207

At the end of this blog I’m going link you all to a new one-shot podcast, something we’re calling the Ohio Cast.  It chronicles a trip I recently took with my good friend and delivery guy, Mr. McPhealy.  But before I send you out into the unknown lands of a strange, interim podcast I wanted to give you a little more background.

If you’ll all bear with me, I’m gonna get all kinds of self-righteous up in this piece.

As most of you know I recently went to Cincinnati to campaign for a Presidential Candidate.

What you will hear in the ‘cast is, largely, the frustration we felt at wanting desperately to do something good, something meaningful, something patriotic, and failing at every turn.  The forecast for the last few years has been cloudy with scattered disasters and a chance of Armageddon.  We wanted to stop complaining about the weather and do something about it.  But that first day, man.

You will hear allusions to walking through the worst neighborhoods I’ve ever seen and everyone we talk to being incapacitated for some reason or another.  Drugs, alcohol, illness.  Usually all three I’d guess.  What you won’t hear much of, because we ran out of space on the recording device, is the next day things went much, much better.  We spoke to many lower middle class people and, I think, maybe even changed a couple of minds.  On the second day we walked through neighborhoods many (white) people might call scary, but which were filled with genuinely decent people, hard working people many of whom have a deep love for this country and this world.  People who want change and relief.  People who want a finer world.

But that damn first day, man.  Heartbreaking.

While I was there, walking the cracked, ice covered sidewalks that no one had the time or money to clear and rebuild I remembered the first time I went to Manhattan, several, several years ago.  Before I left people (who had probably never been outside the south) told me that as soon as I got off the plane someone was going to stab me.  And if I somehow managed to survive the terminals at LaGuardia I better not go anywhere near Harlem, I would be dead for sure.  And for God’s sake don’t go to Central Park at night.  Even if it’s an overcast day don’t go near the park.  And even if it’s daytime avoid areas with too many trees, because you never know who’s lurking in the shade.

And what I discovered, which I kind of expected, is that Harlem is kind of nice.  Quaint, even.  And the park is gorgeous and massive and varied.

It’s true the money runs out around 110^th street (or it was true, I hear it’s getting much nicer these days) but the upper west side doesn’t devolve into a zoo of crime and murder and hatred just because.  And on the east side, right around 96^th street, Spanish Harlem, it’s like a damn music video; filled with some of the most beautiful people you’ll ever see in your life.  No joke.

Hell, doesn’t Bill Clinton have a damn office in Harlem these days?

So, yeah, people are stupid.  But these areas of Cinci we walked through, down on Madison and Chapel Street, streets people who have lived in Cincinnati their whole lives have never heard of because no one goes there if they can help it, these places were rough.

I wasn’t scared, mind you; no one tried to rob me or hurt me or even yell at me, it was just brutally sad.  Buildings falling or fallen down.  Boarded up and littered with trash and broken everything’s.  Battered children’s toys strewn about alley ways and dirt lawns.  A memorial, not of innocence-lost, but of innocence-never-had.

When the people who lived there, and “lived” here is a relative term, saw me coming they would get nervous and go inside or go to their cars and take off.  I’m 6’3, white as a ghost and wearing a coat that costs more than three months of their rent.  I must be a cop, right?  That’s what one of the residents confided in me after I assured him all I wanted was his vote.  I doubt he voted, but he did get a couple of bucks off me.

Is that election tampering?

These parts of Ohio, this is trickle down economics at work.  Where we see that the few drops the rich accidentally lose from their dollar-sign-monikered-canvass-bags don’t dribble anywhere near here.  We’ve made sure to put plenty of filters in place.  We’ve made sure to keep them thirsty and dirty and cold.

This is where, even more than before, you want to beat the shit out of the angry-white-man who looks down on these cats, complains that they are soft and demands they be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

These people have no fucking bootstraps.

This is a desert where hope never rains.

And it was standing there, surrounded by crumbling, decaying tenements and broken windows and shattered people that, for the first time, it really clicked for me that we are all in this together.  That if we, as Americans, have inalienable rights we, too, then, have inalienable responsibilities.  To look after one another, to watch out for the least among us.

If these are the places where angels fear to tread, we need to upgrade our fucking angels.

It’s hard to believe that twice electing an oil heir, a reprehensible failure of a human, did nothing to help these people and the surely millions more like them.  It’s hard to believe that a man who has never struggled for anything except, perhaps, vocabulary, doesn’t even see how many people get lost in his cities everyday.  But the great thing about America is: every four years we get an opportunity to overthrow the government.

Make your decisions wisely, please.  Not only for your own sake, but for the people you hope to never meet in the streets you’ve never heard of because you’re too scared to drive down there.

Anyway, so the Ohio Cast can be found here.  It’s not nearly as heavy as all that.  It’s light and fluffy and has a marshmallow filling.  It involves me getting us lost and travel games and things.  And hopefully it’s a little funny, too.

And if you like the theme song to WKRP in Cincinnati you’re in for a treat.

Get a beverage of your choice and change the world,

E

One of the million things she said… 

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 16th, 2008 at 9:50 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.