Stop sending the wrong message

Stop sending the wrong message

I am appalled at the isolation ist attitudes in this city. I can see a failure of many to identify this city as an entire population. It seems that each section or group wants to be a separate island within the city.

Much is being said about the city’s progress, the jobs it needs to provide, and what reinvestment it needs. Until and unless we come to terms with the core of our city, we are not going anywhere. You cannot disinvest and disenfranchise groups of people within the city and place them in a “to be discarded” pile. Environment has everything to do with children having the same hope most of us enjoyed growing up.

Some of us have the attitude that race is not important. People who are being discriminated against will not agree. We can have the attitude that some parts of the city, like the South Side, are unimportant. Those of us who live on the South Side will heartedly disagree.

We all agree that our children are the future. Yet every day children cross Market Street near Warren Avenue for school and very rarely does a police car attempt to slow traffic down to school-zone speed. I have lived in this area 20 years and have seen a patrol car once — only once. The message being sent to our children and to me is that their lives do not count.

Putting playgrounds in one area but omitting an area with a greater number of children, again sends the message that these are “throw-away people, throw-away children.”

If you want crime to stop and you want children to succeed no matter what obstacles are in their path, then stop sending these subliminal messages.

Delores T. Womack, Youngstown