The Rock doing well

[aylbert]

This was pretty overtly racist. I'm not big on PC, but I'm actually offended by this post.

It wasn't racist at all, it was prejudiced against a socioeconomic class and its pretty hard to say he's wrong. It is what it is. You also can't improve an area by lifting its people... It doesnt happen.

You bring opportunities, it creates demand to be there. I don't see that in Newark just yet. I see businesses catering to the crowds, but the area seems dead to me outside of those times.

When businesses move in with good jobs, people move in to be closer. The area improves because you changed the population. Cashiers and laborers don't become finance, legal, marketing, research people just because a new company opens their doors. And if you're hoping for the rebirth of the middle class with factory jobs... That isn't going to happen.

I like the Rock in Newark because it's 1) not CAA and 2) easilly accessible . I wasn't scared of the location, I just didn't think it would happen like NewarkDevil used to talk about long before it came to be.

[Dead]

Newark (and well every city) is affected directly by the people that live there. To say otherwise would ignore the citizens of whatever city, and their effect on their city. Lets face it Newark is not a very "good" city in general but the vast majority of people that live in Newark are good people. As with all areas a small percentage of the population is what is considered "bad", and well those give any city the rep it has (as far a negative).

I have seen enough of newark and goings on to know that it is generally not safe (day or night), for the most part regardless of the area you are in.

[Colin226]

Newark (and well every city) is affected directly by the people that live there. To say otherwise would ignore the citizens of whatever city, and their effect on their city. Lets face it Newark is not a very "good" city in general but the vast majority of people that live in Newark are good people. As with all areas a small percentage of the population is what is considered "bad", and well those give any city the rep it has (as far a negative).

I have seen enough of newark and goings on to know that it is generally not safe (day or night), for the most part regardless of the area you are in.

 

The downtown is pretty safe during the day.. The worst you get are robberies (mainly people stealing iPhones), but that's not uncommon in any city really including NYC.. It's partially why Apple beefed up the features around locking phones when they've been stolen.. At night you get the occasional shooting but really most of the bad stuff we hear about in Newark is a mile or more from the arena (mainly west and southwest, but also some northwest).. My parents see all the cases that come through from these crimes so they've shared this info with me

 

But as you say, it's unfortunate that the very small minority ruin for the rest of the folks in Newark just trying to get on with their lives.. The problem the city has is that it's easy to get to downtown and it's also a big shopping area for locals, so how do you keep the crime out? Tough task

[Chuck the Duck]

[NewarkDevil5]

I like the Rock in Newark because it's 1) not CAA and 2) easilly accessible . I wasn't scared of the location, I just didn't think it would happen like NewarkDevil used to talk about long before it came to be.

 

Well I had only been advocating it since about 1998 so I was a relative latecomer at about 10 years before opening day lol. I think in a lot of ways it wound up happening exactly in the context that I thought it would, which is to say as a means to save the existence of the Devils as a New Jersey team as well as revitalizing the downtown core, which it has done amazing things towards both.

 

As far as the west and south side neighborhoods, those kinds of neighborhoods exist in all major cities. The difference is that in NJ our home rule mentality has carved up our cities to the point where we've used municipal boundaries to segregate. In any other state, Newark's municipal borders would encompass the majority if not all of Essex County and those neighborhood's crime statistics would be akin to those of Bedford-Stuyvesant or Watts, but they would be listed within the greater Newark statistics so the city wouldn't look as bad.

[ATLL765]

Why?  The reason a good chunk of Newark is a craphole because of the people who live there.  Hell, almost every plighted area in the US is plighted because of the people who live there.

 

Here again is the reverse fear of gentrification because it somehow destroys the "charm" of these areas.  Give me a friggin break.  DUMBO was a sh!thole before the hipsters moved in and if you want to romaticize an area that was full of gangs, drugs and violence then go right ahead.  I like walking through that area without having to worry about my safety.

This is without a doubt, a giant over simplification of the issue.

In no way can you blame the particular people there for the entire problem, because if you take otherwise very similar people and put them in a nice area, they all of a sudden don't get arrested a lot and have a chance at college. What is different about these people? Usually just where they live, possibly how much money they make.

While it's true whenever you get a large concentration of poor people in one area, crime is a problem, but that isn't the people, it's the situation. Are people to blame for some of it, obviously yes, but to say they are the cause of their own plight is not only ignorant, but makes you sound like a straight up a$$hole who doesn't give two sh!ts about the poor because you only have to see them when you fear for your safety....

I usually 100% disagree with coffee cake and think his posts don't make sense, but he hit the nail on the head here about people's feelings on urban areas. You guys are giant pussies if you're afraid of walking through any area. I'm 5'5" and like 105lbs and I couldn't give two sh!ts about being anywhere in Newark that's remotely close to anyplace any of us would go. Do I want to be in an open area drug market at 2 am? Probably not, but it's not like you're gonna accidentally wander into one walking to your car from the Prudential Center.

Same goes for taking the current residents into account going forward. It does not matter how many sh!t holes you gentrify the sh!t out of. Poor people don't just disappear when that happens, they find the next sh!thole. And then when it turns out that sh!thole is your town. It's whoa is me, all this crime, there's scary men on the basketball court in the park, blah, blah, blah.

[TheRedStorm]

In no way can you blame the particular people there for the entire problem, because if you take otherwise very similar people and put them in a nice area, they all of a sudden don't get arrested a lot and have a chance at college. What is different about these people? Usually just where they live, possibly how much money they make.

While it's true whenever you get a large concentration of poor people in one area, crime is a problem, but that isn't the people, it's the situation. Are people to blame for some of it, obviously yes, but to say they are the cause of their own plight is not only ignorant, but makes you sound like a straight up a$$hole who doesn't give two sh!ts about the poor because you only have to see them when you fear for your safety....

 

 

Jesus H, what a total and absolute load of liberal garbage pulled right from the handbook. Nothing more needs to be said.

 

Actually, it does, for effect. The human pieces of sh!t who carjacked and killed a man in front of his wife for his Range Rover a few miles from my home wouldn't have done that if you gave them say, a year ago, a middle class home, a few dollars and the thought that they'll now enroll in a local college?

 

Get the hell out of here.

Edited December 18, 2013 by TheRedStorm

[ATLL765]

Jesus H, what a total and absolute load of liberal garbage pulled right from the handbook. Nothing more needs to be said.

 

Actually, it does, for effect. The human pieces of sh!t who carjacked and killed a man in front of his wife for his Range Rover a few miles from my home wouldn't have done that if you gave them say, a year ago, a middle class home, a few dollars and the thought that they'll now enroll in a local college?

 

Get the hell out of here.

No, I'm saying it's far less likely that any particular person would commit a crime like that having grown up in a wealthier area. This is fact.

[TheRedStorm]

No, I'm saying it's far less likely that any particular person would commit a crime like that having grown up in a wealthier area. This is fact.

 

It's also fact that violent crime knows no territorial boundaries or class system and that violent crime isn't just caused by poverty.

 

A person is responsible for their own life's choices, rich or poor. Free will. Want to carjack someone? That's a choice. Want to murder someone over sneakers? That's a choice. Want to run a ponzi scheme like Bernie? That's a choice.

 

There are also born animals in society who no amount of education and money can help and the lifestyle they live is glorified. The problem is statistically these people are all in inner cities or impoverished areas.

Edited December 18, 2013 by TheRedStorm

[NewarkDevil5]

It's also fact that violent crime knows no territorial boundaries or class system and that violent crime isn't just caused by poverty. I'm not a believer in "you're a product of your own enviroment". People are responsible for their own life's choices. Free will. There are also animals in society who no amount of education and money can help and the lifestyle they live is glorified. I'd be willing to bet there are people who will never leave an inner city for any reason.

 

Violent crime may not be caused strictly by poverty, but it is absolutely exacerbated by a nothing to lose mentality. Poor people have less to lose than rich people, that is a fact.

 

You can talk about free will all you want, but the invisible hand of the market governs the market regardless of your freewill to choose the higher priced equivalent item. In much the same way, the forces of economics and incentives govern what people are more or less likely to do with regards to crime. If you have more incentive to take what someone else has at gunpoint than you do to work for it, you're more likely to do so.

 

If the home-life and schooling you were given allows you little opportunity to do anything legitimate outside of a minimum wage entry level job with no growth potential, then you might start looking at illegitimate options like drug dealing and theft. Are there going to be examples of people who rise above? Absolutely and they are fully accounted for by the odds.

 

There are absolutely people who never leave an inner city. There are also people who never leave their small rural town of 500. What that has to do with anything I'm not entirely sure.

 

As far as glorifying their lifestyle, it is something that has been going on for a long time. Before you had black gangs you had Italian mafiosos, before them you had Irish gangs and so on. Every group has gone through this and their exploits have been both glorified and vilified in each group's histories in similar ways.

[DevsMan84]

This is without a doubt, a giant over simplification of the issue.

In no way can you blame the particular people there for the entire problem, because if you take otherwise very similar people and put them in a nice area, they all of a sudden don't get arrested a lot and have a chance at college. What is different about these people? Usually just where they live, possibly how much money they make.

While it's true whenever you get a large concentration of poor people in one area, crime is a problem, but that isn't the people, it's the situation. Are people to blame for some of it, obviously yes, but to say they are the cause of their own plight is not only ignorant, but makes you sound like a straight up a$$hole who doesn't give two sh!ts about the poor because you only have to see them when you fear for your safety....

I usually 100% disagree with coffee cake and think his posts don't make sense, but he hit the nail on the head here about people's feelings on urban areas. You guys are giant pussies if you're afraid of walking through any area. I'm 5'5" and like 105lbs and I couldn't give two sh!ts about being anywhere in Newark that's remotely close to anyplace any of us would go. Do I want to be in an open area drug market at 2 am? Probably not, but it's not like you're gonna accidentally wander into one walking to your car from the Prudential Center.

Same goes for taking the current residents into account going forward. It does not matter how many sh!t holes you gentrify the sh!t out of. Poor people don't just disappear when that happens, they find the next sh!thole. And then when it turns out that sh!thole is your town. It's whoa is me, all this crime, there's scary men on the basketball court in the park, blah, blah, blah.

You are also totally ignoring the culture of victimization that is occurring in these plighted areas where their struggles are never the fault of their own but instead always the fault of society or some outside influence. This is where you get that line if thinking of where if you throw money at the problem then it goes away. We all know that line of thinking is seriously flawed. Want proof? Well how has the abbot school system been working out for NJ? Schools that were failing are now spending the most per pupil on education with the same or nearly the same results before the abbot system started.

Bill Cosby for years have been giving speeches to inner city children to accept responsibility for their lives and to not fall into the victimization trap. The response from the left and inner city "advocates" have been nothing but negative with words like "traitor" being some of the kinder words he has been called.

[DevsMan84]

Violent crime may not be caused strictly by poverty, but it is absolutely exacerbated by a nothing to lose mentality. Poor people have less to lose than rich people, that is a fact.

You can talk about free will all you want, but the invisible hand of the market governs the market regardless of your freewill to choose the higher priced equivalent item. In much the same way, the forces of economics and incentives govern what people are more or less likely to do with regards to crime. If you have more incentive to take what someone else has at gunpoint than you do to work for it, you're more likely to do so.

If the home-life and schooling you were given allows you little opportunity to do anything legitimate outside of a minimum wage entry level job with no growth potential, then you might start looking at illegitimate options like drug dealing and theft. Are there going to be examples of people who rise above? Absolutely and they are fully accounted for by the odds.

There are absolutely people who never leave an inner city. There are also people who never leave their small rural town of 500. What that has to do with anything I'm not entirely sure.

As far as glorifying their lifestyle, it is something that has been going on for a long time. Before you had black gangs you had Italian mafiosos, before them you had Irish gangs and so on. Every group has gone through this and their exploits have been both glorified and vilified in each group's histories in similar ways.

So you are saying Newark, who not only receive more funding per pupil than most districts due to it being an abbot district, does not give children an opportunity at education? Please. It's the children who have grown up watching their parents receiving handouts because they chose to play the victim card who chose not to take advantage of the school system and the parents not giving a damn.

You can't improve an area when a large chunk of that population can't improve themselves with all the assistance in the world. Therefore like my original argument a page ago you cannot gentrify a neighborhood with the existing pre-gentrified population still there.

[DJ Eco]

This is the typical far left excuse for why poverty exist. They are always the victim of something whether it be corporations, society or the "white man." There is now an entire culture of victimization where the only way they see an escape is through someone else instead of pulling themselves out of it.

Want more proof of how you help feed into that culture if victim hood? I never once mentioned race in my post but that's the conclusion you immediately jumped to and accused me of being a racist.

Do yourself a favor and read something written by someone other than far left philosophers and theorists.

 

I'm super far-left liberal and generally agree with your point.

 

You shouldn't generalize people or their beliefs.

[TheRedStorm]

Violent crime may not be caused strictly by poverty, but it is absolutely exacerbated by a nothing to lose mentality. Poor people have less to lose than rich people, that is a fact.

 

You can talk about free will all you want, but the invisible hand of the market governs the market regardless of your freewill to choose the higher priced equivalent item. In much the same way, the forces of economics and incentives govern what people are more or less likely to do with regards to crime. If you have more incentive to take what someone else has at gunpoint than you do to work for it, you're more likely to do so.

 

If the home-life and schooling you were given allows you little opportunity to do anything legitimate outside of a minimum wage entry level job with no growth potential, then you might start looking at illegitimate options like drug dealing and theft. Are there going to be examples of people who rise above? Absolutely and they are fully accounted for by the odds.

 

There are absolutely people who never leave an inner city. There are also people who never leave their small rural town of 500. What that has to do with anything I'm not entirely sure.

 

As far as glorifying their lifestyle, it is something that has been going on for a long time. Before you had black gangs you had Italian mafiosos, before them you had Irish gangs and so on. Every group has gone through this and their exploits have been both glorified and vilified in each group's histories in similar ways.

 

DM84 above beat me to the main response, but those people in that rural area of 500 aren't adding to the national/state crime statistic and aren't a part of their own problem eating themselves from within, save for the epidemic of cow tipping.

 

,

Edited December 18, 2013 by TheRedStorm

[DJ Eco]

Even if Newark was close to as dangerous as the media exaggerates, what made anyone think waking a handful of blocks from your car to the stadium and back with throngs of people would present any serious threat? Fear of urban areas really just stems from ignorance and misperceptions. And they need to be careful balancing revitalization, and make sure gentrification is held somewhat in check. We don't want to see the local population displaced.

 

 

I disagree with you in some cases and agree with you in many cases, especially my own case.

 

My own area is a good example of this. I live in Hudson County, town of North Bergen/West New York. It's a mostly middle or lower-middle Hispanic population (which makes up half of my background as well) and is undergoing a very steady stream of gentrification.

 

There've been at least 4 playgrounds and basketball/mini-soccer courts get torn down in the past 2 years, and replaced with dog-runs. Not that the original residents don't walk their dogs, but their kids always made full use of the playgrounds, they were always packed. Now, you only see upper-middle class white professionals in their 20s and 30s hanging out with their dogs at the dog-run.

 

It sounds small, but it always starts small. I love my neighborhood because food and groceries are cheap and pretty much everything is cheap and within walking distance. Not to mention, the cuisine is incredible: tons of amazing Colombian and Hispanic cuisine. The next step is once the bodegas and dive bars start getting bought out and replaced with yoga studios and vegan minimarkets and some interpretive arts space opened by some art kid on his rich family's dime. These are all red flags that lead to new businesses and amenities on a neighborhood-scale which attracts a certain kind of people, like termites. And they'll suck all the roots out of the neighborhood and turn it into what their version of the neighborhood "should be".

 

An area like mine doesn't want gentrification. The crime's pretty low, and most people here like it the way it is.

 

An area like Newark though, I don't think you can really argue against a little cleaning up. There's really nothing much else you can do to help many of the people there. Ironbound's tight-knit enough to not really give in to a massive gentrification but I can't say the same for much of the rest of the city.

[DJ Eco]

The mafia while thugs and criminals never voluntarily committed violent acts against people who weren't an ememy or rival. They operated by codes and they held each other to them. While an innocent person was undoubtedly caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, those who committed that act were swiftly dealt with. The mafia didn't carjack a family for their car for fun and didnt beat down a person for his sneakers. To compare today's gangs to these past groups is foolish as they commit acts of violence towards anyone or anything that gets in their way and at the price of anyone or anything,

 

It's interesting to note that mafias came to be in New York to help the large Italian immigrant population get jobs and thrive. Their primary purpose early on was to make sure people of their kind could come to the U.S. and have a job and a place to live while taking care of their family. That in turn made Italian neighborhoods much cleaner and safer, because slipping into alcoholism or drug use or general vagrancy was severely frowned upon; you were thrown out of town if you were a liability to the neighborhood.

 

That obviously was diluted eventually, as soon as drugs came into the picture. And I'm not sympathizing with the mafia, but many people don't realize that their initial purpose was mostly a benevolent agenda, like a proactive community center that wasn't linked to murder/violence/drugs at the time.

Edited December 18, 2013 by DJ Eco

[NewarkDevil5]

So you are saying Newark, who not only receive more funding per pupil than most districts due to it being an abbot district, does not give children an opportunity at education? Please. It's the children who have grown up watching their parents receiving handouts because they chose to play the victim card who chose not to take advantage of the school system and the parents not giving a damn.

You can't improve an area when a large chunk of that population can't improve themselves with all the assistance in the world. Therefore like my original argument a page ago you cannot gentrify a neighborhood with the existing pre-gentrified population still there.

 

Whether more funding or less funding or equal funding, the quality of education in Newark schools is below that of other school districts. Whether you want to blame that on funding or the family life and culture of the students is not my concern in the above statements.

 

As far as the parents receiving handouts, I agree with you on that. I believe the current system creates a culture of dependence and crime. In no part of what I wrote did I ever advocate the continuation of the current systems as they are currently structured. What I said is that people respond to incentives and are more likely to turn to crime if the incentives point in that direction which they more often do in poor areas.

 

On the flip side I don't necessarily think that all of the systems need to be gotten rid of. Tying welfare benefits to community service hours in a form of "workfare" is a good idea. There are things that can be done to make the system work better, because right now the results are fairly disastrous. The devil is in the details, which comes back to education funding. Throwing money into an education system to pay more to administrators that never see the inside of a classroom is a waste of money and does nothing to help the schooling system. Just because things are being done incorrectly doesn't mean they can't be done properly. People believe that government can't get anything done right and create self fulfilling prophecies.

 

All of this is to say that I'm not saying that it is the fault of funding or not enough social programs or whatever, but that the original post seemed to imply that you have people who are just plain no good for being no good's sake and they have chosen to congregate in Newark for whatever reason, which simply isn't true. People may have free will, but they respond to incentives and the collection of incentives faced by an average person in Newark is more likely to lead to a life of crime than it is for an average person in Montclair.

[David Puddy]

I disagree with you in some cases and agree with you in many cases, especially my own case.

 

My own area is a good example of this. I live in Hudson County, town of North Bergen/West New York. It's a mostly middle or lower-middle Hispanic population (which makes up half of my background as well) and is undergoing a very steady stream of gentrification.

 

There've been at least 4 playgrounds and basketball/mini-soccer courts get torn down in the past 2 years, and replaced with dog-runs. Not that the original residents don't walk their dogs, but their kids always made full use of the playgrounds, they were always packed. Now, you only see upper-middle class white professionals in their 20s and 30s hanging out with their dogs at the dog-run.

 

It sounds small, but it always starts small. I love my neighborhood because food and groceries are cheap and pretty much everything is cheap and within walking distance. Not to mention, the cuisine is incredible: tons of amazing Colombian and Hispanic cuisine. The next step is once the bodegas and dive bars start getting bought out and replaced with yoga studios and vegan minimarkets and some interpretive arts space opened by some art kid on his rich family's dime. These are all red flags that lead to new businesses and amenities on a neighborhood-scale which attracts a certain kind of people, like termites. And they'll suck all the roots out of the neighborhood and turn it into what their version of the neighborhood "should be".

 

An area like mine doesn't want gentrification. The crime's pretty low, and most people here like it the way it is.

 

An area like Newark though, I don't think you can really argue against a little cleaning up. There's really nothing much else you can do to help many of the people there. Ironbound's tight-knit enough to not really give in to a massive gentrification but I can't say the same for much of the rest of the city.

 

Hah, this sounds very close to my neighborhood, but there's not much to romanticize about my neighborhood. It used to be known for antiques, but the only antique shops that remain are dust buckets. There's a used car lot and a barbershop or hair salon on almost every block. The latest trend is discount cell phone (pay all your bills here!) stores. Plus, tons of empty storefronts. I don't think you can make an argument for my neighborhood having any kind of character.

 

We had a yoga studio in my building that failed within a year (it's now a hair braiding salon). There was a graphic design/t-shirt shop that opened, but is now a cell phone store. The quirky hipster art gallery space (which opened in an antique/architectural salvage place that moved out of the neighborhood) is still going, but the vintage clothing shop and artisanal chili store next to it didn't last long. (Now they're opening an artisanal breakfast shop in the chili place... but it's being opened by a chef with 2 successful restaurants, so it might have a chance. I'm still not paying $8 for red velvet pancakes or whatever they come up with.) Oh, and a micro-brewpub, which I am actually excited about. And we do have some architects and graphic designers moving into the neighborhood.

 

In my neighborhood's case, when there are so many buildings and storefronts sitting empty, you can't complain about any tenant moving in, be it the next MetroPCS dealer or another yoga studio. I just wish there was some middle ground between blight and pretentiousness.

[NewarkDevil5]

DM84 above beat me to the main response, but those people in that rural area of 500 aren't adding to the national/state crime statistic and aren't a part of their own problem eating themselves from within, save for the epidemic of cow tipping.

 

,

 

That's not necessarily true, but because those people happen to be white meth addicts in rural areas stealing copper wire out of a light pole in a small town to pay for their meth addiction vs a black crackhead in an inner city holding someone up to pay for their own they get thought of differently. Believe me when I say that small rural towns have their own crime issues.

[DJ Eco]

Whether more funding or less funding or equal funding, the quality of education in Newark schools is below that of other school districts. Whether you want to blame that on funding or the family life and culture of the students is not my concern in the above statements.

 

As far as the parents receiving handouts, I agree with you on that. I believe the current system creates a culture of dependence and crime. In no part of what I wrote did I ever advocate the continuation of the current systems as they are currently structured. What I said is that people respond to incentives and are more likely to turn to crime if the incentives point in that direction which they more often do in poor areas.

 

On the flip side I don't necessarily think that all of the systems need to be gotten rid of. Tying welfare benefits to community service hours in a form of "workfare" is a good idea. There are things that can be done to make the system work better, because right now the results are fairly disastrous. The devil is in the details, which comes back to education funding. Throwing money into an education system to pay more to administrators that never see the inside of a classroom is a waste of money and does nothing to help the schooling system. Just because things are being done incorrectly doesn't mean they can't be done properly. People believe that government can't get anything done right and create self fulfilling prophecies.

 

All of this is to say that I'm not saying that it is the fault of funding or not enough social programs or whatever, but that the original post seemed to imply that you have people who are just plain no good for being no good's sake and they have chosen to congregate in Newark for whatever reason, which simply isn't true. People may have free will, but they respond to incentives and the collection of incentives faced by an average person in Newark is more likely to lead to a life of crime than it is for an average person in Montclair.

 

 

I agree with a lot of what you have to say. You have some great ideas and good insight.

 

The problem, though, lies when a really good teacher (someone like my mom) gets reassigned to Newark, and she gets told to "fvck off" on the first day, or physically threatened, verbally abused, etc... There's only so much a person can take.

 

There is definitely a point where parents or a support system (or lack thereof) ARE to blame. Police officers or white suburban people didn't teach a 3 year old kid from the projects how to say "fvck you," or be generally disrespectful to others and not give a sh!t. 

 

It's not the education system's job to teach kids that mugging people is wrong.

 

And you're right, a long gradual change in public welfare policies might do the trick, but even then, who knows?

[Mike Brown]

ITT: Right wingers showing that they're full of crap like always.

Sent from my XT907 using Tapatalk

[TheRedStorm]

ITT: Right wingers showing that they're full of crap like always.

Sent from my XT907 using Tapatalk

 

And a left winger pointing fingers while adding nothing. Shocking

[ATLL765]

DM84 above beat me to the main response, but those people in that rural area of 500 aren't adding to the national/state crime statistic and aren't a part of their own problem eating themselves from within, save for the epidemic of cow tipping.

 

,

Also they don't have the option to sell drugs and make money because who the fvck goes to middle of nowhereville to get the good sh!t?

If you're living in an inner city and because the schools are garbage(while I certainly don't deny that money hasn't helped the problem, I'd say that's more to do with mismanagement of funds than the students not caring) you have no chance at working and getting a living wage and you're faced with a choice of work some crap PT job with AWFUL hours making $800/month or sell drugs which you can do at your own convenience, provides unlimited ability to move up in the organization and ability to earn income. Seriously, if you're in the right spot, all you gotta do is stand there and let it sell itself or hire somebody to be your runner and you barely have to do anything. I mean, what would you choose if you were poor, hungry and needed the cash?

[TheRedStorm]

Also they don't have the option to sell drugs and make money because who the fvck goes to middle of nowhereville to get the good sh!t?

If you're living in an inner city and because the schools are garbage(while I certainly don't deny that money hasn't helped the problem, I'd say that's more to do with mismanagement of funds than the students not caring) you have no chance at working and getting a living wage and you're faced with a choice of work some crap PT job with AWFUL hours making $800/month or sell drugs which you can do at your own convenience, provides unlimited ability to move up in the organization and ability to earn income. Seriously, if you're in the right spot, all you gotta do is stand there and let it sell itself or hire somebody to be your runner and you barely have to do anything. I mean, what would you choose if you were poor, hungry and needed the cash?

 

So you're supporting or advocating a socio-economic system that's supported by selling/running illegal drugs because someone doesn't have a "choice"  or they are somehow "disadvantaged" even when working and earning some kind of legit income? I mean it's one thing to be on the left (and far left) but it's another thing to advocate or defend a illegal activity that leads to prison time, death and poisoning of people all in the name of being poor. Besides, that's not an alternative, that's a choice and as i said people are responsible for their actions/free will and the courts aren't going to hear that it's a poverty problem as a defense. It's bad enough politicians buy into it.

 

BTW...if a kid knows he has this is a route, then it begs the question why throw money at inner city education? It's bad enough you can throw all the money at schools you want and you cant make kids who don't want to learn, learn. But, this scenario makes it a complete waste.

Edited December 18, 2013 by TheRedStorm

[Devil Dan 56]

So you're supporting or advocating a socio-economic system that's supported by selling/running illegal drugs because someone doesn't have a "choice"  or they are somehow "disadvantaged" even when working and earning some kind of legit income? I mean it's one thing to be on the left (and far left) but it's another thing to advocate or defend a illegal activity that leads to prison time, death and poisoning of people all in the name of being poor. Besides, that's not an alternative, that's a choice and as i said people are responsible for their actions/free will and the courts aren't going to hear that it's a poverty problem as a defense. It's bad enough politicians buy into it.

 

BTW...if a kid knows he has this is a route, then it begs the question why throw money at inner city education? It's bad enough you can throw all the money at schools you want and you cant make kids who don't want to learn, learn. But, this scenario makes it a complete waste.

 

 

There's a difference between supporting an illegal activity and understanding why someone with nothing to lose would engage in an illegal activity.

 

I live near Newburgh, NY. It's neck and neck with Rochester every year for worst city in the state. It was ranked the 9th most dangerous city in the country last year. If someone is born into that, and they believe that that environment is all that life has to offer them, and that that is their place in the world, it's very difficult for them to see any way out of it. What is there to stop a 10 - 12 year old from joining a gang when there's nothing else there for them?

 

They interviewed a girl in an article a couple of years ago. She was making something like $2,500 a week as a 16 year old selling weed. Her friends who had regular jobs were making less than a quarter of that. It's not hard at all to see why someone surrounded by violence and poverty would go that route, especially when jobs are hard to come by with so many empty store fronts. Fixing things that are ingrained that deeply goes far beyond the ideas of making better choices.