Thursday, August 04, 2011
National Night Out
Tuesday was National Night Out, against crime & to further community & police cooperation. Elizabeth held the event in Kellogg Park, a square block in North Elizabeth I wouldn't set foot in at dusk. When you hold a little festival in a park, & there's plenty of cops, & the mayor is there, lots of self-congratulatory speeches, the whole thing wraps up before sunset, that's not quite a night out. By ten p.m. or whenever the Dept. of Public Works finished the cleanup you probably wouldn't want to cross Kellogg Park even as a short-cut home. I'd be cautious about walking through any park anywhere in New Jersey at night. The urban ones could have dangerous people lurking in them & the others might have bears wandering around.
Our mayor - who I liked before I resided here - admits the city has a street drug dealing problem but won't publicly concede it's gang-related, so concerned is he that gangs rather than drug dealing wreck a city's image. He sounds delusional. But most people know Elizabeth only by what they see from the Jersey Turnpike - which is ugly, people-less scenery - & from visiting the huge Jersey Gardens Mall & Ikea just off the Turnpike. So he may have a point there.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Our mayor - who I liked before I resided here - admits the city has a street drug dealing problem but won't publicly concede it's gang-related, so concerned is he that gangs rather than drug dealing wreck a city's image. He sounds delusional. But most people know Elizabeth only by what they see from the Jersey Turnpike - which is ugly, people-less scenery - & from visiting the huge Jersey Gardens Mall & Ikea just off the Turnpike. So he may have a point there.
Labels: Elizabeth NJ
