Transitioning to the Ghetto

If you were running for the office of mayor, the most effective agenda you could adopt would be the immediate needs of the community.  While I see my hometown regress into a ghetto, we have sprouted a skantly publicized, mostly incognito, professional tennis facility.  On the table also is a one hundred and fifty million dollar performing arts center.  The homeless populate our intersections, sidewalks, and bus stops and create a menacing dining and shopping experience.   When I do either, should I feel guilty for having what they do not?  That is the gist of it, and the overt "vibe" of Fayetteville is a cold, barren, hostile, urban parking lot.  Your community never will flourish, if this is the setting for their lives.  We are not new.  Fayetteville is not the first city to succumb to urban plight.  (I don't know the appropriate term)  I am witnessing a city deteriorating and potentially becoming a crime-laden ghetto infested with drugs and violence.  The availability of drugs is key, so without an able and active police force, your city is doomed.  There are many Hollywood films that depict this scenario.  The "South Side of Chicago."  Watts.  Tenements.  How to be begin?  The first thing is the homeless.  Two things come to mind.  One was the closing of America's mental health facilities.  Release all the crazies onto our streets.  Dorothy Dix now is a park instead of serving a relevant purpose housing the insane.  Geraldo did no good by exposing the dire circumstances in these facilities.  They were deplorable, unsanitary, and repugnant, but the crazy were not roaming the streets.  Now the crazy easily buy AR-15 assault rifles and murder our family members.  The gun lobby says it is not the fault of the Ar-15, but if they were not available a demented teenager could do the same harm with a machete or tomahawk.  Assault rifles makes it easier.  Assault weapons should be banned.  Selling them so manufacturers can profit now is immoral and unethical.  Capitalism is not the scripture here.  Secondly, many cities shuttered their soup kitchens.  Hungry, homeless, mentally unstable people are ripe candidates for drug use.  Fayetteville has built in a handful of public facilities including a day room facility on Eastern Boulevard.  We need to round up the indigent people and require they use this facility.  Panhandling should be a crime, and if it is it should be enforced by the police.  The reaction to Black Lives Matter, "Abolish the police," is anachronistic and inappropriate.  We need a viable and strong police presence, and their training should be deep and meaningful.  Trained seasoned policemen would be a good place to start to redistribute the unevenly divided wealth in America.  There was a time when jobs paid enough to take pride in your work.  You could own a home, rear a family, and not work your fingers to the bone.  Wages for these crucial jobs are important in the salvation of America.  Teachers are second, because demanding they do the policeman's job as well is absurd.  The value system of America is askew.  We no longer realize what is important and what deserves higher waves.  It is not the family and friends of the wealthy or elected.  "Vape" are problematic.  When your congressmen friends from other states come to Fayetteville and provide illegal drugs to anyone behind the facade of the sale of legal tobacco, it is a crime.  Vape shops should be closed.  The lottery is a ridiculous front for embezzling money.  The money does not go to public education.  If it did thirty-five percent of North Carolina teachers would not be quitting.  They too deserve higher wages.  Our General Assembly does not want to invest in public education, and they are complicit in a campaign against the people.  There are conspicuous private planes flying to Atlanta, Georgia from North Carolina to support Donald Trump.  They stink.  Anyone who continues to support this known criminal is a criminal.  Red North Carolina is rife with traitors.  Many exist within the General Assembly.  It would seem crime, known criminal while collar crime, is the only thing that dissuades these dough boys.  The wealth will be redistributed, and if you are rooting for the downfall of the free world, because you have enough money, the people will prevail.  There will be no second Civil War.  The rule of law will ouster these Jim Crow traitors and return North Carolina to civility.  Reasonable housing is a concern for Fayetteville.  The Covid bubble empowered hedge fund oligarchs to invest in real estate.  Hedge fund managers are buying up available real estate and raising prices.  Gentrification.  Our communities need medium and low level jobs, and we must provide housing for these social classes.  The conundrum is exposed.  If you eradicate low income or subsidized housing, because it is unseemly, then jobs for those people cannot survive.  Cashiers, laborers, waitresses, and others can't afford to live in close proximity to their work.  We must allocate a percentage of  real estate to these classes.  They will not be profitable, but like law enforcement, civilization takes precedence.  Gentrification is not effective, and the homeless have taken over our streets.  The trailer parks and seedy apartments served a purpose in housing these people.  Most people today can't afford monthly rent from their earned wages, so who is supposed to move in?  The chasm between the ultra rich and the poor has become America's plight, and the middle class must be invigorated.  If a professional tennis complex is being paid for by private money, okay.  Building a federal halfway house against the will of the people is an atrocity.  Allocating $150,000,000 to a trophy performing arts center is insanity in light of Fayetteville's other problems.  A baseball stadium did no better solving these problems.  We might as well market it as a hotel for the homeless and indigent.  Millions of dollars in infrastructure money are sitting in state budgets, and see how it is spent.  Will it be for the good of the community, or will it be bonuses for friends and family like TARP.  Watching my town regress into a ghetto is unnerving.  As soldiers deploy to Europe and the Middle East, the gaping hole of social equality is left.  I thought the "Good Old Boys" were dead, but not 'round these here parts.  It's no wonder that children never return to Fayetteville after college.  It is a ghost town and the tumbleweeds are people.