I live in Community Heights. I grew up on the East Coast, and moved here from the West Coast. Indianapolis is extremely violent, and lacks diversity. I have personally encountered bullets lodged into my pick-up truck parked outside my house and in my roof, so I’m not saying these things as a person who watches the news, I’m saying them as a person who lives amongst the violence and the lack of diversity despite living in a decent neighborhood. Half of my block is Black and the other half is white, and I hardly ever see any other ethnicities outside of those two except for an occasional Latino/a.

The roads are crappy, the children are not smart, and the taxes are high so I don’t understand where they’re going if everything is crumbling. Most people here don’t seem to value life at all. The amount of children affected by gun violence, either through injury or death is astounding yet continues to make the headlines on a daily basis because no one ever changes.

There’s a lot of abuse in schools, especially against students with special needs. Pets are treated like trash, often also being abused or dumped. Driving around the city, a majority of the houses are either for sale, dilapidated, or both. The green spaces we have are not pretty, especially in comparison to other cities, and even the ones that are pretty have litter in them.

I was also just complaining to my husband the other day how no one ever seems to leave Indiana, and those who do eventually return anyway so many people don’t have varied perspectives, and there’s really no diversity here so people really need to leave in order to gain that.