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“The rich, giving part of their enormous earnings [to create universities], became known as philanthropists. These educational institutions did not encourage dissent; they trained the middlemen in the American system—the teachers, doctors, lawyers, administrators, engineers, technicians, politicians—those who would be paid to keep the system going, to be loyal buffers against trouble.”
-Howard Zinn
A People’s History of the United States
“Just a reminder that the year is 2009, and white people talking to black people is still a controversial issue in the Republican party.”
Kitty cats and records.
Apparently, I was part of a protest earlier this year against the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Dance Program, for poor treatment of their students of color.
The protest and the anonymous group who staged it like a guerilla art installation are called THIS. I was posting as idyllicmollusk at the time.
I don’t know what words they chose or why, but it is very powerful to hear that they chose a bit of my writing in their fight. Read through their blog. THIS created some waves. It sounds like they are pretty powerful.
A photo from a THIS guerilla installation in February.
Last night, I rode my bike home from an event a couple miles from my house.
It was nearly 2 am and I had some concerns about drunk drivers. I turned down a driveway passage that leads between some public housing complexes near my house to avoid the cars racing up and down the major roads.
As I was riding through the central courtyard, I noticed a group of rather large men, dressed all in black, standing together at one end.
As I passed them, they took note of my presence and started shouting at me. They yelled out “HEY!” several times and demanded that I stop and talk with them.
It took me zero seconds to decide that would be a piss poor idea and to peddle all the faster. Usually ignoring such attention from men and leaving the area quickly is enough.
Not this time. I realized one of the men was literally chasing me. I was overwhelmed with fear. I didn’t even want to imagine what a cluster of five men hanging out in a dark corner at 2 am and shouting at women would want with me. My whole body went cold and I peddled as fast as I could, aiming for the bright lights of the nearest busy street.
I heard one of the men shout “Police!” and thought maybe a police officer was coming to the rescue.
Oh how wrong I was.
Because these men were the police.
That realization did not make me feel any better. I quickly assessed my options and decided to stop before any guns were drawn. Though I experience white skin privilege, the police in my neighborhood are so accustomed to abusing the marginalized communities here that I believed white privilege wouldn’t overcome their “shoot first, ask questions later” mentality.
The five police officers approached and surrounded me. Up close I could see that their dark clothing was black or navy uniforms with policey-decorations on them. They were all white, which I thought was odd for this majority-POC neighborhood. They demanded to know what I was doing in “the projects”. I responded that I was riding my bike home, and that the complexes were between my starting point and destination. They told me that this is a “high crime area” and that I “shouldn’t be around here”. I informed them that that was unreasonable because I live “around here”. That sounding deeply implausible, the leader demanded my ID and accused me of fleeing the police. He and three officers went a few paces away and huddled, speaking in low tones, for the next 15 minutes. One officer was left to monitor me.
I was thoroughly frightened and confused. I had only planned on a quick 10-minute bikeride from hanging out with friends to my home. Being shouted at, chased, and surrounded by a group of five big-bodied men… it hadn’t really occurred to me as a possibility. I expressed my confusion at this turn of the events and questioned my detention. They told me to wait.
Eventually, the leader of the group stalked up to me and in a raised, aggressive voice informed me that I was charged with disorderly conduct and riding a bicycle on the sidewalk. He informed me that I had known all along they were police, that I had shouted insults at them, and that I had deliberately tried to flee them.
This was, of course, news to me. I explained that when I pass noisy groups of men who shout at me in dark passages in the wee hours, it is simply a matter of survival that I get out of the situation, and that any woman in my place would do the same. He repeated that I had known they were police and had intentionally committed this crime.
He handed me the tickets and I got out of there fast. I have never felt so unsafe in my own neighborhood. I have never been harassed in this manner in my neighborhood before. I feel thankful that I came out of the situation with my life. That may be my white privilege. Around here, as around the country, police have a reputation for murdering black people. They murdered one man earlier this summer for the crime of being on his porch and telling a disguised under-cover cop to stop loitering on his property. He was killed in his own front doorway.
Some other reflections:
1. All this shouting and chasing and harassing was in the courtyard of a large housing complex full of families. I am talking hundreds of people. How safe can they feel when police officers are loitering outside of their homes screaming at the top of their lungs at every passer-by? Especially when this community, being low income and of color and partly immigrant, is already subject to excessive amounts of police harassment?
2. My own white privilege was revealed to me as I came to realize that this is what my neighbors experience every day, and that I usually escape it. It’s possible that the same darkness that prevented me from seeing the police uniforms prevented them from seeing my skin tone. They may have planned on harassing a public housing resident of color, and I just blundered into the situation by assuming that I can go wherever I want without police harassment. The fact that I never realized how police interactions interlace the daily lives of my neighbors is a wake up call for me.
3. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THOSE OFFICERS? How dare they harass a woman who is traveling alone at night in an isolated location away from any busy roads (where there would be witnesses and the potential to call for help)? Are they out of their minds? How can they be so blind to their male privilege and the legitimacy privilege of possessing state power? Could they really not see why the situation they chose to create was a terrifying nightmare-scenario for their victim? How in the world is public safety achieved by men shouting at and chasing women in the night? I have never felt so unsafe in my neighborhood as I do now. My neighbors haven’t ever done anything to make me feel unsafe, and so until now I had no fears. The behavior of these men was so egregious that I believe it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find similar instances perpetrated by the supposedly dangerous inhabitants of the public housing buildings.
4. Essentially, my crime here is that I was biking while female. I acted as any rational women would react in this situation. For my natural behaviors of simply trying to survive on the street, I actually have to be a defendant in court.
5. I want to state clearly that this is an intersection of institutional and state classism and racism, and that I will not be accepting comments to the effect of “Oh you’re so naive to live near public housing and/or to think good on your neighbors.” Those comments would be classist and racist and that’s not what this post is here to talk about. Why would I be the “naive white girl” to live near these apartments, but the residents are “hardened black criminals” simply for residing inside the same apartments I live next to? The location of your home does not define you as a criminal or not, nor does your skin color nor your poverty. I guess I should say “should not” instead of “does not”. We all know that people of color, public housing residents, immigrants, and poor people are criminalized simply for existing as such.
Puke.
Share your stories of police harassment if you like. NO RACISM & NO POOR-BASHING.
Check out the 5th Carnival of Feminists over at Zero at the Bone.
Lots of good reading to do. They’ve got some big names, they’ve got some little names. (I’m a little name, FYI.)
Really peeps. Let’s have a little discussion… I think it will be fun and insightful. How do you define socialism? No, not the dictionary, unless you want to ref your fave def. But what does it mean to you, deep down inside?
If you want, share with the group: do you consider yourself socialist? Oh please tell us all the juicy details!
Please do not discuss whether Obama is a socialist or not. BORRRING. Keep it personal! Very personal.
Hello friends.
I am compelled to cease this blog, as it has been used by a stalker to track my activities.
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A dear friend of mine is part of a group who started the Saint March Collective, a gallery located on 406 South Street in Philly. It just opened on March 15 and has an amazing show up.
Two dozen artists have created a “Saint” complete with relics of her body parts — each crafted as an artistic statement. Even the eyes are by two different artists. A portion of the moderate price for the art pieces will go toward an organ donor program. (The young creator of the liver is an actual liver transplant recipient!)
The gallery is a part of a “cultural renaissance” planned by landlords and “pioneers” along South Street to revitalize what once was a hub of Philly’s cultural scene. Five new galleries opened this month, all in donated space in formerly vacant storefronts.
Several more galleries are in the pipeline plus a performing arts center for theater, poetry, dance, and music which is scheduled to open by Easter.
…[The planners] have long lobbied to return the street to its artistic heritage established when the street was revitalized when a generation of hippie artists fought a crosstown expressway to save their arts -oriented community.
I hear there’s a new show going up on Sunday, so if you’re in the area check it out!
Media coverage: Art in the Age, Weekly Press, and South Street.
Yes.
More Czech action!
The Czech in action.
In Williamsburg, NYC.
I’ve noticed that the search “How to Say ‘Merry Christmas’ in Czech” has led several people to my blog lately.
In the spirit of the season, I’ll magnanimously give the people what they want!
Veselé Vánoce!
Get the pronunciation at Czech Phrases.
I’m tossing this little post out there because I want people who are able to remain comfortable during this economic downturn to get a glimpse of the choices that some people face when money and jobs disappear. I’m not whining for the sake of sympathy… if I went totally broke I could probably find friends and family to lend me money until I found work. But nobody really wants to go that route.
I’m facing a tough choice: how to maintain my mental health while unemployed, uninsured, and running out of savings? Previously, when on health insurance, I would go to a psychiatrist regularly, get a prescription, and fill it at the pharmacy.
Then I quit my job and moved. As I began my job search, the economy tanked. My circumstances changed rapidly. Finding, vetting and paying for a new psychiatrist is not an option. Even if money were no object, I am not thrilled about learning the hard way (again) whether my psychiatrist is a homophobe or not, whether s/he will say that I had a distant mother, and that made me queer, and that’s why I struggle with mental illness.
I started splitting my last pills in half, to make my final prescription refill last longer. Then taking them every second day instead of every day. Still no job- but the symptoms started coming back. Friends have offered to split their prescriptions with me- something I can’t accept, because it isn’t fair for them to put their mental health on the line for the sake of mine- there is no net gain.
A friend from out of town visited. She’s in herb school. We talked about doctors controlling my access to mental health care. I could probably afford to pay for the pills alone, but I would have to see a new psychiatrist first and convince them to write a prescription for the same dose of the same medicine that was working for me before. Though it is likely the psychiatrist would write the prescription I need, it is not given- they are in control, they could decide not to. We talked about how money was impeding my ability to get the care I needed, care that if I go without, will eventually impede my ability to find and keep work, leading to a really crappy cycle I want to avoid.
She suggested I try herbs. They are commonly available and require no prescription or doctor visits, i.e. no one controls my access to them. They aren’t cheap, but the expense seems small compared to the alternative of going unmedicated.
So I’m trying it. You have to take them more frequently, and in larger quantities. The therapeutic effects that I previously got from a single tiny pill per day I now get from hundreds of drops from tinctures spread throughout the day- it kind of makes me feel like I’m on a constant drip.
So far, so good. We’ll see.
Cryptosporidium lives in the intestine of infected humans or animals. Millions of crypto parasites can be released in a bowel movement from an infected human or animal. Consequently, Cryptosporidium is found in soil, food, water, or surfaces that have been contaminated with infected human or animal feces.
The most common symptom of cryptosporidiosis is watery diarrhea.
A few years back, there was an outbreak of Crypto Sporidium in my Kansas hometown. Some infected kid shi.t in the town’s only public pool during a hot, hot summer. Within days we had an epidemic on our hands.
My friends and I laughed off the epidemic, congratulating ourselves on being too smart to go swimming in the public pool (due to an already solid reputation for being nasty).
After a few months, the epidemic took its course and everyone could safely forget that they had ever become acquainted with the term “Crypto Sporidium.”
That is, until last weekend, when during a fit of binge drinking with my newly married best friend, dark secrets that had remained buried for years rose to the surface. Here’s how it went down:
Setting: van full of drunk people, Dallas, ~11pm
S.Michael: mumble mumble mumble Crypto Sporidium mumble mumble….
Me (joking): S.Michael! You never told me you got Crypto Sporidium!
S.Michael (whipping his head around to look at his new wife): YOU WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO TELL THEM!
Me: I was joking. Wait a minute, you really had Crypto Sporidium?
S.Michael: (awkward silence)
Me: YOU DICK! Each bowel movement releases millions of parasites! All your friends could have got that off your toilet seat! I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU KEPT THIS SECRET FROM YOUR BEST FRIEND FOR FIVE YEARS.
It turns out that S.Michael and his future wife had clandestinely gone swimming in the public pool at the height of the epidemic. He claims that for the first week he innocently attributed the sudden uptick in bowel movements to the effects of unchecked binge drinking and that it wasn’t until the second week that he considered a connection between 1. Extreme diarrhea epidemic at public pool, 2. Taking a swim at said public pool, and 3. Experiencing extreme diarrhea immediately thereafter.
Be that as it may, this is no excuse for HIDING the fact that he had Crypto Sporidium at whichever point he realized it, as revealing his situation could have led to increased precautions on the part of his friends.
Crypto Sporidium may never have affected my intestines, but it has now infected my heart. I will never trust again.
© idyllicmollusk 4/25/08
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