This is a note about the hot summer ahead and the heated letters below — and the blood that’s boiling beneath the surface.
As the temperatures are rising, so is the community’s crime rate, with racial incidents unfortunately making more frequent appearances in our police reports. One of the following letter writers was a random shooting victim in Grays Ferry; perhaps this offers pertinent context for a letter that, even in its edited form, could be considered inflammatory.
I also edited two more perceivably offensive letters, these targeting our newer ethnic populations. Anyone who reads newspapers should understand that because I print them doesn’t mean I endorse their contents.
In fact, my views of the local Mexican and Asian immigrants are just the opposite of the first two writers: I welcome them with open arms. In a community that has bled residents in the past decade, these new populations are saving us from going under. For the most part, they’re working hard and providing us with broad-based services. They are indeed reminiscent of the Jewish, Irish and Italian immigrants who helped build South Philly.
And, like many Italians have, they’re opening an abundance of quality businesses, including food. They’re bringing international flavor into our neighborhoods, and to me that’s a very good thing. Of course, not everyone agrees.
By printing these letters, my intent is not to incite or even sensationalize, but to attempt a dialogue among local residents of every population. Obviously we’re dealing with equal parts everything — cultural barriers, unfair judgment, ugly realities too. We need peace on the home front in a big way. I don’t purport to even remotely know how to achieve it, but I can feel the community’s temperature rising and something has to give. Bitter silence didn’t seem to be working.
Another letter, toward the end, exemplifies genuine cooperation among residents — the kind people lament that we used to have in South Philly. Some blocks, no matter how integrated, still have it. Maybe they can show the rest of us how to get it, so that we have a fighting chance of living together in a far more neighborly fashion.
