In Difficult Times Good People gravitate towards Absolute Truth
Trouble in Baltimore!
A good and wise minister friend of mine sent me a most insightful article concerning the situation in Baltimore. It gets to the core of the matter, in my view . . .
Years ago my wife and I visited with our daughter who lived outside Baltimore to the west. Our Big City experience was Atlanta where I grew up. Baltimore was not nearly as big, but you could feel the hairs rise as we went down to the area near their stadium and waterfront. It was daytime, but you could not help but think, "Would my hubcaps be still on after the game is over?" In St. Louis, years ago, it was the same when we visited for a meeting.
The Braves in Atlanta are now moving their baseball to a new complex some 20 miles north of the present location in the heart of town. The current Turner Field was just built in the last 10 or so years, has all the beauty you could want, has oak trees planted which are still small---but to go there means entering The Hood. There are all kinds of dark skinned people trying to get you to use their yards instead of the official parking. The same thoughts enter my mind in Atlanta!
Years ago a white Emory coed was killed. That got my attention. When I read the full story, she was in a part of town no person would enter if they had a clue! More years ago my wife and I were in San Francisco. We got on the last cable car --- only to discover it was going away from the waterfront instead of towards it!
Being the poor young couple we were, I said, "It's not that far to walk so we can enjoy what we planned. My wife was dressed in a lovely curvaceous dress of yellow with Chinese decorations. I was in my sports coat and trousers. WE LOOKED LIKE TOTAL TOURISTS! In a few blocks we had gone from nice urban to run down slum with men standing around staring.
Suddenly, an old movie I saw came clearly into my head. It was the story of a white woman in America being abducted to China for prostitution purposes. She was kidnapped, put on a ship, and had to do the best she could to survive in a horrible place. I quickened my pace, but was praying to God as never before that he protects her from danger / me from getting killed so she could be taken without more struggles of men with ill intent. I might have been a Baptist Minister, but try to hurt my wife and I will do my best to kill you!
What I see in many big cities having riots and racial tension is simply too many people crammed together too tight, facing the angst of a new place, being put down and stared at, having people on all the crowded roads not caring if you are in front of them. They are going to be first, no matter what and who they have to run over.
The last few days have spotlighted a school graduation at Stone Mountain, GA. I lived a few miles from there growing up. Stone Mountain and Clarkston High Schools were strong rivals. It is in DeKalb County. It is next door to the downtown Atlanta Fulton County. Over the last 20 years it has gone from majority white southern folks to INTERNATIONAL. You have blacks of all kinds, Indians from India, Middle Eastern, Korea, etc. There are some places now without a business sign in English on the streets! They want to keep their culture in a new land; we make disparaging remarks about "LEARN ENGLISH" or leave!
by Ralph Nader
Suddenly, the mass media is writing about or televising the conditions in West Baltimore. Conditions that Washington Post columnist, Eugene Robinson, summarized as decades long "suffocating poverty, dysfunction and despair."
Suddenly, reporters and camera teams are discovering Baltimore's inner city-crumbling or abandoned housing; mass unemployment; too many merchants gouging the locals (the poor pay more); too many drug dealers; schools, roads and sidewalks in serious disrepair; debris everywhere; lack of municipal services (which are provided to the wealthier areas of the city); and, as always, grinding poverty and its many vicious circle consequences.
Suddenly, media highlights a report by Harvard economists putting Baltimore County last among the worst counties in the U.S. for economic mobility.
Suddenly, The Atlantic pays attention to the reporting by the Baltimore Sun of police brutality in Baltimore against people and communities of color. "A grandmother's bones were broken. A pregnant woman was violently thrown to the ground. Millions of dollars were paid out to numerous victims of police brutality."
Suddenly, the Washington Post reports that life expectancy in 15 Baltimore neighborhoods, including the one where the innocent, young Freddie Gray lived (slain by the police for making eye contact and running) is shorter than in North Korea! The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health gets press for concluding that Baltimore teens between 15 and 19 years old face poorer health conditions and a bleaker economic outlook than those in economically distressed cities in Nigeria, India, China and South Africa.
Suddenly, the aggressive arresting practices of the local police and their climate of constant fear are the subject of detailed media presentations. Interviews with grieving, frightened residents in the neighborhoods shock viewers who are unfamiliar with Baltimore. Suddenly, viewers and readers come to the realization that these people of color are all human beings who for too long have had their plight overlooked and ignored.
Baltimore is an example of the harsh conditions created by a combination of white flight and loss of economic opportunities due to a shift of manufacturing off our shores to those of other countries that will allow their citizens to work for a smattering of pennies (facilitated by trade agreements like NAFTA and the World Trade Organization). The gap between rich and poor, between visibility and invisibility, is one of the largest in the country-a recurrent tale of two cities in modern America.
Suddenly, we see major reporting on the thousands of lead-poisoned children in Baltimore. Ruth Ann Norton, executive director of the Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning, says "a child who was poisoned with lead [from lead-based paint] is seven times more likely to drop out of school and six times more likely to end up in the juvenile justice system."
Our first black president laments the cycle of poverty, but calls protestors who destroyed property, not lives, "thugs." This is the same president who has spent tens of billions of dollars illegally attacking communities with civilians ("collateral damage") in foreign countries. Such monies could have rebuilt our devastated cities, promoted programs and employment to help those in need in these very cities, and enforced laws against the corrupt political officials, and commercial and street predators who profit from the powerless poor and exploit poverty programs.
West Baltimore received a visit from the new Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, who said "we're here to hold your hands and provide support," without specifying resources beyond helping the city improve its police department.
Hundreds of pages in newspapers and hundreds of hours of television time were devoted to cover what the Reverend Donte L. Hickman Sr. called "the deterioration, dilapidation and disinvestment."
And what brought the media attention? A couple hundred young men smashing windows and burning some stores, buildings and cars. Young men like Freddie Gray die often at the hands of some violent police in America's inner cities without any subsequent media coverage or remedial action, but it took protests, civil unrest and fires to finally illuminate the interest of the nation's media. How shameful! And how predictable will be the inevitable official inaction by the ruling classes once the embers dim, leaving the neighborhoods in despair.
When the poor neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. erupted in 1968, the great FCC Commissioner Nicholas Johnson said: "a riot is somebody talking. A riot is a man crying out: listen to me, mister. There's something I've been trying to tell you, and you are not listening."
If the plutocrats of America do not wake up to the daily, acidic results of excessive greed coupled with excessive concentration of power over the people, they will be fomenting what they abhor the most-cascading instability and disruption. In their parlance-that's bad for business.
Go Back
Years ago my wife and I visited with our daughter who lived outside Baltimore to the west. Our Big City experience was Atlanta where I grew up. Baltimore was not nearly as big, but you could feel the hairs rise as we went down to the area near their stadium and waterfront. It was daytime, but you could not help but think, "Would my hubcaps be still on after the game is over?" In St. Louis, years ago, it was the same when we visited for a meeting.
The Braves in Atlanta are now moving their baseball to a new complex some 20 miles north of the present location in the heart of town. The current Turner Field was just built in the last 10 or so years, has all the beauty you could want, has oak trees planted which are still small---but to go there means entering The Hood. There are all kinds of dark skinned people trying to get you to use their yards instead of the official parking. The same thoughts enter my mind in Atlanta!
Years ago a white Emory coed was killed. That got my attention. When I read the full story, she was in a part of town no person would enter if they had a clue! More years ago my wife and I were in San Francisco. We got on the last cable car --- only to discover it was going away from the waterfront instead of towards it!
Being the poor young couple we were, I said, "It's not that far to walk so we can enjoy what we planned. My wife was dressed in a lovely curvaceous dress of yellow with Chinese decorations. I was in my sports coat and trousers. WE LOOKED LIKE TOTAL TOURISTS! In a few blocks we had gone from nice urban to run down slum with men standing around staring.
Suddenly, an old movie I saw came clearly into my head. It was the story of a white woman in America being abducted to China for prostitution purposes. She was kidnapped, put on a ship, and had to do the best she could to survive in a horrible place. I quickened my pace, but was praying to God as never before that he protects her from danger / me from getting killed so she could be taken without more struggles of men with ill intent. I might have been a Baptist Minister, but try to hurt my wife and I will do my best to kill you!
What I see in many big cities having riots and racial tension is simply too many people crammed together too tight, facing the angst of a new place, being put down and stared at, having people on all the crowded roads not caring if you are in front of them. They are going to be first, no matter what and who they have to run over.
The last few days have spotlighted a school graduation at Stone Mountain, GA. I lived a few miles from there growing up. Stone Mountain and Clarkston High Schools were strong rivals. It is in DeKalb County. It is next door to the downtown Atlanta Fulton County. Over the last 20 years it has gone from majority white southern folks to INTERNATIONAL. You have blacks of all kinds, Indians from India, Middle Eastern, Korea, etc. There are some places now without a business sign in English on the streets! They want to keep their culture in a new land; we make disparaging remarks about "LEARN ENGLISH" or leave!
Suddenly, Baltimore - Wonder Why?
Suddenly, the mass media is writing about or televising the conditions in West Baltimore. Conditions that Washington Post columnist, Eugene Robinson, summarized as decades long "suffocating poverty, dysfunction and despair."
Suddenly, reporters and camera teams are discovering Baltimore's inner city-crumbling or abandoned housing; mass unemployment; too many merchants gouging the locals (the poor pay more); too many drug dealers; schools, roads and sidewalks in serious disrepair; debris everywhere; lack of municipal services (which are provided to the wealthier areas of the city); and, as always, grinding poverty and its many vicious circle consequences.
Suddenly, media highlights a report by Harvard economists putting Baltimore County last among the worst counties in the U.S. for economic mobility.
Suddenly, The Atlantic pays attention to the reporting by the Baltimore Sun of police brutality in Baltimore against people and communities of color. "A grandmother's bones were broken. A pregnant woman was violently thrown to the ground. Millions of dollars were paid out to numerous victims of police brutality."
Suddenly, the Washington Post reports that life expectancy in 15 Baltimore neighborhoods, including the one where the innocent, young Freddie Gray lived (slain by the police for making eye contact and running) is shorter than in North Korea! The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health gets press for concluding that Baltimore teens between 15 and 19 years old face poorer health conditions and a bleaker economic outlook than those in economically distressed cities in Nigeria, India, China and South Africa.
Suddenly, the aggressive arresting practices of the local police and their climate of constant fear are the subject of detailed media presentations. Interviews with grieving, frightened residents in the neighborhoods shock viewers who are unfamiliar with Baltimore. Suddenly, viewers and readers come to the realization that these people of color are all human beings who for too long have had their plight overlooked and ignored.
Baltimore is an example of the harsh conditions created by a combination of white flight and loss of economic opportunities due to a shift of manufacturing off our shores to those of other countries that will allow their citizens to work for a smattering of pennies (facilitated by trade agreements like NAFTA and the World Trade Organization). The gap between rich and poor, between visibility and invisibility, is one of the largest in the country-a recurrent tale of two cities in modern America.
Suddenly, we see major reporting on the thousands of lead-poisoned children in Baltimore. Ruth Ann Norton, executive director of the Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning, says "a child who was poisoned with lead [from lead-based paint] is seven times more likely to drop out of school and six times more likely to end up in the juvenile justice system."
Our first black president laments the cycle of poverty, but calls protestors who destroyed property, not lives, "thugs." This is the same president who has spent tens of billions of dollars illegally attacking communities with civilians ("collateral damage") in foreign countries. Such monies could have rebuilt our devastated cities, promoted programs and employment to help those in need in these very cities, and enforced laws against the corrupt political officials, and commercial and street predators who profit from the powerless poor and exploit poverty programs.
West Baltimore received a visit from the new Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, who said "we're here to hold your hands and provide support," without specifying resources beyond helping the city improve its police department.
Hundreds of pages in newspapers and hundreds of hours of television time were devoted to cover what the Reverend Donte L. Hickman Sr. called "the deterioration, dilapidation and disinvestment."
And what brought the media attention? A couple hundred young men smashing windows and burning some stores, buildings and cars. Young men like Freddie Gray die often at the hands of some violent police in America's inner cities without any subsequent media coverage or remedial action, but it took protests, civil unrest and fires to finally illuminate the interest of the nation's media. How shameful! And how predictable will be the inevitable official inaction by the ruling classes once the embers dim, leaving the neighborhoods in despair.
When the poor neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. erupted in 1968, the great FCC Commissioner Nicholas Johnson said: "a riot is somebody talking. A riot is a man crying out: listen to me, mister. There's something I've been trying to tell you, and you are not listening."
If the plutocrats of America do not wake up to the daily, acidic results of excessive greed coupled with excessive concentration of power over the people, they will be fomenting what they abhor the most-cascading instability and disruption. In their parlance-that's bad for business.
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