Kenneth Stutts on Salisbury’s National Night Out this year: In years past, the city of Salisbury has helped individual neighborhoods plan and get the word out about their own local Night Out events, thereby helping to facilitate people getting to know each other better and to forestall the fading trust that is permeating into our national consciousness.  But now, unfortunately, the City has removed all help to the neighborhoods that are the heart and soul of this town in favor of a centralized Night Out event location…”

One of the primary purposes of the annual National Night Out event is to engender a sense of community and build trust among neighbors in our increasingly connected, but paradoxically dissociative world. 

I know more about and talk more with people thousands of miles away, but I can’t tell you the names of the people who live up the corner from me (and neither can my 86-year-old neighbor). 

In years past, the city of Salisbury has helped individual neighborhoods plan and get the word out about their own local Night Out events, thereby helping to facilitate people getting to know each other better and to forestall the fading trust that is permeating into our national consciousness. 

But now, unfortunately, the City has removed all help to the neighborhoods that are the heart and soul of this town in favor of a centralized Night Out event location far removed from the actual residential cores where most people in our town live. 

The City has once again decided that downtown business and its fanatical obsession with the Bell Tower Green takes precedence over an actual and real feeling of community. 

I suppose our neighborhoods are on their own – that may be for the best. 

Kenneth Stutts