Today's column on crime in Fells Point and whether the boundaries make a difference got several responses, mostly from people who understand what truly matters is the shooting and the victim:

I just wanted to drop you a quick note to express my support for your most recent column. The fact that the concern stems from whether or not the shooting occurred in Fells Point sickens me. Not only does it demonstrate abject disregard for human life, specifically a life which appears to have belonged to a loving mother and honest citizen, but it also exposes one of the nastiest by-products of gentrification: class-based racism. Invisibile lines which carve out distinct social stratas make it possible that Ms. Wright could be murdered "just a few feet" outside of the Fells Point limit.

I am appalled.
 
I accept that Baltimore is a city of neighborhoods. I am a citizen of one of them, and a born-and-bred child of another. But lord knows that we can be something more. We can be one city. I know that in my heart. But it can't happen until we stop promoting these racist attitudes through inequitable, government-sponsored gentrification and redevelopment.
 
Thank you for this column, and the many others you produce. They mean something to me.
 
Very respectfully,
Dennis Robinson
J.D./M.B.A. Candidate, 2010
University of Maryland

Thank you for writing what you did today!!! I have live in Fells Point ... or fells Prospect ... or whatever the "name of the day" is - and have been here for about 12 years. It is appalling that people are responding to you about what part of the city she was actually killed in rather than responding to how she died.  Unfortunately it represents the classism and racism that is pervasive in this city. I am just as concerned as the next person - I have a young son in school a block from where Ms. Wright was shot - but to focus on where it happened (and to whom) rather than the fact that it DID happen at all is alrming to say the least.  Thank you again. Lauri

Dear Mr. Herman,

I totally agree with the point of your article today about the shooting of an innocent lady driving down Broadway in Fells Point.

I was riding my bicycle that very afternoon across that very intersection just about an hour before the shooting happened.  The irony is that I was riding back from a truly "bad" neighborhood over on Pulaski and Pratt streets in West Baltimore. I was helping a friend pack and move her apartment.  I was a bit concerned to be bicycling through her rather seedy neighborhood, but she needed my help.

I bicycle through the Perkins Homes neighborhood on Gough St. every morning and every evening on my commute to and from work. I think about all the crimes I read about there (the discovery of that poor young girl who ran away from Alexandria, VA behind a dumpster, for instance), and I search the faces of the people I see on the streets there, wondering if any of them are murderers.  But to be honest, they all seem just like family and friends, living their lives. In fact, I see a lot more human interaction (of the positive kind) on those streets than I do on my own street (I live on "Washington Hill" at S. Ann and Lombard streets.)

So your point is right on the money. No matter on whose street someone is being shot, it is everybody's problem. If President Obama can go to Turkey and proclaim, "We are not at war with Islam," then surely Baltimoreans can understand that everyone who lives here is part of the same community, no matter how hard we try not to recognize that we are all neighbors.

Sincerely,

Joanne Stato
"Fells Point"