Capitol-izing on Capitalism
I’m not gonna lie I love D.C. But, Washington, D.C. is one of the most contradictory cities in our nation. You walk the streets of Georgetown and can’t help but notice all the cultured, fashionable people roaming around. Saturday mornings, the Dean and Deluca line spills out to M street with cyclists, students, politicians, World Bank economists, IMF bankers, and lobbyists alike. A stroll through the city blocks reveals well manicured row houses and pedestrians wearing go green D.C. shirts every where you turn. It’s and understatement to say that D.C. society is a conscious well informed cultural group of high status people (well around Georgetown at least).
Yet a few neighborhoods away the stark reality of existence penetrates deep. Despite it’s educated and fashionable facade, Washington, D.C. is one of the largest and most violent urban regions in the United States. In the 1990’s, D.C was the murder capital of the U.S. In present day America, the Washington Metropolitan Area is home to some of the largest and most notorious gang population. Violent crime is a daily occurence in D.C. and its immediately surrounding areas of Maryland and Virginia. Despite, the home of our country’s leader being a few blocks up the street, violence remains salient.
I often sit and wonder how my experience of D.C. would differ I had experienced and related more readily to the dark side of D.C. and not the stuffy high society side. In all honesty, I am just another outsider looking into a world I’d never be accepted as a part of. Yet high society, power, poverty and violence seem to coexist quiet harmoniously in the nation’s capitol. I think it represents a stark metaphor of the deficiencies in modern industrial capitalist society.
Urban Pioneer 
Deficiencies there are! A lot of folks try to hide from the darker aspects of life by either covering it up or pushing it away. The same thing is happening in Cincinnati- people think that by constructing new buildings and fine restaurants that poverty and crime might dissipate, but its totally superficial; a temporary, illogical fix to a huge moral problem. People need to stop living with blind folds over their eyes and pay attention to/awaken that beating thing in their chests…