Ray Suarez is Senior Correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS. For many years he was host of NPR’s Talk of the Nation. His journalism career has included assignments in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, London and Rome. He is the author of The Old Neighborhood– What we Lost in the Great Suburban Migration: 1966-1999 (1999). He was interviewed for A Lot in Common in July, 2000.

Here are some excerpts:

"Bad things happen when places cannot live up to the use that they were designed for. This isn’t an inner-city problem, this isn’t a black problem, this isn’t a Latin problem. It’s an American problem, and it takes neighborhood action to turn that around. Neighbors who know each other feel more safe about living on their block, even in dangerous neighborhoods.

Knowing others and being known creates a way for people to gauge their real risk on the streets of their neighborhoods: to know what’s dangerous and what’s not. In the old neighborhood, the lady across the street who looked out the window all the time. The guy down the block who when you fell off your bike, knew where you lived, knew who your parents were. We gave that up, traded that in for a new way of life. But we were so quick to trade that in for a new way of life that we threw away the good stuff along with the bad stuff.

The value of real community is created when we open ourselves up to the people that we live with, make common cause with them in making this place a decent place to live. And there are heroes coast to coast who are responding to that call, that call to open themselves up to their neighbors."