More McCheese?
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Maria R. Burgio on Government Spending, Urban Development, and Forgotten Children
When I logged onto my Yahoo homepage
the other day, I noticed an article from Forbes.com
by Joshua Zumbrun. The article was
entitled, “The Obama Boomtowns: Mayors Line up at the Trough with Projects
Ready for Stimulus Money,” the majority of which is going towards efforts to
create jobs, provide cities with an economic lift, and perhaps even generate
some hope for the future. High on the list were cities such as: San
Fransisco, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Sacramento, Miami, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, St. Louis, Phoenix and Dallas.
What’s interesting is that while almost
every mayor requested funds for infrastructure projects like roads,
bridges, highways (Dallas, Albuquerque, and Los Angeles were among
those requesting assistance for energy projects like installing solar
panels), only one (Mayor Michael
Nutter of Philadelphia) made the children a priority.
I was stunned by the overall scarcity of
attention to children's needs. After-school
activities are so important to teenagers because for most of them, their
parents are not at home. Sure, most
mothers who work get home after 4:30 PM; but a 2004 Journal of Adolescent
Health study suggested that the highest risk time for teenagers is not at night—it’s
between the hours of 3 and 4:30 in the afternoon. Likewise, recent U.S.
Teenage Pregnancy Statistics (Alan Guttmacher
Institute, 2006) show that there are roughly 750,000 babies (which is down
from one million in 1995) born to America's teenagers each year. With
such a significant number of children being born to young adults, one has to
wonder why there are so few social clubs, organizations, and institutions for teenage
parents in high risk communities, like inner cities and poor rural
areas.
At least Philadelphia's mayor takes
an active interest in developing resources for the youth in his community: a good deal of the money he’s requested is dedicated
building new schools and a new juvenile detection hall. Not only that, he wants to develop
bookmobiles to improve literacy, direct money toward community block grants (which create
green space, parks, etc.), and establish a new zoo and art museum.
All for the children. And why?
Because they are a powerful presence in our lives; they are why we
work. And they are also our future. Yet community outreach programs like teenage social clubs, supervised after
school activities, and parent networking and educational opportunities are all still
missing in many cities, perhaps because of the void in our priorities that I
described in my
first article.
I urge you, readers, during this
holiday season, to share how your communities take care of the children,
particularly those that increase healthy socialization and community spirit. Together, we can work toward creating a new
itinerary, one that we can share on a broader political forum.
-M.R. Burgio
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