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Aug 14 2008

A Trip to America's "War Zone"

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By Rachael Bliss

Is this what we want to pass on to our grand kids?

It all started out quite innocently on a Sunday afternoon during our visit in Los Angeles with friends and Disneyland. We had some time to kill so we decided to take the Metro light rail from Norwalk, CA to downtown LA.

We took the Blue Line where it intersected with the Norwalk Green Line. Those getting on with us were predominantly either Black or Latino. We were White and Asian.

As we inched ever closer to downtown LA, our fellow riders became even more Latino and Black, until soon, as we approached Watts, Florence and Washington stops, we became the only Whites and Asia

ns, the five of us.

But it wasn't just the color and ethnic backgrounds of the people on the train with us, as it was what I saw outside the windows of the Metro. My heart sank as I saw anger in graffiteed walls of buildings and anything else that could be used as a wall. I saw home and shop with bars over their windows and doors. There was very little green life anywhere. I saw that these areas were victims of environmental racism and injustice. I saw no crime, but my imagination saw it, along with police brutality, burning buildings, crying, despair, sadness, poverty, hopelessness in a sea of brown, tan and gray.

It was then that I had to admit that I was a person of privilege. Even though my money situation is not the best in the world, nevertheless, mostly because of my color and ethnicity, I can live in a better environment than most of the people who sat on the train with me could.

They dressed and acted their part, while I did the same mine. I was quiet. I did not want to talk to anyone in a patronizing manner, nor in a naive way. I tried to make some small talk, very small talk. I did smile at one lady who smiled back at me a few times. No one threatened me, and I wasn't very worried about my safety. But to say I was uncomfortable with my fellow riders would be a true statement. We three adults breathed a sigh of relief as we departed off of the train and into a sickening smelling elevator that took us out into the dead downtown streets of LA.

We went into a Macy's Plaza store on Seventh Street, and found ourselves looking for restrooms among predominantly Latino shoppers and clerks. Even the Macy's store, which is usually a upper end store, was decaying in this part of downtown LA.

In less than a half hour, we once more boarded the train to go down to where it would once more meet the Green Line. As we sped back away from downtown, some sweet Latino girls, all sisters, complimented us on how cute my grandson was. They were beautiful and well mannered girls with fine parenting, I could tell. I wondered what their lives held before them as they got off near the Watts station.

Soon one old skinny Black guy hobbled up to the front of our train, and eventually bragged that he hadn't smoked any weed in eight days. That drew a huge laugh from others on the train who acted as though they all knew him. So he changed his story, and said, well it was just four days. But he now needed some dough, and would any please be willing to contribute to his cause. One lady tempted him with a 30 cent donation, and that was about it.

As I left the train, my son mentioned that the ride had reinforced in him the value of hard work and good parenting. But I feel there is much more to the story of why we have such divisions of class and prosperity in this country.

This country is also racist. If you are an immigrant, especially if you are illegal, you can't receive financial aid (or even in many cases scholarships) to go into a professional occupation. The best you can hope for is a service job of cleaning hotel rooms, doing janitor work in our office buildings and airports, or serving meals to many of us who are of another color and ethnicity.

Sometime, take some time to look at the schools that are in the neighborhoods I wrote about earlier. How many of these schools offer classes that will help serious students excel? How many offer neighborhoods where people can go out at night (or even during the day) and not live in fear that they may be shot? How would you feel if you had a junk yard behind your back fence, or had a polluting factory spewing out garbage less than a football field away from your back door? What if your family had no access to good and fresh food?

And it's not because the people who live in these neighborhoods are no good, that they are lazy or uninspired. No, it is much more designed this way. We will always need the desperate ones who will work their rear ends off to stay out of these neighborhoods, or to have to return there.

Just as seeing the homeless on the streets makes the rest of us work harder to be sure we don't end up there, so too to see neighborhoods of people who may not be of our ethnic background, reinforces us to be sure we keep the status, whatever it is, above them.

I have no workable solutions to the war zones I saw in the United States, but I know that there have to be solutions somewhere out there nevertheless....solutions that are just and humane and ones that will help us all be honorable human beings.

What do you think? Must we pass on these war zones to our grandchildren, as they were created during our life times?

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Comments (1)

1. 15-08-2008 11:12

Born in Compton, over 60 years ago...

:sigh

Yes, it is true. Ms. Bliss is painfully correct. We haven't evolved at all, have we?

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ryzowski@iowatelecom.netNOSPAM! ">Richard Rye

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