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.
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13 comments:
I guess you can always find a way to blame the victim and to excuse--if not elevate--the criminal, but when society stops holding people responsible for their actions, it will be a sad day. Of course, we already let the rich off, so why not the homeless too? Here--in Eugene, Oregon--the man would not have been taken to jail because there would be no room for him anyway. And, even where you are, no one goes to prison for vandalism unless he does something really big like pissing on a Van Gogh.
Thanks for your thoughts Snowbrush.
My complaint is that the only way we relate to the poor in the USA, at least in Ohio, is by holding them responsible, making them feel like it's their fault they are poor... not just when they freak out, like this man did, but every day of their lives, from TV shows like Oprah to the way social services are allocated in this country. It's now wonder the man snapped...
This isn't just in Ohio. It's everywhere. And although you may have realized it too late, at least you were able to recognize your mistake.
He should not get special treatment just because he is poor. In America he has the same opportunity to get a job as anyone else.
I disagree with Tyler in that I don't think he should get a pass for criminal behavior, but I also consider it rather obvious that not everyone in America has equal opportunity. When it comes to getting into a good college and later getting a good job, who would you bet on, a kid from the slums or a Kennedy? You might point out that a few kids from the slums succeed, but surely you would agree that the playing field is not equal.
well put snowbrush. we have a national mythology, ideology really, that in america, everyone is equal... it's very powerful and useful. it justifies incarcerating huge segments of the population under what michelle alexander calls "the new jim crow." (a great book btw!)
and i am not saying that people deserve a free pass, but i lament the fact that i was responsible for his arrest. and we have to wonder, assume even, if his being read as homeless didn't affect the punishment he received, namely being arrested for cutting down ivy. i don't think the punishment fits the crime. if he were a white, middle class male i think it would have turned out completely differently.
and btw, i moved out of this building, but i often walk by it, and the other day, the management decided to cut down most of the ivy. capitalism organizes and legitimates who has the right to do what -- namely property owners monopolize the right to designate the use of public space-- and produces, criminalizes, and spatializes difference and poverty.
I don't know that I would consider an apartment building public space. According to that thinking, wouldn't my house and yard be public space? Here, in Eugene, Oregon, business owners have a tremendous problem with street people gathering in large numbers on downtown sidewalks and intimidating their customers, so I don't know but what I don't favor those people who actually have an investment in the community having more of a say than those who don't. On my street, people camp illegally on the grass and in vehicles, and I can't get them moved. Their presence creates an unsafe, unsanitary, and trashy, environment, yet I pay taxes, and work my ass off to make my neighborhood attractive while they do nothing but bring it down. So, are you saying that, because despite the problems they cause, they have as much right to make decisions regarding my neighborhood as I do after 20 years of money and toil?
As for poor people paying disproportionately for crimes, I will freely admit that in some matters, the courts favor the rich (those scales Lady Justice holds are for bribes), yet in small matters, the really poor are untouchable because the jails are too crowded to contain them, and they have no money to pay fines.
i can't address your particular situation, snowbrush, because you live out in the suburbs. but i would say the fact that you "own" a space ignores all the social forces that went into creating it... the streets and sidewalks you lament were built using public monies, and the loan for your house was secured by a whole federal apparatus that secures loans. i would just say that anyone who uses a space has some kind of investment in it, whether or not it's legitimate in your eyes because it's not "financial."
in the case of the particular building i am discussing, it is located in a downtown area, where many people come to enjoy entertainment and arts. it is also located adjacent to a low-income neighborhood... thousands of people -- from the suburbs and from the low-income neighborhood- walk by it on a weekly basis: that is necessarily public space even if it is recognized by the state as privately owned.
attractiveness is in the eye of the beholder... bourgeois values don't have room for the democratic use of space. thus names like "unsafe" or "unsanitary" are always used to legitimate the exclusion of the homeless or people who may not "own" the space... but the people who use the space might appreciate it even though it doesn't fit your expectation of sanitation. and that is doubly true for a space that is located in a downtown, non secluded area.
Actually, I live downtown. If I lived in the suburbs, I wouldn't have a problem with illegal campers because they like staying close to missions and social agencies. Also, the people in the suburbs live in spendier neighborhoods, which means the cops actually give a rip about their problems.
As for that federal loan, what makes you think I financed my house through the Ginnie Mae or Freddie Mac? Loan guarantors aside, I never had any loan. I worked hard and saved my money so I could pay cash. My house being a fixer upper, I've spent the last two decades making improvements.
Given your belief that the disadvantaged deserve more compassion, what do you propose as a practical solution to people like myself and the business people I wrote about who work for many years in order to be able to afford a home or a small shop only to have gangs, drunks, druggies, and prostitutes take over their neighborhoods? I see in you so much compassion for those who have nothing and so little for those who worked hard to buy what is theirs. What I wrote to Anon was true, yet I grew up in an unpainted shack in family that was so poor that we didn't have running water or electricity, and I promise you that I didn't work hard in order to live amid crime and filth because some people made bad choices in life.
One more thing, Tyler.
"the people who use the space might appreciate it even though it doesn't fit your expectation of sanitation."
I actually do "use" the space in which I live. I walk the dogs once a day, and I bike several days a day on errands and for business. I also go about picking up other people's garbage. As for my definition of 'sanitation," I must confess that I don't consider abandoned syringes, used condoms, broken bottles, and emptied toilets to be sanitary. You have labeled me "bourgeois," and I suppose I am if bourgeois means working hard and placing a high value on cleanliness and safety. Honestly, Tyler, it is those who hold values such as yours that send people running full tilt into the Tea Party movement. I am a Democrat, but I can sympathize with those who feel that no matter how hard they work, the only people who ever matter to liberals are the ones who never take an iota of responsibility for their own lives.
i am sorry i wrote you live in the suburbs, i thought for sure i read that you did which is a fault of my own reading.
your account that you alone are responsible for your wealth, that you because of your talent and skills or determination were able to climb up from the depths of poverty to wealth and freedom is quintessentially american. it lies at the heart of what i was talking about before as an ideology that is used to legitimate exclusion.
i respect that you came from nothing. that is my situation too, except it isn't clear to me that i'll ever escape poverty. at the same time, i have enjoyed certain advantages from being read as "white" on the one hand and "male" on the other. to not recognize that society treats you differently, (i.e. recognizes, trusts and reaffirms your capabilities in school or work) because of those readings is to ignore a major advantage you've had growing up. and btw, if you think that poverty is the result of bad choices, which is the popular belief in the US, then you are sorely mistaken, as infinite numbers of empirical studies by social scientists have shown.
you talk about gangs and prostitutes taking over neighborhoods of people who have "worked hard", as if prostitutes and gang members don't "work hard". what you really mean is that the former groups don't lead a respectable, normative, bourgeois lifestyle... they don't work 9-5, buy a home, and decorate their houses neatly (all stereotypes btw).
the problem is that you classify difference, in this case class and race, as filth and crime. and i would also ask if you live in a gentrifying neighborhood, in which case you are the one who went into the "raucous" inner city, likely seizing on what was affordable inner city housing, maybe even encouraged by local governments through tax subsidies, to buy a house among long time residents who were low income. in this case your presence is what encroached upon a neighborhood and eventually displaced low income residents who couldn't afford the rising cost of housing among newly renovated homes. in these cases (maybe yours, maybe not) the gentrifier is the problem: the cause of social discontent, and not the original inhabitants.
and don't go to the tea party, which is problematic on many levels, the least of which is populist racism, because i'm sure you would find the majority of democrats sympathetic to your story, and agree with you, not me. democratic politicians are at best marginally better than republicans (at worse, the same as) when it comes to issues of social justice. you can feel secure in your property rights through your democratic party membership.
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