonds.
· Understanding the ethnic factor, the longtime key to understanding a northern urban area, is useful almost anywhere.
· The role of the church in social action is to help convene people.
· Self-help is self-determination and self-reliance.
· “Try it” is a consistent principle; not all ideas that look good in theory work out in practice. Community developers should not try to manage the projects their organizing efforts produce. These should be spun off into separate organizations.
· The organizer has to get ordinary people in touch with their roots, their heritage, their best. · The organizer has to give ordinary people hope.
· The organizer has to believe that ordinary people can build bridges across racial and ethnic lines.
· Surround yourself with strong people, willing to challenge the conventional wisdom. Work with them as a team, not as an academic debating society.
· The organizer has to have deep respect for the ordinary in ordinary people.
· Know where you come from; it is part of what you are.
· Now and then slip away for a few days; get away from the intensity. Today is not the world’s final day.
· Look for the “right language” that can bring people together.
· Tell stories and listen to the stories of others.
· Talk to anyone, friend or foe. You can never tell when someone is ready to be won over.
· Values are at the core of any organizing effort. Respond to people’s deepest hopes and aspirations.
· When you make a mistake, admit it; then pick up the pieces and move on.
· It is easier to obtain forgiveness than to get permission.
From "The Baroni Principles for social action" Fr William Byron, S.J.
[edit] Further reading and primary source materials
- O'Rourke, Lawrence M. Geno: The Life and Mission of Geno Baroni. Paulist Press, 1991. ISBN 0809132745
- Forum on Public Morality, In Celebration of the Seventy-Fifth Birthday of Father Geno Baroni, Sponsored by the Eisenhower Foundation, Broadcast by C-SPAN October 24-25, 2005, Washington, DC http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/baroni_forum.php
