Jim Crow laws for the Trick or Treaters?

Halloween. The holiday in which young children get dressed up and trick or treat through their neighborhoods. That is unless your neighborhood has crappy candy. “Let’s go to the rich people’s neighborhood and pillage their community of all the decent candy.” This seems to be the motive behind the bus loads of kids that are brought from less fortunate, or just crappy neighborhoods, to the communities of the haves. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate kids. The kids are not the facilitators of this heinous un-American act. It is the parents and community leaders of the neighborhoods that enable these children.

Think of it this way, Halloween is a community event. It is a time in which the children that you normally see playing out in the street, or riding their bike, or playing hide and go seek, show up at your house dressed as the Jonas brothers and beg for candy. This is what strengthens the fabric of a community. There is nothing worse than opening the door to a mildly costumed 14 year old non English speaking adolescent that is foreign to your neighborhood and doesn’t even have a candy bag. The transaction is more reminiscent of communion during a Catholic mass with the teeny bopping latino and their cupped hands. I feel sorry for the poor kids, so I don’t break their spirit by denying them the candy. I do have a heart. What this is to me is a wake up call to city hall that our neighborhood strengthening initiative is not working.

What is the solution? Get out and say hi to the weird guy across the street that used to live with his mother until she died and left him the house. Talk to the long haired teens that live two doors down, or create a waving relationship with the older retired couple across the street. In essence, what I am saying is that as Americans we need to become more local while living globally. We know more gossip about the couple that is currently separated and the wife got to keep the house while the husband must rent a cheap 2 bedroom on the other side of town, than we know the people enough to say hi followed by their name. Take the bull by the horns and start with the sheepish wave. That sheepish wave is the first step into making the world a better place.