read about my neighborhood here:

Making a life on North Garth Avenue

here's what they don't tell you...

cruisers speed down our street driving literally 40-50 mph without their lights or sirens on - we have young kids and dogs and cats around and it's only a matter of time until someone/thing gets hit. i have police officers walking through my backyard on a regular basis and i don't know why - they don't ever knock on my door to tell me what's going on. i can drive less than two blocks and see five black and white cars. sometimes when i get home from work, a cop car will drive by, slow down a couple driveways away, turn off its lights, and stay there until whoever is in it sees that i'm just a white girl - no threat, not like all these black drug-doing folk hanging around.

of course i don't want shoot-outs happening on my street, and of course i'd rather not have our downstairs neighbor knock on our back door to tell us there are kids "dealing" on our front lawn, but it's bunk if the cops deny it's racial profiling. that pisses me off. OF COURSE it's racial profiling. why else would all of the columbia neighborhoods that are populated mostly by people who aren't caucasian be tagged "the projects?" or the "inner-city community"...seriously? this columbia, missouri, not los angeles, folks. if it takes you less than 20 minutes to drive from one end of the city to the other, EVERYTHING is "inner-city."

and could bill watkins be more transparent when he describes wanting to clean up the area? "What we need to do is make that neighborhood as attractive to live in as some of the other neighborhoods" = "MAKE IT WHITER!" who's gonna pay for renovation? government grants? i bet. razing a few houses doesn't pay for paint jobs for the rest.

and i didn't get any flier about a neighborhood watch meeting. c'mon, the lady fliered twice in eight years!? what activism.

jessica