From Tara O’Neill, CT Post:
Eric Diaz 19, of Bridgeport, was found shot in the stomach near that intersection at around 10 p.m. Thursday, police spokesman Av Harris said. He was pronounced dead at a local hospital, and his death remains under investigation.
Throughout the day on Friday, people stopped by the corner, paid respects and took a moment to remember their loved one at a memorial set up for Diaz on Beardsley Street. At about 9:15 p.m., Bridgeport Police Capt. Roderick Porter said, things started to take a turn.
“The majority of people there came to grieve in a peaceful manner,” Porter said. But, he said, some people showed up at an already emotional scene with alcohol.
Porter said officers and community leaders in the neighborhood worked to calm the situation. But one officer was pepper sprayed–Porter said it was unclear who sprayed him–and a Taser was used on one civilian in the area of the memorial. The two were taken to local hospitals by ambulance.
Full story here.
It is unrealistic to believe Bridgeport’s elected government will address the root causes of this: poverty, despair and a failed public education system. Not any time soon, if at all.
First they have to recognize that there is a problem before they can address the root cause.
Joe Ganim and Mario Testa care about the African-American community when they need votes, but that is only every other year or so. The rest of the time mayor and his padron are consumed by their orivilege.
The root causes have been identified over and over. The short answer is the pervasiveness of the ‘ghetto culture’.
Tom White are you sure that the problem is a pervasiveness of the ghetto culture or the problem is the pervasive use of “ghetto” as an a historic cultural signifier of all things bad, broke and black: ghetto schools, ghetto jobs, ghetto names, ghetto music.
The black ghetto remains for you a product of certain characteristics of the Black population, rather than a phenomenon of ongoing external domination and neglect.
Corporate welfare is a bigger drain on the greatness of America than any human welfare.
Don, Tom White was talking about Corporate welfare is a bigger drain on the greatness of America than any human welfare as you wrote.
“pervasive”
[per-vey-siv]
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adjective
1. spread throughout:
The corruption is so pervasive that it is accepted as the way to do business.
Don, Tom White knows what the root of ghettos, just like 45 but the answer doesn’t help their base. Tom White following the dog whistle of 45.
The First White President
The foundation of Donald Trump’s presidency is the negation of Barack Obama’s legacy.
Trump’s presidency is the negation of Barack Obama’s legacy.
By Ta-Nehisi Coates
His political career began in advocacy of birtherism, that modern recasting of the old American precept that black people are not fit to be citizens of the country they built. But long before birtherism, Trump had made his worldview clear. He fought to keep blacks out of his buildings, according to the U.S. government; called for the death penalty for the eventually exonerated Central Park Five; and railed against “lazy” black employees. “Black guys counting my money! I hate it,” Trump was once quoted as saying. “The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
A young man is shot and killed in a dispute over what, drug turf? The street gangs don’t own the real estate. Or maybe it was over a baby mama. Or maybe, just maybe, he was killed for the hell of it. Whatever the reason he is still as daed as Julius Caesar. Now people are fighting over that.
Why? Because Bridgeport schools turn out more losers than winners. The students are apathetic about higher education because the adults at home are apathetic. The BOE has been neutralized by lawsuits, pettiness, bickering, and too many members demanding to run the show. The needs of public school students is not even on the agenda. Joe Ganim and Mario Testa only care about the public schools for the fat goods and services contracts they can pass out as party favors to well-heeled campaign donors. The legislature doesn’t give a shit. $7,000,000.00 earmarked for Bridgeport’s public schools was slashed from the proposed budget while Greenwich was to receive $1,000,000.00. Thank Christ for Malloy’s veto.
Let’s not forget all the multi-century tax abatements awarded by Gamin, Finch and mayors past. There are thousands of acres of abandoned industrial properties in Bridgeport that cannot be taxed because of those goddamned tax abatements. All the while these abandoned factories are full of barrels of industrial chemicals, rusted and leeching into the ground. Generations of local graffiti artists have used them as reusable canvases. This is what commuters see from I-95.
Unless and until Joseph P. Ganim and his padron take action on these issues hopelessness and despair will continue to fester. Unless and until Joseph P. Ganim and his padron make serious efforts to attract long term jobs paying living wages the local economy will be supported by criminal proceeds and EBT.
There is a limited amount of money that can be raised. The adults should have figured out by now what works to provide them a photo op with a half truth to tell their public. But they have not worked it out so there is a larger problem than we have considered, and much of it may be laid at the foot of pension plan promises made with assumptions that have gotten ever more unrealistic. Assuming 8% as a return when 4.74% is what has been earned on average over the past ten years and refusing to reduce the assumption (that increases the liability and the public chance of seeing it for real) is legislative trickery. And the unions have collaborated and supported the unsupportable. And people live longer which means more benefit years to fund, and world fixed dollar financial markets have had unusually low rates for years now so 8% year in and year out is not a realistic expectation.
Private industry adjusted to “defined contribution” plans as have some communities. But you would need a finance group in the City to get us out of our box long term, and the State finance leaders are out of bounds as well.
A youth whom I see regularly in the first two weeks of school had substitutes for two days in the first week and the same in the second week. Packets passed out to work on. Wonderful!! Will this be the new form of education? Why are funds for youth education not set first and let everything for those over 18 get settled with what is left? If the State is in charge, can you say that they are paying attention to their charge? Time will tell.
The private sector in to many cases move their business off shore and take the pension money for their employees, what does that leave America? Jobs, taxpayers, tax revenue and workers who need government help.