Photo and blog post by John HoffFormer Hawthorne Neighborhood Chair Peter Teachout, who swore into the army a short while ago, has started a new blog called Saddling Up For Service. Click here for a link to the blog.
While getting ready for army training some months from now, Peter is still running his building contractor business. Peter hopes to use his new blog to--among other things--give people tips on how to find local resources to fix up their homes. But, of course, the whole time he is...
SADDLING UP FOR SERVICE.
On another note...and this may be a wee bit off topic, but not too much...why is there no military recruiting station in North Minneapolis? This neighborhood is full of young people who could benefit from the educational and career opportunities afforded by military service. And yet the military recruiters are located, for example, in Stadium Village near the U of M or out in Bloomington. If there IS a military recruiting station in North Minneapolis, I have not seen it, and my Googling efforts have turned up nothing nearby.
From 1990 to 1994, I served as an E4 in the United States Army, paying off all my student loans through the army's loan repayment program. I often thought to myself, geez, I wish I'd taken out twice as many student loans and maybe paid for a couple of fun "May Seminars" in Europe, since it was army duty that paid off all that college a few years later, and it would have been possible to pay off even MORE loans.
Also, as a result of all that military training and experience, I spent years working a good-paying job in the mental health field, not to mention really enjoying the time I was stationed in El Paso, Texas, where I never saw snow--not even once--for 3 and a half years.
Why shouldn't these golden opportunities for travel, education and career opportunities be presented to OUR community?
(Do not click "Read More")
Uh, probably because of the politics of setting up a military recruiting place in a predominantly African-American area. This of course does not match up to the reality that the military is a way up and out of poverty nor that killing bad people in other countries is better than shooting up your own neighborhood. I don't have the stats but somebody said that there are neighborhoods in the US that are more dangerous than Iraq and Afghanistan.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'm quite aware of the politics. And I think we should have a military recruiting station ANYWAY.
ReplyDeleteI must say, a person is as safe as he lets himself feel. If you open yourself up to feeling unsafe you won't feel safe. The rifraff and the drug dealers know this more than anyone. That's why they only need to throw rocks through one person's windows. They know that if they do it to the right person's house, they will have 10 maybe 100 maybe 1000 people talking about it. If they can get it on the news then they have thousands of people talking about it. If one is to properly combat these efforts one cannot let minor attempts at fear mongering be used to label a neighborhood. If we approach each situation with this determination we will go a long ways in helping people not form incorrect mindsets about a certain area.
ReplyDeleteAs for recruitment offices located in North Minneapolis, unfortunately I think that the government uses demographics to decide where to put their offices. But then again that begs the question why its ok to have an office located on Lake st but not on Broadway. Maybe we can get the one on Lake moved to Broadway...