this use to be my playground?

i don’t have much of a memory from before 1st or 2nd grade really (6-7 years old). many of the details i know of my life before that come in the form of stories from various sources, who tend to offer unreliable and sometimes contradictory accounts. prior to my dad getting custody of me when i was about 6, i lived with my mom in the st. johns neighborhood of portland for about a year. my aunt has lived in st. johns for a few years now and i visit her fairly frequently. until recently, nothing really looked familiar to me, but i always sort of felt like something familiar could be right around the corner. and there it was, last february.

my partner and i were visiting and took a walk. on the way back, i tensed up as we approached and walked through these vines. the tension wasn’t attached to a specific memory, just the fact that i remembered anything at all.

things that i had previously remembered about the place/time:
1. watching cartoons at my neighbor’s house while my mom was away. the same neighbors my (step-)grandma said that my mom intended to give me away to. he-man and she-ra were often (once?) on in the morning.
2. one of my stuffed animals getting ruined in a bucket of oil.
3. a spider biting me between the eyes one night, which made my eyes swell up for a few days.
4. sleeping behind the couch on the floor in the living room when my mom got a boyfriend and i no longer slept in her bed.
5. my mom using the money from my piggy–actually, i think it was a multicolored froggy–bank to get us 4th of july fireworks.
6. and then the talk–my mom expressing regret but saying that she thought it would be best if i lived with my dad. i remember thinking she was right, no disagreement there. she acted real sorry and i probably acted real sorry too, but i was not. i was very well behaved in those days.
like that time she commented on how sweet i was behaving after church. we had stopped at the grocery store and i held my hands together pointer finger to pointer finger, thumbs rolled under, and fingers around, a stolen roll of lifesavers.

when i came back in august i decided that i wanted to remember more. to come up with my own, reliable, stories. at least i would locate what i knew in its proper place.

so, between my dad and i, we figured out the address of the shack my mother and i lived in that year. except the address and the shack no longer exist. instead, if this is right, the shack was torn down and this was built in its place:

and if that’s right. this is where i ate cereal and watched he-man in the morning while my mom was out (working?):

and this house was next door, facing our cross street:

and this was at the end of our street:

but how could i not remember such a landmark? i can’t say for sure that this was my street. but the address fits.

and then there is school. i was told that i was kicked out of catholic kindergarten. or i made it up. i really don’t know. but in my(?) version i accidentally flipped off a nun while doing sign language to “silent night.” sounds sort of plausible. and then i went somewhere else. was this one of my schools?

or this?

i don’t know. though during this (october) visit it occurs to me that it is most likely that this is one of them:

this park seems familiar.

especially the teeter totters.

oddly, this is the one thing i remember for certain. i can say without a doubt in my mind that this is where we bought fireworks that year:

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poem(ish)

sunset turns to twilight leaving me looking for lights on in any of the boats docked at the marina
my bike pants beneath me as i contemplate:
a. how it is that a bike can sound like a thirsty dog
b. how it is that the idea of living on a boat has made its way into my head

b.
this thought mulls around with the others—
the thoughts which occupied the better portion of one los angeles winter wherein i imagined myself a hobo of the train-hopping variety
it’s in there with my burlesque stage name which shall only be revealed after i run away to join the (very sexy) circus

this living-on-a-boat idea, though, it’s the practical parallel to my train-dwelling, garter-belt-wearing fantasies
i could move to a boat today and relatively little would change
my address could be within a mile of what it is now
i could live and work and write from a boat
i just have to figure a few things out, like, can i get wi-fi on the water?

a.
i don’t know, but
the air smells of diesel and ocean water that’s waves have been broken
fake waterfalls are lit up in starburst candy colors: cherry, lemon, orange
the bridge is a neon caterpillar—wearing green and blue and purple vertical stripes

and the people
families drawn out of hot apartments to the cool edges of long beach
a boy asking his peers, “could you or could you not …”
each bend and pier holds people—alone and together—silent and staring beyond the water
a man carries a bucket
a man and a woman sit on a bench, leaving room for the somebody they are talking about between them. “my bitch” the man starts; he corrects himself: “my girl”
a group of men laughing, calling their friend “cabrón”

people
people
people
out but in
for a second i step out and just feel the perfect wind
and, pulling myself back in, i think
will it ever feel this good again?

oh my god
oh, my God
yes, it will

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writing the diss

so, i decided to take a few days off and head to CO to work on my dissertation. i am finding that the writing is coming very slowly. this has a thing or two to do with my perfectionist tendencies, but honestly has a lot more to do with the fact that i have a lot of reading to do still! i have written some nonetheless … this is as first draft/puke it all out on the page as it gets for me:

***

This chapter places Los Angeles’ Safer Cities Initiative and the high rates of citations, arrests, and incarceration that have resulted from it within their larger (socio/historical/political/economic) context. Over the last four decades, incarceration rates in the United States have skyrocketed. Gilbert (2008) and Parenti (2008) [1999] link increased incarceration to the US’s neoliberal policies (which are rooted in imperialism). They assert that the social movements of the 1960s combined with the economic downturn of the 1970s led to political strategy aimed to: 1. discredit those involved in movements for social justice, and 2. find a scapegoat for the US’s financial woes. Impinged by the movements of the 1960s, overtly discriminatory language went underground in mainstream political parlance and found its home in colorblind definitions of crime and approaches to criminality, which are in fact far from race/class/gender blind in their consequences. Add to this the politics surrounding urban growth (i.e., more growth at just about any cost, including the displacement of those who stand in the way of or are simply unattractive to development) and it is not surprising that we find ourselves with unprecedented levels of imprisonment.

As of 2008, approximately 2.3 million people were in prison in the US—seven times the rate of incarceration in 1971 (Gilbert 2008). Prior to this explosion, the rates of imprisonment had remained more or less stagnant for seventy years (Gilbert 2008). And it’s not as if a massive crime wave suddenly swept across the US. The high number of people incarcerated reflects a shift in law-enforcement policy which simultaneously expands definitions of criminality and increases penalties for behaviors defined as criminal. So what accounts for this shift? Parenti (2008) argues that this “lockup binge” began to as part of an effort to control the movements for social justice of the 1960s and has continued as a response to the consequences of Reagan-era (and beyond) neoliberal economic restructuring. Amidst the backdrop of social upheaval—the antiwar movement; protests and legislation asserting the rights of people of color, women, gay men and lesbians, prisoners, and other marginalized groups; hundreds of riots/rebellions in cities across the US between 1965 and 1968; and a steep increase in violent and property crime—a “tough on crime” stance both assuaged and created fears that bought support for politicians among the majority of the (white) electorate. Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential victory underscores this point. Shortly before winning the presidency “Nixon wrote his mentor Dwight Eisenhower, noting both the power of anti-crime fearmongering and its racial content: ‘I have found great audience response to this [law-and-order] theme in all parts of the country, including areas like New Hampshire where there is virtually no race problem and relatively little crime’” (Parenti 2008:7). Law-and-order themes remain prevalent across the mainstream political spectrum (and in spite of decreasing crime rates) today.

Tough-on-crime rhetoric and its corresponding policies became increasingly prevalent as the financial impacts of social change were felt by business. The “average profit rate for businesses fell from a peak of 10% in 1965 to a low of 4.5% in 1974” (Gilbert 2008: 33). A number of factors led to an economic boom in post-WWII US. However, by the early seventies it was clear that the US was in an economic crisis—fueled in part by overaccumulation, expanding international competition, and the high cost of labor in the US. In dealing with this crisis, corporate solutions meant reducing the wages, benefits, and number of jobs available to the working class. Afraid to lose the white working class electorate, politicians sought to explain the worsening conditions for US workers in a way that did not call into question the structure of capitalism and the accumulation of corporate wealth. The poor and people of color (often conflated as one group) became an easy scapegoat:

People of color were cast as parasites, and violent perpetrators pilfering middle-class (read white) America by means of such Great Society programs as AFDC [welfare] and Head Start. And the most potent anti-poor symbol—the one that always surpasses the welfare mother and the mendicant addict—is the young dark criminal, the untamed urban buck, running free, threatening order, property, and (white) personal safety.” (Parenti 2008: 168)

The popularity of law-and-order rhetoric paved the way for a revitalization of order-maintenance strategies of policing—strategies that grant police a high level of discretion in the name of preserving “order.” Wilson and Kelling’s (1992) “broken windows” theory is the most recent incarnation of order-maintenance policing. “Broken windows” theory puts forth a model of community policing that is based on criminalizing once minor infractions and policing “quality of life” issues—including public urination and sleeping in public spaces. White (2008) illustrates how “quality of life” policing has its roots in vagrancy laws, which he traces to 14^th-century England. The focus of vagrancy laws has shifted throughout the centuries—sometimes they are used to force “undesirables” out of a locale, other times they are used intimidate people into staying in servitude (serfdom in 14^th-century England; slavery in 19^th-century US). White (2008) offers post-slavery Black Codes as an example of “a system where the likelihood of being arrested, charged, and punished far outweighed the risks of continued servitude” (72). Black vagrancy was defined broadly:

Runaways, drunkards, pilferers; lewd wanton, or lascivious [exciting lust] persons, in speech or behavior; those who neglect their employment, misspend their earnings, and fail to support their families; and all idle and disorderly persons. (White 2008: 72, quoting Mississippi’s Black Code).

Whites who associated with blacks or who advocated for their equality were also subject to criminalization under these vagrancy laws.

The room for officer discretion in the enforcement of these laws is found in modern-day “quality of life” policing.

***

from here i’m going to write about how although the class and race components of “quality of life” policing are often discussed, the intersection of gender with class an race and the policing of the gender binary is often ignored. i will be drawing on incite’s work on this.

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starting again

critical of my elementary exploration of abolition, i had thought about deleting a few of my previous posts before starting to blog again. but i will leave them. they are part of the process and part of the dialogue that’s needed to move us beyond basic (mis)understandings and into intelligent action. today i am grateful for the media makers’ potluck that jess hosted last night. more tk.

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