{"id":521,"date":"2006-06-13T09:00:37","date_gmt":"2006-06-13T09:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hostkabob.com\/vote\/?p=514"},"modified":"2006-06-13T09:00:37","modified_gmt":"2006-06-13T09:00:37","slug":"61206-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=521","title":{"rendered":"6\/12\/06"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday National Public Radio<\/em> did a piece explaining that the homicide rate in America is increasing. Adding to those statistics was a murder last week about 200 yards from our place in Cleveland’s inner city. According to reports, it was 3 a.m. and a man pulled up to a light at the corner of Lorain and Fulton roads here. Two men swiftly approached the car, dragged him out, then beat and stabbed him to death. The murder victim was the father of several young children and there are posters up around the neighborhood asking for leads in finding the murderers… We live in an area that not only seems, but feels, <\/em>continually on the edge. Poverty, frustration, drugs, mental illness… swirl about here. Children grow up amidst this, often just trying to survive — and seeing virtually no way out. Bruce Springstein sings of an inner city in New Jersey: “Kids down here look just like shadows…”<\/em> And they do, metaphorically. Below the bravado, the street tough, I’ve consistenlty experienced these kids as often emotionally empty and afraid. A ‘shadow’ of one’s self, if you will… So what do we do? Some of us take a deep breath and move back into the inner city to live side-by-side with the disadvantaged. We become friends with the parents and formal, or informal, mentors to some of the kids. We, for instance, live on a street with a cluster of Catholic Workers who have moved into the city to help. They have become friends to their neighbors on 38th St., informal mentors to the kids here as well, fight for affordable housing, help run a drop-in center for the poor… They are, in effect, modern day martyrs. That is, they are risking their safety for a higher good. And it’s my contention that in God’s eyes, whether any of these Catholic Workers die a violent death down here, or not; they, ultimately, will be considered “martyrs” just by the mere fact they were willing<\/em> to move into a danger zone to help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday National Public Radio did a piece explaining that the homicide rate in America is increasing. Adding to those statistics was a murder last week about 200 yards from our place in Cleveland’s inner city. According to reports, it was …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}