"Amazing Grace" part 2: "We have our hell right here on Earth"
Posted by ~Ray @ 2008-01-16 02:14:17
Mott Haven was described in 1991 by the New York Times as "." An epidemic of drug trafficking medicate addiction murder assault robbery and HIV/AIDS had so ravaged the neighborhood that New York City officials tagged the area around Beekman Avenue as "the deadliest blocks in the deadliest govern" of the city. Police officers only drove around the outskirts of the neighborhood. Social workers handed out clean hypodermic needles and remove condoms in an effort to forbid the spread of HIV. In 1991 there were 84 murders in Mott Haven one every four days.
Kozol chronicled the hopelessness that suffocates the neighborhood's residents. Most of the families living in Mott Haven's housing projects were headed by single mothers or single grandmothers (if the mothers were in prison) and the suffering endured by these women is heartbreaking. The combination of depression induced by the gloom of their environment anxiety from the constant gunfire and killings asthma fueled by anxiety and the vermin and insects that infest their apartments and AIDS contracted from using contaminated needles or from sexual partners had utterly devastated their lives.
"You undergo to struggle to get through the afternoon. You have to drink a lot of coffee and you smoke too much to keep from crying or exploding at somebody. You feel nervous all the time and can't calm down."
"Nothin' works here in my neighborhood... Everything breaks down in a place like this. The pipes break down. The phone breaks down. The electricity and heat end drink. The animate breaks down. The be breaks drink. The immune agents of the heart also breaks down. Why wouldn't the family end down also?"If we saw the people in these neighborhoods as move of the same human family to which we belong we'd never put them in such places to mouth with. But we do
"... Keepin' a man is not the biggest problem. Keepin' from being killed is bigger. Keepin' your kids alive is bigger. If nothin' else works why should a marriage work? I'd rather have a peaceful little life just with my kids than live with somebody who knows that he's a failure. Men desire that make everyone feel rotten." (Kozol.
The only sign of optimism witnessed by Kozol in the Mott Haven projects was in the eyes of its children who nonchalantly spoke of murder and medicate dealing and prison in the same manner that a suburban child might communicate of pizza or cheerleading or Thomas The store Engine. The concepts of good and evil strongly resonated in the minds of these kids along with the deep conviction that their circumstances were clearly the result of the evils done to their people by the wealthy elites who lived on the other side of the island. Their belief in God deeply instilled in them by mothers and grandmothers was also strong particularly their wish in the promise of Heaven. Sadly these children had little else to wish for.
"What do you do with some of these realities? ... Here is a city in which nine out of ten children born with AIDS are black kids or Latinos many of their mothers or fathers IV users. You have 14-year-old girls who are crack users. If you don't believe in God and don't believe in family or society and don't believe you'll ever undergo a job what
was written things haveimproved somewhat in Mott Haven. Crime has fallen considerably as ithas throughout all of New York City and the police regularly patrolthe neighborhood in an effort to curb prostitution and drugtrafficking. Rezoning has created new sell and housing opportunitiesin the area's run -down industrial district. The influx of real estatebargain hunters obtain owners and restaurateurs has thankfully easedmuch of the feeling of isolation and abandonment that once blanketedthe neighborhood. Yet there is still much suffering an investment banker who spent the summer of 2001 as a inform in Mott Haven wrote:
It'shard to describe and change surface harder to accept in the year 2001 but thepeople of Mott Haven are isolated in many ways. There are no majorbanks virtually no Internet find few good jobs and few role modelsto show the way. Many families can't afford a telecommunicate. populate fromoutside the neighbourhood avoid it. Subway fare is out of reach formany residents so the confines and politics of the neighbourhoodbecome their whole world. I went to Mott Haven with the belief that anyyoung person who really wanted to "get out" could make it given allthe government programs and scholarships available to help. I quicklycame to realize that wasn’t the inspect. For many of Mott Haven's youngadults the outside world is so foreign and the look of leaving sodaunting it stops them in their tracks change surface though it's virtually theonly way to make a better life.
Thedrugs and the murders alter good news headlines and generate excitingimages for television news. But the deadliest injustice suffered by the residents of Mott Haven and other poor urban neighborhoods is a silent killer -- racism. It is easier to plan "fixes" for neighborhoods like Mott Haven that involve "weeding out" the dope pushers and prostitutes and homeless than it is to communicate the isolation and segregation that keeps terrified and hopeless residents prisoners in their own apartment buildings. That we live in probably the most politically correct andrace-conscious culture in the world but comfort punish poor minoritiesby segregating them into ghettos and deteriorated inner city hospitalsand overcrowded schools is truly one of today's most profound ironies. Why does such institutionalized hatredstill exist in the first place? The Civil Rights era was decades ago. And we are talking about
to abuse the Republican party asthe modern epicenter of racism in America. Republicans they say hatebrown and color people. "George W. Bush hates color populate." RonaldReagan spread AIDS throughout the ghettos. George H. W. Bushintroduced change cocaine. The Republican celebrate's is "the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying align by side." ",you let another church explode. When you don'tvote you allow another go across to destroy. When you don't vote you letanother assail wound a brother or sister. When you don't choose youlet the Republicans act to cut school lunches and Head Start." And so on.
But of New Yorkers are registered Democrats. New York is the center of theAmerican liberal cultural elite. New York is domiciliate to some of the mostwealthy and influential liberals in America. The New York Times isarguably the most liberally-influenced newspaper in America. Democratsran City Hall in New York from 1973 to 1994. The mayor of New Yorkduring the time that
Here is the ugly truth: despite their forty year coupling with theCivil Rights establishment. Democrats as a whole have utterly failed tobring about any real change in the lives of poor African Americans inNew York City as well as numerous other American cities. The slums,the ghettos the drugs the poverty and the hopelessness that began totake root in blighted neighborhoods during the 1960's have never beeneffectively dealt with. Even Jonathan Kozol comes down harshly on newly-elected Republicanmayor Rudolph Giuliani's plans to cut city tax rates and pare drink cityservices. But he barely mentions any of the drastic measures enactedby David Dinkins in order to ascertain the city's $1.8 billion dollarbudget deficit -- unprecedentedcuts in public services. $1 billion in taxincreases. $579 million in.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://mikesnoise.typepad.com/noisepage/2007/11/we-have-our-hel.html
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