hilos

sometime towards the bening of the year i was with a friend watching the news. at one point the newscaster was talking about a murder or homicide or something where someone had gotten killed. we turned to each other as she remarked how the first death of this kind in the year had happened in La Villita. or maybe she just said it happened here and we said, great, first homicide just has to have happened here. great (sarcasticly).

we joked about it for a whie. before another custumer came to buy a cigar, or some chips.

watching the news always makes it seem like certain neighborhoods are dangerous. or that certain people are dangerous (ie strangers and usually people of color). When you look at the media there is a very narrow definition for everything. beauty, youth, normalcy. all very boring and restrictive.

the discussion we had in class about what makes a neighborhood attractive makes sense. You want somewhere with a dynamic immigrant population, with diversity. With local shops, not just big box stores; with a good public transportation system, cheap housing (relatively speaking because what is cheap for some, other people might not be able to afford). And the other element was having an edginess of sorts, like soft drugs.

so on the subjetc of drugs. If you watch the news the people who use and sell certain drugs are villified. I say certain drugs because it is totally fine to sell alcohol and nicotine (filled with tar and other chemicals). but the point is that those who get villified are the people who belong to the target groups. Like having a charge be more for a drug in a form that is less pure (sometimes more dangerous, but more cheap) than for the drug in its pure form (more expensive). who can afford the more expensive drug? people with more money, who tend to be caucasian (not true for all people but on a systems level yes). so who gets caught and charged more are the people who have less money and are the target groups (meaning those who are denied access to resources on many if not all levels of power).

cities profit from this inequality but everyone gets shortchanged. i say cities profit because jails mean more jobs, a contract for construction companies, if it’s a private prison then that company profits too. it is a lucrative buisiness. but the city gets hurt because it limits a lot of people in a lot of ways. by not giving people better access to education, to health care, to affordable transportation…people have to be more focused on making more money to make ends meet and there is barely any time to reflect about what is going on and organize to change things. the potential of the people living there is curtailed and contained. that is not good for anyone, except those that benefit from the status quo. and even they get pushed into narrow definitions of self and all that stuff.

we really need to get rid of stereotypes to function better as a society. i mean we need a lot of things and this is one we do at the same time.