Talk about saving the best for last. And by best, I mean worst, the worst problems facing this city now and for the foreseeable future - poverty and crime.
Before we get into it, I recommend that you read what the agenda has to say about poverty and crime and then go over to the Great Expectations blog to take part in the discussion going on there. Feel free to copy your comments onto this blog post as well.
We all know the connections between these two issues. If put a map that pinpointed all of the 85,000 felonies committed in 2006 on top of a map that shows median family income or median house value (or some amalgam of both), I'm pretty sure you'd see that most of those 85,000 serious crimes are committed in the poorest neighborhoods. Murders, robberies, rapes, and shootings are being committed, overwhelmingly, by people whose situation in life is so hopeless that they have no regard for the law. And their victims are most often their neighbors.
On the one hand, we should be grateful that at least there are some parts of the city in which people can feel safe and where wealth is being created, kids are growing up healthy and neighbors support and care for each other. On the other hand, however, the isolation of the poorer neighborhoods has made it possible for people in power, not politicians necessarily but people with real economic power, to ignore those problems.
So what's to be done?
Can government/the mayor strengthen families? If there were more jobs, would people who have turned to crime for their livelihood suddenly want to work regular, 40hr/week jobs? What can we do for a whole generation of 1-5 year olds who are growing up in poverty, without parents, without anyone reading to them at night or telling them to brush their teeth? Or with parents who are neglectful, abusive and not really fit to be parents? Or with parents whose own education level is so low that there's not much they can teach their children anyway?
Speaking of generations... have we lost the generation of 18-30 year olds who are grew up under these same circumstances? What can be done for them? If I'm a 25 year old, with a high school diploma, though not a very good education, and I've never had a regular job because they just didn't exist but I make some cash selling drugs or occasionally breaking into homes or stealing cars, what can be done to convince me to take a regular job (that is, when the tax cuts lead to more jobs)?
Tough questions. Give it a shot.