A second thought on negative comments.

My own personal comment on Saturday's blog. It was an anonymous commenter with some racist statements.

Now it's one thing to not agree with what's posted. But we ask you to not resort to attacks . Also, not being anonymous also shows some conviction to your community, that you're a real person who can stand behind their comments.

Those aforementioned comments are the real views of a FEW people in our community. I heard similar statements in meeting of the WIM (Wabash Indiana Michigan) Block Club. HOWEVER, they are clearly not the thoughts of the MAJORITY of the community. (A WIM officer, after the comments were made, was visibly agnry, and went to address that commenter after the meeting). I have met too many people in the ward to know such comments are out of place here.

Other communities might thrive on anonymous commenters attacking a certain point of view, but we'd like to show Chicago how intelligent & reasonable the people of the 6th Ward are.

Chatham had a community of people who were "haters"(and in that case, left the community entirely). That's one part of our community's history we don't need to re-live.

We DO need to talk about the future...the WIM meeting empasized in their advertising that Chatham is a middle-class neighborhood, implying that Wal-Mart is low class....maybe they had the option of not having it before. But in today's economy? They might want to re-think that theory. Are all the Dollar stores & convenience stores in the neighborhood that much better than a Wal Mart?

Let's discuss, and have differing opinions if we must, but let's also respect each other, and hear each other's heart.