Jennie Pollock

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London, Writing, Research

Jennie Pollock is editor of UK communications for Newfrontiers and is studying for an MA in Philosophical Studies. She attends ChristChurch London, where she’s learning and growing all the time, and loves London above almost anything else. She reads voraciously to learn lessons from the past and drink deep of the wisdom of today, and longs to see words and the creative arts used to bring about a shift in the norms and assumptions underpinning Western culture.

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Medellin Escalator by AP Photo/Luis Benavides via Daily Telegraph

When faced with seemingly-intractable problems, city chiefs need to think laterally. The problem presenting itself may not be the one which most needs to be tackled, at least not directly.

Medellín, Columbia, was once known as the murder capital of the world, with gang violence fuelled by drug-trafficking and controlled by a deadly mafia. Crime and social breakdown were the trademarks of the city, and to many the situation must have seemed hopeless. Yet today Medellín is a popular tourist destination, having undergone what has been described as a ‘dramatic transformation’. The key? An improved transport system.
 
This report from the BBC in summer 2010 identifies a vastly-improved metro system and a cable car as central to the regeneration of the city. Both have made it easier for poorer residents to travel into the business centre from their favelas on the hills surrounding the city. “If the view isn’t spectacular enough for you,” comments the reporter, “You can always borrow poetry and literature from one of the Metro’s four libraries.” Tourists now visit the former no-go areas, while residents are able to travel much further afield to find work.

A succession of visionary local leaders set about removing the intimidation and violence that were part and parcel of the drug trade here. Their main aim was to connect the mountainside slums with the rest of the city.

   
After putting the Metro into place, Mayor Sergio Fajardo moved onto phase 2 of his plan: to ensure that the city’s most beautiful buildings were situated in the poorest areas. State of the art schools, parks, museums and libraries bring in the tourists, but also encourage aspiration in the slums’ young people, to such an extent that “Medellín has become an example of how urban transformation based on good architecture can reshape the mentality of its inhabitants.”
 
“From the time I was a child, it was clear to me what aesthetics meant as a tool for social transformation, as a message of inclusion,” Fajardo explained in an interview with architect Giancarlo Mazzanti, “Underneath it all is the most important word in all of those urban interventions in which architecture plays an important role: dignity… The poor are habitually given crumbs, but our proposal was to give them the very best. We had to break away and show another way.”
 
The whole article is well-worth a read, as it gives a fascinating insight into the heart of a man who sought social justice for the poorest of his city, and set processes in motion which are well on the way to achieving that goal.
 
Farjado’s tenure as mayor ended in 2007, but his legacy lives on, and this Christmas the poor of the Comuna 13 district were given a new gift – a series of outdoor escalators scaling the 384m (1,260ft) hillside and saving them a climb equivalent to 28 flights of stairs - daunting enough at the best of times, but soul-destroying to face at the end of a long day’s work.
 
Medellín’s leaders have been tough on crime and on criminals, but they have recognised that reducing crime-rates is about far more than simply fighting crime. It requires taking a good, hard look at the bigger picture and making changes across the board, often to things which seem to have little immediate bearing on the issues in hand.
 
The transformation of a community requires every inhabitant of that community to be treated – and regarded – as a valuable participant in its flourishing. A giant escalator may not be the answer to every city’s problems, but it meets the needs of Comuna 13. What is the big need in your community? What could you do to meet that need, and to restore dignity and hope to those who need it the most?

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Escalating Success

When faced with seemingly-intractable problems, city chiefs need to think laterally. The problem presenting itself may not be the one which most needs to be tackled, at least not directly.

Lunch Box By David Zellaby

How do you get Bible readings on national television against the will of the schedulers? I recently stumbled across the following article by Lee Habeeb telling the story of how Charles M Schultz - creator of Charlie Brown and Snoopy - managed just that. It is reproduced here by kind permission of National Review Online.

The Gospel According to Peanuts
How A Charlie Brown Christmas almost didn’t happen

by Lee Habeeb
 
Few headlines about network television make me giddy. Fewer still make me hopeful that all is good in the world. But back in August of 2010, I read the following headline from the media pages with great excitement: “Charlie Brown Is Here to Stay: ABC Picks Up ‘Peanuts’ Specials Through 2015.” The first of these to be made, the famous Christmas special, was an instant classic when it was created by Charles Schulz on a shoestring budget back in 1965, and thanks to some smart television executives, it will be around for at least another five years for all of us to see and enjoy.

What people don’t know is that the Christmas special almost didn’t happen, because some not-so-smart television executives almost didn’t let it air. You see, Charles Schulz had some ideas that challenged the way of thinking of those executives 46 years ago, and one of them had to do with the inclusion in his Christmas cartoon of a reading from the King James Bible’s version of the Gospel of Luke.

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

As far back as 1965 — just a few years before Time magazine asked “Is God Dead?” — CBS executives thought a Bible reading might turn off a nation populated with Christians. And during a Christmas special, no less! Ah, the perils of living on an island in the northeast called Manhattan.

“A Charlie Brown Christmas” was a groundbreaking program in so many ways, as we learned watching the great PBS American Masters series on Charles Schulz, known by his friends and colleagues as “Sparky.” It was based on the comic strip Peanuts, and was produced and directed by former Warner Brothers animator Bill Melendez, who also supplied the voice for Snoopy.

We learned in that PBS special that the cartoon happened by mere serendipity.

“We got a call from Coca-Cola,” remembered Melendez. “And they said, ‘Have you and Mr. Schulz ever considered doing a Christmas show with the characters?’ and I immediately said ‘Yes.’ And it was Wednesday and they said, ‘If you can send us an outline by Monday, we might be interested in it.’ So I called Sparky on the phone and told him I’d just sold ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas,’ and he said, ‘What’s that?’ and I said, ‘It’s something you’ve got to write tomorrow.’”

We learned in that American Masters series that Schulz had some ideas of his own for the Christmas special, ideas that didn’t make the network suits very happy. First and foremost, there was no laugh track, something unimaginable in that era of television. Schulz thought that the audience should be able to enjoy the show at its own pace, without being cued when to laugh. CBS created a version of the show with a laugh track added, just in case Schulz changed his mind. Luckily, he didn’t.

The second big battle was waged over voiceovers. The network executives were not happy that the Schulz’s team had chosen to use children to do the voice acting, rather than employing adults. Indeed, in this remarkable world created by Charles Schulz, we never hear the voice of an adult.

The executives also had a problem with the jazz soundtrack by Vince Guaraldi. They thought the music would not work well for a children’s program, and that it distracted from the general tone. They wanted something more . . . well . . . young.

Last but not least, the executives did not want to have Linus reciting the story of the birth of Christ from the Gospel of Luke. The network orthodoxy of the time assumed that viewers would not want to sit through passages of the King James Bible.

There was a standoff of sorts, but Schulz did not back down, and because of the tight production schedule and CBS’s prior promotion, the network executives aired the special as Schulz intended it. But they were certain they had a flop on their hands.

“They were freaking out about something so overtly religious in a Christmas special,” explained Melendez. “They basically wrote it off, like, hey, this is just isn’t going to be interesting to anyone, and it’s just going to be like a big tax write-off.”

Melendez himself was somewhat hesitant about the reading from Luke. “I was leery of the religion that came into it, and I was right away opposed to it. But Sparky just assumed what he had to say was important to somebody.”

Which is why Charles Schulz was Charles Schulz. He knew that the Luke reading by Linus was the heart and soul of the story.

As Charlie Brown sinks into a state of despair trying to find the true meaning of Christmas, Linus quietly saves the day. He walks to the center of the stage where the Peanuts characters have gathered, and under a narrow spotlight, quotes the second chapter of the Gospel According to Luke, verses 8 through 14:

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and goodwill towards men.

“ . . . And that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown,” Linus concluded.

The scene lasted 51 seconds. When Linus finished up, Charlie Brown realized he did not have to let commercialism ruin his Christmas. With a sense of inspiration and purpose, he picked up his fragile tree and walked out of the auditorium, intending to take it home to decorate and show all who cared to see how it would work in the school play.

When CBS executives saw the final product, they were horrified. They believed the special would be a complete flop. CBS programmers were equally pessimistic, informing the production team, “We will, of course, air it next week, but I’m afraid we won’t be ordering any more.”

The half-hour special aired on Thursday, December 9, 1965, preempting The Munsters and following Gilligan’s Island. To the surprise of the executives, 50 percent of the televisions in the United States tuned in to the first broadcast. The cartoon was a critical and commercial hit; it won an Emmy and a Peabody award.

Linus’s recitation was hailed by critic Harriet Van Horne of the New York World-Telegram, who wrote, “Linus’ reading of the story of the Nativity was, quite simply, the dramatic highlight of the season.”

A Charlie Brown Christmas is equaled only perhaps by the 1966 How the Grinch Stole Christmas! in its popularity among young and old alike. Thank God the Grinch-like executives at CBS chose to air the special back in 1965 despite their misgivings. If it had been left to their gut instincts, we would have had one less national treasure to cherish come Christmas time.

— Lee Habeeb is the vice president of content at Salem Radio Network, which syndicates Bill Bennett, Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, and Hugh Hewitt. He lives in Oxford, Miss., with his wife, Valerie, and daughter Reagan.

This article originally appeared in National Review Online. © 2011 by National Review, Inc., Reprinted by permission.

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The Gospel According to Peanuts

How do you get Bible readings on national television against the will of the schedulers? I recently stumbled across the following article by Lee Habeeb telling the story of how Charles M Schultz - creator of Charlie Brown and Snoopy - managed just that. It is reproduced here by kind permission of National Review Online.

Brooms Up Clapham! That's the spirit! by belkus

Social networking was used to draw hundreds onto London’s streets yesterday. Armed and ready to do battle, they descended on Clapham, Brixton and Hackney. Units later broke out in Manchester and Birmingham. Yet these gangs were not armed with face-masks and firebombs; they came with bin bags and brooms. Their goal was not to tear down and destroy, but to cleanse and to heal.

At some point during Monday night, a website and twitter feed entitled ‘riotcleanup’ were created. By mid-afternoon @riotcleanup had over 70,000 followers, and 600 people were waiting in Clapham for police to open the roads and allow them to swoop in and sweep up.
 
Even more heartening, though, was the fact that at the top of Twitter’s ‘trending’ list, showing what key words are being most used across the micro-blogging site worldwide, the hashtag #prayforlondon sat at the top of the list for most of the day. That means that every time anyone anywhere in the world logged on to twitter’s home page, the call to pray for the UK’s capital city was in the most prominent position.

Christian groups and charities were also taking advantage of the social media networks to circulate suggestions for how to pray and how to give practical help: some sent out appeals for clothes they could give to those whose homes had been burned out; others suggested baking goodies for the hard-working police and fire crews; still others publicised prayer vigils being held across the city.
 
Looking at the scenes on TV and the internet, it would be possible to think that the UK had descended into anarchy. Violence and destruction seemed to rule the streets, yet when dawn broke, good people, who cared about their neighbourhoods, were ready and willing to put their compassion into action. This is the famous sociological ‘Broken Windows Theory’ on a grand scale.
 
Simply put, the theory, posited by George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson in Atlantic Magazine nearly 30 years ago, states that if a neighbourhood is such that broken windows remain broken and graffiti remains disfiguring the walls, then it will not take long before more windows are broken, more graffiti appears, and vandalism generally increases. If, however, windows are fixed, walls are cleaned up and the area is generally well-tended, it will remain well-tended and will feel both a safer and a more pleasant place to live.
 
Londoners and residents of other cities across the UK could have hidden indoors, battening down the hatches and sheltering from the storm. They could have called on the local councils to clear up the mess. In taking the responsibility and making a stand, though, they have chosen to reclaim their streets and not surrender them to violence and destruction.
 
When the world looks darkest, it is important that we not lose hope, but focus on the good that remains, and allow our light to shine brightly.
 
However you choose to respond, remember to stay safe, and to work with the local authorities to help and not hinder their work.

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Mending the broken windows

Social networking was used to draw hundreds onto London’s streets yesterday. Armed and ready to do battle, they descended on Clapham, Brixton and Hackney. Units later broke out in Manchester and Birmingham. Yet these gangs were not armed with face-masks and firebombs; they came with bin bags and brooms. Their goal was not to tear down and destroy, but to cleanse and to heal.

London - Shaftesbury Memorial by ...::: Antman :::...

Anthony Ashley Cooper was a man who understood what it meant to be Salt and Light in society. The son of a wealthy landowner in an age when Britain’s fortunes were built on the broken backs of the poor, he disappointed his father, was derided by his contemporaries and deprived himself and his family of many of life’s luxuries in his lifelong campaign for social justice.

Equally at ease conversing with royalty and chimney sweeps, Anthony cared little for his position or reputation, but devoted his life to serving the God he loved. He is commemorated in the name of one of Central London’s busiest streets, and with one of its most famous monuments; and it is no exaggeration to say that his tireless work saved the lives, as well as the souls, of many thousands of people. He was dubbed in his life time ‘the Great Reformer’ and ‘the best friend the poor ever had’, but is most commonly known today simply as Lord Shaftesbury.
 
As was the case for many children of the rich at the time, Anthony’s early years – he was born in 1801 – were ones of loneliness and deprivation, even in the midst of his parents’ wealth. The love we might have expected to be provided by his parents came instead from the devout Christian housekeeper Maria Millis. While the church and his father taught Anthony to know and obey the teachings of the Bible, Maria taught him to know and love the God of the Bible; she introduced him to the faith that was to sustain and drive him for the rest of his life.
 
As a teenager at Harrow School he once witnessed a ramshackle, undignified pauper’s funeral. His compassion welled up for the dead man, and he resolved then to commit his life to making a difference to the fates of the lower classes. He asked God to help him to use the power and influence that were coming his way (he was to become an MP for many years before inheriting his father’s Earldom) ‘to plead the cause of the poor and friendless and to give them a better life.’
 
It is almost easier to list the areas of poverty and injustice in 19th Century Britain that Shaftesbury didn’t try to solve than those he did. He campaigned for better treatment of mental health patients and proper regulation of the asylums; for improved working conditions, fewer hours and the provision of education for children working in factories and cotton mills; for the prohibition of the employment of children under ten and women in coal mines; for the abolition of the use of small boys to sweep chimneys, and against animal vivisection. He was a strong supporter of the London City Mission, an active participant in the establishment of ‘Ragged Schools’ (free schools established to teach the poorest children reading, writing, arithmetic, the Bible and a marketable skill), and an opponent of the wholesale destruction of poor people’s housing to make way for the new railways. He sought the regulation of boarding houses (which sometimes housed up to thirty people of both sexes in a single room), the placing of new cemeteries within easy reach of the poor in London, and the provision of clean water and proper sanitation for the city. In short, Lord Shaftesbury made good on his intention to give his life to the improvement of every aspect of life for the poor and friendless.
 
If this list appears exhausting in itself, consider the even more remarkable aspect of Shaftesbury’s work, and the thing which made him so persuasive: he didn’t merely campaign for these reforms from the warmth and safety of his London office or his country estate, but made a point of backing up his rhetoric with first-hand evidence. He travelled to the north of England to see conditions in the factories and meet the hunched, wizened, half-crippled children who worked as many as nineteen hours per day during the ‘rush months’ (and fourteen the rest of the year) darting among the noisy, dusty, potentially lethal machinery in the cotton mills. Then it was down into the coal mines, taking an artist with him this time, the better to convey the dark, cramped conditions in which children as young as four years old would often be found working. The pictures and stories revealed six-year olds carrying loads too heavy for a grown man, boys and girls with their legs rubbed raw crawling along the passageways dragging cartloads of coal to the surface, chained to their loads like pack horses, a young girl sitting alone in a dark passage hour after hour listening out for the rumble of a cart signalling that she should open the trap door to let it through. Alone, afraid, hungry and tired, she sat at her post all day every day, earning a few pennies to help keep her family from starvation.
 
The Mines and Collieries Bill was passed relatively quickly, due in no small measure to the powerful first-hand evidence and testimony that Shaftesbury was able to give. The Government tried to prevent the evidence from reaching the public domain, but it was leaked and doubtless the public outcry contributed to the success of the Bill. Other measures did not fare so well. It took 41 years before the Ten Hours Bill regulating the length of time children could work in factories was fully functional! Then as now, the complexity of issues surrounding any legislation was so great, and the interests of the mill owners and the MPs who were in Parliament thanks to their votes were so strong that to do what was right for one part of society would upset the finely balanced economy and, so it was argued, damage the prosperity and health of the nation. Shaftesbury would not give in, though, refusing to ‘let my fears or my love of ease come before my sense of what is right and of what God wants.’
 
But that was still not all. Not content with using his influence and his testimony to make a difference, Lord Shaftesbury used his own meagre resources to be of immediate assistance, too. One biographer described him as, like many of the landed gentry of his day, ‘asset-rich but income-poor’. (By this time too, he and his wife, Minny, had nine children to feed, clothe, educate and, sadly, in a couple of cases provide expensive medical care for.) He was constantly in debt, yet constantly giving to others whose needs were even greater than his own. On finding pupils at one of the Ragged Schools too hungry to concentrate on their work, he went home and got his cook to boil up a cauldron of soup, which he took to the school. He provided the same for the school every day for the rest of the winter.
 
A story which encapsulates the esteem in which he was held by the poorest of the city, tells of the time when a small boy picked his pocket and made off with his gold watch. The pick-pocket’s friends recognised the watch and promptly bundled thief and timepiece into a sack, tied it up and deposited it outside Lord Shaftesbury’s front door! History does not record how the Earl dealt with the ragamuffin, but the example of countless other such encounters would suggest he was more likely to give the child a bath and a hot meal than a beating.
 
Shaftesbury was not only a friend of the poor, though. He was encouraged and supported (often with very generous financial gifts) by Lord Palmerston, offered positions of power by successive governments, and was counted by Prince Albert as a confidant and friend.
 
Story after story could be told of this great man who humbled himself and gave all he could to befriend the friendless and live out his faith in practical action. He was deeply concerned for the souls of the lost, but knew that calls to repentance would go unheeded unless their hearts were softened by experiencing the love of the God he served.
 
The statue of Anteros, or the Angel of Christian Charity, was erected in memory of him in Piccadilly Circus, at the foot of the street named in his honour: Shaftesbury Avenue. Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, died in 1885 at the age of 84. His funeral was held at Westminster Abbey, and he was offered a burial place there, but asked instead to be buried at his home, Wimborne St Giles. The words he chose for his gravestone sum up the philosophy that motivated his life’s work, his generosity and his love: ‘What hast thou that thou didst not receive?’ (1 Cor 4:7) He worked, not to earn God’s favour, but out of gratitude for the blessings, love and salvation the Father had lavished upon him. It took time and effort, it was exhausting and often discouraging, he often felt almost entirely alone in his fight (save for the faithful support of his wife), and his support of the rights of the poor over the profits of the rich alienated him not just from his political colleagues but from his own father, yet considering whether it was worth it, Shaftesbury once wrote:

‘In spite of all vexations, insults, toil, expense, weariness, all loss of political position – in spite of always being secretly despised and often publicly ignored, I would for myself say “Yes”’.

__________

Further reading:

Richard Turnbull, Shaftesbury: The Great Reformer (Lion Hudson, 2010) – a very thorough, detailed account of the many areas of Shaftesbury’s interest and campaigning.
 
Jenny Robertson, I Stand Alone: The Life of Lord Shaftesbury (Scripture Union, 1985) – written for children, but manages to be both thorough and engaging. Turnbull’s book will give you a clear catalogue of the facts, but Robertson’s adds to that a vibrant sense of the man and his character.

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Lord Shaftesbury: The Great Reformer

Anthony Ashley Cooper was a man who understood what it meant to be Salt and Light in society. The son of a wealthy landowner in an age when Britain’s fortunes were built on the broken backs of the poor, he disappointed his father, was derided by his contemporaries and deprived himself and his family of many of life’s luxuries in his lifelong campaign for social justice.