On being mugged.

Because there other things I am writing about or trying to write about and I cannot think straight. I just keep thinking about a fist coming at my face and a bunch of kids running away with all of my most precious material possessions. And of course I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and as Stefano said “Pezzi di merda” (pieces of shit); which is true because anyone who uses violence and thievery as a way of life is exactly that.
At the same time it goes deeper than simple bitterness- men are only turned into pieces of shit under certain circumstances. It took me getting punched in the face to really think about this. Given where I attended college and the environment in which I grew up clearly I have thought about poverty and crime before- I am not so naïve. In college there was always the presence of service trips and helping those in need. Connecticut is not the idyllic land most people imagine either, we have some of the poorest cities in the nation with crime rates rising each week. To be in the middle of the situation somehow makes it feel much more imminent. Much more urgent in fact than seeing poor children in the daylight hours or doling out food in a shelter.
I believe now that crime and poverty in the United States are systematic. I’ve always had Foucauldian leanings but for these men it becomes clear that society has made them into some other kind of creature. When thousands of poor people are stacked upon thousands of poor people in fifty-story public housing complexes- no good can come of it. New York City is hot in August and heat rises. Days and days of heat are the perfect catalyst for a recipe of violence on top of years of racial tensions and inequality, poor schools and poor health care.
Off of the JMZ line in Brooklyn, one block to the south of the tracks around the Flushing or Myrtle stops you can find yourself amongst rows and rows of public housing in Bed-Stuy. This is a lot of angry people living together. This neighborhood (using such a term quite loosely considering it didn’t feel so neighborly or welcoming) as some of the worst schools and hospitals in Brooklyn, probably in the country. Violence is the only way to get your voice heard- even cowardly violence against people who will not fight back.
I don’t think there was any reason to rob me except out of boredom. This isn’t the kind of boredom that makes people watch bad television or smoke pot or pick lint from their navels, it is much stronger than that. Odd that boredom can be strong, but it can be. It reaches into every aspect of a person’s life. There is a feeling that there is nothing better to do or there is nothing better worth doing, or that could be more rewarding than causing trouble. It is an active choice into someone else’s life. It is something to talk about. It is social really- in all of the wrong ways. And it has nothing to do with more after-school programs or summer camps. It is a deep-seeded problem having something more to do with years of institutionalized repression.
The question then remains: with whom can we be angry? Certainly we can say “ourselves” and wallow in neo-liberal pity but I know it isn’t my job to be a reformer. I believe I am most capable of making changes from the inside and from my particular place within society; I am not a missionary. No one wants to hear it from an outsider. In Bed-Stuy I am clearly an outsider (which leaves me nervous and hesitant about my future teaching position and the continuation of life as an outsider) and not the authority young people will look to first. I don’t want to be another hipster kid afraid to leave her house at night but tough as nails in the daylight hours, gentrifying Brooklyn one Whole Foods at a time. I like to shop at Whole Foods- but I don’t think everyone has to go there. Which just leaves us with the idea that if we stay out of each others hair we won’t have any trouble and that doesn’t help us either, except to be ignorant…and I suppose mutual respect and help is just, well, out of the question.