No, Chicago Reader, Mount Greenwood is one of Chicago's best - not worst - neighborhoods
By William J. Kelly, Monday at 4:08 pm
In a vile, mean-spirited ode to the holiday season, Chicago Reader has attacked an entire neighborhood in its piece, “Mount Greenwood is Chicago’s Upside Down.” According to the Reader’s editor, Jake Malooley, Mount Greenwood is the lowest of the low. The worst of 246 neighborhoods in Chicago.
Is it Mount Greenwood’s high crime rate? No, as home to thousands of Chicago police and firemen, Mount Greenwood has one of the lowest crime rates in the city. Is it because of Mount Greenwood’s underperforming schools? No, Mount Greenwood has great schools. Chicago’s worst neighborhood, claims Malooley, is the one that is least representative of the city—demographically, politically, culturally," and that means Mount Greenwood.
Isn’t the Chicago Reader supposed to stand for tolerance? The cultural powers that be tell us we are supposed to be celebrating our differences – just not Mount Greenwood’s cultural, political or demographic differences?
Let’s read between the lines: When Chicago Reader attacks Mount Greenwood’s “demographics” – it means it’s mostly middle-class Caucasian residents. When the Chicago Reader says Mount Greenwood’s “cultural differences” are "upside down" – it means the neighborhood’s mostly Irish, German, and Polish heritage and traditions. It means if you respect law and order, as the residents of Mount Greenwood do, you must be bad and you must be erased, eliminated. When Chicago Reader condemns Mount Greenwood’s “political differences,” it means if you voted for Donald Trump in 2016 or if you have ever voted Republican, you should be exiled from the City of Chicago, annexed by a neighboring suburb – if the staff of the Chicago Reader has anything to say about it.
What an oddly intolerant, bigoted article from the "open-minded" Chicago Reader. It's an attack on a neighborhood of Chicago police, firefighters and their families.
I know the 19th ward. I was brought home as a baby on St. Patrick's Day to my family home in the 19th ward.
I know the people who live and raise their families there. They aren’t just good people – they are great people. When someone breaks into your house and you call 911, most of the time it’s Mount Greenwood-residing police officers that come to your aid. When your house is on fire and you are trapped in a bedroom, it’s the firefighters who live in Mount Greenwood who come to your rescue.
It’s time for Chicago Reader to get its priorities straight.
Since he was elected, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has done little to nothing to stop the bloodshed in Chicago’s neighborhoods. It’s worse than ever: citywide, Chicago has topped 669 homicides again this year. Schools in poor neighborhoods are failing. Kids are getting killed at the bus stops, caught in gang crossfire. Drugs have infected our communities and the only thing Chicago Reader is angry about is that “70% of three Mount Greenwood precincts voted for Donald Trump" in 2016?
Every time you go into 115 bourbon street it's a local resident cpd lounging around
ReplyDelete"Is it Mount Greenwood’s high crime rate? No, as home to thousands of Chicago police and firemen". THOUSANDS??? Uh duhhhhh ..... Yeah, duhhhhh .... dat sounz right.
ReplyDeleteBack in the 70's my first job out of college was working at the Chicago Tribune. In a room of 250 employees, there was only a handful of us that lived on the South Side. Even then we were looked at as some subhuman life form, that nothing in Chicago existed south of Roosevelt Road and that everything on our side of town was how it would appear from the Dan Ryan expressway.
ReplyDeleteLiving on the north side is trendy now for south side millennials. Wrigleyville, Lincoln Park, Lakeview and the like. And there's been a ton of redevelopment and gentrification there. However, with regard to the south side and the 19th ward in particular, I would point out that neighborhoods and parishes are kept up, neighbors look out for each other. On that, I choose to look at Mt. Greenwood, Beverly and all of the 19th ward as a haven and last resort compared to other neighborhoods that are in decline.
Drive by Bourbon Street on any weekend and see a parking lot crowded with cars owned by people attending one of several charitable fundraisers organized by neighbors to benefit a sick child or family needing help due to a death in the family. They have them almost every weekend, year round. You won't see that in Wrigleyville or Lincoln Park.
We still care about our neighbors and have a generous heart when one of them is down on their luck.
As for the Chicago Reader, its history is one of tearing down anything that would represent middle class values. In their view, all of us are racist. If there were anything of value in this publication, it would be sold, not given away.
Those businesses that choose to advertise in it would be well advised to check their circulation figures, which in all probability, are also lies.
Mount Greenwood is Chicago's best kept secret.
ReplyDeleteTRS WAS.
DeleteMystic was
DeleteBoth those taverns closed because MTG is circling the drain and they took off while they can.
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