lacking a sense of urgency

[mellowtigger]

It was another rough night with gunshots a few houses away. I got about 3 hours of sleep. The violence has been bad here in recent days. They even did a special news segment last night about the weapons that actually harmed people. My house is at the far north side of their map. They failed to mention ANYthing about the many bullets flying everywhere that do NOT hit someone. It really is a #WarzoneInMinneapolis here.

As I learned last year upon self-reflection after "Engaging Across Difference" training at work, frustration can make simple-but-wrong solutions very attractive. Systemic changes are too slow, yet we need fast relief. I'm facing that problem again. I'm certain that we need both kinds of solutions here in my Jordan neighborhood of Minneapolis. I promised a post back in January, and someone at work asked me online today:

What are the immediate fixes to these problems?

There's simply no time to wait decades for system changes. Everyone in my area needs and deserves immediate relief from the stress of circumstances here. What does it look like to SOLVE some of the underlying problems instead of merely SUPPRESSING or RELOCATING the symptoms?

Drug-selling business:
Legalize everything.  If my crack house neighbors want to "play" at running a business, then make them actually do it.  1) When they have a dispute with a competing business, make them buy lawyers and advertising to solve it instead of literally killing their competition (and anyone else nearby).  2) Make them pay taxes to help rebuild the streets, sidewalks, fences, and trash cans for all of the extra car traffic and foot traffic they bring.  3) Calm them down by preventing their DEFENSIVE posture of hiding their business.  Instead, encourage an OPEN posture of advertising so they can establish a stake within the community for themselves.

Drug-buying customers:
Raise minimum wage and/or establish Universal Basic Income so people can afford to put food in their belly, keep a roof over their head, and keep clothes on their bodies (bare minimum survival standards) without the constant fear-stress of systemic failures facing all of us these days.  For the poor here, there are not enough jobs and not enough money to meet basic needs.  Remove that stress, because people are heavily self-medicating with bad drugs and bad food.  Remove that need.  Now.  Also, legalize marijuana completely.  Let people grow pot in their garden if they want, again to remove the DEFENSIVE nature of it now and promote OPENNESS instead.  Remove the chronic fear-stress of hiding everything all of the time.

Basic survival needs:
Make food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare easily available.  Other countries do it, and the USA is supposedly better than them, so what's the issue here?  I eliminated grass from my front yard and planted strawberries, raspberries, and juneberries.  Everyone is welcome to pick them.  I'm even putting in a path to make it easier for visitors to pick food here (picture at left).  Someone at the end of the block has a "Sharing Is Caring" plastic tub filled with durable food products, free for the taking.  More edible landscaping in the city, please!  More free food lines!  There should be a fixed location in every neighborhood, every day, where someone can get a free meal.  It shouldn't matter if they're too poor to afford food or too mentally broken to prepare their own food.  Once-a-month church events are woefully insufficient.  No adult who is sleep-deprived, nutrition-deprived, and chronically stressed is going to perform well in daily planning, job interviews, or job performance.  Relieve those precursor problems.

Gunfire:
A lot of gunfire here is simple anger/aggression not related to drug business.  Why are so many people (usually male) resorting to violence to relieve their emotions?  I'm not a good person to address this problem.  I'm too self-absorbed to worry what other people think.  My answer to distress is always self-isolation.  I understand that most other people are "built" as social animals and need to develop their skills of non-fatal problem resolution.  I dunno.  More hippie drum circles and Buddhist meditation chants?  LOL  I want those things, yes, but we need to help people other than just me.  Or, taking the opposite tactic, more official training in violent arts?  Would formal training in boxing, karate, and gunfire remove the novelty factor of violence and instill a responsibility ethic instead?

Education:
SHOW kids how they can affect their own future paths in life.  The high school a few blocks from my house has a 13% graduation rate after 4 years, and a 40% graduation rate after 5 years.  Without kids of my own, I'm ignorant about the failure here.  Is someone not encouraging them to build things (woodcraft, gardening, painting, programming, cooking, writing)?  Is someone not encouraging their curiosity (reading, science, history, architecture)?  Are they sleep-deprived (frequent shouting at home or neighborhood gunfire)?  Are they hungry?  Create more local events in every neighborhood that provide food (free/cheap) and peaceful socializing.  If I try to imagine myself failing as these kids are, I can think only of the futility of existence, a lack of personal motivation for effort that's never rewarded.  SHOW them that they matter.  Their hobbies matter.  Their attention matters.  Their voting matters.

Healthcare:
Tax and spend appropriately.  Defund the police to spend for training and job positions that will actually help here.  People here need crisis counseling, family counseling, all kinds of mental health care, normal physician care, environmental justice, and more.  Stop procastinating, government; make it happen.

What will not help: putting National Guard troops at checkpoints on every street corner.  My gut wants that immediate solution, but my brain knows that it's not really a solution.  It's just a suppression of symptoms, not a cure for the underlying disease that needs healing.

Please...  if you have additional suggestions, please create a free Dreamwidth account to add your ideas here.  It matters.  I want things to change.  Everyone here in Jordan in Minneapolis DESERVES for things to change.  It stresses me out to live here, when I already have the adult mental skills to comprehend the complexity involved.  I can't imagine what parents teach their kids about living here, amidst the crime and violence and gunfire.