-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday 14 October 2002 23:56, dyna wrote: > Ah, the power of denial- I mutter a few truths about the > prevalence of crime in parts of Minneapolis and how overpriced > housing is here, and the backlash begins:
I don't consider a little cheerleading for a City I love (Minneapolis, that is) to be either "denial" or "backlash" and I think saying that I engaged in either is unfair. We need to consider Minneapolis against its peer cities, not against small, rural communities. > Again, I suspect that most of your favorite restaurants are > pricier than my budget will allow. BTW, Glencoe has a Subway and > coffeehouse too. Actually, my favorite restaurant of all time is a place called Camdi in Dinkytown. I can eat a big plate of great Vietnamese food and a drink big pot of jasmine tea there for about $5 or $6. > In greater Minnesota you can grow your own, or buy from the > farmer. I don't believe Minneapolis has had a working farm in some > years... I had so many organically grown vegetables from my garden this year that I couldn't eat them all-- if I do the garden again next year I'm definitely going to have to get into canning. I've seen a real increase in the number of community gardens around town, as well. > >Now, if you can tell me that Glenwood has libraries that even come > > close to touching Minneapolis Central (even the slapped together > > interim location with its lack of stacks)... > > Try that DSL line I mentioned- I can't even get DSL here in the hood. I can't get DSL either, but I can (and did) get a Time-Warner cable modem for about the same price (maybe even less, I don't know). I would be surprised if they don't offer service to where you're at. And the internet quite the same as a library. I love them both, but I wouldn't want to live with just one or the other. Besides, DSL and cable modems cost about $50 a month. I don't spend nearly that much at the library. > > if you can tell me where > >I'll be able to buy a decent variety of cheeses and wines... > > Again, beyond my economic strata- although you can always > make your own with such a variety of raw materials available. You can't afford a few dollars for a hunk of cheese and $10 for a bottle of wine, but you can afford all the raw materials and equipment necessary to make your own in small batches? How do you manage that, Reaganomics? > Like I said, for us soon to be retired jobs are irrelevant. Like I said, lucky for you-- Glenwood is a great city. But retirement and moving to Glenwood are not options for a significant portion of Mpls' 380,000+ residents. And where would Glenwood put all of us? > had several here in Hawthorne. What is Glenwood doing right that > Hawthorne is doing wrong? If you honestly think you can compare a single neighborhood in a big city to a small rural town, then I'm pretty sure it is not I who's in denial. Glenwood has its population spread out over many many more square miles than Hawthorne does. Glenwood is not smack dab in the middle of a million-body metro area. Glenwood is nowhere near as racially diverse and Hawthorne. > How about New York City, with a much larger population. Our > murder rate has competed with theirs in recent years. How about it? I spent some time today and put together an analysis of the murder rate in 45 large U.S. cities, which I have put online at: http://www.ichimunki.com/Murder_in_U_S_Cities.html Minneapolis scored 19th overall, with an average of 16.86 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. Not good, number one was New Orleans with a ten year average homicide rate of 61.46 homicides per 100,000 residents. But Minneapolis was still better than NYC at 17th with 18.73 homicides per 100,000 residents -- and I would point out that only in the last few years has NYC seen a real drop in their homicide levels. In the early 90s they were in the 20s and 30s. Given what I found, we should probably send some policy makers to places like Seattle WA, Porland OR, San Diego CA, and El Paso TX. Those places all average under 10 homicides a year per 100,000 inhabitants. > I'll delve into the history of Red Light districts from > Storyville to Superior's another day. Suffice to say, we already have > them, as several folks from the Northside and Phillips have reported > on this list. BTW, as you seem to think ready access to drugs and sex > is such a good thing, can we move the Red Light district to your > neighborhood? OK. So we've had red light districts in the past. Where are they now? Red light districts are not typically based out of houses in residential neighborhoods. That's my point. My point was that the City razed what would have passed as our red light district(s)... and look where that crime went: into neighborhoods, yours, and a couple on the south side. Wouldn't it have been better if they'd left it where it was, centralized in a mostly non-residential area? As I recall, prior to 1987, Block E was a place that generated some 50% of the police calls for the city. This was the reason they tore it down. But the crime did not go away, it just moved. And it's not that I think ready access to drugs and sex is a good thing (although I suppose Walgreen's and marriage seem to be civilized solutions), I'm saying that no amount of trying is going to make the trade in either one go away. We've had a drug war for 30 years now and the U.S. has tripled it's prison population in that time. Yet I would have an easier time finding dope in this town than a nice place to live that's actually affordable. I'm clearly proposing that the City contain these crimes somewhere other than your neighborhood, but not in any else's neighborhood either. I've also said over and over that, legalized and regulated, these two businesses would be no more annoying to live near than Walgreen's or a doctor's office. But for some reason the only politicians that get elected are the ones who promise to do something about drugs and prostitution under the general "tough on crime" rubric. It's time to stop framing the issue as tough-on-crime/not-tough-on-crime. It's time to start looking for a new definition of crime, so that we can focus law enforcement on the task of locking up those criminals who are actually a danger to others (i.e. murderers, robbers, drunk drivers, etc). With decriminalization, you might still live next to some unruly folks, but they wouldn't be operating a store off the front porch at all hours of the day and night. So, unless you agree with that approach, I have to ask again. What exactly do you want the city to do? And what evidence do you have that it will solve the problem, rather than relocate it? -michael libby (cleveland/north mpls) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Michael C. Libby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> public key: http://www.ichimunki.com/public_key.txt web site: http://www.ichimunki.com ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE9rKZk4ClW9KMwqnMRAmI8AJ9+VpEduZZSEHJ/IyrmGB21H5McSACfUsbm WFUTa3fMxUHt+mwbOM/ydOw= =gB// -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
