Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Class Warrior


I never thought I would be a class warrior. At least, I never thought I would be on this side of the class war.

I was running, furious. I yelled at a police man in his cruiser. "I don't think this man should be doing this," while I pointed him out. He pulled over and yelled at the man. I ran down the basement of my apartment building, searching for management.

I was so angry. How could this ass hole who doesn't live here attack our building? This is OUR neighborhood and OUR building. The Grey Stone is a historic building for Christ's sake. He is being so disrespectful!

I yelled "Is anyone here?"

An old man, the owner, responds "yes, can I help you?"

"There is a homeless man outside cutting and pulling down the ivy off of our building. You didn't hire him, did you?"

"Hell no! I'll meet you out front in just a second," the landlord yelled as he ran toward the front of the building.

I walked back the way I had come, Casey had come to check on the matter.

"I stopped a police man, and the landlord is on the way," I told him, proud of myself for stopping this grave offense.

It had happened before. Anonymous people cut down sections of the ivy on our beautiful, century-old building. When the roots of ivy are cut, of course the rest of it dies. It took years to grow these vines on this building. The last time it happened, management put up notices on our doors.

"If you see someone cutting down the ivy, call the police!" they plead.

And that's what I did this time. What a good citizen I am. A good bourgeois citizen fighting the degenerates of this city.

I stood at the front of my building as I watched the police man whom I had alerted arrest the homeless man. My neighbor arrived home from work, and asked what's the matter. I related the story. "Good job for doing the right thing," he praised.

I had done the right thing. I had caught that bastard. I stopped another section of gorgeous ivy from being cut down. How dare he encroach upon my space. This is my space, after all... I pay rent here. I live here. He disrespected my home. He disrespected history. He disrespected....

I realized it then. As the land lord started accusing the man, now in handcuffs, of previous ivy-cutting incidents, I knew I had been mistaken. What he had really disrespected was capital. He hadn't followed the rules of the system. He disrespected my own selfish aesthetic desire... that I come home everyday to a beautiful, ivy-covered courtyard. The historic part was an elitist, racist ruse for my own petty demand.

Never mind that this man would now be going to prison. Never mind that he might be mentally ill.

Or maybe he thought he was doing us a favor by cutting down the weeds off of our building. Or maybe, just maybe, he was fed up with being treated like scum for not being successful, for being homeless. Maybe he was tired of people like the owner of Mahan Gallery suggesting he is a problem -- that he has no right to exist near her shop-- her grandmother could shop in the Short North without feeling "uncomfortable" (she means, guilty) if he weren't asking her for change.

Maybe he knew he wasn't being a good citizen, and that was the whole point. Fuck these bourgeois assholes. For not selling himself, for not handing over his labor for exploitation to the system; for not owning his failure, because it is his own fault that he is homeless, (not the fault of the efficient machinery that systematically produces homelessness in this country,) for those reasons, he was entered into a system of incarceration from which he may not escape.

And all because of me. In that moment, I felt so self-righteous that I had to alert the police... I couldn't let this beautiful building be defaced.

I always hoped I would be a class warrior, a champion of social justice, and indeed a class warrior is what I became today... but I somehow ended up on the wrong side of the war.