The Tale of Two Cities By Brandon Phillip Reed

The murder of Marando Miller in Texarkana ,Tx on early Friday has began to raise some brows...Does Texarkana have a crime problem in this small city of approximately 38,000...Marando Miller became the 10th victim of homicide in Texarkana as crime runs rampant in this norteastern Texas city....Austin meanwhile on the other hand is much larger with a population of approximately 757,688 and early Saturday morning Osmel Castilla-Diaz became the cities 8th homicide victim...Does anyone see some discrepancies there.Well the root of the problem is , small town America generated its economy from farming and as we moved into the Urbanisation of America small towns such as Texarkana has suffered.The only other major trade to replace farming has been the illicit drug trade.With the I-30 corridor that extends through Little Rock,Hot Springs, West Helena,Memphis etc..This opened up sort of a new breed of opportunity for the poor in these rural communities especially here in Texas with the I-35 corridor being the major drug transportation hub for these drugs coming through Mexico...
Now the problem is getting out of hand America needs to take a look at re-establishing rural-America..You could go to Austin,Dallas,Houston,or San Antonio and find a number of community activists combating the problems through different programs.Not here in Texarkana.These kids have no jobs,no mentors,and no constructive daily programs.Wake up America the major urban areas are having major problems,but small town America is having problems as well,You can check the news for Marshall,Tyler,Longview etc and they are all having murders that were unheard of 10 years ago.This is a systematic problem that we must all recognize ,AMERICA IS MORE DANGEROUS THAN IRAQ ,ISRAEL,AND AFGANISTAN combined.We have approximately 16,425 murders per year in the USA.Lets become proactive and combat the cause of these staggering numbers in Rural America.

http://www.ci.texarkana.tx.us/ourcity.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin,_TexasMore >>http://www.ksla.com/Global/story.asp?S=10746570&nav=menu50_2
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/2009/07/19/0719shooting.html