I'm building shopping centers and movie theaters in the inner cities. So that means supplying jobs and letting blacks understand that we have to build our communities back, not looking to anybody else.
Interpretation
Magic Johnson emphasizes the importance of community development and self-sufficiency for inner-city residents.
This quote by Magic Johnson highlights his commitment to enhancing inner-city areas through the development of shopping centers and movie theaters. He advocates for job creation and stresses the necessity for African American communities to take charge of their own rebuilding efforts rather than relying on external support, promoting empowerment and self-reliance.
In practice
In a speech about urban development, I quoted, 'I'm building shopping centers and movie theaters in the inner cities...' to emphasize our commitment to community growth.
Standing on that platform, I said a silent prayer. I thanked God for giving me the strength and the opportunity to come back, to play basketball again, and to be part of that whole magnificent Olympic experience. It's a memory I will always cherish.
HIV changed my life, but it doesn't keep me from living.
I love business. I love helping urban communities grow. I love putting people to work of color. I love making sure - like right now the whole mortgage crisis, I want to help people get back into their homes.
I never think that there's something I can't do, whether it's beating my opponent one on one or practicing another hour because something about my game is just not right.
My first and only experience in baseball, the coach signed me up; he didn't tell me there's a thing called the curveball. I didn't know that. So the ball's coming at me and I start backing out, and then it broke inside. And the umpire says, 'Strike one!' And I'm saying, 'How is that a strike? It almost hit me!'
In life, winning and losing will both happen. What is never acceptable is quitting.
Curation comes up when people realize that it isn’t just about information seeking, it’s also about synchronizing a community.
Where there is no human connection, there is no compassion. Without compassion, then community, commitment, loving-kindness, human understanding, and peace all shrivel. Individuals become isolated, the isolated turn cruel, and the tragic hovers in the forms of domestic and civil violence. Art and literature are antidotes to that.
Community means caring: caring for people. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says: "He who loves community destroys community; he who loves the brethren builds community." A community is not an abstract ideal.
We have essentially gone from being communities that were policed by people from the communities to being communities that are policed by strangers, and that's no longer a community: that's an area that's under siege.
People don't believe or understand that a community can lose hope. You can have a whole community where hopelessness is the norm, where folks don't have faith that things will get better because history and circumstances have proven over 30, 40, or 50 years that things don't get better.
Without the ability to plant roots and invest in your community or your school - because you're paying 60, 70, 80 percent of your income to rent - and eviction becomes something of an inevitability to you, it denies you certain freedoms.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.