There are no magic fixes for Trenton’s problems

Watch me fix this city’s problems of violence, blight, crime and unsuccessful education efforts.

Presto. Change-O! Nothing?

That (expletive) trick never works. Neither sleight of hand nor slighted words can produce real change in this city’s troubled neighborhoods awash in weeds, blight, drug and gun violence.

Let’s try this with new Mayor Reed Gusciora.

Steve Miller, please. Abraabra-cadabra. No change-O.

“We got a new mayor and same old problems,” Friendship Baptist Church Pastor John R. Taylor offered Wednesday during a midday press, city-inspired press conference at the intersection of Calhoun St. aka Rev. S. Howard Woodson, Jr. Way and Spring St.

“Once again, I have have to stand here, been standing at various podiums for years,” Taylor continued. He touched on various issues that have plagued for decades Trenton’s most violent and crime-ridden streets.

Come on. We can identify these thoroughfares with the same roted passion as the Lord’s Prayer.

Passaic St., Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, Stuyvesant Ave., Walnut Ave., Hermitage Ave.; all wrapped in poverty; places where lives fragment and hearts break with every gun fight that either injures or kills.

“We have to deal with systemic injustice. We have to deal with jobs not in our communities, lack of education. We have to deal with people trying to put food on their tables and they use various resources” to achieve those ends.

Man, Rev. Taylor needed only The Temptations’ “Ball of Confusion” as background music to turn this press conference into a blaxploitation film.

“Well, the only person talkin’ bout love thy brother, is the preacher. (Come on with it) .... And nobody’s interested in learnin’ but the teacher.”

Taylor said “every life is important, whether or not it’s somebody on the streets or