Jacob Weisberg Quotes

As a city, we have to face the reality that New York's minority communities experience a disproportionate share of violent crime.

I think there's an element where people get very comfortable in their ghetto. Which is fair enough.

The trouble with us is that the ghetto of the Middle Ages and the children of the twentieth century have to live under one roof.

You leap over the wall of one ghetto and find yourself in another ghetto.

'The Wire' is very realistic and based on real events.

I think riots happen when communities are under pressure for long periods of time. That's not a mistake.

I know we haven't cleaned up all the slums, but I didn't create the slums, did I?

South Central's been portrayed so many different ways in the media for however long.

One of my biggest influences, of course, is David Simon and his work on 'The Wire.'

I gained direct knowledge of the life of the poor in big towns: I have lived the narrowing mechanism of its conditioning and feared it.

Because Katrina put it out there, no one can play the pretend game anymore that there isn't poverty and inequality in this country. The Millions More Movement - Katrina gives it added significance.

I think 'The Wire' really is relatable. It reflects an ongoing issue across America, about inaccuracies in major cities between rich and the poor and some of the things that go on behind the red tape of council and government bodies.

'Death at an Early Age' was about racial segregation in Boston. 'Illiterate America' was about grownups who can't read. 'Rachel and Her Children' was about people who were homeless in the middle of Manhattan.

If the Negroes are to remain forever removed from the producing atmosphere, and the present discrimination continues, there will be nothing left for them to do.

It's important for me to go back into the ghetto, where I'm from. I still get my oxygen from there. I don't live in the ghetto anymore, but every time I go back, I'm still seeing the same things that I lived.

It's hard for me to view Baltimore outside the context of what Baltimore has always been in my mind: a violent place.

I was born and raised in the ghetto, on welfare, two minutes from homeless.

I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with Blood.

The condition of white people in this State is such that they must labor in competition with the negro laborer.

For the urban poor the police are those that arrest you. In almost any slum there is a vast conspiracy against the forces of law and order.

There are people with no high school education who are poor. but there are also university graduates on food bank lines. There are people who are poor because they have made bad choices, gotten addicted to drugs, burned bridges with friends and family — and then there are people who have never taken a drug in their lives, who have huge social networks, and who still can’t make ends meet.

If this is the second century of slumdom, it is also the 14th year of a self-governed state, when the babies of 1916 are still, as men and women, crying for a happier life for their babies, crying for a simple shelter.

A culture that generates more backwardness with every generation.

You have to understand - I come from a neighborhood where 'The Wire' was filmed.

Most citizens viewing the tape of Rodney G. King being beaten by police officers were stunned and uncomprehending. Most citizens, that is, but the urban poor.