全新版大学英语 第二版 阅读教程

哈维．米尔克 (HARVEY MILK)

由街道组成的城市 A City of Neighborhoods

美国梦是从街道开始的。

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哈维．米尔克(1930－1978)是第一个被选入旧金山市管理委员会的公开的同性恋者。三次竞选失败后，米尔克于1977年代表卡斯特罗区──一个不同种族的人杂居的地区──入选市管委会。对许多当地居民来说，这个区就像一座小城。他们不欢迎市区再建。尤其不欢迎用推土机铲平街道，代之以高楼大厦的做法。米尔克的选民们对是否能保存他们生活的特点，避免发生在其它大城市中已毁了街区的衰败现象感到疑虑，忧心忡忡。米尔克意欲爲同性恋问题以及美国城市街道复兴而大声疾呼。然而1978年11月27日哈维．米尔克和乔治．莫斯肯被一名心怀仇恨的前市管委会成员暗杀。

哈维．米尔克在就任市管委会职务后不久在一次募集基金的宴会上发表了以下这篇演讲。

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……对这－点我们可别弄错：美国梦是从街道开始的。如果我们要重建城市，我们就必须首先重建街道。而要这麽做，我们就必须认识到，生活的品质比生活的标准更重要。坐在门前台阶上──不论它是－座小城住宅的游廊还是一个大城市住宅的混凝土门廊──与我们的邻居闲聊，要比挤坐在起居室的躺椅上看一个顔色失真的虚假世界重要得多。

进步并非美国的唯一事业──当然也不是它最重要的事业。随着技术的发展，生活的品质下降了，这岂不是咄咄怪事? 哦，洗盘子更容易了。正餐本身也更方便了──只须加热，端上饭桌，虽说若是我们吃了广告扔掉食品，营养或许更丰富。当客人来访时，我们再也不怕玻璃器皿上会有污点了。但是，当然啰，也没人来做客了，因爲我们的朋友怕上我们家来，我们去他们那儿也不安全。

我不必多费口舌告诉你们：在那十九或二十四英寸的世界图像中，清洁早巳使神圣黯然失色。所以我们将个个散发出清洁的气息，显示出清洁的外貌，简直像实验室一般一尘不染，从里到外皆无菌。我们是完美的消费者，身边全是最新式的用具。我们是完美的观衆，坐在比赛场外围的座位上几乎能看到世界上任何竞赛项目，无臭、无味、无感觉──孤孤单单、郁郁寡欢地呆在我们各自起居室的荒原中。我认爲我们真正需要的应该是裤子后档多沾上一点灰土，坐在门户阶上再次与邻居谈天说地，享受着夏日的闲暇，那时大蒜的气味比音速传得还略快些。

我们干净整洁的生活缺少某种东西。这种东西是在华盛顿的我国领导人绝对无法用简单的法令提供的，也是电视广告从未宣传过的，因爲尚无人发明一种方法用瓶子、盒子或罐头将它装入。我们所欠缺的是生活的触感、温暖和意义。《时代》周刊的四色整页广告无法代替它。电视上三十秒钟的广告节目或华盛顿一场安抚人心的记者招待会也不能代替它。

我在华尔街和蒙哥马利街度过多年，因而完全了解那些大公司欠了它们的股东多少债务、多少责任。我也完全了解纽约、克利夫兰和底特律都市如战场的实情。我看见城市失业者以及可能会失业的人的脸。我看见唐人街、常聚集小偷和赌徒的猎人角、西班牙人聚居区、妓女和嫖客集中的娱乐区人们的脸……而我不喜欢自己看到的这一切。

奇怪的是，我也回想起一个商行所能构思出的最棒的口号：顾客永远是正确的。

娱乐区和猎人角的人被忘掉了。街上的那些人正是顾客，当然是潜在的顾客，他们应当被当作顾客对待。不能对他们置之不理，商业界也不能无视他们的存在。倘若潜在的顾客买不起産品，生産産品又有何意义呢? 这不单是价格问题，它是个购买力的问题。对于一个身无分文的人，从一点二九美元降到九十九美分仍是一大笔钱。

美国商业界必须意识到，股东们总是第一位的。但紧接着便是对他们的顾客的关切和供应问题，他们对顾客和该顾客所在的城市负有债务和责任，对商业本身在其中生存壮大的城市负有债务和责任。抛弃一个把你从幼童培养成人的老年公民是错误的。一旦你的商业发达了便对一个城市任意处置是同样错误的，甚至更加目光短浅。

不幸的是，对于那些欲逃避城市问题的人，城市的问题不仅限于城市。在我们的城市周围并没有护城河将这些问题封锁在城内。在纽约和旧金山发生的事最终也会在圣何塞发生。这只是时间迟早的问题。就像流感，它传播得越广情况就越糟。我们的城市不该被遗弃，它们值得人们爲之奋斗。不只是那些城市居民，産业界、商业界、工会，所有的人都该爲之奋斗。不仅因爲它们代表过去，而且因爲它们代表未来。你们的孩子，而且很可能还有你们的孙子，将住在这些城市里。爲了实际效果，从波斯顿到纽瓦克的东部走廊将成爲一个规模宏大的长条形城市。从米尔沃基到印地安那州的加里也将如此。而在加利福尼亚，由柏油路和霓虹灯构成的繁华的新月状地带将从圣巴巴拉一直伸展到圣叠戈。城市枯萎病是否将顺着快车道的动脉蔓延呢?当然会这样──除非我们阻止它。

因此80年代的挑战将是如何唤醒工商界的觉悟，使他们认识到在拯救曾养育他们的城市的工作中应起什麽作用。每家公司都懂得，它必须不断地向自己的工厂投资以保持健康发展。而城市是那工厂的一部分，城市居民是城市的一部分。这些因素相互关联，一损俱损，一荣俱荣。

总之，生産一种産品成本最低廉的地方若是使你的顾客丢了职业，也就不可能有什麽成本低廉可言，倘若美国的顾客没钱买电视机，在日本制造电视机便毫无意义。産业界应积极雇用失业者，培训身无一技之长的人。“劳动集约”不是一个肮脏的词，并非每件工作都是机器干得更出色。産业界的任务不仅在创造産品，而且也要创造顾客。

代价高吗? 我不认爲如此。码头上堆满货物无人问津，这问题造成的损失大得多。那样做还有别的好处：犯罪率降低，福利负担减少，而且可以让你们的朋友和邻居坐在焕然一新的门廊里。

许多公司感到，援助城市是慈善事业的一种形式。我认爲把它视作经营上的部分费用更确切，应把它作爲未来分期偿还的款项入帐。我希望工商界这样考虑问题，因爲我认爲工商界比有更大的创造力，或许能力也更高一筹。我认爲工商界不但可以把市场区以南的地方变成工业区，而且可以把它变成一个街区。请允许我编造一个双关语：我们太多的城市有综合企业，事实上有太多的综合企业。我们不需要另一个混凝土建筑物的丛林，当你们夜晚熄灯后，它便死去。我们需要的是一个街区，人们能在那儿步行去上班，养育他们的小孩，享受生活的乐趣。

我们的城市将得到拯救。我们的城市将得到治理。但它们将不是由三千英里外的华盛顿管理，不是由州议会管理，尤其不是由那些已逃到市郊的提毡包的人们管理。你们不可能让不住在城里的人管城市，正如你们不可能让不住在城市的人组成有战斗力的力量。在这两种情况中，你得到的都只是占领军而已。……

我们的城市将不会被这种人所拯救，他们觉得住在这些城市活受罪，迫不急待地想迁往马林或圣何塞、埃文斯顿或韦斯特切斯特。我们的城市将由热爱它们的市民拯救。这些人在街道商店和商业大街这两者之间更喜欢前者。他们去剧院看戏，去餐馆吃饭，去夜总

会跳迪斯科；这些人即便自己无子女也关心孩子们所接受的教育。

那将不只是未来的城市，它是今天的城市。它意味着新的方向，新的联盟，对古老的问题的新颖解决方式。拥有两辆汽车和二点二个孩子的典型美国家庭不再居住在那里。这种情况始于若干年前。人口统计数字现在不同了，我们都明白。我们的这些城市成了独身男女的城市，年轻夫妇的城市，成了退休老人和穷人的城市，成了说多种语言、肤色不同的人杂居的城市。

我们的城市将自我管理，将自己创造解决问题的方式。区级选举不是结束，而只是开端。我们将解决自己的问题──依靠你们的帮助，如果我们能够做到；不靠你们的帮助，如果我必须做到。我们需要你们的帮助，我不否认这点。但是你们也需要我们。我们是你们的顾客，我们是你们的未来。

我正骑马奔向那未来世界，坦率地说，我不知道自己是戴着曼布里诺的虚构的头盔，还是头戴理发师的铜盆。我猜我们头戴各自想戴之物，同我们想与之搏斗的对象搏斗。可能我看见了几条凶龙，而那里其实只有风车。然而有某种迹象告诉我，那几条龙是真的，如果我舍得用一两支长矛投向旋转的叶片，或许能逮住一条龙。……

昨天市管委会一位可敬的同事说，我们不能只靠希望过日子。我懂得这一点，但我深深感到，关键不在我们不能只靠希望度日。而在于没有了希望生活就失去意义。如果说唐．吉诃德的故事有什么教益，它告诫人们：生活的精神和生活的实体同样重要。一个别人眼中像理发师的铜盆的东西，你我却明白那是一顶鋥亮的传奇般的头盔。

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附注：

综合企业：原文爲complex，也有“情结”或“病态心理”的意思。

提毡包的人们：原文爲carpetbaggers，指美国南北战争后只带一只旅行袋去南方投机谋利的北方人。

头戴理发师的铜盆：西班牙名作家塞万提斯的长篇小说《唐吉诃德》中，主角堂吉诃德因骑士小说入迷，竟把风车当巨人，把羊群当敌人，把理发师的铜盆当作魔法师的头盔。

Let's make no mistake about this: The American Dream starts with the neighborhoods. If we wish to rebuild our cities, we must first rebuild our neighborhoods. And to do that, we must understand that the quality of life is more important than the standard of living. To sit on the front steps― whether it's a veranda in a small town or a concrete stoop in a big city― and talk to our neighborhoods is infinitely more important than to huddle on the living-room lounger and watch a make-believe world in not quite living color.

Progress is not America's only business― and certainly not its most important. Isn't it strange that as technology advances, the quality of life so frequently declines? Oh, washing the dishes is easier. Dinner itself is easier― just heat and serve, though it might be more nourishing if we ate the ads and threw the food away. And we no longer fear spots on our glassware when guests come over. But then, of course, the guests don't come, because our friends are too afraid to come to our house and it's not safe to go to theirs.

And I hardly need to tell you that in that 19- or 24-inch view of the world, cleanliness has long since eclipsed godliness. So we'll all smell, look, and actually be laboratory clean, as sterile on the inside as on the out. The perfect consumer, surrounded by the latest appliances. The perfect audience, with a ringside seat to almost any event in the world, without smell, without taste, without feel― alone and unhappy in the vast wasteland of our living rooms. I think that what we actually need, of course, is a little more dirt on the seat of our pants as we sit on the front stoop and talk to our neighbors once again, enjoying the type of summer day where the smell of garlic travels slightly faster than the speed of sound.

There's something missing in the sanitized life we lead. Something that our leaders in Washington can never supply by simple edict, something that the commercials on television never advertise because nobody's yet found a way to bottle it or box it or can it. What's missing is the touch, the warmth, the meaning of life. A four color spread in Time is no substitute for it. Neither is a 30-second commercial or a reassuring Washington press conference.

I spent many years on both Wall Street and Montgomery Street and I fully understand the debt and responsibility that major corporations owe their shareholders. I also fully understand the urban battlefields of New York and Cleveland and Detroit. I see the faces of the unemployed― and the unemployable― of the city. I've seen the faces in Chinatown, Hunters Point, the Mission, and the Tenderloin. . . and I don't like what I see.

Oddly, I'm also reminded of the most successful slogan a business ever

coined: The customer is always right.

What's been forgotten is that those people of the Tenderloin and Hunters Point, those people in the streets, are the customers, certainly potential ones, and they must be treated as such. Government cannot ignore them and neither can business ignore them. What sense is there in making products if the would-be customer can't afford them? It's not alone a question of price, it's a question of ability to pay. For a man with no money, 99*\" reduced from $1.29 is still a fortune.

American business must realize that while the shareholders always come first, the care and feeding of their customer is a close second. They have a debt and a responsibility to that customer and the city in which he or she lives, the cities in which the business itself lives or in which it grew up. To throw away a senior citizen after they've nursed you through childhood is wrong. To treat a city as disposable once your business has prospered is equally wrong and even more short-sighted.

Unfortunately for those who would like to flee them, the problems of the cities don't stop at the city limits. There are no moats around our cities that keep the problems in. What happens in New York or San Francisco will eventually happen in San Jose. It's just a matter of time. And like the flu, it usually gets worse the further it travels. Our cities must not be abandoned. They're worth fighting for. not just by those who live in them, but by industry, commerce, unions, everyone. Not alone because they represent the past, but because they also represent the future. Your children will live there and hopefully, so will your grandchildren. For all

practical purposes, the eastern corridor from Boston to Newark will be one vast strip city. So will the area from Milwaukee to Gary, Indiana. In California, it will be that fertile crescent of asphalt and neon that stretches from Santa Barbara to San Diego. Will urban blight travel the arteries of the freeways? Of course it will― unless we stop it.

So the challenge of the 80s will be to awaken the consciousness of industry and commerce to the part they must play in saving the cities which nourished them. Every company realizes it must constantly invest in its own physical plant to remain healthy and grow. Well, the cities are a part of that plant and the people who live in them are part of the cities. They're all connected; what affects one affects the others. In short, the cheapest place to manufacture a product may not be the cheapest at all if it results in throwing your customers out of work. There's no sense in making television sets in Japan if the customers in the United States haven't the money to buy them. Industry must actively seek to employ those without work, to train those who have no skills. \"Labor intensive\" is not a dirty word, not every job is done better by machine. It has become the job of industry not only to create the product, but also to create the customer.

Costly? I don't think so. It's far less expensive than the problem of fully loaded docks and no customers. And there are additional returns: lower rates of crime, smaller welfare loads. And having your friends and neighbors sitting on that well-polished front stoop. . . .

Many companies feel that helping the city is a form of charity. I think it is

more accurate to consider it a part of the cost of doing business, that it should be entered on the books as amortizing the future. I would like to see business and industry consider it as such, because I think there's more creativity, more competence perhaps, in business than there is in government. I think that business could turn the south of Market Area not only into an industrial park but a neighborhood as well. To coin a pun, too many of our― cities have a complex, in fact, too many complexes. We don't need another concrete jungle that dies the moment you turn off the lights in the evening. What we need is a neighborhood where people can walk to work, raise their kids, enjoy life. . . .

The cities will be saved. The cities will be governed. But they won't be run from three thousand miles away in Washington, they won't be run from the statehouse, and most of all, they won't be run by the carpetbaggers who have fled to the suburbs. You can't run a city by people who don't live there, any more than you can have an effective police force made up of people who don't live there. In either case, what you've got is an occupying army. . . .

The cities will not be saved by the people who feel condemned to live in them, who can hardly wait to move to Marin or San Jose― or Evanston or Westchester. The cities will be saved by the people who like it here. The people who prefer the neighborhood stores to the shopping mall, who go to the plays and eat in the restaurants and go to the discos and worry about the education the kids are getting even if they have no kids of their own.

That's not just the city of the future; it's the city of today. It means new

directions, new alliances, new solutions for ancient problems. The typical American family with two cars and 2.2 kids doesn't live here anymore. It hasn't for years. The demographics are different now and we all know it. The city is a city of singles and young marrieds, the city of the retired and the poor, a city of many colors who speak in many tongues.

The city will run itself, it will create its own solutions. District elections was not the end. It was just the beginning. We'll solve our problems ― with your help, if we can, without it if we must. We need your help. I don't deny that. But you also need us. We're your customers. We're your future.

I'm riding into that future and frankly I don't know if I'm wearing the fabled helm of Mambrino on my head or if I'm wearing a barber's basin. I guess we wear what we want to wear and we fight what we want to fight. Maybe I see dragons where there are only windmills. But something tells me the dragons are for real and if I shatter a lance or two on a whirling blade, maybe I'll catch a dragon in the bargain. . . .

Yesterday, my esteemed colleague on the Board said we cannot live on hope alone. I know that, but I strongly feel the important thing is not that we cannot live on hope alone, but that life is not worth living without it. If the story of Don Quixote means anything, it means that the spirit of life is just as important as its substance. What others may see as a barber's basin, you and I know is that glittering, legendary helmet.