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.
One of the pleasant things about small town life is that everyone, whether rich or poor, liked or disliked, has some kind of a role and place in the community. I never felt that living in a city - as I once did for a couple of years.
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.
A community which refuses to welcome - whether through fear, weariness, insecurity, a desire to cling to comfort, or just because it is fed up with visitors - is dying spiritually.
We urgently need to bring to our communities the limitless capacity to love, serve, and create for and with each other. We urgently need to bring the neighbor back into our hoods, not only in our inner cities but also in our suburbs, our gated communities, on Main Street and Wall Street, and on Ivy League campuses.
Neighborhoods and communities are complex organisms that will be resilient only if they are healthy along a number of interrelated dimensions, much as a human body cannot be healthy without adequate air, water, rest, and food.
Somehow, we have to get older people back close to growing children if we are to restore a sense of community, acquire knowledge of the past, and provide a sense of the future.
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