The Problem With Trying to Do Good from Inside the Bubble

It is pretty easy to see that poor neighborhoods are underserved by the government just like poor people are underserved; just drive through a poor neighborhood. What to do about it, however, is harder to see. I default to One thing that is nice in a neighborhood is a park, a place to have lunch or take the kids on Saturday. The problem with that, I just read in an interesting article in Bay Nature, is that when we put parks in poor neighborhoods, it gentrifies the area. This is where I get a little confused; if gentrifying the area is bad, and it certainly seems to me that it is bad for the residents that get gentrified out, what is good? I keep reading that poor areas are food deserts, so maybe what a poor area needs is a good market and maybe, rather than a park, the funds should be spent subsidizing that market. Maybe a market that gives classes on healthy eating. We have community gardens that are subsidized, why not markets. And, I want to add that I’m in the bubble of white, middle-class, entitlement so, rather than listening to me, the real people who should be listened to are the existing residents.     

In the well, of course, department, but still….

Former U.K. deputy prime minister Nick Clegg is now vice president of global affairs and communications at Facebook, and recently purchased a home in Atherton for $9 million.

In the how dumb can somebody be department.

“Pelosi is playing checkers. Trump is playing chess. Trump’s intuitive mind is a super-computer. … He is a strategic savant. Instead of wasting energy on things like tact, his brain focuses on strategy.” A Tweet by Bill Mitchell.