“A friend of mine recently got robbed by an 11-year-old in the Near West Side – an 11-year-old, right? And I can’t begin to fathom the circumstances that pushed that kid to do that, right? But that only tells me that we failed – the system has failed.”
(Ryan Johnson-Travis of the Near Westside, 28, adjunct professor in Syracuse University’s African-American Studies program, Democrat)
“We have a huge investment in an extremely enormous mall. And that’s not a bad thing. But we have all these campaigns that say ‘Shop downtown, shop local.’ But at the same time, we’ve agreed to have this brand new, giant mall installed. And I think it’s just counterproductive.”
(Andrew Jordan of Syracuse’s Westside, 27, gift gallery manager at the Onondaga Historical Association, registered with the Independence Party)
“With the amount of people that are serving on the police force, we need to have more going into that, for the protection of the citizens, as well as the business owners down here. It’s not that safe yet, here, in Syracuse.”
(Emilie Crosby of Camillus, 62, owner of Café Ole in downtown Syracuse, unaffiliated with a political party)
“Keep downtown clean. Have you ever walked down the sidewalks of downtown? It’s like cigarette butts, gum stains, dog poop everywhere.”
(Tavon Walker of The Valley, 22, server at La Taqueria in downtown Syracuse, unaffiliated with a political party)
“The drugs – they are everywhere. Just sitting down at the wall over there, where the buses used to be, you see all those kids over there? They are all sitting around smoking spike.”
(Anne Burgmeier of Syracuse, 21, unemployed mother, unaffiliated with a political party)
(Valerie Crowder is a junior with dual majors in newspaper journalism and political science.)
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