What may not be a problem for you may be a problem for others

I am not content to just not get murdered every day.

My friend Annie over at Unconsoled posted a piece that I urge you to read here.

In it, she quotes an article from Compact about crime, the Democrats and crime statistics. I’m not quite sure who in the articles said this, but it is worth quoting:

Crudely put, it comes down to Democrats saying "There's no problem, this is just an excuse for authoritarianism," and the response, "By saying and acting like it's no problem, you have provided the excuse for authoritarianism.”

Lots of people are up in arms, or up without arms because they wouldn’t own a gun (nor would I, I wouldn’t even trust myself with a water gun!) about Trump’s actions in Washington, DC.

It reminds me of how almost exactly two years ago, a close friend of mine who was very much afraid of a Trump victory, would ask me how I would feel about the National Guard on Baltimore Avenue, the main street of the part of West Philly where I live.

“I’m waiting for them,” I used to tease him. “I’ve made coffee and I’m keeping it hot for when they show up, but I keep looking and they’re not here yet.”

I was teasing. I don’t really want the National Guard on Baltimore Avenue. My five cup coffee maker barely makes enough for me. But I do think it would be a useful exercise for those who do not deal with crime and the downstream effects of crime on a daily basis to consider the perspective of those of us who do.

In the space of a few weeks, my best friend was hit by a car in broad daylight crossing Baltimore Avenue in a crosswalk with the light, and my car was broken into. Fortunately my friend is on the mend and I was able to get the car fixed, and to replace the twenty rolls of toilet paper and two containers of cat litter that the thieves took. But these events, plus the day to day grind of being accosted by people begging for money, walking past people writhing on the sidewalk, and fearing for my life as people run stop signs without even looking up from their phones to pause, add up to stress and discontent, which eventually turns into anger.

But according to the statistics, violent crime like homicide is down. Great. I’m glad. Really, I am.

Given that the local antisemites don’t know who I am and don’t appear organized enough to pull off an actual murder, I wasn’t that worried about getting murdered, though being caught in the crossfire of a gun fight is always a danger here.

It’s not enough to not get murdered. Crimes like breaking into cars or disobeying the traffic laws that are meant to keep the cars (which are deadly weapons) from killing or injuring people are not merely inconvenient: they cause a massive decrease in quality of life. Add to that the noise, the trash everywhere, the graffiti, and the fact that every few months store owners on Baltimore Avenue tell me that their windows were smashed in the night, again, and you have a mental and physical health disaster.

My friends who live in nicer places usually react to these updates with, “You should move,” or “We’ve got to get you out of there,” and I appreciate that. I am working toward being able to move, which will at least double my rent. I will, eventually, be able to get a place somewhere safer and go about my life in peace (I hope.)

But what about the people who can’t leave? Who own their homes here, maybe have been here for generations? The sweet old ladies at the YMCA whom I used to meet when I worked out there did not ask for this. They are tired of their sons and grandsons and nephews being shot. I stopped going shortly after my morning yoga class was told that we might have to go on lock down because a disturbed person had been coming into the Y and making threats. Is nothing, even an old lady yoga class at 7:30 am at the Y, sacred?

When I taught in the public schools, I saw both the roots and the effects of a culture that tolerates/rewards crime and punishes education and work. My students, with a few notable exceptions, were practically allergic to work. They did not want to do anything and expected to get good grades. If teachers did not give good grades, even to kids who rarely showed up and did no schoolwork, the teachers were threatened by the parents.

I asked my suburban students if they can imagine a situation like that. They were absolutely shocked. Their parents would threaten them if they behaved the way my former students did, they told me. They reported that they would get detention for talking too much in school. The idea of cursing at a teacher, throwing a pencil in class, or running around the classroom playfighting was about as foreign as riding a camel to the nearest well to draw water for the day. Perhaps more foreign, since at least they had heard of people riding camels.

The kids I taught in the urban public schools can not, with a few exceptions, read or write. They have no hope of even surviving the SAT, much less scoring well on it. So much has gone wrong by middle school that it’s hard to imagine how the ship can be righted to make these kids employable, even in minimum wage jobs. They say their plan is to get into the NBA or be a TikTok star. I did my best to suggest alternate plans. I fear that crime may turn out to be their plan B. In 2021 - 22, I was teaching in an even worse area of town, and some of my students spoke openly about their gang and crime involvement. In eighth grade.

This may all be quite abstract, even hard to believe, if you live in the suburbs or in a nice town somewhere else and never have to see it. But it is quite real to me. It is very, very real as I come to the end of my teaching job in the suburbs and figure out what I want to do next. To people in SUVs in nice suburban houses, for whom a $12 or $15 takeout lunch can be an every day thing, the world I inhabit is no more real than Game of Thrones.

So if you drive a nice car, can afford a $15 lunch, do not worry that you will be hit by a car on your morning walk, do not wake up at 2 am to the sound of someone blasting rap out of their car which is inexplicably parked for fifteen or twenty minutes in front of your bedroom window, and do not check your car obsessively to make sure it is still in possession of all the windows it had last time you parked, please consider the perspective of those of us who actually deal with crime.

Statistics about how the homicide rate has gone down do not help my situation, or the situation of my seventh and eight graders. What would help is… MORE POLICE. More, better funded police. Most of the police in my neighborhood are black and are from this or similar neighborhoods. There are not bands of white cops driving around trying to kill black people. What there is a situation where there are too few police to handle the serious crime, so less violent but no less deadly crimes like blowing stop signs have become de facto legal.

Every time I have occasion to interact with a police officer I thank them for their service. On the telephone poll on my walk to Baltimore Avenue to get the trolley or go anywhere, there are posters that say, “F*& the cops.” I wonder what the person who put up the poster hoped to achieve, other than working out some adolescent issues with authority that are endemic to the anarchist experiment this place has turned into.

The toxic culture that calls anyone who cooperates with law enforcement or any authority (including school authorities) a “snitch” is a topic for another day.

No, I do not want the National Guard on Baltimore Avenue. I fear that the nice men and women of the National Guard might be unprepared to deal with what they find. I want well-trained, decently paid police officers, preferably from the communities they serve, to be visible, available, and enforcing the laws of this country. No more, no less.

Every day that I go to bed alive with my beloved Loviefluffy, I give thanks to G-d that I made it another day. I am grateful not to be the victim of a homicide. But surely we can do better than that?

And yet the hibiscus still grows. This neighborhood was beautiful. It could be again.