80’s Baby

Rap artist Maino gives an account of his childhood in the 80’s, the era of the crack cocaine epidemic.

The audacity of hope

William Marcus, 49, horse exerciser and full time bum

I came across William Marcus, 49, in a food line in Jackson Heights.  His hands were covered in tattoos, his lithe frame in disheveled clothing.  His yellow teeth were spaced out and rotting.  His eyes were bloodshot from too much alcohol.  This is the transcript:

I exercise the horses.  At the racetrack. Was suspended for year.  I took the horse to the store.

And did what?

I tied him to the meter, get my food and brought him back. They caught me coming in the street with him.  I had a choice of a $10,000 dollar fine or a year suspension.  I took the year…I didn’t want to walk so I took the horse with me.

This would be a particularly bad time not to work right? Especially this year?

Three more months left.

Have you tried to work in some other industry in between?

No, I go to church. I know a lotta priests. I even know the head priest here so I got to all the priests.  I do what they tell me to do.

Marcus goes church-to-church and lives on their handouts, often conning parishes into thinking he belongs within their boundaries.

What about during the day? You just really don’t do much?
I walk around.  I used to be on SSI but they stopped it.  Social security.

Why did they stop it? They said I wasn’t disabled. I can work.  They stopped it now for 12 years now.

Are you going to vote in the coming election?
No way.  They are two scum bags to me.  One is dumber than the other.

Which one is the dumber one? The Democrat one.

You think Obama is dumber? Yeah.  They took it away from Hillary Clinton.  Hillary Clinton should’ve won that…I wish Hillary Clinton could go in there but they think she lied.  I don’t think she lied about anything. She said a couple a bad things, just listen to her husband. You have a husband like that, you wouldn’t have lost.  But she made a few lies that’s what they say. That’s the best president we’d have had right now. These two are dumb and dumber.

If I had to vote, I’d probably go with the Democrats because I don’t trust those rich ass people man!  I’m registered to vote but not going to vote.  I hope they both [Obama and McCain] just go out somewhere.  I’d rather have no president than them two. They don’t even know what they’re doing.

Did you watch the presidential debates? I watched debates against Hillary Clinton.  I know why she lost, its cause she’s a woman and that’s bad.  Its not because she lied, its cause she’s a woman.  I don’t agree with that.

The worlds gonna blow apart unless Bill Clinton comes back.  Bill Clinton would have won again if he’d run because he is the best person that ever lived in my book.

Cute kids, reading and capitalism

By Selena Ross and Gayathri V

CLICK TO PLAY > audio slide show

At the New York Times the Great Children’s Read on October 5, 2008, kids rocked to fun tunes, great stories and a whole bunch of goodies for sampling in the true spirit of capitalism.

James Salomon, ex-felon, 25

I met James recently at a St. Vincent de Paul meeting where they hand out food checks to people in need. Here is the transcription of the tape:

James: You might just find me attractive after a while.

Me: Why are you here?

I’m here because the economy is very low. Cause I’m broke. Cause I don’t have money.

Why don’t you try to get a job?  [I think he doesn't have a job.  These days in New York, it doesn't matter if you have a job.  You can still end up in the food line.]

I have but I’m a convicted felon so its hard to get a job. Robbery, I was a young man, 18 yrs old at the time, made a mistake and paid for it.  Now it’s the new start for life.

I got [a job] all over the place. Just go for regular jobs…t-mobile…but its kinda hard. I’m also a very good talker, impressive personality.

What was your last job?

Oh building maintenance. I clean the buildings.

You ever tried to work in the construction industry?

I gave it a shot yeah but um its pretty tough. That’s about a year ago.

Why did you stop?

Because business was too slow, not enough money. They treated me like I’m a Mexican.

Ok, how do they treat mexicans?

They pay them a little bit of money for a lotta hours. I’m American and I cant make a dollar outta 15 cents.

You know what I really wanna be? What? I wanna be a model, I wanna be a hand model you kow a hand model like I could just show my hands. Or maybe I could do movies you know triple x movies like…

How serious are you trying to be?

I’m trying to be as serious as you trying to be about this study…that must be serious

Can I get your name?

You want my number?

No your name…could you spell it out?

James Salomon, I’m from Corona, Queens, Corona

You are not from Jackson heights?

No, Corona.

Is this your first time here?

No! I’ve been here many times. You know Jackson Heights and Corona are borderline. I just moved to Corona recently.

You want my phone number? No its fine.

You have a boyfriend? Yes

Is he a journalist? walk away mumbling incoherently…

Later I ask him if he’s going to vote.  He says he can’t since he is a felon.

Excerpt from Uptown Sinclair “The Jungle”

Written in 1905, “The Jungle” provided a stunning look at the meatpacking industry in Chicago and was an important contributor to the Food and Drug and Meat Inspection Act (1906).  Sinclair went undercover and lived with Lithuanian immigrant workers for two months for this story:

” There were the men in the pickle-rooms, for instance, where old Antanas had gotten his death; scarce a one of these that had not some spot of horror on his person. Let a man so much as scrape his finger pushing a truck in the pickle-rooms, and he might have a sore that would put him out of the world; all the joints in his fingers might be eaten by the acid, one by one. Of the butchers and floorsmen, the beef-boners and trimmers, and all those who used knives, you could scarcely find a person who had the use of his thumb; time and time again the base of it had been slashed, till it was a mere lump of flesh against which the man pressed the knife to hold it. The hands of these men would be criss-crossed with cuts, until you could no longer pretend to count them or to trace them. They would have no nails,—they had worn them off pulling hides; their knuckles were swollen so that their fingers spread out like a fan. There were men who worked in the cooking-rooms, in the midst of steam and sickening odors, by artificial light; in these rooms the germs of tuberculosis might live for two years, but the supply was renewed every hour. There were the beef-luggers, who carried two-hundred-pound quarters into the refrigerator-cars; a fearful kind of work, that began at four o’clock in the morning, and that wore out the most powerful men in a few years. There were those who worked in the chilling-rooms, and whose special disease was rheumatism; the time-limit that a man could work in the chilling-rooms was said to be five years. There were the woolpluckers, whose hands went to pieces even sooner than the hands of the pickle-men; for the pelts of the sheep had to be painted with acid to loosen the wool, and then the pluckers had to pull out this wool with their bare hands, till the acid had eaten their fingers off. There were those who made the tins for the canned-meat; and their hands, too, were a maze of cuts, and each cut represented a chance for blood-poisoning. Some worked at the stamping-machines, and it was very seldom that one could work long there at the pace that was set, and not give out and forget himself, and have a part of his hand chopped off. There were the “hoisters,” as they were called, whose task it was to press the lever which lifted the dead cattle off the floor. They ran along upon a rafter, peering down through the damp and the steam; and as old Durham’s architects had not built the killing-room for the convenience of the hoisters, at every few feet they would have to stoop under a beam, say four feet above the one they ran on; which got them into the habit of stooping, so that in a few years they would be walking like chimpanzees. Worst of any, however, were the fertilizer-men, and those who served in the cooking-rooms. These people could not be shown to the visitor,—for the odor of a fertilizer-man would scare any ordinary visitor at a hundred yards, and as for the other men, who worked in tank-rooms full of steam, and in some of which there were open vats near the level of the floor, their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting,—sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham’s Pure Leaf Lard!”

Source: Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1905), Chapter Nine.

Ah Colombo

I really love my work, sir

Its a matter of excrement

Why is it that the nuclear powers of the world are queuing up to supply India with nuclear technology? Nuclear reactors are immensely unpopular in the United States which is the largest supplier of commercial nuclear power in the world.  It has 106 nuclear power reactors, the largest number in the world, but all of them were built in the 1960’s.  For more than three decades, no new nuclear reactors have been built in the States despite all the political rhetoric about reducing dependence on foreign oil.

Other than the more obvious danger on the scale of Chernobyl, the problem with the technology is storage of nuclear wastes.  The spent fuel is highly radioactive and needs to be stored away “safely” underground.  It takes thousands of years to decay to a less radioactive isotope.  The storage site should not be next to a groundwater source.  The water may erode the canisters and release the waste into the environment.  So the area should have little geologic activity, i.e. not prone to earthquakes.

In the States, there is one such site: the Yucca Mountain in Nevada, which should be ready by the year 2010.

So the plan to come up with more nuclear reactors in India raises the question of where they are going to put the waste?  So far the political parties have pontificated on energy needs of a “rapidly growing” economy, on foreign policy and loss of sovereignty but there has been no meaningful discussion of the dangers of nuclear energy.

Yucca Mountain, Nevada

Given the geography of India, it is likely that the resulting nuclear waste will be stored underground in the deserts of Rajasthan.  Incidentally, it turns out that Pokhran and surrounding areas in Rajasthan where nuclear tests were conducted by India in 1998 have significant radioactivity.  It would be interesting to find out what a geologist thinks a good site would be for storage in India.

So far, the United States, Russia and France are fighting over the right to supply the energy and the reactors to India–the newest minted member to the old boys club of nukedom.  There is a shitload of money involved, given that a single reactor costs $3 to $5 billion just to build and the American and French companies are starved for orders.

With such big money involved, the government and media need to examine every step of this nuclear power proliferation. It makes sense to outside powers to sell technology to India indiscriminately, but it is the duty of the Indian people to debate intelligently over how many reactors they are ready for in terms of environmental and human costs.  After all, this is people’s lives we are talking about.