the end of the semester is nearing, and the work is piling up. i made a list the other day and i'm trying not to be completely overwhelmed by it right now...
i go home for thanksgiving on wednesday which i'm not really looking forward to. seems like just about every year around my birthday my parents and i end up in a huge fight. can't wait for this one!
the other night i was driving with kat and leyla to get doughnuts on erie. we turned around a corner and there was this guy walking up the street towards us, and i was looking at him as we got closer to him, and just as we were about to pass him, i realized he had a gun in his hand. i realize this shouldn't be too shocking considering this is syracuse, but besides scaring the shit out of me for a bit it made me think. i wasn't really worried that he'd shoot at us so much as where he was going with that gun...
i read the newspaper every day and i wonder what the hell a bunch of old, rich white men think they can do to fix the real problems plaguing our country. poverty, homelessness... there's this photographer who calls himself boogie who shoots a lot of documentary style city stuff who i think sums it up pretty well:
low income housing, apart from the poor, houses gangs, drugs and violence. it houses a community of hopeless young people, who never had a childhood or were given a chance to start a life free of the rules of the ghetto. prostitution, theft, extortion are the means of survival in a drug filled environment that leads into a vicious cycle of violenc,e poverty and high mortality rate.
twenty years ago, the crack cocaine plague spread throughout the ghettos of urban america. it brought a surge in violence, caused by territorial rivalry between gangs, all fighting for their share of drug business. the affordable price of crack brought this highly addictive and lethal substance into the hands of those always in search fora way out of their misery - the poor.
gang related shootings soared. a whole array of social problems came along to accompany the gang lifestyle, adn we are faced with them today. children who grew up with gang role models and who are coming from famillies with drug addicted parents and/or broken homes skipped childhood. to prove their maturity they got involved in crime and early sexual actrivity. teenage and adult prstitution, drug dealing and theft replaced work. teenage pregnancies becme the norm, with young girls hoping to form adn maintain their families, but failing to do so as a rule. single mothers were left to fight for a normal life for their children, but wihtout education or any job prospects, they never stood a chance.
and that was the beginning of a never-ending cycle.
boogie
http://www.artcoup.com/movie.html
makes my problems seem so insignificant...
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