C on Two Shootings in 24 Hours, Two Kids Injured, 10-Year Old Gunman, Mayor SILENT:
I just want to put in my two cents about Mayor McGinn on Weekday and Steve Scher. I generally like this show, but part of the blame goes to Steve, and his lack of questions on crime.
…did anyone hear his interview of Mishna Wolff who wrote “I’m Down”? The book is a memoir about growing up in the Rainier Valley. His questions kept insinuating that Rainier Valley was a bad and dangerous neighborhood and that her grandparents moved out to get away from all the black people. I was proud of Ms. Wolff for giving him attitude on some of his ignorant questions.
Crime in the southend doesn’t register on Steve’s radar because he thinks the Rainier Valley is the ghetto, and it’s all our fault anyway. Thus it didn’t occur to him to ask any questions about two kids shooting each other.
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‘Insinuating that Rainier Valley was a bad and dangerous neighborhood”
Crazy, what with regular shootings, stabbings, folks getting set on fire and ten year olds mugging people on buses (and that’s just THIS week folks). It’s just like Wallingford, but with teens armed with guns not books.
Sorry, but NPR can’t stop bad parenting.
Apparently you’ve never ridden the #16, Dave. Hope you enjoy the north side, where everyone’s a good parent and the sun shines every day.
This is a poor comment- the writer calls a person ignorant, insinuates he is a racist, and claims the powers of mind reading. Really, how does this commenter know what Steve Scher thinks? ESP is not real.
I heard that radio piece and I agree with the writer. Steve Scher made comment after disparaging comment about the neighborhood. I found myself saying out loud, ‘hey buddy, that’s where I live’! I don’t think he’s racist, but he sure is clueless and tone-deaf, like the rest of his fellow north-enders. I can’t count the people I’ve encountered who think nothing of cracking ghetto and ‘hood jokes when I tell them where I live, though many have never been down here and have no first-hand knowledge of the RV. If you read the paper, listen to the radio and watch the local news, you can come away with the impression that nothing exists south of I-90 and east of I-5. It’s about time that changed.
So…it’s only ok for people who LIVE here to make the disparaging comments? Like you know, all those nice suggestions for the name of the rooftop park awhile back, or the ones about how gentrifying is the answer, or how we should just let the toubled youth shoot each other to death at Qwest field, or how funny it would be for a teenager girl to get run over by another teenage girl, you know, because they both have problems with the police, but it would be FUNNY!
Check. Got it. FWIW, I’ve not read the book or heard any interviews with the author, but I do know that any number of white, upscale parents are citing it as an example of why their little darlings shouldn’t be forced to go to school with kids of color.
That was shoot each other at the Kingdome.
“insinuating that Rainier Valley was a bad and dangerous neighborhood”
How to reconcile the fact that 90% or more of the comments on this blog insinuate that the Rainier Valley is a bad and dangerous neighborhood with the accusation that Steve Sher is a white racist?
We (try to) avoid racially loaded explanations of our problems by blaming Mike McGinn for the loathesome shit that goes down here and for the desirable shit that doesn’t go down here.
@John: It’s kinda like talking trash about your sister. It’s ok when you do it, but God help anyone else who tries it.
With regard to your other comment. I don’t think anyone’s blaming the mayor, they just want him to represent his entire constituency equally. What’s wrong with that? After all, he IS an elected official, isn’t that his job? Why are you so judgy about holding him to that?
What? Oh my! Well, this is unexpected. I certainly wasn’t thinking that anyone would even read my comment, much less give it the “Comment of the Week” award.
Oftentimes when I comment, I’m tapping out my thoughts in three minutes or less because I’m at work, and should really be spending my time doing something else. In the above comment, I broke one of my own rules, which is, “Don’t engage in name calling.” Calling Steve Sher a White Racist is name calling. Sorry, Steve.
However, his bias toward the Rainier Valley was very much revealed in his interview of Mishna Wolff. He didn’t sound like he was conscious of his own bias and it was offensive.
Yes, Rainier Beach feels like it’s more dangerous than it did just a few years ago. However, there are a lot of great things about this neighborhood–reasons that inspire me to stay here–that Steve chose not to ask about–probably because he doesn’t have any idea. And thus the reason he missed asking the mayor about the recent crimes down here. These crimes, that are a very big deal and should be making the news, that elected officials should be speaking out against!
If I called my sister a cheap whore again and again, I shouldn’t be surprised when somebody agrees.
It doesn’t arouse my judgy-ness that people want the mayor to do something about the crime and the violence, it’s that they seem to believe that something he could do might fix it.
When a boy shoots another boy on Henderson, reading here you’d think it was the mayor that pulled the trigger. Outrage at the the crime becomes the same thing as anger at the mayor. The next logical leap is that the mayor and the city council are the cause of the problems in the Rainier Valley. This rabbit trail, followed so often here abouts, is a dead end.
The violence and crime around here are social problems. The mayor’s neglect didn’t cause them. His attention and his meager resources won’t solve them.
Blaming the mayor is a wise thing to do if you’re going to get something concrete out of it — but I don’t see that happening because we’re not really asking for anything specific (to “represent his entire constituency equally” doesn’t count). The way I see it, mayor-hating is often a lazy sustitute for honestly engaging with a complex set of problems that are politically and practically difficult to solve.
The problem with mayor-hate is the focus on problems. Politicians are lame. They have to be told what to do. When doing the right thing isn’t easy, they have to be pushed into it by citizens. If we don’t bring real, practical solutions to very specific problems we identify, I don’t see the point in “holding the mayor accountable.”
The citizens of the Rainier Valley need to organize, agree on what the problems are (no easy task, I’ve found), have a command of the issues (like, for example, whether or not the YVPI is working), agree on some solutions, lobby/lambaste officials to get with the program, and build some kind of lasting capacity to see the solutions through. It has been done before in the RV (ask Jim Diers about it on Thursday night) and it can be done again.
The mayor, the police, the city council, nonprofit service providers — they are imperfect, but necessary tools for accomplishing our goals. The Rainier Valley community has to lead the way. It’s not fair, but it’s true.
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