I personally don’t know any of my neighbors. Okay - so I know how much their house costs (in comparison to my family’s), I know what kind of cars they drive, who their kids are (if they still live at home), and a rough guess at what their nationality is.  However, aside from that I don’t know my neighbors. Therefore, this idea of having a National Night Out - is a good thing. 

My neighborhood association put on a block party two years ago - my parents went but I did not. Apparently, it was really awkward because as natural suburbans we like living in our own space - we did not sign up to diverge circles with another family or a another group of human beings. However, we are social creatures; we like being acknowledged by people - even if we don’t personally like them them back.  But imagine what a united community could do that millions of dollars would not - let us look at the numbers. 

Fullerton (my home city) 

• has a crime index of 20- meaning that it is only 20% safer than the rest of the United States

• There are 15 drug and alcohol abuse facilities in Fullerton alone. 

That’s just a small picture of Fullerton - and I’m not saying that Fullerton is going to hell or whatever. I just think that it would be very rad if communities came together and said that they were going to say no to crime, no to teenagers thinking that they have no one else to turn to, no to prejudice and racism, and no to being alone. 

national block party link here