I DO THIS OUT OF LOVE -- PLEASE JOIN ME IN CARING


It is important to me that people reading my blog posts about the Marketview Heights neighborhood understand that I hold no anger, but bear only love for everyone who lives here -- including the drug dealers. I love every single one of them. Including whoever it was who threw rocks through the windows. I could not stay here if I did not feel that love.

It is important to me that people reading my blog posts about the Marketview Heights neighborhood understand that I hold no anger, but bear only love for everyone who lives here -- including the drug dealers.

The drug trade is possible in neighborhoods like this because of economics. Many people here are desperately poor, with little education or training to enable them to get decent jobs. Ninety-four percent of the population in the 14605 zip code has only a high school degree or less. And there are very few commercial or industrial locations here that offer jobs. And it is very difficult for people to get transportation to areas where good jobs are available.

It is true that some are drug addicts or alcoholics. Street drugs and alcohol more often than not are used for self-medication against the pain of their lives. People can get so beaten down when they are faced with grinding poverty. Without education that helps them to understand that there are better ways to cope with pain, it is not surprising to me that they turn to drugs.

Equally important, the vast majority of drug purchases are made by what I call the "suburbanites" -- people with middle class or better resources who come here from the suburbs or who live in better parts of the city. They come here so their fellow "suburbanites" (and especially their employers) won't see them buying drugs.

During the winter months I saw dealers standing on the corner in 10 degree wind chills without adequately warm clothing 12 hours a day, seven days a week. You have to ask yourself -- what makes it possible to get people to work so hard like that under such miserable conditions? Why would anyone do that?

To my mind, the dealers I have seen on this corner (and others who stand on other corners) are some of the most exploited workers on earth.

Several weeks ago as I was working in the front an older black gentleman who had been to the store said hello. I said hello right back, and we started talking about the neighborhood. He told me his mother owned property up the street, three houses, and he had grown up in this
neighborhood, from the time he was three.

He said his family had been the first black family to move in 45 years ago. He gave me his name along with his mother's. He told me he had been a drug user, but was now seven years clean. He said he also used to sell drugs. Now he lives near Manhattan Square and was up here walking. Just got a new hip, trying it out. Said he has seen me out and has always wondered who I was, putting so much care into the place. He told me what a wonderful place the neighborhood was back then, how there was a baseball field and wonderful other places for children to play, and a really nice store and a laundromat occupying the building across the street.

We did not speak of it, but both of us knew that the transformation of the neighborhood began with racism and white flight to the suburbs.

We talked about the work I was doing to rid the corner of drug dealers, and to help build a better, safer community for everyone. I told him do not want anyone to end up in jail. Instead, I want them to have decent jobs. I want them to be able to live in nice houses and have good transportation. I want their children to go to good schools where they can be safe enough to be able to learn and grow. I want them to have decent health care. I want the addicts to get treatment. I want everyone to have a good life.

I do love these people. Every single one of them. Including whoever it was who threw rocks through the windows. I could not stay here if I did not feel that love.

I know that the problems in this community run deep and wide and have a very long history. Sometimes it seems as if they are insurmountable.

But when people start feeling the problems are too big to solve, that's when the people who CAN leave do. And then the neighborhood (and all others like it), just gets worse.

So what shall we do? Do we run and hide? Do we allow the problems to fester and grow until we have riots the way we did in the 1960s?

Somehow, we have to find a way.

Posted: Sat - June 3, 2006 at 09:49 AM          

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