A friend of mine posted a link on facebook to a website that concluded Over-the-Rhine was the most dangerous neighborhood in America? In America!? Over-the-Rhine wasn't even the most dangerous neighborhood in Cincinnati in the past four years!

According to WalletPop.com, Over-the-Rhine, between Liberty Street and Central Parkway, has the most crime per 1,000 people (266.94) than any other area in the United States. The insurance website collected data compiled by NeighborhoodsScout.com, which gathers FBI data from 2005, 2006 and 2007 submitted by all 17,000 local law enforcement agencies and from that came up with the highest predicted rates of violent crime in America. Yeah, PREDICTED.

A couple of points:

1) In 2006 and 2007 the most dangerous neighborhood in Cincinnati wasn't Over-the-Rhine. That distinction went to Walnut Hills which outpaced Over-the-Rhine in just about every crime stat--including homicides. Over-the-Rhine hasn't been the most dangerous neighborhood in Cincinnati since 2005.

2) These websites compile numbers only to make predictions and their methods seem faulty. Is crime in O-T-R? Heck yeah it is but in all of my years of ever being down there during all parts of the day and night nothing has ever happened to me or my friends or family. NOTHING!

The Cincinnati Enquirer gobbled the story up and an onslaught of racist comments followed. The problem with an erroneous story like O-T-R being the most dangerous neighborhood in America (beating out areas in cities like Miami, Baltimore and Chicago--places infamous for rates of crime so high Cincinnati looks like an utopia in comparison) gives people in Cincinnati another reason not to care about the heart of the city. It has been further demonized in the eyes of the outsiders. No one wants to care and it's that apathy that will bring Cincinnati to its demise will continue on and on and on and on...

I have plenty of faith in the people on the front lines in the city--the people who fight to win the community back from the crime that wants to consume every crevice it can. Everyone in the city and everyone in O-T-R aren't welfare receiving, ignorant, illiterate, unwed mothers or dope dealing, white t-shirt wearing high school dropouts with mouths full of gold. Families, hard working people, and young professionals reside there. If there is anyone who will ruin an area like Over-the-Rhine and Cincinnati, it will be the suburbanites who do their dirty deeds in Over-the-Rhine and the suburbanites who want to ignore the problem, add to the problem, or destroy the "problem" which, to them, is the area all together. Ignorance and apathy will destroy a community far greater than anything else.

On only three-and-a-half hours of sleep, my fiance and I made our way to the tea party on Fountain Square on this chilly grey day. The space on the square was limited because of the flower carpet that is displayed every spring but that didn't stop folks--they just hung round on the street.

I proudly wore my Obama victory shirt on the square full of angry and frustrated people. There were speakers who all said the same thing and folks clapped, shouted, touted their signs and chanted U.S.A....U.S.A.... The crowd soon marched to City Hall, with their teabags and petition of 1,700 signatures, to tell Mayor Mallory to refuse the stimulus money. Okay...quit laughing for a second. Nah, go ahead. These people who, most likely, don't even live in the City of Cincinnati are raging against the machine to tell a Democratic mayor of a city that is really financially strapped who backed President Obama from the beginning to not accept money? HA HA HA!

I digress...

I went there for several reasons. First and foremost, I wanted to show support for my president. He's trying to get something done in a very messed up time for everybody. Secondly, I wanted to really know why these people were so willing to assemble on a lousy weather day to protest something that they should have been protesting. Where were all of these people when former President Bush and Congress approved $720 billion in TARP money during his last months in office. After all, they are protesting wasteful spending, right? RIIIIIIGHT... Thirdly, I was interested in how people would react to me openly supporting President Obama. My mom read in City Beat about a lady who claimed to have been hit with nigger this nigger that while she showed her support for Obama during the first Cincinnati Tea Party. Would history repeat itself? You bet your butt it would! The final count for every n-bomb I heard was four. I got plenty of stares. Surprisingly enough, though, the kids who were forced to go really liked my shirt. It is quite colorful. (I bet those poor kids wished they were in school. Wait...the protesters were so about "think about the kids" when it came to the economy. Why weren't they in school? Don't they care about education? Truant officer, please!)

It appears to me that we are so ready for President Obama to screw up. The protesters write him off as a failure before he can even get a chance to fail. For those opposed to what President Obama is doing I have a few questions that I hope get answered here since no one at the tea party would really answer them:

1) Where was the mass protest when President Bush gave Wall Street $720 BILLION and told Congress to allow President Obama to have access to that TARP money once he was president?

2) If these same people were so concerned about the future of our kids, where was the outrage when it was discovered that Bush's "No Child Left Behind" legislation was underfunded by billions of dollars?

3) What about Iraq? With the pointless invasion, the U.S. has spent billions upon billions upon BILLIONS of dollars that could have been used here at home.

4) Why waste wonderful bags of tea? I love tea, especially green tea. Very refreshing.

People sure do grow a massive pair of balls when posting comments on the web and that reminded me of something I had posted on facebook a couple of weeks ago about these folks...





A teenage girl goes for a solo jog around her home during the mid afternoon hours. When she didn't return home that evening, her parents called the police and filed a missing persons report. Tragically, young Esme Kenney's nude, partially burned body was found in the woods near her Winton Hills home. The police also found 40-year-old Anthony Kirkland, a man with a seedy past, asleep near Esme's body. Kirkland had Esme's i-pod and watch in his possession. He has since confessed to killing her.

Kirkland served 16 years in prison for burning another woman alive in 1986. There are also reports of possible evidence connecting him to two other homicides that resulted in the victims being burned. One of the possible victims is a 14-year-old girl killed in Avondale a few years ago, a story that hasn't received much public outcry from the posters (or lack thereof) on the web.

This case of Esme being killed the way she was is very sad and disturbing. The Greater Cincinnati area has weighed in heavily on this homicide as evidence by the number of comments readers posted following the story on every local media website. But as much as Esme's death bothered me, some of the readers comments got to me almost as bad.


Here are some of them:

"It's simple.
We have the most morally bankrupt system in the world.
What a shame that the life of this girl was taken by a piece of scum like Kirkland.
As offensive as this may sound, Hitler had a way of dealing with these kind of people. No appeals, no 20 year waits, no coddling!

Tried, convicted, killed!"--webthedog, poster at cincinnati.com

"this is a hate crime ...plain and simple....a black man kills a white girl in cold blood.....i am so tired of this crap in my society.... kill the f@ck now"--sirlouie, poster at communitypress.com

"Blacks make up 13% of the population, yet are responsible for 54% of all murders? And 94% of blacks murdered are killed by other blacks... What is wrong with black culture to produce these monsters? Look at the heroes of Black "culture" - pimps, Scarface and misogynistic rappers... "--Hang em High, poster at wcpo.com

"love and peace mu butt. Yes this is about black and white. Reverse this and we would have a riot on our hands. But we cant reverse it because whites do like to go to otr. Hell whites are being targeted just for being white. You kill each other but leave our children alone. stay in your hood and get out of ours."--boredatwork, poster at wcpo.com

"Now, now, folks... we've all collaboratively agreed that it's never the African American's fault. Well, at least you Cincinnatians agreed..."--bandaid36, poster at local12.com

"Another beautiful white girl gone, the victim of black savagery. This girl is yet another victim of forced integration. A return to strict segregation would go a long way in preventing blacks from preying upon whites. Don't believe blacks are dangerous? Move your family to a black apartment complex."--Joe G, poster at fox19.com


So very very sad...sad...sad...sad...sad...

You'd be hard-pressed not to read a thread on any of the stories of Esme and not find this venom of racial hatred. People sure do develop a big pair of balls when they have the anonymity of the web to hide behind. This horrible crime that proves our legal system is way off kilter. And I am reminded (as if I need anymore reminders) of how dumb people can be.

We all grieve the same. Pain hurts us equally. We all hate to see children victims of such vicious violence or any violence, for that matter. Our blood is red, our tears are clear, and we all wish that we could live in safe communities where we can rasie our children to be the best that they can be.

This shouldn't about race. This should be about a man who has a history of attacking women and burning his victims being on the streets. This is about a system that allows a person who has repeatedly committed the same crime to be free but you'll find yourself behind bars quick over weed. Now I believe that everyone should be given a chance at redemption. However, I don't feel the same for this man. My conscious won't allow it.

I would just hate to see that one of the legacies the death of this child may leave behind would be one of further deepening the chasm of black/white in Cincinnati. That just might be the biggest tragedy of all.

It seems like ignorance will always have a fighting chance in our society. Tsk tsk...

I rode through Avondale today and it was such a sad sight.

I remember playing at the park at the corner of Harvey and Hickory. Just a week-and-a-half ago, two men were killed execution style in a house on Hickory. I remember walking to school and stopping at the beauty supply store to get a lollipop from the owner. All that remains is a boarded up building with graffiti on it. What once was business and not so littered streets is now nothing but blight and tons of litter.

My mom was with Matt and me and she bumped into a guy she knew from back in the day. He bummed 45 cents off of her. When we hit the road again mom saw another woman that she said been on the streets bummin' for 20 years, addicted to crack. The man my mom knew looked to be more of an alcoholic than a crackhead.

"Crack and alcohol were the worst things to ever be introduced to the black community", I said. Matt and my mom agreed.

I really don't know or understand why these types of issues are so prevalent in my community. I have heard many theories but it seems that no one can come up with a concrete answer. I'd venture to say that there has to be more than one answer for such a complex issue.

The Obama administration is dedicated to fighting the drug war in Mexico. The stuff I've seen on the news and read online sounds like the stuff movies are made of. Very very scary things. But what I see happening in the old neighborhood seems to be the realization of my biggest fear--we, black folk, are perpetually cursed by... I don't know what exactly because, that too, is a complex issue.

Aren't we are more than drug addiction, liquor stores and hopelessness? We are a people of thinkers, artisit, inventors, teachers...positive contributors to our society. The black community can be greater than is it because were are very capable of being people who accomplish great things. I know we are and I know we can.

Today was such a beautiful day--warm and sunny with so many flowers in bloom. I spent my Saturday afternoon at Washington Park with a group from Shiloh Seven-Day Adventist church feeding the homeless that hang in the park.

Everyone there isn't homeless because of misfortune, of course. You can look at the folks who can't help but to shake because of their alcoholism or you can see the gaunt features of the crack addicts who have yellowish burns on their thumb and index finger from the crack pipes they use. Either way these are people who need our help. Neglecting them because one doesn't want to admit that there's an issue isn't the way to go because it never works.

The city of Cincinnati seems to be good at doing that. For the longest time Washington Park and Over-the-Rhine were places "designated" for the poor, the addicted, the uneducated. Now that the city wants to turn the area round Washington Park into an arts district officials are jumping to fix things. Washington Park School, the neighborhood school, was torn down to create parking for Music Hall. A block up the new building for The School for Creative and Performing Arts is in the middle of being constructed. You have to audition to go there. That leaves the only neighborhood school 10+ blocks up from where Washington Park School was. Vine Street School is overcrowded and in need of renovation. The other neighborhood school, Rothenburg, was supposed to be renovated seven years ago but the Cincinnati Public School system proclaims that it doesn't have enough money to fix it. This school system is spending 72 million to build another SCPA but they don't seem care that the children of Over-the-Rhine are left hanging.

Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory wants federal money to build a trolleycar system. That wouldn't be such a bad idea if there weren't other pressing issues that need funding--schools, the Banks project, putting more cops and first responders on the streets, rehabbing Over-the-Rhine...