As a youth, my parents taught me the importance of being a productive and responsible citizen of our great city by helping my neighbors and community in whatever way I could. During winter, when the snow arrived in light or heavy form, my father and I would grab our shovels to clear the sidewalks in front of our property and also the sidewalks of neighbors who were elderly or had a medical condition that prevented them from doing so. Other neighbors helped also.
Decades later, what my parents taught me has stayed with me, and though I’m not a young man anymore, instead of picking up a shovel, I get out my snowblower and remove the snow from the entire length of the sidewalk on my side of the block. My neighbor across the street does the same. I clear the snow from the stairs and walkway of neighbors who are elderly or have a medical condition. It’s my way of contributing to my community.
The Chicago City Council is taking steps to create a pilot program that makes sidewalks part of the city’s snow removal duties. While I agree that access to safe travel is important to all, my concern is the costs. Where will this money come from? Will there be yet another city tax to pay for this program?
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Maybe the city wouldn’t need to make sidewalks part of snow removal duties if able-bodied citizens helped in their communities by removing the snow from in front of their property and that of their neighbors who need assistance. As Chicagoans, we should take pride in our communities by helping in any way that we can, not relying on the city to do the things that we could do for ourselves and our communities.
This would also be a valuable lesson to the younger generation of Chicagoans in becoming productive and responsible citizens.
Mario Moreno, Archer Heights
We all want peace
We live in a world where we wish that others would behave in a peaceful, moral way. This wish has raised the question of what is moral and what is not. Who decides? Does morality only rest upon what’s in it for me? Perhaps now that humanity is faced with the huge and growing problem of weather on steroids, among other complex issues, we need to focus on solutions that benefit all of us.
For example, the solution to the war in Ukraine is not just a matter of signing treaties and establishing boundaries. If it were that simple, world governments would rise together and put down the aggressor’s armies, establish firm territorial boundaries and assign reparations as has been done before. History shows this kind of peace does not last.
Although all of us say we want peace, few of us can imagine it or believe that our fellow human beings also want it, so we do not work toward it. Our leaders are failing to create visions of peace with us. They are stuck with the same skepticism.
Perhaps we each need an inner attitude adjustment to believe that the people with whom we share our communities, our country and the planet also want peace. We all want to have safe places to live, jobs to earn money, clothes on our backs and safe food and water on our tables. We can move beyond asking “What’s in it for me?” to “What’s in it for all of us”?
We have a planet full of like-minded people who want peace. Let’s work for peace together!
Mary Hansen, Northbrook
