April 8th Post

For my blog I want to keep on talking about what we wrote about on the board on monday. The questions which we were trying to answer were extremely challenging and all debatable. After reading Neumark, more than any other author, I could feel her urgency in every word. I always thought the South Bronx was bad, but i have never heard stories so horrible. For example, when she talks how little the parents help their children. Angie, a friend of Neumark, would send Tiriq her son to church so she wouldn't be bothered. Tiriq was being abused by her parents and had to deal with a drug addict mother. However, people like Heidi let these children know that God cares about them. I think so many people just expect to live with injustice and nothing will change. Justice must be served to everyone, not just the people who our considered good, or to deny the people who are inconvenient for your own life. 

There are so many factors which bring these people down. I think that one important cause we were talking about was the environment around them. When I lived in a row home my back yard was just a driveway, and my front yard was barely enough to even lay on comfortably. For me to be outside as a kid I would have to go to the nearest park. the woman which we saw on that video had the right idea to make more parks and easier access to these places. Maybe these new parks could keep these kids out of trouble. It infuriates me to think that not only do people not come and help, they actually dump trash into their neighborhoods. That brings me to one of the most important causes of injustices, the government around these ghettos. It's so sad how the state only cares about the people with money. how does anyone expect to help anything when the people said to watch over you are treating your home like a toilet?

Finally, we asked what we can do. In my group we talked about how far away we are from New York. The only thing we can do easily is send to a charity. However, that only helps these people for a limited amount of time. We gotta teach these people to fish so they can teach their kids. I believe we can take what Neumark has done in the South Bronx and apply that anywhere. Injustice is around every corner, and so many people think no one cares. Therefore, it's our responsibility to love these people. Especially because we our now aware of all the horrid things going on in our country. Neumark not only helped, she loved and that is the most important part of reaching someone and potentially leading them in the right direction.