Reply #10: Don't feel badly...

[anelson]

I was born in LR, graduated from UALR with both a BA and Master's degree, and left the state in 1994 after I couldn't get a job paying more than 20K/yr. My mom and family all live there still, and it breaks my heart to fly into Little Rock Regional these days.

The poverty I witness as I drive from east to west down Roosevelt is just shocking and unforgivable. It always breaks my heart. Poor blacks and poor whites at each others' throats fighting for scraps, while the people in West Little Rock are laughing all the way to the bank. It just breaks my heart to come home.

Granted that I live in chicagoland these days, but it just seems that AR is more segregated and static than I can remember. So many failed businesses east of University Ave. The Cinema 150...closed. West Little Rock swells, and Southwest LR rots. Churches on every corner, and F-ing republicans running our state into the ground (Huckabee). What is wrong with our home state? It just breaks my heart to come home these days...