Recently my city has been under attack by the president and the people who like to pile on and dump on the city that I have made home for the last 25 years. It has been an informative discussion of things I surely have never heard before. I was never aware of our many shootings, our corrupt police force or even our rat problem.
But…all sarcasm aside, A couple thoughts…
• Read an editorial by a suburban visitor that listed the cities many woes and offered distorted takes on how we as residents feel about it. What caught my eye was the free admission that this person is not a city resident.
To which my not at all sarcastic self responds with “Then shut up.”
• Elijah Cummings by the way, is not the only representative who represents Baltimore. As it happens, John Sarbanes is the rep on my side of town. John Sarbanes is white. Elijah Cummings is black and investigating Trump. This whole thing has nothing to do with Baltimore. Trump doesn’t give a fuck about Baltimore. He never did.
• I do not live in a hellhole. My neighborhood is nice. There are many such neighborhoods in Baltimore. There are also many shitty ones. A unique feature of this town is that often the good and the bad are right next to each other. They alternate. I call it “good block/bad block.”
• I understand privilege factors in. I can’t help that. I will never completely understand others’ lives or problems. But I make the attempt to empathize, (which is more than I can say for some people.) I just don’t lose my mind over it.
Look…we know this place is fucked up. Many of us accept the challenge of living here and trying to make it work.
The difference between me and the suburbanite casually tossing “shithole” bombs at us is that I don’t use those things as a reason to hate on this city.
Next: What I hate about living in the city.
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