Dreams Are Only Real If They Come True

Three Steps Necessary For Us To Reach Our Goals and Materialize Our Dreams As Individuals and As One Community:

I. Security and Safety:
* in the sense of crime prevention and basic safety from intrusion, and Security in the sense of being safe from bias arrest/prosecution, the endless examples range from senselessly being imprisoned for a suspended license to unwarranted investigations where the interrogations reach abusive bounds.
A) The Security Plan
a. Invest time and resources into developing and maintaining solid relations with the criminal justice department to allow for the free flow of information between the elected body of authority and our community. Diplomacy in this area is a necessary part of building confidence and safety. A professional approach here would yield benefit in our day-to-day dealings with police officers and it would also establish political ties with entities that could provide long-lasting security resources, provided that we were able to show that we are in fact a block-vote constituency.
b. Equally as important is the emergency information that provides every member of this community with a basic understanding of defendant-rights particularly during the investigation stage of any prosecution. The laws in this area are fairly intuitive but it will require some work demystifying the process used by government while building a case against a subject.
My first choice of approach regarding both points of security mentioned above is Diplomacy mainly because we can not afford to be stone-walled during the course of any such matter that affects our community so sharply. Confidence requires trust and trust comes by diplomacy and respect. Tactics of resistance have proven to be far too risky in the past, and even the rare positive response to such tactics have been short-lived and have granted only temporary relief to an ongoing concern.
II. Social Services, in terms of access and availability as well as the often poor efficiency of delivery and the lack of accurate information available.
B) The Social Services Plan
a. It may be a surprise to some that social services are widely available in Crown Heights in many major areas including health care, education, after-school programs for children, job training, treatment, therapy, and building/construction grants. The key point is to isolate the weak link in the chain of awareness and delivery. There are dozens of benefits available that are untapped. There are services offered to not-for-profit organizations that are simply undiscovered. The question then becomes what is available? Who is qualified? where do I go? Who do I need to speak to?
We belong to the age of information and indeed we must now take full advantage of new-age inter-organizational networking to centralize our “Go-to” place, our data base, in order to seek realistic benefits that apply to individual circumstances. Internet access has allowed us to share information and communicate with greater ease than was ever imaginable. Even if we have to catalog one thing at a time to run a system where current updates are available and understandable to the lay person, it would still be worth the effort considering the potential benefit.
III. Financial growth and wealth management strategies have been placed on the back-burner likely due to superseding matters of importance that interrupted the driving force of progress associated with financial growth that would otherwise have been a focal point of our success as a community.
C) Financial growth/management is addressed using two general resources:
a. Professional solicitation of government funding, and
b. Intra-community fund raising
Regardless of any and all major concerns that require public attention, financial growth/management is an unavoidable measuring-stick by which the successes of many other goals are measured. There are far too many entities that share the daily struggle of financial burden that dealing with the real threat of financial-collapse can no longer be ignored. We need not recreate the wheel because there are working systems out there in neighboring communities that have tested the effectiveness of real professional, corporate-level solicitation and advertising at very high success rates. The Jewish Community Council is a government funded operation it needs professional representation in the solicitation of government funds. The same applies to funds collected from within the community. We are selling our potential short if we choose anything less than corporate-caliber fund raising strategies. Fundraising campaigns that work for us comparable to ones used by out-reach programs such as NCSY or ones used by Flatbush Hatzolla etc…
CONCLUSION
One matter that is inextricably intertwined with every aspect of this community’s concern is the ability to create strength in our successors, our children, the youth of Crown Heights. We carry a legacy that the Rebbe established here in Crown Heights. My family and I have benefited personally from the in-reach programs that exist here; specific credit is due to Rabbi Moshe Feiglin for his work and accomplishments developing Aliya Institute. When Aliya was first created, in-reach was viewed as a novel idea that was often ignored. In fact, with the movement of progressive thought in Crown Heights gaining popularity, the idea is now recognized as an essential necessity to preserving our Chassidic methodology and richens the very fabric of our community.

Very truly yours,