Philly needs to be safer and greener
By Alim Howell
Gun violence has to be stopped somehow in our city of Philadelphia. The main question most citizens have who have been residents of Philadelphia for a substantial amount of time is why is the gun violence still happening over and over again? One thing to be said is that if some people are going to risk their own life and harm others then shame on themselves. Basically a certain scale of people are not going to act like they have sense as a human being and an upright person. That is the real problem.
Philadelphia has to have more resources for mental health especially these days. All of the shootings, drugs, lawbreaking and our unhoused people have to get solved. The current situation our United States of America is in seems to be greatly divided. Most of the division comes from our country’s government views. From which political party a person stands for and the ongoing argumentative debates on the world’s issues. Today our country has too many differences between one another not getting to the root of the problems caused in our neighborhood communities.
Everyone is not going to agree and will have their own perspective on the issues but the way our world is acting in true inhumane ways and distraught is demoralizing. At this stage in time our elected officials, who we as citizens in their legislative, senatorial and congressional districts voted for, should be completely irate about the despicable crime that is being committed in all the territories they cover. The same goes for our Philadelphia Police Department districts and police departments throughout Pennsylvania.
Talking to the baby boomers age range generation about their thoughts on why they think gun violence is vigorously taking place is upsetting, too. Close to all of them say this is nothing new to our society in Philadelphia but it is a shame that it continues to happen. Adding, we would think things would get better from their past to our future timezone but it seems as if it has gotten worse since their time.
Another issue to address is sanitation. Going by what city hall or a township borough municipality says is that it is up to the people who reside on that property to clean up the property line. But the Department of Streets can put a more aggressive effort on trash, recycling and city upkeep. Extending to the townships together with our boroughs can be better. Going off of that a start to having more cleanliness can be at all SEPTA transportation centers including our transit buses and trains.
Having a clean environment makes almost all ages of people from children to senior citizens more comfortable and genuinely happy setting the tone of their day-to-day endeavors. All these vital circumstances have to be fixed in a higher quality. We can point the finger at one another as citizens of Pennsylvania but it all goes back to our political government, police combined with our justice system.
On a monthly basis our political representatives update us on what they are doing to fix the problems such as bills passed, etc., but daily we still are witnessing negative effects in our neighborhoods. Philadelphia is way too well known for its violence and being one of the most dangerous places in the world. A nickname it encounters is killadelphia, which has been around since the 2000s because of the high murder rate it holds. And to this day still holds a high murder rate. Whether it be from a police officer to a non-police shooting.
Philadelphia has an everlasting cycle of unrest and nonstop crime and gun violence. It is a shame that some things give a vibe that the awful negative reputation with unlawful actions will never end. From the phila.gov city of Philadelphia office of the mayor description page: making Philadelphia the safest, cleanest and greenest big city in the nation, with economic opportunity for all, has not been done up to par yet as we are in the year of 2024. ••
Alim Howell is an activist and advocate for the Philadelphia organization Race for Peace Committee. Race for Peace was established in 2016, formed to build more positivity with law enforcement. Website is raceforpeace.org. ••
Letters to the Editor
New jobs needed each year
If America’s consumers focus even more of their buying power to support America’s manufacturers and local businesses, we could create several million additional full-time and part-time jobs for American workers each year. That’s not considering the jobs that are reported in the news media each month as being created, because the majority of those jobs are replacing the workers who retire from the workforce each month. I’m talking about millions of new jobs created as a result of industries expanding their product lines and services here in the United States of America to meet the growing demands of America’s consumers.
Supporters of the Buy American Made Campaign have certainly been making a major impact on helping businesses remain stable, and our efforts have also been encouraging businesses to expand in America as we purchase more items made in the United States of America.
Only when we can all go shopping and find 50% of items we need made in America can we consider our efforts a success.
With your participation everything is possible and with all of us working together we can change the landscape of America and see more Americans able to support themselves and be part of the growing global economy.
Your comments and suggestions are always welcome. Email them to: Michael@AmericanWorkersRadio.com.
Michael Blichasz
Grammar can be amusing
As a big fan of the bi-weekly Philadelphia Inquirer column “The Angry Grammarian,” I was very disappointed to read Jeffrey Barg’s farewell piece. Now, thanks to Mark Zimmaro’s most recent report (“A romantic comedy musical about grammar,“ March 6), I learned that Barg has transformed his newspaper column into a musical comedy. How exciting!
I taught grammar and punctuation to young children throughout a long career in the School District of Philadelphia. So it really amused me to read Barg’s sarcastic and truly funny comments about the grammatical mistakes made by public figures. It was both instructive and entertaining.
Frankly, I am not surprised that Barg switched from one form of art, writing, to another form, musical comedy, to express his passion for proper grammar. It is both creative and consistent with his desire to encourage the correct usage of words and the punctuation marks that hold them together.
By the way, I wonder how Jeffrey Barg feels about the most recent statement by publisher Merriam Webster that it is “permissible” to end a sentence with a preposition.
Gloria C. Endres
