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People are not currently fleeing NJ because of a crime problem. They are fleeing because of a cost of living problem. Your neighbors- no matter how angry they may be- will not be able to fend off developers or the likely sprawl. This is not some new trend.
It's kind of surprising that someone from a completely different type of environment can be gullible enough to fancy themselves an urban pioneer in a place like Newark. As if the world has never seen college educated white males take over a city before. It is beyond arrogant to assume that because someone lives in a town such as this they don't strive to make their city better or have the brains to organize. The community you come from has never experienced anything on the scale that Newark has.
Comparing the problems here to just a "sketchy neighborhood scenario" is just as off the wall as telling "survivors" they just need to get some civic pride.....A new Low.
Oh and this gem..
"Criminally-intentioned New Jersians who are peddling drugs in Wilkes-Barre to our children"
As though you don't have drug dealers in your vanilla-bred hometown to begin with.
And this,
"For what it's worth, all of the news we hear in PA regarding Newark is awful."
Why are your neighbors(and yourself) concentrating on places in other states when you have the identical problem in your own? This smacks of the most insincere concern I have heard today. If you want to have an impact-why not get involved in an area like Philly where there are identical problems? And no- I'm not asking why you don't move there. You moving to any of these places is not the issue. People already live there(is that news or something?). They don't need you to move there-not at all.
If you really wanted to make a difference you would put your energy into something that would empower/strengthen the current residents-not spend your time trying to find a place for yourself to live. You say you would gladly be the first-as though this is something new and unusual that has never been tried....LOL- even youth does not excuse that gem of a remark.
It's great that people have made your area "trendy" again. It probably took some effort on their part. You can pick up the torch where they left off. You could channel some of that vision of yours and teach the less fortunate all those great middleclass survival skills you've mastered.
Well, if anyone here is being brash or arrogant, it's certainly you. Perhaps you meant "ignorant" while referencing me? That is something more credible, in my humble opinion considering I presented myself in a respectful manner while your entire reply was laced with cynicism, sarcasm, and rudeness. Perhaps you need to learn a thing or two about respect yourself before criticizing others?
I don't even know how to begin with a rebuttal to this one. I stand by my comments about the fact that we are losing the war on drugs in my area. While it is true that if the locals weren't waiting in the wings with big wads of cash in hand to purchase cocaine, meth, speed, etc., it is also true that they wouldn't be purchasing such items if "clever entrepreneurs" from NEWARK, CAMDEN, TRENTON, (and yes, Philadelphia and New York City too to be fair), weren't bringing such items to our area to market them at an inflated price. Just about every crime in our area now is drug-related, and we usually see those responsible for our robberies, shootings, stabbings, etc., as being identified as Kumal-Ali Jackson of NEWARK or Shaliffe Naqif of CAMDEN. Even those with local addresses are often referenced as being "formerly" from some other area in NYC/NJ. Believe me when I tell you it is not the homegrown locals who are forming major drug rings and commuting back-and-forth between here and NJ/NYC/Philly to start a new "business venture." The locals might be dumb enough to buy the nefarious products from these suppliers, but the founding fathers of this certainly hail from outside of our once-peaceful area. When my own college campus sent out a mass e-mail last semester urging students to no longer walk alone and to contact campus security for escorts to and from their vehicles, that's when you know the crime problem is starting to get out of hand. These lowlife scumbags from those aforementioned cities are continuing to move here in droves to peddle meth to us, rob us, mug us, etc., and we're tiring of it. I'll admit that becoming fed up with crime in my own area being largely committed by outside influences is part of the reason why I'm irritated that folks in NJ aren't giving a damn about the condition of places like Newark, Camden, etc. and that they're now "spreading" their urban ills to other areas. Why should we in a different state even have to be terrorized by their negative influences? There's a reason why the gangs are now recruiting in Monroe County, PA as well, and don't tell me "it's the locals" who are forming chapters of the Bloods, Crips, and Latin Kings in places like Stroudsburg and Tobyhanna, PA. While I welcome industrious new neighbors with open arms, if you're coming to PA to deteriorate our quality-of-life, we WILL rebel against you.
By the way, how is it "a new low" for me to tell people to start taking their streets back in Newark, Camden, Trenton, etc. If they're not going to do it, then we WILL start doing it to save our OWN areas from spiralling further into disarray. The drug problems here just across the Delaware River are now out-of-control, so you need to understand my frustrations. There was just another double-homicide in Hazleton in the middle of the street last week, and shootings/stabbings over "drug deals gone bad" is something heard of quite frequently now in Monroe County. Pardon me for not wanting your state's lack of concern over the current condition of its cities to spread itself across the Delaware River and further harm us. I truly wish those of you sitting there right now thinking "this guy is nuts" while sipping coffee on your suburban cul-de-sacs would WAKE UP before it's too late and these same thugs start invading YOUR communities as well due to a lack of enforcement. Crime is spreading throughout our nation, folks, and it is no longer confined to places like Newark or Camden now that the dealers there realize that they can charge much more for their products in suburban marketplaces to a lot of bored ex-city teenagers who are then propositioned by gang recruiters. If it's happening here in Northeastern PA, it is most certainly happening in the NJ suburbs as well right under all of your noses! What efforts are currently being undertaken by your state to nip crime in the bud before it can further spread? None? I thought so. Why again does this outrage nobody that you're paying the highest property taxes in the nation for a total lack of municipal services as far as aggressive police patrols are concerned? Places like Sparta and Saddle Brook won't remain "wholesome" and "Mayberry-like" forever---even the posh suburb of Clarks Summit had a major drug bust at its own high school several years ago. If you all want to sit in your "vanilla" (as you dubbed me) denial, then be my guest. As for me, I'm raising hell on these types of social issues so I won't have to relocate even further west than I already am to escape a deteriorating quality-of-life and to raise my children in an area outside of the Greater NYC area gang/drug influence. I'm not the type to "run" from my problems, which is why I'm trying to confront them HEAD-ON now before it's too late.
As far as your first paragraph is concerned, my neighbors have every right to be upset. I've watched in horror as our own housing prices have steadily-increased as well from being dirt cheap to now being about "average" for America, but they are still climbing. Crime is surging with the population influx---drug-related shootings and gang-related graffiti-tagging would have been unheard of in the Poconos before it became "suburbanized." Schools are having difficulty keeping pace with the growth. Traffic congestion continues to worsen on I-80, Route 209, Route 611, and many other primary arteries in the Greater Stroudsburg area. We're by no means a "mini-Newark" YET, but if people here don't start making their voices heard soon, what's to stop Monroe County from turning into the same exact pit that NJ residents were fleeing from in the first place? We're seeing Monroe County natives fleeing to my own Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area now to "escape the city," and now people in my area are beginning to clash since the population has started to grow again. Does this mean that the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre natives will now move even FURTHER west to "escape the city?" At what point do we just draw the line? We can't keep running from our problems, which is the main point I've been trying to get across to people! At some point we all have to simply throw our hands up in the air and vow to bring positive change to existing neighborhoods instead of unfairly spreading these same problems into third-tier places like Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, PA, Binghamton, NY, the Lehigh Valley, PA, or even Harrisburg, PA and Albany, NY in the upcoming years at the rate the growth of the CMSA is going.
As I have just said, I recently moved out of Jersey City Heights. I'll give credit where it's due... the rent was affordable and getting to Manhattan was easy. And the area near Shoprite is going through major real estate development, but I can't afford those condos anyway.
I am so glad I am out of there.
Friday and Saturday nights, after 2AM, it was common to hear throngs of black kids walking down from Palisade Avenue to the housing projects. WIthout any regard for those who were in bed, they'd yell, curse, shout, and laugh at the top of their voices. I don't remember the number of times I called New Jersey Police's noise complaints unit. And yet this pales in comparison to the number of times I saw fights there. This past winter, on a weeknight (yes, a WEEKNIGHT), around 9PM, I saw a car stop and kids got off and pummeled another kid and used a broken bottle on him. I saw incidents where the fights would involve 20+ young men and I'd call the cops... but these kids would mostly all leave by the time the cops arrived.
I once saw a black young man ram his bicycle through a car's rear windshield because he thought the driver cut him off... the young couple driving the car was terrified, and wouldn't you know it, black residents mumbled it wasn't right to arrest the kid.
And this is not Newark, it's Jersey City, and that's what I faced...
The only area of Newark I'd ever live in if I had to live in Newark is the Ironbound, near the Portuguese/Brazilians.
As a single man who is in his 30s and has now moved from the partying of his 20s into what I call the last years before marriage and parenthood I'm doing all I can to be able to afford living in a better area with better schools... I grew up in the suburbs and now I thank my parents for the high quality of life I enjoyed as a teenager. Hopefully I'll be able to give my own kids half of what my parents gave me.
I am SO glad I am about to close on a new apartment in Bergen county, in an area without such people. Am I being racist? No, I'm just stating the facts... these kids may not all be bad but they gravitate towards such acts because many come from one-parent homes, and have no good role models. And no matter how wealthy I get in the future, I will never sacrifice my lifestyle or my family's for that matter to "renew" a downtrodden neighborhood. I didn't make it that way, it shouldn't be up to me to renew it.
Good riddance, Jersey City Heights!
I feel for the families and hope the murderers are caught. I'll bet the perpetrators were not white, but that should surprise nobody given the crime demographics of Newark and of JCH, and of the Bloods, Crips there, etc...
The projects you are referring to...are they Hudson Gardens across from Dickinson HS? back in the day when I attended Dickinson they were predominately white and a TEMPORARY home at afordable rent as you worked on improving your station in life...not to be lived in by you, your children and your grand children as well, never moving on in life
ive said it b4 and ill say it again, whites created the ghetto and now they cannot find a viable solution. since they created the ghetto, it is their responsibility to fix it, and to somehow re-integrate the hoods back into society. incarceration does not work. threats of punishment does not work. more police does not work.
all of these social ills are the effect of poverty, poor education, white racism, and lack of community--and this pattern is indicative of urban areas everywhere.
HUH???? Can you enlighgten me on your thinking?? When I moved out of Jersey City years ago my neighborhood was pretty decent still as more people left and "others" moved in it became a dump...homes were no longer kept up, garbage everywhere and worth your life to walk down that block in DAYLIGHT now....Duncan Ave, 2 blocks below Westside Ave ..Olean Ave, very nice back in the day
How did this turn in to a story about who is wealthy or not?
As I read every page of this forum, and the only reason I came into NJ's forum is to see whether people had any decency to talk about this issue, I have to say that you all have turned this tragedy into an poor-wealthy arguement. I knew one of the STUDENTS who attended DSU and you guys are making it out as if these kids were thugs. You all should be a damned shame of yourselves for turning these families tragedy into a forum to bash a poorer county. TJ was an ordained minister. These kids had no previous criminal records. They were good kids and I can not sit here and let you all turn this into a story about why you moved from new jersey. Show some respect for them, they were going to college and worked for what they had. This forum shows just how much people care. When something like this happens to you, you want to cry and whine, but when its 4 black college students, you all talk about how poor their neighborhoods are! You all are crazy!Get off your high horses for a minute and pay your respect.
Anyway, my reason for coming to this forum was to send my prayers to those people this affected and to keep their memories alive. This was a senseless act no matter how you affluent people on here try to flip it. NJ needs a solution and clearly its not coming from you all on here.
As I read every page of this forum, and the only reason I came into NJ's forum is to see whether people had any decency to talk about this issue, I have to say that you all have turned this tragedy into an poor-wealthy arguement. I knew one of the STUDENTS who attended DSU and you guys are making it out as if these kids were thugs. You all should be a damned shame of yourselves for turning these families tragedy into a forum to bash a poorer county. TJ was an ordained minister. These kids had no previous criminal records. They were good kids and I can not sit here and let you all turn this into a story about why you moved from new jersey. Show some respect for them, they were going to college and worked for what they had. This forum shows just how much people care. When something like this happens to you, you want to cry and whine, but when its 4 black college students, you all talk about how poor their neighborhoods are! You all are crazy!Get off your high horses for a minute and pay your respect.
Anyway, my reason for coming to this forum was to send my prayers to those people this affected and to keep their memories alive. This was a senseless act no matter how you affluent people on here try to flip it. NJ needs a solution and clearly its not coming from you all on here.
Yes you have a very valid point. From all stories published these were good kids...going to college and improving their quality of life. Unfortunately for them they were at present time still stuck in Newark and the ugliness of that city and many of it's slimy scummy citizens is what snuffed their young lives out. I pray the one survivor is under police protection at the hospital ( and also think it's careless journalism that published WHAT hospital she is at) and she can provide some clues to capture these animals.
As I read every page of this forum, and the only reason I came into NJ's forum is to see whether people had any decency to talk about this issue, I have to say that you all have turned this tragedy into an poor-wealthy arguement. I knew one of the STUDENTS who attended DSU and you guys are making it out as if these kids were thugs. You all should be a damned shame of yourselves for turning these families tragedy into a forum to bash a poorer county. TJ was an ordained minister. These kids had no previous criminal records. They were good kids and I can not sit here and let you all turn this into a story about why you moved from new jersey. Show some respect for them, they were going to college and worked for what they had. This forum shows just how much people care. When something like this happens to you, you want to cry and whine, but when its 4 black college students, you all talk about how poor their neighborhoods are! You all are crazy!Get off your high horses for a minute and pay your respect.
Anyway, my reason for coming to this forum was to send my prayers to those people this affected and to keep their memories alive. This was a senseless act no matter how you affluent people on here try to flip it. NJ needs a solution and clearly its not coming from you all on here.
Go read the NY POST. Maybe you'll find the populist foot-stamping you're looking for there.
But to justify:
1. actually, this discussion IS about the tragedy of 4 college students getting killed senselessly. The problem goes much farther than the incident itself, and this discussion addresses the higher issues of how to stop this problem at the root.
2. This thread is now over 6 pages long. Perhaps I missed a post here or there, but i don't recall anyone ever discrediting the victims in any way, or "making them into thugs". Actually, if anything, it's been quite the contrary.
Go read the NY POST. Maybe you'll find the populist foot-stamping you're looking for there.
But to justify:
1. actually, this discussion IS about the tragedy of 4 college students getting killed senselessly. The problem goes much farther than the incident itself, and this discussion addresses the higher issues of how to stop this problem at the root.
2. This thread is now over 6 pages long. Perhaps I missed a post here or there, but i don't recall anyone ever discrediting the victims in any way, or "making them into thugs". Actually, if anything, it's been quite the contrary.
1. Where in this thread did anyone pay their respects? A simple RIP could have done the job. No one on here is addressing the issue on the streets of NJ, you all are on a forum! So far this is what I gathered from reading this topic..." Poor people don't do this, they don't do that, they are lazy" Well if you feel you have so much energy then go help them out.
2. Did I single you out or did I post this to all of the people on here? Reread the my post and then come back to me.
1. Where in this thread did anyone pay their respects? A simple RIP could have done the job. No one on here is addressing the issue on the streets of NJ, you all are on a forum! So far this is what I gathered from reading this topic..." Poor people don't do this, they don't do that, they are lazy" Well if you feel you have so much energy then go help them out.
2. Did I single you out or did I post this to all of the people on here? Reread the my post and then come back to me.
Actually I have seen a few posts where the poster has said prayers etc for the family. I truly feel for them, but, and I mean no disrespect to the dead this is a weekly occurance in Newark...Newark and the way it is right now is the problem it is the reason why young people are losing their lives at an alarming rate....the posts tie in with this because until something is done it's going to CONTINUE....so maybe because these were fine young people this will be their legacy to get the decent citizens of Newark angry enough to DO something so others don't meet with a similiar fate
Actually I have seen a few posts where the poster has said prayers etc for the family. I truly feel for them, but, and I mean no disrespect to the dead this is a weekly occurance in Newark...Newark and the way it is right now is the problem it is the reason why young people are losing their lives at an alarming rate....the posts tie in with this because until something is done it's going to CONTINUE....so maybe because these were fine young people this will be their legacy to get the decent citizens of Newark angry enough to DO something so others don't meet with a similiar fate
I totally agree with you on this njkate, but until it happens to someone you know then it takes on a new meaning. I guess I got ahead of myself for calling everyone out not just a few, but still Philly has a high crime rate, so does Prince Georges county where I live, but it makes no sense to argue about who is wealthy and who is not, when just an arguement does not spur change. I wonder about the so called wealthy people who down the poor class because they do not know how hard it is for poor people so how can they speak about something they do not know about or never even went through. Do you kow how hard it is to get the city government to respond to the request of the community when the government is corrupt and does not care about the people they supposedly represent? Do any of you now how hard it is to get up everyday and go to WORK, yet not be able to pay all of the bills? How hard is it to steer you kids away from drugs when they see that is a way to make easy money, when their mother is slaving at 2 jobs, and can not even come home at a decent time to raise their kids? Not many of you on here can say that you all have been through that, but continue to "KNOW" what goes on in a poor community.
I totally agree with you on this njkate, but until it happens to someone you know then it takes on a new meaning. I guess I got ahead of myself for calling everyone out not just a few, but still Philly has a high crime rate, so does Prince Georges county where I live, but it makes no sense to argue about who is wealthy and who is not, when just an arguement does not spur change. I wonder about the so called wealthy people who down the poor class because they do not know how hard it is for poor people so how can they speak about something they do not know about or never even went through. Do you kow how hard it is to get the city government to respond to the request of the community when the government is corrupt and does not care about the people they supposedly represent? Do any of you now how hard it is to get up everyday and go to WORK, yet not be able to pay all of the bills? How hard is it to steer you kids away from drugs when they see that is a way to make easy money, when their mother is slaving at 2 jobs, and can not even come home at a decent time to raise their kids? Not many of you on here can say that you all have been through that, but continue to "KNOW" what goes on in a poor community.
Anyway , I came to pay my respects and thats it.
Yes it absolutely takes on new painful meaning when it happens to someone you know & love.....this is very sad because it seems these kids were on the right path...I only hope the killers are caught soon.
And kudos to all the hardworking parents who ar trying to make a difference inthe lives of their kids and keeping a watchful eye on them....it's our future
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How did this turn in to a story about who is wealthy or not?
