urban life

(Listening to John Legend)

In an hour the mayor is going to be leading a community meeting at my church next door to discuss the recent spike in violent crime among minorities in our community. A week ago the police chief, Harry Dolan, publicly complained that the minority community was not responding to this crisis, asking "where's the outrage?" The African-American community, in particular, has responded by vehemently denying Dolan's charge and attacking the police department for racial profiling. Basically everybody is pointing the finger at somebody else while more young African-Americans and Latinos are getting killed all the time. I'm glad Hartwell has called this meeting, at least, but I'm not sure what good will come of it. The problem starts with the public education in this town, but that's tied to the funding that comes from property taxes of those who live in the district. Because something like 40% of the people in my neighborhood live below the poverty line, the schools will never get the funding they need. Of course, just throwing money at the problem won't make it disappear. There is the question of how to bring businesses into a neighborhood with that much poverty and an 89% African-American and 11% Latino population, the problem of institutional racism, the fact that almost nobody owns their home, and -most importantly- how can we change the culture of the neighborhood so that young people believe things can change? How do we fight the hopelessness and defeatism? I don't know, but we have to start by building relationships one person at a time.