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Help us tell the story of the Miami Valley by writing a letter to the President and sending it to WYSO.Your letter can be written, or recorded for audio or video. WYSO will collect the letters for a special storytelling series this spring.Your letter may be featured on the air! Here's how to participate:Write a letter: No more than 300 words - THEN - follow these steps:Record yourself in audio or video reading your letter out loudSend us the recording. Length: no longer than 90-secondsSend us a selfie/portrait of yourself holding your letterPlease let us know if you need help recording your letterWe want to hear from you, your family, your friends and your neighbors. Email your letter to wyso@wyso.org. A producer may contact you for more information.

Dear Mr. President: Urban Poverty Problems Have Become Endemic

Dear Mr. President

Attention: President Donald Trump

The West side of Dayton, Ohio, is symptomatic or emblematic of the successful politics of racism, whereby it is acceptable to neglect and disparage African American (or Black in the common racial parlance) sides of cities and towns across America. This has resulted in lower property values, a general lack of investments, blighted neighborhoods and communities, lower education standards, fewer job opportunities and exponential growth in urban crime.

Political leaders and media organizations at all levels pile on these crimes-against-humanity and property values, and have significantly contributed to the self-inflicted injuries of lower economic prosperity. What I am referring to here is a significant decline in property tax revenues, and the negative impacts on Gross Domestic and National Product or Production. We are all Americans no matter what our race, creed, religion, national origin, gender or sexual orientation. In other words, we are all representative members of the same human race or humanity and the United States economy. Obviously, the urban poverty problems have become endemic and pandemic.

Poverty tends to perpetuate itself and concentrate over multiple generations. Whether you call it PTSD issues or emotional-intelligence deficits -- the damages have become pathological and deeply cultural. There is much remedial work to be done, internally and externally to these urban communities across this country of ours.

If the U.S. can send drones (UAVs or UASs) from Wright Patterson Air-Force Base -- 12,000 miles to the Middle East -- to target and kill specific Al Qaeda and Isis (Arabic language acronym Daesh) terrorist operatives, we certainly have the capability and capacity to target and eradicate the festering legacy of urban planned damages. These racial damages are as planned, overtly or covertly, as any planned community plat or subdivision.

We need to start a letter-writing campaign to President Donald Trump to ask him what his plans are for solving our national urban-negligence problems. This letter writing campaign needs also to be directed towards local and state elected officials, too. The U.S. internal problems need to be solved before our nation can legitimately have the moral authority to solve problems in other countries.

Our national competitive advantage should not be based on hypocrisy, and on illegitimately imposing our military power in the civil wars of sovereign nations.

Respectfully,

Curtis M. Watson

February 6, 2017

Dear Mr. President asks what you want to say about your community, and what you want President Donald Trump to know about the Miami Valley. Submit your own letter by emailing it to wyso@wyso.org.

This letter was lightly edited for clarity.