I Think We Have Come to the End

Appropriately, the sentencing of former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle followed quickly on the heels of the general election so that West Oaklanders could be bitch slapped twice by a system that does not care about them.
.
Forty-four percent of the households in my neighborhood do not have access to a car. There is no decent public transportation; neither do taxis cruise the streets picking up fares. With only 250 registered voters in my precinct, the city will not even open a polling place. The ballot marking procedure changes in every election so that the method learned in one election means nothing to subsequent elections and ballots are easily invalidated in the rare instances when they are cast.
.
We do not have a full service grocery store. West Oaklanders buy most of their food at mom-and-pop corner stores and gas stations, meaning they pay the highest possible price for household staples such as milk and eggs. That is like going to the emergency room to get a Kleenex. There is no fresh produce in a gas station. Dining out often means buying fatty, high sodium food from a taco truck.
.
We are red lined for gas—paying as much as 50% more for a gallon of gas than drivers in better neighborhoods. Our stores are big box stores. Our dogs are pit bulls. Our rides are bicycles. Our restaurants are trucks. Our parks are center dividers. Our attitude is fuck you.
.
Last night, when Mehserle received a two year sentence for killing an unarmed man who was face down on the ground with another officer kneeling on his back, Oakland erupted in violence for the third time this year. America listens to only two voices: money and violence. My neighbors do not have money. When the government, including the justice system, says ‘we don’t give a rats ass about you and to prove it, we will not punish your murderers,” we answer with smashed windows, burned cars, and, last night, stripping officers of their guns and turning the tables. A gun sure looks different when it's pointed at your head.
.
But what did you expect? Flowers? A peaceful march where we sang the old time spirituals?

One of These Is True, the Other Is a Dream

1. Two work colleagues and I piled into a taxi to head out to lunch. The driver, a recent immigrant from India, was unfamiliar with the restaurant we directed him to and asked us to tell him how to get there. Although we were diligent in guiding him at first, we got lost in conversation and were soon enough lost on the road. Despite picking up and extra person who seemed to know the area, we ended up far from where we intended to be. I could not recall the name of the restaurant but, certain that I knew how to get there, I began telling the driver what road to take, where to turn, etc. Our party grew to a small convoy when another car responded to our appeal for assistance by saying, “Follow me.” One of the people in the cab claimed to be about to faint from low blood sugar and asked could we please stop at any store and pick up something small, like a bag of chips. Our driver pulled into a seedy looking corner store in a tough neighborhood. There was little in the store other than sugar—candy, soda, ice cream—and we declined to buy anything, preferring to soldier on to the restaurant. We got back in the cab and were immediately surrounded by young toughs who began beating on the roof and hood of the cab, taunting us for not spending money in their store. I said, don’t worry, they’re making fun of us for being white. The apparent ring leader heard this and started to laugh; he thrust a 40 through the window of the cab and I took it, drank some and passed it to the others. We spent much of the afternoon surrounded and drinking.

2. After obtaining a medical marijuana Rx and a license to grow, a woman in my building began cultivating plants on the roof and, after a few crop rotations, discovered she had an aptitude for producing incredibly strong ganja. Soon, the grow garden on the roof became a small farm that employs a handful of people at harvest time. Unfortunately, the woman’s profound attraction to abusive men is in direct, if inverse, proportion to her aptitude for producing splendid spliffs. As hindsight is universally recognized to be 20/20, we might reasonably argue that she should have seen trouble coming when her crop could be measured in bushels as opposed to plants. After the most recent harvest, one of her helpers stopped by for a brew. Though the harvest was a home grow for personal use, it was not hard to see it as a cash crop worth big money. Another beer and this chap had dollar signs gleaming in his eyes. My neighbor is spunky and when her visitor challenged her for the pot, she put up a fight. That’s when things got very bad. They fought hard and dirty. The woman was battered quite severely but this was not the first time she'd been attacked by a man she trusted. As she was being pushed against the counter, she had the presence of mind to grab a pair of scissors she’d been using to trim the plants and stabbed her assailant in the nuts. Hard. Later, the police were able to gather DNA evidence from the blood on the floor.

We Don't Waste Words In the Square