Taking My Ball and Moving Away Syndrome

[bleedingheart]

I live outside Pittsburgh and recently I have been really bummed about matters both in and outside the city. Granted it is my perspective but the city of Pittsburgh is quite a gem, culture, arts, sports, history..etc but due in part to politics, geography, lack of money..etc there are some big gaps. Two issues for people in the city are schools and services and for those in the outlying area it is sometimes schools and transportation woes.

For almost fifty years there have been talks of finally getting mass transit in our area but in that time there is this pathetic little subway that doesn't go very far...when it first opened people started to have hope but then I just don't know what happened. Then there are the schools in the city, some schools are seen as struggling while others don't have enough kids to warrant keeping them open and everyone one on every side battles it out. In fact there are some schools where no one wants to run for school board....so if the schools are bad what does it say about the community when no one wants to even roll up their sleeves and make a difference?

Meanwhile a lot of people rather than try and work to make things better they just leave..in droves...to the outlying areas and the congestion in and around the city just grows worse.....so pastures and forests succumb to large developments with hundreds of homes and a bunch of angry people who having left one mess...create a new mess when such a large influx of people now need more services in areas not accustomed to accomodating them....and then when taxes are raised...they get even madder because that's one of the reasons they left the city in the first place...

Now there are those progressive people who do fight the good fight, they move into old neighborhoods, rehab houses, and do their best to make things better....but as anyone who volunteers knows...it is always the same small group of people trying to man the "fort"...when in reality we need everyone to pitch in to make things better.

It is just easier for people to quit fighting than to make an effort to make things better...it is just easier for people to keep moving further and further away from the problems rather than face them....