Murder Up in North Brooklyn, Down in South

Ohhhhhhh……I get it. Because it’s an African metaphor….Ohhhhh.

Gee, not too KKK on your part, huh Bren?

“Let’s not think that lower income people don’t care about their schools or their kids’ futures – most do. But often they do not have the wherewithal to organize, or to be effective in the halls of power.”

Common sense- you are so ignorant of life and people in “poor” NYC neighborhoods that it’s appalling. You have no idea of the grass roots organizations that exist, the politicians who have come up from the neighborhoods, the political influence many of them are just now beginning to wield. Yes they need and want help but not from the likes of you with your Rudyard Kipling White man’s burden thing.

And before you talk about No. Brooklyn “de-toxifying” itself you need to realize that drug dealers are all over the city- in plenty of rich white neighborhoods too. Who do you think buys half the drugs in this city? Those rich folk who can afford to. they keep the pipelines flowing, not just kids in the inner city. DOn’t think so? Some years ago there was a huge drug bust in Lower Manhattan- they netted a whole lot of dealers and users- mostly rich white Wall St. types. Never make the mistake of thinking the drug problem belongs to poor people or Black and Hispanic people. You can stick your neck in the sand but it’s the truth.Think we’d be left with one big f**kin detroit? Ah, there’s that North Carolina coming out in you. Take your set of white sheets and go home.

It’s really very simple. You’re all making it much too complicated.

By now everyone understand that Atlantic Yards really is going to happen–which is just to say that everyone now understands that the entire area surrounding AY is going to go straight to hell. And that, of course, translates into ‘party time’ for the thuggish elements of our borough.

[i]amen to that 5:18

5:10, you are, of course correct that education, hard work, etc, etc, would go a long way to curing these ills. However in order for those things to work, those programs/ideals need to work.

It seems like every day on this forum the topic of good schools vs bad schools comes up. No one will argue that most of the public schools in the 81st precinct district are not what they should be. But what is our response on this board? “Don’t move there!!!” or “Be prepared to ship your kids off to private schools.” If the more well heeled in the community – old and new, don’t invest in local schools, nothing will ever change, and they will stay crappy forever.

People with money have more power than people without money. Fact of life. Most people with money know how the system works, and have more access to knowledge, policymakers, and agents of change than people without money and connections. Another fact.

Let’s not think that lower income people don’t care about their schools or their kids’ futures – most do. But often they do not have the wherewithal to organize, or to be effective in the halls of power. That’s what money and personal power can bring. We need a coalition of people who want to fix things – not just because it directly affects us or our kids, but because fixing them is the right thing to do for everyone. These groups exist, and do what they can, but they need our support.

Same with jobs. We can’t expect a kid to get a good job if he can’t read. We can’t tell them to become something that will be a career – like a cop, for instance, if they can’t make ends meeton the salary offered.

It’s a whole eco-system here, everything is connected. If we want to break the cycle of poverty in this city/country, we need, on a huge level, a true war on poverty. That’s the war we should be fighting.[/i]

I feel for the victims of crime. I also feel for those who have to live in the neighborhoods affected by it.

But then everybody digs up the same answer:

[i]Oh, let’s hike NYS already confiscatory taxes to pay for yet more entitlement programs[/i]

40 years of the “Great Society” have given us what? Higher crime rates that the Black community has ever experienced in it’s life time.

I mean, I like section 8, food stmaps, “midnight basketball” and all, but the answer to the communites problems have to come from within.

All this “Those evil gentrifiers” and “stroller moms” comments ignore one thing: It’s other black youth doing the killing.

Every white and/or well off person could move out of NYC tomorrow and nothing would change. In fact, you’d be left with one big fucking Detroit. Is that what “the community” wants? Didn’t think so…..

I think a lot of this violence is the direct result of encounters with those damned Park Slope stroller moms.