"You can't do that now. You'd be dead!"
"I know, but it was perfectly safe then. When I was a kid, you didn't have to worry about anyone climbing in your windows. Many people didn't even lock their doors.
Each Saturday, everybody washed their front steps, and there was never any trash on the sidewalks. Up and down Kensington Avenue, there was never an empty store front."
Bob's two grown children are still in the neighborhood. His son works at a car washer and his daughter cleans offices with his ex wife.
"What do you think will happen to Kensington in five years, Bob? Do you think it will get better? Worse?"
"Probably worse."
"What can make it better?"
"We'll need to get many of these people out of here. It's the people that are making it worse."
Though Bob won't say it, we can guess which people he's talking about. "But without jobs, Bob, how can it get better? Those factories are gone."
To this, Bob has no answer, but who can blame him. None of our politicians have solutions for us, only slogans. Don't think for a second, however, that they don't know what they're doing. They have all of the answers for themselves and their masters.
We have a rogue government that respects no law, domestic or international. It violates every other country's sovereignty while puncturing its own borders. It creates terrorists while pretending to fight terrorism. It extols global stability while generating millions of war and economic refugees. It turns all ideals, freedom, democracy, equality and sacrifice, etc., into perversions. It kills millions of people. It kills language.
We're a**holes for allowing this to happen, and a**holes for turning on each other. We're a**holes for not knowing who our common enemies are, and when this house collapses and the bullets fly, will we just knock each other out of the way to jump into the shitter?
Jack's still opens at 7 in the morning, but instead of workers coming off their night shifts, its earliest customers these days are hookers, pimps, drug dealers and junkies, people who've been up all night to get by in the worst ways. The factories are gone.
"I know, but it was perfectly safe then. When I was a kid, you didn't have to worry about anyone climbing in your windows. Many people didn't even lock their doors.
Each Saturday, everybody washed their front steps, and there was never any trash on the sidewalks. Up and down Kensington Avenue, there was never an empty store front."
Bob's two grown children are still in the neighborhood. His son works at a car washer and his daughter cleans offices with his ex wife.
"Probably worse."
"What can make it better?"
"We'll need to get many of these people out of here. It's the people that are making it worse."
Though Bob won't say it, we can guess which people he's talking about. "But without jobs, Bob, how can it get better? Those factories are gone."
To this, Bob has no answer, but who can blame him. None of our politicians have solutions for us, only slogans. Don't think for a second, however, that they don't know what they're doing. They have all of the answers for themselves and their masters.
We have a rogue government that respects no law, domestic or international. It violates every other country's sovereignty while puncturing its own borders. It creates terrorists while pretending to fight terrorism. It extols global stability while generating millions of war and economic refugees. It turns all ideals, freedom, democracy, equality and sacrifice, etc., into perversions. It kills millions of people. It kills language.
We're a**holes for allowing this to happen, and a**holes for turning on each other. We're a**holes for not knowing who our common enemies are, and when this house collapses and the bullets fly, will we just knock each other out of the way to jump into the shitter?
Jack's still opens at 7 in the morning, but instead of workers coming off their night shifts, its earliest customers these days are hookers, pimps, drug dealers and junkies, people who've been up all night to get by in the worst ways. The factories are gone.
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