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.
As a community, we create a lot of space for fighting and pushing back, but not enough for connecting and healing.
During natural disasters or emergencies, the most resilient communities - places that suffer the fewest casualties and rebuild more quickly - are not the wealthiest neighborhoods or ones that have spent the most on physical infrastructure, but rather the communities with the strongest social infrastructure.
Where there is not community, trust, respect, ethical behavior are difficult for the young to learn and for the old to maintain.
We need a new kind of citizenship, so that we can see citizens as themselves earning the rank of patriot because of their involvement in their community affairs....We as a society need to be encouraging people to focus not just on individual wants but on serving the larger community.
The tenets of my cultural teachings are rooted in our commitment to lift up every community member so that no one is left behind. Work and food were shared equally. Through our commitment to community, we care about children, even when they aren't ours, and we want our old folks, and yours, to live their last days in dignity and comfort.
If you and your church were to disappear off the face of the earth tomorrow, would anyone in the community around you notice you were gone? And if the community did even notice would they say 'we are really glad they are gone', or 'we are really going to miss them'?
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