COMMENT BY
COMMENT ABOUT PLACE
Boston, MA
COMMENT
re: Flint is a great place to live - 3/27/2010
I agree wholeheartedly with your statement, "we need more creative people to come here to help us solve problems." This is the way to get things healed. However, bashing on GM's lifetime employment trends is an easy way to alienate people. The community responding to the diminishment of their greatest income source is not lazy, or uncreative. They are responding with a deep psychological distress. You would be lost too, if you grew up and depended on the same things. I can tell that you care and you rightfully consider yourself an empathetic person. This is evidenced by some of your thoughtful statements, like the one previously quoted and your positivity about your city. However, it seems by your choice in wording that you have reconciled your city’s major issues by bifurcating it. The “Old Flint” and the “New Flint,” in the ways that you use these words, is a distinction dangerously close to the “Impoverished Flint” and the “Affluent Flint.” This is supported by statements such as, “The schools are not great, but with the price of the houses you could send your kids to private schools that are very, very good like Saint John Vianney or Saint Paul Lutheran church.” Even with low-priced housing, this is simply not an option for most people, let alone the majority of the population in a city with such a high unemployment rate. This statement appeals only to the upper-middle class. We need the creative visionaries you mentioned earlier to help heal the school systems for everyone.