We bring a highly-trained, educated professional to Baltimore City as the new police commissioner and he is to blame for the 50 years of accumulated woes ("Your challenge, Commissioner Batts May 31)? I think not!
The riots of the 1960s, the flight of the city population to the suburbs, the slow, steady loss of jobs from the city and the empty 50 years of promises from city and state officials, the drug economy, the politicians and corporate owners actions resulting in permanent economic tragedy are not the fault of Anthony Batts.
The "sick children, the thugs and criminals," exist because there are no economic opportunities in the city for low and middle class residents and only drugs are offered as a panacea. Continued development for the upper classes is not going to solve the problems.
But, as I have shared with many acquaintances, if there is ever another real civil war in America, bigotry and racial inequality will be exhorted as the "reasons" for the unrest and not the real cause which is the planned economic destruction of our country by corporate greed and inaction or ineptitude on the part of our government officials. We should be given a list of the members of Congress who are going to vote positively for the Trans Pacific Partnership which will effectively finish removing what jobs are left in America. Remember NAFTA?
I actually am a moderate and not an extremist in any direction but, oh, how convenient to use the old cry of "racial inequality." By the way, why doesn't the media ever report on the large numbers of successful middle class and upper middle class African-Americans in obtaining education and jobs? I know many.
Celie Hanauer, Abingdon