Yesterday, Allentown event promoter Alfonso Todd wondered aloud why Allentown's political establishment was distracting itself with doing away with English as the official language, when wholesale shootings were occurring on main streets during the day and early evening. Todd knows that nothing hurts or slows down an event or city as the much as people feeling unsafe.
While our progressives concern themselves with defunding the police and social issues, our reality demands more police than ever on the streets. We have a popular, excellent chief, but he needs a bigger force to cope with the Allentown of 2021.
While this blog is steeped in history, the Allentown of yesteryear is no more. A recent resident commented that Allentown is a better place now than it was ten or twenty years ago. That's a hard statement for me to evaluate, having graduated from William Allen in the mid 1960's. Like the strawberry pie at Hess's, the Allentown of my reference is never to return. However, as Mr. Todd observes, we must at least make our main corridors a safe place. Call me old fashioned, but my prescription would be for many, many more policemen.
I was going through my copies of the History of Allentown the other day. Amazing what Allentown looked like.
ReplyDeleteMany do not realize that around 2010, when Hamilton was a dark strip with very few businesses, boarded up windows, litter everywhere, and frequent stabbings and robbings along with 600-800 buildings in Center City designated uninhabitable, it was city hall policy. Some of the very same people that allowed the blight, blamed the blight to tear it down. They now want to take credit for the "revitalization".
Today, with the news of trading properties in the NIZ for ones outside the NIZ, Allentown is a real-life version of Monopoly funded by the tax payers.
While they are distracted with eliminating English, they are creating conditions in which only English speakers will be able to live downtown, but they'll pat themselves on the back on how inclusive they are. They might even feel proud to live on Calle Siete when they've completed revitalizing 7th Street.