In My Backyard. . . Poverty in D.C.

The following is an assignment we had to write for class. We were to think about poverty in the neighborhoods that we come from and write a loose three pages on it.

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The current situation of the Black population in the United States is a dire one. Black people in this country constitute one of the most impoverished and oppressed sections of the society, it has been the story since their inception into this country as exploited labor used to build the foundation of the world power. Over 400 years later the status of Blacks representing a large source of free labor still remains the same. The only difference is that in the present situation the brutal system of slavery has been replaced with the prison industrial complex, of which Black people, men in particular, make up between 43 -50%. Many may assert reasons, such as a “criminal culture”, as to why this staggering statistic is in existence but most fail to satisfy logic. Blacks make up 12% of the United States population, and thus for there to be such a clear disproportionate amount of African Americans behind bars seems unexplainable to most until they take into account the other factors that govern the lives of African Americans, such as their positioning in the society. Blacks, due to a specific historical development which includes tremendous racism supporting capitalist exploitation, make up an overwhelming part of the excess labor in this country. This means that Black Americans find themselves more vulnerable to the repressive arm of the state for a number of factors, including but not limited to participation in the informal economy, and police racism. The governing body’s neglect is also blatant and serves to continue to impoverish and demobilize the Black community of D.C. No where is this more visibly seen than in Washington D.C, which has been deemed by many Black leftists as “A Piece of South Africa on the Potomac”. Washington D.C. is a microcosm of the plight facing Blacks in the inner cities of the United States.

The city of Washington D.C. is plagued with many problems all due to a lack of concern and attention shown by the governing body of the area. This all contributes to the criminalization of Blacks, especially youth and their often oppressive encounters with the state. In order to properly talk about the issue of state violence and imprisonment one must first start with some of the reasons why the African American population come into contact with the courts and police in the first place. This leads us to the education system. In D.C, 51% of the adult Black population holds high school diplomas and 2% of the school age population is truant, which is a high percentage. This may be jarring to those who remember that D.C. spends 11,269$ per pupil, among the highest in the nation.  However, the notoriously lax enforcement of truancy laws, rapid closing of public schools and changes in the personal lives of lower income students, due to various reasons for unstable households, leads to a rather significant truancy rate. We know, based on the research done on “tracking”, those children who are less successful in school on average have the spectre of the prison industrial complex looming in their future. However, school is not the sole factor in the increasing tensions and clashes of the Black population, which makes up 52%, of D.C. and the city’s law enforcement.

D.C. is also a city, like most in the country, which is undergoing a large amount of gentrification, meaning that a lot of public housing is being removed and the land is being sold to private contractors. In many cases, these spaces are filled by expensive condominiums. This translates to the rapid removal of the vibrant, predominantly Black, working class of D.C. Often times these new settlements of young, mostly middle class whites, professionals come through the collaboration between government and business. Adrian Fenty, recently ousted mayor, approved  100 million dollars in city contracts without the approval of the city council. This was in addition to the Housing Authority making a 6 million dollar deal with Banneker Ventures which is owned by Omar Karim, a fraternity brother of Fenty. This is all relevant when you look at the severe number of Blacks moved out of the city, about 2500 per year by last estimate. This all has an adverse effect on the lives of African Americans in the district, especially youth, whose lives are in a state of chaos. Couple this with the rising unemployment rates, of which Blacks make up 51%, and you have a perfect storm brewing. Alienated and ousted, many Black youth don’t find themselves with the opportunity to be able to fit into the romantic image of the teen with a steady job on their way to becoming a decent citizen.

In large, the Black citizens of D.C. make up a surplus of labor, meaning that many Black people are not working to reproduce profit for the corporations or city and cannot work because they find themselves out of the pool of eligibility, either through qualifications, or racism. This makes them more vulnerable to the one place that can extract profit from them; the prison system. The criminalization of the Black residents of Washington D.C. is something that is constant. One thing that most Black youth in D.C. can count on is the fact that they will encounter the police at least once in their adolescent lives, with the encounter usually being negative. The D.C. police department, which led the nation in the 90’s in murders of residents, has a long history of abuse. Most recently, police chief, Cathy Lanier, led the department on into direct confrontation with the community through the “All Hands on Deck” program. This program had nearly the entire 4,000 person department on the streets serving warrants, questioning residents, and patrolling the streets. To those unfamiliar with the long history of violence done to the Black community at the hands of the police, this may seem like a great idea to curve seemingly random, unreasonable violence. However, the antagonisms between the predominately foreign, in the geographical sense- most of the police serving in the D.C. area are from neighboring states, white officers and the oppressed Black populations have often spilled over into more senseless violence. Recently, the parents of 27yr old Kellen White have filed suit against the DCPD for shooting Kellen 12 times at a traffic stop, parents allege that he was unarmed. This incident highlights the common phenomenon of police brutality. For those who do leave these encounters with their lives, the court system is the next stop.

The court system in Washington D.C., which by default is a federal court system with appointed judges and prosecutors due to D.C.’s lack of statehood, prosecutes hundreds of Black residents a day. Most of these people are here because of non violent drug offenses. Many of these lives fall forfeit to the will of the court which more often than not shows little to no mercy to them. Many Black lives are lost to the prison industrial complex. Once inside the belly of the beast, many Black inmates still find themselves fighting for survival. D.C. inmate deaths usually double the normal average of those in the nation with the national average being 145 deaths per every 100,000 prisoners. D.C. inmate deaths usually average around 315 deaths per every 100,000 prisoners. Even more disturbing is the fact that these inmates mostly die from illnesses such as HIV/Aids. In 2008, Washington D.C. reported to have some 15,120 residents living with the virus and of that number 81% were African American. One can assume this number is so tremendously high because of inadequate education, social stigma around homosexuality and a lack of accessibility of medicine. Thus for many, these prisons also serve as a final stop.

We have seen in epic fashion the failure of non-profit organizations when it comes to organizing serious class resistance in the face of severe state oppression. As crisis deepens and the Black population in D.C, both employed and not, see new levels of exploitation and gentrification, the old workings of the non-profits seem all too irrelevant. This is not to say that the non-profits at work in the District are waste. Quite the contrary, in lieu of strong revolutionary organizations that are capable of supporting the people’s needs, the non-profits do good work for the people. The limitation comes in the funding and theoretical base of the organizations. By their very nature non-profits are instruments of the state because they depend on the state to exist and are thus used by the state in times of crisis to pacify the population and feed children bourgeois dreams. In Oakland California, many have criticized the non profits, in the area, of stagnating youth militancy and criminalizing the elements of the Oakland youth who seek channels of struggle that go beyond one day rallies and speak outs about the very real fact that they are being murdered in the streets by the dogs of the state; the OPD (Oakland Police Dept.). In D.C. the rhetoric of being a “good citizen” is dogmatically applied by the mostly after school program based non-profits. Images of youth Black children with “kept” hair (meaning no afros and if you’re boys no hair at all) in suits permeate every flyer or glossy poster, directly attacking the self worth and value Black youth have in their natural appearance and their neighborhoods. This intersection of race based and class oppression hit home and serves to begin the self-demonization of the Black child.

At first look, the sheer amount of obstacles that stand in the way of the oppressed, in the task of creating for them a better existence, seem to be too much to surmount.  However it is necessary to know and understand your conditions before you can make any attempt to change them. When looking at the issues that plague the Black community of Washington D.C. one thing becomes all too clear; organizing to combat these issues cannot come through the same oppressive state apparatus that oppresses the organizers. It is necessary for the people to build their own independent organizations that are committed to education and action. There are plenty of examples of communities organizing independent of the state in order to affect change. Two shining examples that come to mind are the Young Lords from New York and the Black Panther Party based in Oakland, California. Both groups worked with and in the communities they came from to build dual power structures that could challenge the oppressive politicians and businessmen. In addition to that, not all of the Black population of D.C. is completely removed from the working class. There is still a solid base of Black workers in the city that can effect further change through workplace action. Walk offs and strikes have proven to be amongst the strongest tools in the arsenal of working people.

For many African Americans in Washington D.C. the governing body and police force represent manifestations of oppression and exploitation. The population is rendered politically helpless by the lack of political power within the Black community. Blacks in D.C, like many other places in the United States represent a large part of the population that is excess labor and thus, under capitalism, an obstacle to the functioning of the machine both because of the lack of profit being generated and the time this section has to sit and reflect on their positioning and grow more militantly discontent. This is where the violent arm of the state comes in through incarceration. We exist in a profit driven world where the accumulation of capital comes first and people second. However, there is hope in the fact that people can and will always organize against the oppression they face daily.

Conversations in the park

She was like the city itself, broken from a lifetime of struggle, barely standing. Yet, there was still a fire there, still a spark of revolution in her eye. As she spouted pseudo Black nationalist rhetoric, mixed with a tinge of astrology and conspiracy, I was overcome with a strong sense of grief. It was obvious that she had been using some kind of substance, that the ills of Reagan’s final blow to Black radicalism were flowing through her veins. Still, there was a fiery determination in her speech, a need to educate and liberate, a need to get free. Like the city, itself, she was broken and devastated from waging a battle against the state and yet, despite loosing, she soldiered on. She was Oakland.

Oakland is a city shaken from struggle. The increased pig presence reminds the onlooker that there is a deep fear of the population. This is the city that spawned the Black Panther Party, after all. This is the city that dared to stand against the fascist and demand liberation. The people of Oakland stand on the legacy of the Panther’s war with the White capitalist state apparatus. And though they were ultimately defeated there is still the residue of struggle here. It’s in the air. The children know they stand on hallowed ground, and every pseudo revolutionary from Riverside to Richmond VA is dying to come set up shop in the former base of the revolution. This is the city whose ports were shut down by the militant longshoremen in protest of Apartheid in South Africa, this is the city where the last general strike in US history was held, this is Oakland. And sadly like many sites of former battle it has walking wounded.

This womyn brought out both pride and grief in me, simultaneously. She was the perfect example of what happens when one gives their all to an organization believing that their every move is bringing revolution closer, only to have the rug yanked violently and suddenly from underneath. Like many rank and file ex-panthers she probably succumb to the onslaught of drugs in the 80′s and without enough focus on developing the rank and file theoretically by the organization, fell into confusion and disarray after the party’s destruction. But still, equipped with her pamphlets and rhetoric, she marches on, an army of one. Not all of the heroes from the 60′s can be found photographed on the shiny pages in the middle of long self-important autobiographies. Many of them are walked past daily, many found singing songs of revolution to themselves on the BART, asking for change. This system may have won the battle against them, stripping them of public dignity, but the spirit of revolution still burns bright in many of them. Still yearns to get free and set the world ablaze.

I have lived in the Bay Area for 5 years and Oakland for a few months and it has been one of the richest experiences of my life to be here, to develop politically here, to experience love, loss, struggle and strife here. There is no place like it. This meeting, although filled with mixed feelings, affirmed that for me.

conforming. . .contradictions. . .reflections. . .and survival

Illustration by Bruce Nugent

As some of you know I currently live in San Francisco, I’m originally from Washington DC. Coming from the ghettos of DC to live in the very capitalist, very liberal, very racist, very sexist city of San Francisco has been a very interesting experience. I have seen myself develop and change in many ways and noticed strange urges and thoughts come and go through my mind in my time here.

I grew up all over DC because my family was very poor so we were constantly moving from hood to hood. That’s why I often list different hoods in DC that I say I’m from. In any case, I was always in the hood and one thing that became very clear to me at a very young age was the way in which I was supposed to behave as a young male, especially as a young Black male. Naturally, I am timid, and very gender neutral in my opinion. I say this meaning that I am not very effeminate or masculine. However, when I was growing up, my lack of masculinity was perceived as feminine. Since I refused to play with the boys, talk like the boys, and walk like the boys I had to be a sissy. I hung out with girls as much as possible because they were more accepting of me but ultimately there are limits in male/ female friendships even at younger ages. So I became in a way anti-social and began to develop those habits. I knew that I was queer before I knew what words existed to describe it. I remember distinctly wanting to have sex with my best friend, who was a male, in 2nd grade and I also knew that it was not something everyone else need to know about, I knew it wasn’t something normal. As I grew an I learned what “gay” was and what I was I began to despise effeminate boys, both out of self hatred and envy. I hated who I was and envied their ability to be so open. I envied the way in which they challenged the gender binaries without any kind of hesitation, know good and well that when they stepped out of the house it would most likely mean conflict, physical and emotional. Naturally I wasn’t very effeminate and felt lucky that my natural self didn’t lend it self to the social taunting that came along with it but I also began to feel as though I was deficient in someway. And like before with the development of anti-social behaviour, I began to act out, subconsciously being guided by a need to purge myself of the contradictions, and consciously guided by a need to please the Christian leadership of my after school program, of which I was a part for my entire life since the age of 5. The climax of all of this being my divorcing of the queer friends I had in school at the time. The part of me that needed to strongly to belong to the church demanded that these connections be severed, out of the fear of being lost in the world and void of love from God. The part of me that envied their flamboyance and hated it at the same time felt sated, albeit temporarily. I could be alone now to think and purge. I could be at temporary peace now that the outside representations of my Waring self were partially gone. I felt a small sense of joy, confused and lost, but still some sad glimmer of joy. I suppose these warring parts of me have always driven me to be very distant from people, for fear of not being accepted because I have yet to accept myself. I suspect this to be one of the chief reasons behind the aloof nature, which until recently has dominated my friendships.

In any case I came to San Francisco queer, but not too sure of what that meant for me, I am still not but 5 years ago it was worse. Immediately I was hit with an onslaught of images and ideas about what queer was and how it should manifest in society. However, contrary to prior years, this time I began to try and absorb it all. I found my self trying to emulate the “snap queens” that I would outwardly despise and quietly envy in the past. It felt strange, temporarily liberating, but alien at the same time. It wasn’t me but I so desperately wanted it to be. I felt lost because for years I had smothered and repressed instead of building and shaping. I was lost. I was scared and twisted from years of battling and conforming to social norms, from years of trying to find some kind of acceptance, some kind of family that would help me escape poverty, addiction, & abuse. I have seen and found that I am not the only person left scarred by this society. We are all walking wounded. For all of us, but particularly people who are Black and queer there is sometimes a difficulty in defining and finding self because of what is expected and projected on us by society. The historical development of the Black community in this country has left our concepts of gender and sexuality limited. The ways in which the white supremacist, capitalist society has exploited, policed, commoditized, and objectified our sexuality has left us sensitive and almost distrusting of it, in my opinion. While our concepts of what it means to be male and female, while influenced by the over all patriarchy, sexism and homophobia of the culture, have been twisted into stereotypes that are violently re-enforced. All the while the pressure of the oppression we face under capitalism and racism forces us to turn on one another in destructive ways. All of this, limiting healthy growth and self discovery. It exist everywhere, because the system of Capitalism and the social relations it manifest in people can do nothing but divide destructively, but it is magnified in the Black community.

It was in the early years of college that I lost myself, as most do during this time, trying to build anew. I was being confronted with so much at once. I sprang into my new life, hoping to find family, and instead learning that all parts of society are interconnected and no part is immune from the ills that affect us all. Being queer and Black, and coming to the realization of the double alienation is akin to being pushed from the proverbial nest. The gay community which I had romanticized and dreamed about joining once I escaped DC was not what I imagined. I found hatred and racism. I found myself lost again surrounded by men who saw me as flesh, frightened and enticed by me at the same time, wanting to kill and bed me at the same time. San Francisco is not the mecca of homosexuals it is proclaimed to be if you are not a white male. Prior to this I had grown up in an all Black neighborhood (for those unfamiliar with DC it is very possible to go on for most of your day without seeing someone of another ethnicity. You have to consciously go out of your way.) This pain was new, strange and new. I dealt as I always did, by retreating into myself. Don’t get me wrong, I was among friends, I was developing a friend circle of queer people of different ethnicities but I felt isolated still in the sense that I was the only “Black” one. My attempts to connect with Black people on campus had failed tremendously. After attending one session of our campuses BSU men’s meeting and being utterly turned off by the patriarchy. Black men talking about how real Black men helped to spread the seed and strengthen the race was not something that I needed to hear, I did not need to be apart of the rampant sexism reinforced but high fives. I felt othered amongst the Black population, which at this time was mostly made up of Nationalists and didn’t look too kindly on my rainbow coalition of friends. Determined not to scare off my friends I kept the internal angst to myself, choosing instead to be a listener of other’s problems.

I suppose that I developed the habit of repressing and self negation as a defense to my external conditions as a youth and my intense longing to be apart of something. I thought it better at times to continue these tendencies in order to be apart of something and also because of the loneliness I felt, because the isolation I felt, not just as a queer Black child but as one who grew up in an atmosphere dominated by drugs and abuse. I have always longed to escape and find my “true home”.

That was 5 years ago. Many habits have changed while some still remain. The reason I am writing this more personal blog entry is partially apart of an excercise of letting go of baggage and accepting that it for what it was. It is important for me to look at the past, understand it and do my best to use my experience to help others. As someone who plans on dedicating their life to changing this miserable condition we are all in, things like this are of chief importance. I can see the ways in which the false masculinity, and patriarchy forced upon Black men combined with the experience of growing up in the drug infested ghettos, that cripple the Black community, have effected me. I know that this is a similar and shared experience. It is a dangerous one and teamed with the larger system of white supremacy under capitalism it threatens to destroy scores of queer Blacks that are in search of a place called home.

If Ridge St Could Talk II: To The Lumpen Mass. . .

* lumpen= people who aren’t working class or the bourgeoisie. The lower class ie prostitutes, pimps, dboys, etc. . .

I was recently in a discussion with some friends about the lumpen proletariat and their place in the over all revolution against Capitalism. One of my friends, an activist in the homeless rights struggle was at odds with another of my friends because he diss the lumpen, claiming that they have no place in the revolution. I said the following

It’s really interesting because I agree and disagree with Huey and the Panthers on this point. Organizing oppressed communities, in particular Black and Brown ones, means your going to be dealing with the Lumpen. And I agree with Huey that they need to be placed inside of the thought of bringing about revolution under capitalism. Marx analysis was based and limited to the time he lived in, he did not project into the future and so his analysis of the lumpen follows the same way. What constitutes the lumpen now is very different and Boone is right in his aggression towards certain parts of the Lumpen. Huey himself said that certain parts of the Lumpen couldn’t be organized such as pimps. It is very difficult growing up in a place where you are surrounded by pimps, prostitutes, DBoys etc. . . I know when I was growing up I developed a hostility towards them and still harbor ill feelings (it’s hard not to when people are selling poison to their own, you know and your immediate family are victims of that) However, I am trying to always remember that I hate this system, which has produced the lumpen, more. That people are shaped by their conditions. Another interesting point that I picked up speaking to an ex panther the other day was how detrimental the Panthers being the party devoted to organizing the lumpen was. The Ex Panther was saying, and I agree, that the working class is the only class that can bring about revolution under the Capitalist system because of their relations to the ruling class and the means of production. Thus, the working class is the revolutionary class. Marx was right on this, however I agree that it is essential that we start a new pedagogy that has a place for the lumpen, they are the most effected by this Capitalist system in many ways. And if we are talking about updating the Left and making it relevant well. . .

It’s funny cause this all started with me reciting a lyric from a Digable Planets song. “To the lumpen mass. . .”