Mary Schmich is doing an indepth series of columns on Cabrini Green. Not the giant failure of public housing, but the neighborhood and what it was and is. The first three installments of the current series is amazing.
I spend a fair amount of time analyzing issues of poverty in my professional life and that takes me into neighborhoods as a visitor that most white people simply don’t go. I often forget as I drive somewhere and my passengers start gripping the car door and locking their doors attempting to be innocuous. And certainly there is reason to be cautious in a neighborhood you don’t know, but the overwhelming experience I have in those troubled neighborhoods is one of hope and a sense of amazement at what residents accomplish. That isn’t to take away from the very real challenges that exist, but Schmich’s first three columns really speak to that feeling in a way that is hard to explain.