“Together, we are making communities safer, more caring places to live.
“A national community-building campaign that promotes police-community partnerships.”
My neighborhood is throwing a small and brief block party around the dinner hour. We plan to stop in. I don’t recall ever hearing about this before. Have you? And are you planning anything?
I’ve certainly heard of it, but have never lived where it’s much of a thing.
The point seems to have been a family-friendly boozeless get together to meet one’s neighbors, that’s not affiliated with any holiday, ethnicity, religion, politics, etc. A sane Holiday for Everyone so to speak.
And especially for those who live in less than safe neighborhoods, or who perceive their neighborhood to be less than safe, to demonstrate to the baddies that the good people outnumber them greatly. And to show the other good folks by example that they outnumber the baddies too.
I hope it has not been hijacked by RW conformism-disguised-as-community.
Unsurprisingly, I don’t have a lot of faith in our militarized, law of omerta police force anymore, especially since Felon47 has continued to cripple any attempts at oversight and accountability (which was already sorely lacking). So, nope, nuh-uh, ain’t happening for me at least.
Plus, one of the (many?) consequences of living in the stodgy conservative churchy land of Colorado Springs is that there’s a high percentage of wanna-be vigilantes who look askance of anyone around that feels like “others”. My neighborhood is largely conservative, and my wife and I are among the younger, and absolutely more liberal members.
Sure, I’ll wave at and acknowledge my neighbors, but other than the next door one who just got a Prius Prime just after we did, I don’t think I’ve exchanged more than 2-300 works with any of them.
We’ve lived in this house for over fourteen and a half years, and I’ve spoken to neighbours maybe a dozen times. And this is the first time I’ve ever heard of this idea.
I’ve always known National Night Out to be a night when a business invites local law enforcement to gather their vehicles in a parking lot and the kids crawl all over them and honk the horns. That’s how they do it around here. Nothing about block parties.
We don’t always have one because the PD and FD wait to be invited, and the businesses with big parking lots don’t always care. It’s been at Target and at Home Depot in the past.
Our city does put on a touch-a-truck event on city property but that’s a different thing.
And yeah I always get creeped out by the big-ass SWAT vehicles that show up. Lame.
A night to meet the neighbors has some appeal, although i don’t see the need for a “national day” to hold a block party. A night to celebrate police programs really doesn’t have any appeal at all.
If it’s not happening organically then maybe a national event could help kickstart relations? Seems like a nice idea, anyway. It’s kind of sad how many people don’t know theirs at all.
No, but improving police-community relations would presumably be a good thing. Or is that a lost cause these days?
Seems like a good idea. I’m afraid that, at least this year, I’m not going to be the one to organize one, though.
I do hang out some with some of the neighbors. There used to be occasional block parties – I hosted a few myself – but there hasn’t been in a few years; maybe somebody will start them up again.
(The “block”, in this case, would be all of my short dead end road, and the slightly longer and not dead-end road that it’s off, and sometimes some people from adjacent roads and/or family members/friends from further away.)
Having local police show up at a block party in a friendly fashion would be fine, IMO, whether in uniform or not. Emphasis however on their doing so in a friendly fashion.
The occasional Meet The Police and/or Play On The Firetruck event, which does happen around here once in a while, seems to me to be a different sort of event. If the local police actually are trying to be friendly (and yes in some areas this does happen), those are probably a good idea also; but I wouldn’t call them a neighborhood block party.
In an ideal world, this would be a worthwhile cause. For me, three lots down my street was one of the TWO guys who kept flying Trump flags for all of Biden’s administration. Again, nope for me.
Considering that cops are frequently “Cops before Color” I almost respect them building a color-blind society - if such society wasn’t so corrupt, self serving, and insular in ways that makes it excessively hostile to those it is supposed to “protect”. So yeah, lost cause IMHO.
My neighborhood has been having a block party on National Night Out every year since we moved in (eight years ago). Lots of pot luck food and drink (plenty of wine and beer), someone usually has a table with name tags available. Police and fire folk show up.
It has been a great opportunity for new neighbors to get acquainted with everyone, and we always discover someone interesting we hadn’t met before.
More or less the same here. Never heard of it. I also (googling) never heard of National Waterpark day or National Milk Chocolate day, altho that last I can get behind!
National Milk Chocolate Day? What have you got against National Dark Chocolate Day? Just what part of town are you from? You’re not from around here! < Piper eyes Deth with suspicion. >
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