The young urchin was just doing his job. His bike looked way to big for him, no doubt stolen. Today I saw him with a bunch of other baby bangers, practicing their gangbanger moves and trying to look menacing. In a couple summers they'll be knocking off convenience stores for a few bucks and the occasional murder.
These kids aren't dumb, they're just following about the only career path left for working class kids in Minneapolis. Sweigerts, Minneapolis Moline, Honeywell, Continental Baking, etc.. are long gone. UPS is creeping away, and the Postal Service is ready to take a couple thousand Minneapolis jobs to the distant suburbs. Minneapolis' response is to drool over all that prime riverfront land becoming available for hi end residential development...
Problem is, at the rate we're losing the kind of good paying job you need to qualify for a mortgage on overpriced Minneapolis homes there won't be much of anyone left to buy said residential developments. Granted, there's a bit of old money around thats slowly buying up the riverfront residences, but at nothing compared to the way they cover a 40 acre field with homes in a month or so in the rapidly growing exurbs.
You can see the future of Minneapolis right here in Hawthorne where even with prices in the low hundreds homes aren't moving. One of the empty houses on my block just got occupied, but by a dirt poor family as that potential owner occupied home goes back to rental. In an economy where WalMart sets the wages even a two income family will forever be renters. And that's for the folks who can even find jobs- the census tells us that workforce participation has been dropping for a couple decades now. Nationwide, about 15% of men age 25-54 are out of work. I've tried with no success to find local figures, but I suspect at least half of our working age adult population here in Hawthorne is out of (legal) work. No wonder we have so many angry young men and women hanging about the streets.
What of the existing homeowners? I've been sharing my story of potential imprisonment for peeling paint with my fellow postal workers and found that many of us received similar summons. Suffice to say, if the Post Office moves to the 'burbs we'll be happy to follow.
So that's the cause of my labor's day lament- a once proud city of working class homeowners reduced to tenants in a city of slums instead of neighborhoods.
abandoned on Sluyter's Corner,
Dyna Sluyter
TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.)
________________________________
Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
