Culture Clash in the CD

This weeks's edition of the Stranger (6/7/07) features an article by Charles Mudede entitled:

A Central District Story A Bar, a Mugging, a Protest, and a Misunderstanding

The article deals with a white group's reactions to a mugging at 23rd & Union, and assorted associated black/white misperceptions. The Stranger's blog (the Slog) has a follow-up to the article which includes a first person report on the mugging which sparked the whole affair, as well as disturbing reports on activities on Madison which I had been unaware of (though was not surprised by).

It all seems to have resulted from the migration of the street crowds from Madison to 23rd & Union when Club Chocolate City closed.

Mr Mudede deals very thoroughly and thoughtfully with the race / CD / gentrification issue, as he did in his previous report on life around Deano's.

The conclusion of his present article is:

What we all want is simply this: for the dealers to do their thing without guns, without violence, so that the rest of us can do our things—our drugs, our art, our drinking, our shopping, our hiphopping, our fucking—in peace.

And that's it, man.

The flaw in that argument is, of course, that he is simply asking for gun control, which is never going to happen in this country. Law enforcement can only control the gun-toting dealers by going after them as dealers. And some of us feel that we do need to control the intrinsically destructive addictions in our society: meth certainly, crack probably ...... This Slog comment says it much better than I did!