protest, process, begin again
hey all
so just checking in on a quiet saturday morning. quiet anytimes used to be a rarity around here, but a whole bunch of people just left the space i am staying at. it sort of feels like all my friends down here are leaving, but i know its not true. but alot of people are leaving right now, or in the next two weeks. but its ok because im sure there will be other people to make friends with...so anyway ive been having lots of fun lately, epitomized by the other night when i was riding with a bunch of friends to city park at like 2am, drunk playing a trombone as i road my bike. this city is funny. on the other hand last night i went to a presentation by some folks that i work with and heard their stories of being here during the storm, or getting here shortly thereafter, and it just reminded me all over again of how fucked up shit is. this city is really really strange like that and i keep talking to people about it because im still struggling to wrap my brain around it. just in the sense that one minute you can just forget all the fucked up shit and just be having fun riding bikes and drinking with friends, and the next minute you can be reminded all over again that their is no social infrastructure to take care of people in this city. i was reminded of that the other day when i was riding through the ninth ward and saw a man that used to stay at the school with us crawling along the sidewalk and into traffic, clearly having some sort of mental break down, the guy has always been very clearly mentally disabled, but this was definetly beyond that, and it was scary because he was sort of threatening folks, but also scary because it was clear that there was a very high potential of him getting hurt. and aside from the police there's not really anything in place to help this guy right now. if it was albany i would have had a list of places to call...and of course you don't want to call the police to do something about a black man who's crawling down the street in the ninth ward, because chances are they will just shoot him or beat him or something else terrible. and maybe that sounds dramatic, but in reality i went to a press conference yesterday for a man that was killed just the other day in the ninth ward by the national guard, a man who was mentally ill...http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-20/1173512004241300.xml&coll=1 i didn't read the article yet, but there it is...
anyway there's a little snippet of whats going on down here. its really hard to write about it just because its so strange surreal in alot of ways. but mostly im really happy to be here and thinking alot about how to let people know whats going on and ways to make it visible. and in the end whats happening here is just a much more magnified, or sped up version of what's happening in the rest of the country. affordable housing is being turned into luxury condominiums, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting pushed out, devalued, and criminalized...and well yeah, its a sort of scary world...
hope all are well.
xo
so just checking in on a quiet saturday morning. quiet anytimes used to be a rarity around here, but a whole bunch of people just left the space i am staying at. it sort of feels like all my friends down here are leaving, but i know its not true. but alot of people are leaving right now, or in the next two weeks. but its ok because im sure there will be other people to make friends with...so anyway ive been having lots of fun lately, epitomized by the other night when i was riding with a bunch of friends to city park at like 2am, drunk playing a trombone as i road my bike. this city is funny. on the other hand last night i went to a presentation by some folks that i work with and heard their stories of being here during the storm, or getting here shortly thereafter, and it just reminded me all over again of how fucked up shit is. this city is really really strange like that and i keep talking to people about it because im still struggling to wrap my brain around it. just in the sense that one minute you can just forget all the fucked up shit and just be having fun riding bikes and drinking with friends, and the next minute you can be reminded all over again that their is no social infrastructure to take care of people in this city. i was reminded of that the other day when i was riding through the ninth ward and saw a man that used to stay at the school with us crawling along the sidewalk and into traffic, clearly having some sort of mental break down, the guy has always been very clearly mentally disabled, but this was definetly beyond that, and it was scary because he was sort of threatening folks, but also scary because it was clear that there was a very high potential of him getting hurt. and aside from the police there's not really anything in place to help this guy right now. if it was albany i would have had a list of places to call...and of course you don't want to call the police to do something about a black man who's crawling down the street in the ninth ward, because chances are they will just shoot him or beat him or something else terrible. and maybe that sounds dramatic, but in reality i went to a press conference yesterday for a man that was killed just the other day in the ninth ward by the national guard, a man who was mentally ill...http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-20/1173512004241300.xml&coll=1 i didn't read the article yet, but there it is...
anyway there's a little snippet of whats going on down here. its really hard to write about it just because its so strange surreal in alot of ways. but mostly im really happy to be here and thinking alot about how to let people know whats going on and ways to make it visible. and in the end whats happening here is just a much more magnified, or sped up version of what's happening in the rest of the country. affordable housing is being turned into luxury condominiums, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting pushed out, devalued, and criminalized...and well yeah, its a sort of scary world...
hope all are well.
xo