To the editor:

Leonard Pitts wrote: “There is a sickness afoot in our country, my friends, a putrefaction of the soul, a rottenness in the spirit.” (Journal-World, July 9). Mr. Pitts was referring to the tragic reality of killing after killing last week.

I am compelled to face this reality of cultural demise in Lawrence. We share in denial of responsibility toward festering systemic problems affecting thousands of our own citizens. Our public policies and power systems demonstrate our denial of deeply rooted structures contributing to traumatic and widespread domestic, gender and childhood violence. Generational economic and political neglect abusively affects the emotional, mental, and physical development of our children.

Failing to ensure effective treatment for those having mental illness and/or addiction abuse, failing to provide adequate safe and affordable housing for those in crisis or for the working poor and low-income people is a disgrace in a town having this level of wealth and abundance. Thirty years of neglect in resolving our housing needs results in daily toxic-stress, fear, and hopelessness for families and children. Once again we fall back on the way we always do things, protecting powerful interests. We continue responding to the demands for more privilege from the well fed, housed, entertained, comfortable beings we like to be,

Good and faithful people claim that all of us are one family. We do not live and see and hear and act in such a way to make that truth a reality. I grieve today.