 The Violence Has To Stop? -Alex Farr The other day
I had a fare who brought up the topic of the violence in the neighborhoods. Usually people just speculate about the weather, so this was a surprisingly serious topic to have sprung upon me cold. Apparently he'd gotten into some sort of discussion with a bus driver and a female passenger on that bus concerning the topic... and when he hopped into my cab the topic was still burning in his brain. I just happened to have overheard on the news a few nights previous though, on one of those evenings when I'm too drunk to be bothered to change the channel and yet sober enough to still be able to interpret the Charlie Brown-like noises newscasters often make... I'd overheard that as of early May, 2002, there had been 39 homicides in Oakland. Now, figuring really quickly, 30 days has... ok, that comes out to 120 and change days... which comes out at about a homicide every 3 days and some odd hours in this fair city. Holy Shit!! And I'm driving
a cab here??!! I suddenly found myself thinking, now that I was finally bothering to process the math. I quickly dismissed this initial reaction though... through whatever trick of idiosyncratic brain chemistry it may be that has kept me doing this job for going on 5 years now... and I thought about a response for dude. "Yeah... I hear it's been getting pretty bad..." It was the best I could do on such short notice. "Well, there's no argument, dawg... but, and I'm not endorsing or saying that I'm in that lifestyle... but, it's easy to say that when you got your regular paychecks and you're getting yours, you know what I'm saying?" Dude pointed out. In other words, these poor cats lack, and they kill to acquire, and if you don't lack, then you just don't know what it's like... "Yeah, I hear you... but, I mean... if the violence keeps up like this... then whatever they do get, they ain't gonna get tuh keep it too long..." I answered. For some reason, when I'm talking to the cats from the neighborhoods, I start to pick up their quirky syntaxes... Maybe that's what's kept me from being a statistic for this long... "Yeah, I feel ya, but, what I'm saying is... there's fellas out here on the streets that don't give a fuck... and they're gonna get theirs, and they don't give a fuck 'bout what they gotta do to get it, you know what I'm saying?..." "Yeah man, I dig." I answered, "... but it's hard
to feel sorry for those cats when they get popped... 'cause, shit... they
didn't give a fuck, and they was just looking to get theirs, so they really
got no place to complain if someone else that don't give a fuck beats 'em
to it, and blows 'em away in the process... The real problem, what makes
me feel for all these poor bastards, is that some of 'em don't seem to
realize that they're putting themselves into a game where it's just a matter
of time. You know?, it's like a war of attrition, and these poor fucks
are playing for relatively penny-ante stakes, you know?" I pontificated, as I not only warmed to the subject, but apparently began channeling Jack Kerouac, or Tom Waits. At least I hadn't suddenly started channeling the Irish accents I'd picked up in an Irish pub in Amsterdam... "Yo, I feel you. But, like, you got your job and your little monies, and I got mine, and those folks on that bus had theirs... but these fellas they ain't even got cars, you know what I'm saying?..." I knew what he was saying... but I didn't see how cars were something worth killing each other over... especially some of those hooptie pieces of shit I'd seen these fellas tooling around in in the neighborhoods... But then again, I remember the first time I had a wheel stolen off my car at night. I had to spend the next week fighting the urge to stay up, standing guard over the fucking thing, with a gun. I was ready to kill over my car. "Yeah, well... sucks to be them... If they don't get more creative though, they ain't gonna live long enough to worry about those cars passing smog..." Dude didn't get the irony though. He just paid his fare, and went on about his business. And I went on about mine. It took about 20 minutes for it to dawn on me- Wait a minute, I've lived in Mexico! I've lived with people who had to burn their own trash because they couldn't afford to pay for garbage service. People who had to throw their toilet paper into their trash, and then burn it themselves, because the city sewers couldn't deal with toilet paper. People who had to use out-houses, and use their children's corrected homework assignments for toilet paper. People who used wood fires, lit with white gas, or something like that, to cook. People who wash their laundry in a river. I've washed my laundry in a river, by hand. I've slept on a park bench with nothing to eat but cold hot dogs for days at a time... I've seen entire families sharing one bed. These guys on these street corners who don't even have cars really don't have it that bad. Hell, they're usually better dressed than I am... A week's worth of their wardrobes would probably cover the cost of the car I drive... And so, looking back on it, my considered response is... how the fuck does a white boy like me, who can pronounce polysyllabic words with aplomb, manage to survive running back and forth through the cross fire for so long?... And, having done so, who's got time to give a shit one way or another if these fuckheads kill each other or not?... I'm busy keeping my eyes open, and watching my own ass. Of course, I do remember the neighborhoods during the dotcom bubble. Violence wasn't needed... there was money everywhere, and the dealers could hardly keep up with the business... so it is hard not to see the violence as economics- in an unregulated market, where cowboy style gunfights settle "market share" disputes in an industry with a shrinking customer base. It's mid-June now, and the death count is up to 44, last I heard. That means the average is down to just over 2 murders a week. Market share disagreements eventually resolve themselves, apparently. Or maybe it's just a passing fad...
... And come 2009, not much has changed.)
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