1960 to 2008

Nov 05, 2008 00:32

I grew up in Washington, DC, in the 1960s. I clearly and vividly remember the race riots of 1968 in Washington. I remember the National Guard and the Army out on the streets every evening at sundown, weapons in hand, riding in jeeps, shooing all the kids inside, where we sat in our houses, our apartments, our tenements, behind closed (blackout) ( Read more... )

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editrx November 5 2008, 07:48:00 UTC
Was he at Georgetown Law School? American University Law School?

DC hasn't actually changed that much. Which is saddening. What changed for me, of course, was that when I was living there in the 60s and early 70s (I moved to PA in 1976, with my mother and brand-new step-father), I lived in affluent, white Northwest DC. When I was looking to move there when baron_elric was working at Georgetown (which is in NW DC, and is richer and whiter than ever), the best we could afford was the least-scariest area of where MD intersects the DC border in NE DC, a very black area. The MD town is very multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-language and culture, and very open to anyone as long as they're rather progressive (which we are!), but the DC border area against the town is the worst area of the worst slums of DC, all black, and very, very, very anti-white. Anti-anything, actually. The crime statistics for the MD town were lower than any around it, and yet on average there are more than 10 armed house break-ins in that town in a one-month period and at least 3 armed robberies and twice as many armed assaults every single week -- in a town of less than 250 people. Spanning less than eight square blocks.

I wonder how much that area will change now -- I fear not much at all. We have so far to go, still.

And people still chide me for not moving my entire life down there and having Elric keep the job at Georgetown (commuting more than an hour each way to work each day, given the DC traffic). I'd be in that rented house alone every single day -- alone. I'd have had to leave everything up here at the NH house -- all the antiques, my jewelry, most of our belongings, because to take it into that neighborhood, into a house that really couldn't be secured (none of those old Craftsman-era houses can be, not a rented house that I couldn't alter), would be to have it all stolen pretty much right away. And no one to look after it all properly up here. Yeah, right.

The people at Georgetown were furious that we ended up backing out of it all, after nine months of trying to find a place for the pitiful salary they were giving him -- at the level he was, with his experience, they were paying him half what anyone else would make at that job. Just because they thought they could get away with it with people who didn't know the price of everything in the DC area.

And now I wonder. Because, well ... no work at all now.

God. DC. I feel on one hand like I missed a bullet with my name on it (maybe literally). On the other hand, the other bullet with the word "homelessness" is sitting waiting in the wings up here in NH. (And NH has literally zero homeless shelters.)

I loved DC. I hate DC. It's one of those relationships, I guess. ;)

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