September 11, 2013

Dear Editor:

Your recent rant about the St. Paul proposal, in which you casually referred to “refugee dumping,” left me wondering: What do you think are our greatest strengths as a neighborhood? For what kind of neighborhood do you hope? I know that you appreciate our history and architecture, but I’m left thinking you hope for a more homogeneous suburban set of neighbors.

I moved to Northeast seven years ago because of the rich variety of immigrant and refugee populations, as well as the socioeconomic diversity here. The Northeast Chamber is honing in on this as a distinctive strength of Independence Avenue businesses. We have some of the only streets in Kansas City where anyone can walk down the street and look like he or she belongs. This also means we have unique opportunities to form friendships with neighbors who seem to be our opposites. Maybe if you made a few more of those kind of friendships, you would see that no human being is trash, and no one was dumped here.

Sincerely,

Chris Homiak

Northeast Resident