After enourmous pressure from last nights protest in North Miami Beach and loads of emails for YOU – the readers of Yeshivaworld, Mayor Alvarez has aggreed to meet with the community. The following was an email sent to Yeshivaworld from a community activist:

Mayor Alvarez will meet on May 25, 2007 with the leaders of the Dangerous Donut Hole in North Miami Beach, Florida. The neighborhood got its nickname since the small area of unincorporated Miami-Dade County is completely surrounded by the City of North Miami Beach, Florida.
 
The Mayor has the power to expedite the process of closing access points to our neighborhood. This became necessary and urgent once the new Super Wal-Mart opened.  The combination of a public high school, the new Super-Wal-Mart,  our community with 17 points of access and the nearby Interstate made our streets unsafe to walk.
 
For 15 months we have been asking the Mayor for a meeting but until calls and e-mails arrived the world over asking for the Mayor to grant that meeting, none was scheduled. Please assure that meeting will be productive by writing the Mayor and asking him to expedite the access closing process and in the interim proving a police presence in the Dangerous Donut Hole.
 
Neighbors are already pledging to contribute a large portion of the cost of the closure process and will ask the government to do its part. Corporate support would also be helpful. We have a beautiful community that is in danger of being destroyed if help is not timely. We need to get back to the pre-Wal-Mart days. Wal-Mart should not have been permitted to open until our neighborhood was closed. We are in a direct path from Wal-Mart to the interstate. It has not proved helpful. Perhaps Wal-Mart can help make our neighborhood safer by contributing money for the access closures. One member of our community has already been brutally beaten after loading groceries in his car at the Super Wal-Mart.  After 6 attackers knocked him to the ground, they began to kick and punch him until he had to be rushed to the hospital. All so they can steal his car and cell phone. Sadly this was done in front of bystanders. We must reverse this problem before it becomes deadly.

We ask our friends throughout the world to continue e-mailing Mayor Alvarez at [email protected] and copy us at [email protected].

Please forward this to everyone you know that will write the Mayor. Time is not on our side but with e-mails the time frames will be speeded up.

(The amount of emails Yeshivaworld received from residents in North Miami Beach is incredible! They thank everyone around the globe for showing that they care about them.–YW Editor)