…speak my mind about the “Belltown Crime” YouTube videos.

The clips in question, no longer publicly viewable, were placed by an anonymous 26-year-old white female who moved into an apartment here and was shocked to find poor people hanging out in the alleys.

That’s a snarky sentence, I know. It makes the videographer sound like one of those upscale couples who move into quaint country houses near picturesque cattle pastures, then complain about the wafting aromas.

Please note the videographer’s not claiming the persons in ehr video clips had directly threatened any crime against her own self. Nor was she overtly ranting about the poor or the homeless, but about what she calls “crackheads.” She’s not dissing them for existing but for existing while (allegedly) drugged up.

Yet, to the untrained (suburban) eye, the behavior of a disoriented, mentally ill, or simply out-of-sorts man or woman, particularly if the man or woman has an unkempt appearance, can be mistaken for the behavior of a frizzled-out drug user.

Downscale people have existed in Belltown long before upscale people did. There have been three traditional newcomer responses to the downscalers’ existence:

1. Ignore, shy away, close the curtains, cross the street, don’t talk to them, don’t look them in the eye, pretend you didn’t see anything.2. Harass, belittle, demonize, call for police crackdowns, alert the media, evict social-service agencies, demand Someone Do Something Now.

3. Empathize, donate, seek positive solutions (no matter how incomplete).

You can probably discern which category I believe the videographer has chosen, and which I believe you should choose.