One Liquor Store

Visiting East Garfield Park, Chicago, this July, I was struck by how promising this neighborhood is becoming -- and how efforts to improve the neighborhood are undermined by the corner liquor stores. I understand poverty, but this is abuse. When a so-called "convenience" store stocks 10 cases of Colt 45 and 4 loaves of bread, you know what the point is. People are investing their lives in the neighborhood, but the police and politicians are letting them down, failing to enforce the simplest public order laws. Reformist police chief William Bratton says that "one broken window" can bring down a neighborhood's psyche -- I think it's "one liquor store" too many that feeds the street with drunks and depression. Anyway, this video is what I saw - and, I believe, what the people who are trying to make a community in neighborhoods like East Garfield Park think.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• community
• neighborhood
• order
• ghetto
• public safety
• liquor
• liquor store
• alcohol
• alcoholism
• drunk
• drunks
• drunkenness
• rebuilding