To the editors:
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Benson misses the point when she points to society’s responsibility for this community’s problems [Letters, August 20]. This society uses its problems as an excuse for inaction or, worse, as an explanation for its mistakes. Specifically, many of the problems mentioned stem from an attempt to rehab the area northeast of the Howard Street Station known as “the jungle,” which by the 70s had deteriorated into a nest of criminals and underclasses. Much money was raised, plans made, groups organized and with best intentions and with the greatest optimism Rogers Park looked to the future. At the last moment opportunists seized on the plight of those dregs of the justice and welfare systems and forced an eradication program into a disastrous relocation effort. The foisting of these elements throughout east Rogers Park ripped years of efforts and doomed the community to years of unnecessary strife and conflict. Accelerated flight, ripe grounds for speculation and plummeting property values are the direct result of that effort. There would seem to be more For Sale signs than No Parking signs today and few buyers.
Finally, this whole question must not be confused with or clouded by mere reference to race or class. Rogers Park has been a stable multicultural community for generations and has integrated and nourished generations of “new” neighbors before this. Really we are talking about behavior which threatens the very fabric of our community and society as a whole. To excuse negative acts in the light of community standards as prejudice against minorities or the poor is to condemn them to lesser possibilities, expectations, and responsibility: to deny that to be fully human, in the best sense, is for everyone. After all, it is more the biological fluke of an opposable thumb or single-ligament tongue that makes us more than lesser orders; it is manners and morals in the context of evolving shared community values of charity and tolerance that raise our society.
