The performing arts center was a slap in the face of Greensboro's poor just as is the Hotel and this LTE. The writer cries,
" I know very well the limitations of War Memorial Auditorium, and I look forward eagerly to hearing the orchestra and other performers in the new performing arts center. But, as a current volunteer at Greensboro Urban Ministry, I also look forward to a time when we show that we care as much about the homeless, the unemployed and the hungry as we do about attending concerts and plays."
Where was the LTE writer in demanding the the poor be helped before the PAC is built, first things first?
You think volunteering is enough? In most instances volunteering is a band-aid-- treating the symptoms instead of the sickness. The very fact that we need the Greensboro Urban Ministry in the first place tells us something is very wrong with the way things are being done. All of Greensboro's elites volunteer as well and yet Greensboro remains the center of the 2nd hungriest Metropolitan Statistical Area in the United States, has a poverty rate of over 21% and the highest unemployment in North Carolina, and nothing changes while the elites keep volunteering to put band-aids on the wounds they help create.
I don't know Eddie Bass and don't know his part in all this, but his letter reflects the backwards and convoluted ways long perpetuated here in Greensboro. Before the issue of the performing arts center was even made public the Greensboro City Council promised and bonds were passed by the voters to tackle the very issues Mr Bass writes of but as soon as the PAC idea was floated all those promises were forgotten, broken and pushed to the side. The City of Greensboro can always find money for development but not for basic human needs. It's a formula that simply doesn't work.
