The Near South and Everett neighborhoods are very different from other parts of Lincoln.
The crime rate is higher. There's more poverty. Property at 13th and G streets is older and worth far less than it is in, say, Firethorn. There's drug trade, and there are prostitutes.
The Lincoln Journal Star is right to run a series this week about these neighborhoods and the city's efforts to clean them up.
"The Core," they're calling us.
Thousands of Lincolnites - by no fault of their own - never have had a reason to spend even a few minutes in the area. They don't patronize the new Jones Coffee shop or the grocery at "Klein's Corner" - 11th and G streets. They've not eaten a torta at El Chaparro or taken a dusk bike ride through the fantastically quiet streets surrounding the Capitol.
They've heard about Hazel Abel Park, but have they been there?
Those people will get pages and pages full of new ideas - and possibly grave misconceptions - about the Near South neighborhood over the course of the series.
We must be crystal clear in the understanding that this place, "The Core," is not a war zone.
"The once-proud neighborhoods in the shadow of the Capitol are under siege," reads the series introduction. "From drug dealers, hookers and pimps. From a perfect storm of empty rentals, decaying buildings and desperate landlords. But those who remember the history of Lincoln's core - and those with a vision for its future - aren't ready to surrender."
"Surrender." As if it's a war.
The stories are written to convey the hopelessness of a broken neighborhood. Short sentences. Scary thoughts. Watch your back. Stay in after dark.
Drug dealers. Hookers. Pimps.
Fear. Like we live in Chicago's Cabrini Green. Or Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn. Or South Central Los Angeles.
It's like that in "The Core."
Or so you might think, reading the stories of people who seem so far away from your own Lincoln home and so different from your families.
The people showcased in the newspaper have problems. They keep turning back to crime or prostitution.
They're addicted to drugs or struggling with drug dealers.
They're "being held hostage," according to Lincoln Police Sgt. Mike Bassett.
They look different, too. Look at them. They're black and Latino and Asian. Everything written about this place where I live makes it sound like the stereotypical "hood."
It makes sense that people will read this series close. It's interesting, even exotic in a way. There's undeniably something romantic to the idea that Lincoln's big enough to have its very own "ghetto." The place where you don't go after dark for fear of being robbed or shot. The place where everything is so very different, there's no way the "normal Lincolnites" can blend in or feel safe.
There's only one problem: We don't have that place here.
Five people were killed in Lincoln in 2007. In Baltimore last year, 282 were killed. Baltimore is only three to four times larger than Lincoln.
Baltimore, for example, has a violence problem. Lincoln does not.
That's not to take away from what Near South threatens to become if left to its own devices. Keeping an eye on the neighborhood is vitally important. But overdramatizing problems doesn't solve them, it just makes them more fun to read in the newspaper.
I've dealt with plenty of the residents we're reading about this week in the Journal Star. I walk around regularly after midnight, as do many of my friends. I've had chats with plenty of my neighbors to know that for every "hooker" and drug dealer, there are ten honest guys who lead purposeful lives in the Near South.
There's diversity and success. Dozens of students live in the neighborhood. Nebraska Unicameral staffers live here for its proximity to the Capitol. Working families with children are everywhere, and while many of them struggle with poverty, relatively few have plunged themselves into crime and prostitution as a response to that poverty.
The ones that have been sucked into prostitution aren't there because they like it. They can be helped and there are efforts under way - this came across clearly in "The Core." It's worth noting, though, that the reporters who called these people "hookers" also somehow managed to use the gerund "hooking" in a sentence.
"Prostitutes" are boring statistics; "hookers" sell papers. It's the name of the game, I guess.
But in the end, the fact that the Journal Star is running this series is not bad journalism. It's not a bad newspaper. The writers contributing to the series are accomplished and professional, and the neighborhood will be better in the long run under the eyes of the public.
"The Core" tries to expose real problems in a certain part of the city, which, statistically, are very real and threaten to get worse. The City of Lincoln is moving to fix those issues with the support of the neighborhood and the participation of all of us, its residents.
When you read these reports, understand that it's not quite so dramatic in the Near South. It's not quite so different. It's generally just as mind-numbing a place as any other neighborhood.
It's a place full of good people, some facing greater hurdles than others. Those hurdles can and will be dealt with - but the process will be much more painful if the residents of Lincoln shun the neighborhood as an end-of-the-line slum.
We're far from that point in the Near South, and such a perception would be tragic.
Chuck Lippstreu is a senior international studies major. Reach him at chucklippstreu@dailynebraskan.com.
