I'm submitting the following editorial to the Star-Tribune. (Am I becoming a journalist now??)
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There’s been a lot of talk about fires in my north Minneapolis neighborhood recently. Councilman Don Samuels, in a remark he has since apologized for, suggested that the poor track record of students at North High might be cause to burn the place down and start over. It’s not hard to find burnt down buildings in our neighborhood, so I can see where Councilman Samuels got his idea. When problems arise, it’s easy to think that fire presents the most expedient solution.
In North High’s case, fire may be appropriate, but not for the school itself. I have volunteered at North and two other public schools on the northside. At each, I have found caring, motivated, and well trained staff. Unlike some cities, the schools here are often new, well maintained, and equipped with up to date technology. Frankly, the problem isn’t North High.
In fact, with apologies to Councilman Samuels, north Minneapolis has plenty of fires already. I’ve called this neighborhood home for four years. The first two were spent at a house near the corner of Morgan and Broadway, just across the park from North High. Less than a month after moving in, we realized that the convenience store located on our corner was trouble. Drug dealing happened openly and often. Young men would sit on the embankment near one of the station’s driveways and flag down cars as they drove past, using a less than subtle two fingers to the mouth sign to indicate the product they had to sell.
Gunfire was also common. In a six month time frame, I counted ten shootings within a block of our house. I saw two shooting victims myself, though fortunately neither was serious. We decided to move the night two men traded shots across our street. I could see the guns go off through our living room curtain, flashes of fire in the night.
Our new home is fifteen blocks north of the old one, in a quieter area. I’ve made a point of driving by our old place occasionally since our move, just to see what was happening. Sometimes the dealers were there, sometimes not. Last week was a different story. Three of the store’s four walls still stood, but the rest was a pile of rubble. The place had burned down. I feel no grief for it, but realistically, this fire probably didn’t help that much. In our neighborhood, crime has many homes.
Other fires on the northside are more subtle. Sterling, an 11 year old neighbor at our old house, wanted to become a veterinarian and loved watching Animal Planet. Yet when a domestic disturbance flared up at his house late one Saturday night, the police arrived in force, pulled the whole family out of the house, and shot their pit bull for reasons unknown. The first question he ever asked me was, “So, what do you think of this neighborhood?” Even at his age, he knew where he lived, and he knew it wasn’t good. Another blaze was at work in Sterling: an invisible one, but no less destructive and more difficult to put out.
The effects of an even more insidious fire can be found online, at the U.S. Census website. They provide maps of any zip code or city, broken down by major demographic categories. At the south end of our community, a small river, Bassett Creek, separates the Harrison neighborhood from the more prosperous Bryn Mawr. The division is not much to note; it’s only a small bridge on Penn Ave. Yet on the census maps, that small bridge spans wide gulfs of education, race, and income. Simply put, those maps show how clearly this city is segregated along such lines.
If something needs to be burned, this is the place we must start. It is this concentration of poverty and racism that sparks the other blazes I’ve witnessed. When jobs are scarce, drug dealing is a lucrative option. Growing up surrounded by violence, it’s only natural to take it up yourself. Without successful role models to identify with, your own success seems improbable. Surrounded by poverty and despair, there’s no reason to plan for a hopeful future.
Unfortunately, the violence and poverty of north Minneapolis is too often seen as a problem of only this community. Segregation is an easy way for us to wall problems off in urban ghettos, figuring that if the fires there are contained, the rest of us will be safe. Yet it is these walls themselves that feed the flames.
My faith teaches me that when one person hurts, the whole community is in trouble. When one community burns, the rest of us must allow ourselves to feel that heat. Until we deal with the deep racial and economic segregation in our community, these other fires will continue. It will take all of us to accomplish the task of putting them out.