Pubdate: Tue, 14 May 2002
Source: Baltimore Sun (MD)
Copyright: 2002 The Baltimore Sun, a Times Mirror Newspaper.
Contact:  http://www.sunspot.net/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/37
Author: Ed Burns
Note: Ed Burns is a writer and a former teacher who lives in Baltimore. He 
co-authored with David Simon The Corner: A Year in the Life of an 
Inner-City Neighborhood.
Related: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n747/a10.html

CITY'S TROUBLES BEYOND BELIEF

HELP ME out here.

Someone has taken the trouble to send the people of metropolitan Baltimore 
a message. The theme has to do with believing, and it appears to be a well 
intentioned, thought-provoking effort. But one point eludes me: Who is the 
intended target of this message?

Is it meant for those last remaining families in those beat-down, 
boarded-up blocks in our fair city's mean ghettos? Are these folk supposed 
to believe that if they get involved in the process, perhaps pick up the 
phone and alert the authorities to the drug activity that any blind person 
can see, that the endless drone for pink tops would soon fade?

Is that what is needed, to have an already overburdened Police Department 
bring an additional 10,000 or 20,000 drug arrests to the fractured steps of 
our courthouses? Or are these folk supposed to believe that if they take 
extraordinary measures that no right-thinking person living across the city 
line would ever consider and walk right up on those corners and confront 
those gun-wielding drug dealers, the problem will abate?

Is the message meant for those thousands who flee the city every year in 
search of decent schools?

Are these folks to believe that if they were to stay put, risk the future 
of their children in a system that has an obscene dropout rate of 72 
percent and join the PTA, that the presence of underpaid, overworked 
working-class parents haunting the hallways of what passes for our middle 
schools would miraculously be able to turn around what the experts at the 
puzzle palace on North Avenue have failed to do?

Is the message aimed at the addict population?

Will the low-bottom fiend, who in the past 20 years has seen the quantity 
of heroin in his daily blast skyrocket from 4 percent to 12 percent to 60 
percent to 80 percent, suddenly find the strength from this message to 
believe that he can put down that syringe, abandon the shooting galleries 
and begin a new life at a rehab center?

Will the monumental effort of his singular journey be able to erase the 
social stigma attached to the drug culture, will it lose him the rap sheet 
that will deny him employment, will it get him beyond a GED? And, in the 
end, will it guarantee that if he does everything asked of him, when he 
lines up at the rusted gate of a deserted factory, his belief will get him 
that good union wage?

Or is the message directed to the middle class?

Will Mr. Suburbanite believe that if he stops fertilizing his lawn, leaves 
the safety of the county estate after an arduous day in the salt mines of 
corporate America, ventures down to somewhere like Riggs Avenue and Calhoun 
Street and finds a program, he can make a difference?

If that's the case, what's the need for the message? Didn't the clarion 
call of George I with his "thousand points of light" and George II with his 
faith-based program already energize that initiative?

Two things can be said for the good people at Baltimore Community 
Foundation, the Office of National Drug Control Policy -- Executive Office 
of the President and the Baltimore Believe Leadership Committee (sponsors 
of the "Believe" program): one, they spent serious money to get it out on 
the airwaves, and two, not a single penny of what must be millions of 
dollars for this campaign went into the pockets of the poor.

And point two is the message that I got from the message.

Every year, billions of dollars are spent by the government and the 
nonprofits in entitlements and grants to help those trapped in poverty. But 
just like the other poverty-generated economy -- the illegal drug trade -- 
whatever money is pumped into the ghetto has, by the end of every month, 
found its way out of the ghetto.

Where the drug money goes might be something of a mystery. But where most 
of all that clean money ends up isn't. It pays the salaries of those 
well-meaning people who might have come into the city to do good but have 
stayed to do well.

I believe that the message, no matter how poignant, is not as relevant as 
who it is aimed at. This particular message targets us -- Joan and John Q. 
Average Mope. If only we believe that we can rise above the mundane of 
everyday life to reach and sustain a level of superhuman effort, then we 
could triumph over the maelstrom that is consuming our city.

And, of course, if we can't do that, then the fault is ours. It is the 
logic of Nancy Reagan. Just say no, and the drug problem will go away.

For 40 years, that kind of thinking hasn't begun to turn around the plight 
of those stuck in the mire of poverty. Perhaps we need to target another 
group. Why not send a wake-up call to those who benefit from the systemic 
failure of unresponsive institutions? That would be novel, it would be 
listened to and people might even start to believe.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Ariel