In the Safety of Day

To start, I just want to say that I have lived in Columbia Heights for over two years, which I know isn't a super long time, but long enough to remember life before Rumbreros, Red Rock, or the Heights.  The boy and I moved to the area specifically because we both wanted a neighborhood with all types of diversity (economic, sexual, ethnic) and a sense of community.  Although I've had some qualms with the redevelopment that's taking place in the neighborhood, they are mostly minor because I think that many in my neighborhood have fought to keep existing flavor of the community intact.  I also think that the "gentrification" has brought jobs and money into the District and for District residents, which will help local schools, subsidize home ownership, provide the area with more cops, and, hopefully, help make the area as financially vibrant as it was before the '68 riots. 

But... I don't value the part of my community that leads to me witnessing a shooting at 6:10 pm last Friday night not a 1/4 block from the metro.  I was minding my own business when I noticed two groups of young men yelling at each other across Irving (just east of the CVS and the alley between that red, brick apartment building and where the rowhouses start).  Had I not had my iPod on, I might have run back the other way because I would have realized it wasn't just agitated, "Hey, loser, where you been, why are you so slow, cross the street dummy..." or whatever crap teenage boys yell at each other.  Instead, I would have realized that the kids weren't messing around and were about to pull a gun.  I was literally 10 feet away when the shots rang out.  Not cool. 

Now, what bothers me isn't that age-old prejudice that persons of color, especially poor ones, perpetrate violence.  I mean, if I bought into that crap, I wouldn't have moved to CH in the first place...  What bothers me is that there are poor people of any kind or type and that some of them have been taught that the way to solve their problems is with violence.  I mean, the youngest kid couldn't have been more than 14-years-old!  WTF?!  What bothers me isn't that the diversity I so craved in my neighborhood apparently means living with violence, but that some people are taught that they aren't equal, that some parents have to work multiple jobs to pay for basic essentials and their children are left to their own devices in a country that neither respects nor values them, that some people are forced to live without access to basic human rights like clean water and nutritious food, and that some of us just go about our business, buying our crap, not caring one way or the other... until something erupts near our newly renovated neighborhood.   Then we want everyone who is different from us, along with any stores that might appeal to them, pushed out instead of solving the problem of why everything happened in the first place.  It's just easier that way, isn't it?!  And with cuter clothes!! Or an organic grocer! Yum.

I want to be perfectly clear, I still want to live in Columbia Heights or any other neighborhood that reflects the multiplicity of America... I just don't want to live in a country and world of inequality, ignorance, greed, poverty, violence, and apathy.  There has to be a better way...for all of us.