In Windsor there are two groups fighting to make a better city and community for us to live in: those who want to confront reality and those who want to hide from it

When I was filling in on AM800 CKLW this week for Dan MacDonald, someone texted to say that I should focus on the positives downtown and not the negatives.

The conversation of the hour was about the recent and ongoing vandalism of downtown businesses, which at that point included: Phog Lounge, La Vern’s, Shawarma Palace, and Shawarma Queen, and I am sure others that have yet to receive as much attention.

Digging a hole and burying your head in the sand isn’t a viable strategy for dealing with what’s actually occurring around us.

What positive is there to say when businesses are repeatedly having to deal with multiple thousand dollar damages, repeatedly.

What positive is there to say when people are having mental health crisis is requiring intervention, supports, and housing.

What positive is there to say when we see the same rhetoric being deployed in our print pages, hear the same rhetoric deployed on our airwaves, and understand that that rhetoric is meant to placate and pacify.

Now is not the time to spout platitudes about positivity. Now is the time for a very real conversation about the state of the situation at hand.

Our downtown, our neighborhoods, and our city, deserves nothing less than a fulsome conversation about the truth: we are in need of intervention.

I understand that it’s not positive to not speak positively, but it’s also not positive to ignore reality.