Cleveland City Councilman Mike Polensek is making a bit of a name for himself and I'm proud to post his story up here.
The 11th Ward Cleveland native was fed up with a punk in his neighborhood who has been causing a lot of problems
there,most recently an arrest for selling crack near a convenience store in the neighborhood so he decided to write him a little letter.
Rather than dance around the issue, Polensek referred to the recipient in the letter as a 'crack dealing
piece of trash' and closes with a bid to 'go to jail or the cemetary soon.'
Predictably, the recipient's mother has turned this into a racial issue (the letter, you see, also referred to the youngster as 'dumber than mud' and, mud being dirty and black, the letter was clearly a racially-inspired death threat) and is calling the well-known arbiter of truth, Rev. Albert Sharpton, to intervene. He's proven himself very good at sniffing out bigotry in siutations like this.
I hope this young man gets his life back on track, I really do. But I have to believe that if I was causing this much ruckus and someone in my community gave me the finger, I would hope I'd have enough decency to, at the very least, shut the hell up instead of trying to turn MYSELF into the vicim!
While I don't pay as much attention to local politics as perhaps I should, this was a refreshing story for me. Too often around here, people move out to the suburbs and let this city go to the rats. It's a real shame because if more people inside the city of Cleveland would be willing to stand up and do the right thing now and then, rather than spinelessly pandering to thugs and idiots, the city might be able to reclaim a little bit of its once-proud reputation. Instead, it remains a well-kept secret that this is not that bad a place to live at all.
FWIW, this is not the first such letter that Polensek has penned.
The 11th Ward Cleveland native was fed up with a punk in his neighborhood who has been causing a lot of problems
there,most recently an arrest for selling crack near a convenience store in the neighborhood so he decided to write him a little letter.
Rather than dance around the issue, Polensek referred to the recipient in the letter as a 'crack dealing
piece of trash' and closes with a bid to 'go to jail or the cemetary soon.'
Predictably, the recipient's mother has turned this into a racial issue (the letter, you see, also referred to the youngster as 'dumber than mud' and, mud being dirty and black, the letter was clearly a racially-inspired death threat) and is calling the well-known arbiter of truth, Rev. Albert Sharpton, to intervene. He's proven himself very good at sniffing out bigotry in siutations like this.
I hope this young man gets his life back on track, I really do. But I have to believe that if I was causing this much ruckus and someone in my community gave me the finger, I would hope I'd have enough decency to, at the very least, shut the hell up instead of trying to turn MYSELF into the vicim!
While I don't pay as much attention to local politics as perhaps I should, this was a refreshing story for me. Too often around here, people move out to the suburbs and let this city go to the rats. It's a real shame because if more people inside the city of Cleveland would be willing to stand up and do the right thing now and then, rather than spinelessly pandering to thugs and idiots, the city might be able to reclaim a little bit of its once-proud reputation. Instead, it remains a well-kept secret that this is not that bad a place to live at all.
FWIW, this is not the first such letter that Polensek has penned.
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