Beyond Ferguson

It was predictable when the governor of the state declared a state of emergency when, in fact, there was utterly no emergency. What was there? The pending certainty that once again, the cops would get away with murder.

Let’s play fair: every time a cop intervenes in a situation, there is a risk of injury or death. Decisions are made in split seconds that have lifelong consequences. What am I saying? Maybe Darren Wilson had a reasonable belief that Michael Brown was armed and dangerous. Maybe he acted correctly.

(Do I really think so? Of course not. I’m also in a café, not a cop car. I’m reading things, not having them happen around me, as I’m supposed to take charge of a situation without having all the facts.)

So give Wilson a break. But there’s a problem: what do we do with the statistics like these?

Anyone looking at this chart would come to only one conclusion: the police in the United States of America are waging a war on black people. Oh, and by the way, what does our prison rate look like over time? Have a peek:

In short, around 1980 we went nuts and decided to impose draconian sentences on everything, even offenses that were nonviolent. So now, we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world at 743 persons per 100,000. Compare that to Norway, with 71 inmates per 100,000. Can anyone really believe that the United States is ten times more criminal than Norway?

“Those white motherfuckahs will never catch this Niggah; not up here in these hills,” said Montalvo, as he drove about 60 degrees up a hill in the mountains, two weeks ago. “They’d never get a police car up here…”

He had taken us to the river, since I was stressed out and needing a break. So Montalvo? Well, he promised that standing under a waterfall was God’s way of “bitch-slapping the sins out of me.” And who could resist that?

Along the way, he was smoking something hand-rolled, and do I have to tell you? Of course I assumed it was dope, though he told me later that it was passion fruit seeds, instead. Was it? Whatever it was, it didn’t affect his driving down some of the steepest, curviest roads on the island.

But if he tests positive? Well, it will then be 744 not 743 inmates per 100,000 people. And how much will we all pay to incarcerate a black kid who formed a mystical union with a blue macaw?

I could do the numbers, which would probably indicate that we could provide Montalvo with an aviary full of blue macaws, save money, and not jeopardize in the least public safety. But those aren’t the real numbers: what would it do to Montalvo, what sort of man would come out of seven years in prison? Would there be a poet left there?

And what would it do to me?

“Man, I can see it all over your face,” he told me.

“What you’re not hearing is me talking to my father,” I told him.

Because Montalvo had climbed two or three up a rock face in the river, and I was seriously wondering if he would jump down, and what I’d do about that, since I knew perfectly well that there were large rocks six inches below the surface so of course Montalvo was going to sever his spinal column and spend the rest of his days in “I Love You Lord Home Center” Yes, click on the link: it really exists.

Well, I had been arguing with my father, who was telling me from very-much-above (I sure hope) “tell that crazy kid not to jump!” After all, the only reason I have my feet is because every single last time I mowed the lawn, my father had insisted that I wear leather shoes, and had told me never to pull the mower towards me, but rather push the mower away from me. See? That’s why I’m not hopping around on stumps right now.

And it would have been a shame to lose Montalvo to a spinal column injury, since he had very patiently taken Raf by the hand and shoulder, to guide over the rocky river bed. It was touching: a younger man helping his father, unprompted and spontaneously.

It would also be a shame to lose Montalvo to the criminal justice system, since my scotch is OK but his dope is not. I wanted to tell him, my son who had taken his other father by the hand and shepherded him up the river, that the cops could be trusted, that he didn’t need to head for the hills and hope that they wouldn’t send the helicopters instead. I wanted to tell that but…

…I couldn’t.

Education for Some

Here’s why it should work: my nephew, Tyler, went to a public school in New York City. But before you conjure up the visions of a greying, decaying public school—complete with the boarded-up windows—you should know that this was Stuyvesant High School. And what’s so special about that? Well, Wikipedia provides part of the answer:

Stuyvesant High School /ˈstaɪvəsənt/, commonly referred to as Stuy /ˈstaɪ/,^[7] is one of the nine Specialized High Schools in New York City. Operated by the New York City Department of Education, these schools offer tuition-free accelerated academics to city residents. The only way to be admitted into most of the Specialized High Schools, including Stuyvesant, is to take the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT). Stuyvesant traditionally holds the highest cutoff score out of the Specialized High Schools; each November, over 28,000 eighth and ninth graders take the 2¹⁄₂-hour exam, and roughly 800 students (less than 3% of applicants) are accepted annually.

So Tyler had done well—but did Stuy do well by Tyler? The answer is yes and no—since Tyler went on to go to an excellent university and then to Colombia for a master’s degree. But Stuy did have a little problem, in the form of a physics teacher from China or India whose accent was so thick that nobody could understand him. Nor was that the only problem: there were stories of teachers drunk in class, of mediocre lectures, of the academic laziness and boredom that afflict the average American high school. What made Stuy great? The students, not the teachers. Merely by being so exclusive, it attracted the finest students.

News flash—brilliant students don’t need brilliant teachers: they’ll thrive in the rockiest soil. Who needs good teachers? Kids for whom television has been their primary window to the world, not kids who, like Tyler, could identify a Monet haystack at the age of six. That’s how often he had been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art….

So I should be for it, shouldn’t I? Because look, if I had shown up drunk for work at Wal-Mart, they would have marched me down to Human Resources and fired me. Why should a New York City schoolteacher be allowed to hold on to a job, just because he has tenure?

And I should be proud of my state, the great state of Wisconsin, which twenty-five years ago did something that I found chilling at the time, and still do. Here’s what one writer, Christopher Fons, has to say:

25 years ago the Bradley Foundation and a number of other right wing “free market” oriented think tanks convinced the Republican Governor Tommy Thompson, a majority of Republicans, “New Democrats” like Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist and a few Democratic Black Nationalist legislators like Polly Williams that it was time to help the poor of Milwaukee by allowing them to accept state money to attend private or charter schools instead of their neighborhood schools.

The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program initially allowed a few hundred low-income students to participate in the program. Today the program has expanded to over 28,000 students and the means test for getting a voucher is $78,000 if the student’s parents are married. The last Wisconsin budget also expanded the program state-wide and allows a tax deduction of $10,000 if your child goes to a private high school and a $4,000 deduction for an elementary school student.

Wisconsin, in short, is leading the country in using public money to pay for private schools. Here’s the scheme: identify a “failing” school, close it down if it doesn’t improve, and then give parents vouchers for them to spend in the charter school of their choice. And listen to Steve Jobs, if you need convincing:

The problem is bureaucracy. I'm one of these people who believes the best thing we could ever do is go to the full voucher system.

I have a 17-year-old daughter who went to a private school for a few years before high school. This private school is the best school I've seen in my life. It was judged one of the 100 best schools in America. It was phenomenal. The tuition was $5,500 a year, which is a lot of money for most parents. But the teachers were paid less than public school teachers - so it's not about money at the teacher level. I asked the state treasurer that year what California pays on average to send kids to school, and I believe it was $4,400. While there are not many parents who could come up with $5,500 a year, there are many who could come up with $1,000 a year.

If we gave vouchers to parents for $4,400 a year, schools would be starting right and left. People would get out of college and say, "Let's start a school."

—Steve Jobs, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs_pr.html

Hard to argue with Steve, right? But then again, the thought does cross the mind that any child of Steve Jobs will get a good education. Why? Because Jobs will not have parked his kid in front of a TV for the first five years of the kid’s life; neither will Jobs be feeding his kid fast food in the car on the way home from one job before going to his second job. And Jobs will have the mentality and the skill set to go into a school, observe, ask hard questions, interview students and teachers—who knows, maybe even take a look at the books, to make sure the school is financially solvent. White guys who are CEOs of major corporations can do that.

But on this side of the café where I’m writing we have Amir, whose child just turned six months. On the other side, Elizabeth, whose two children are fourteen and twelve. Are either Amir or Elizabeth capable of doing what Jobs did? Good people they are, but are they capable of evaluating a school? Could they be fooled by fancy brochures or the latest technology, when in fact an old-fashioned, low-tech teacher—standing in front of her or his blackboard—would serve them better?

“Hey,” I just asked Elizabeth, “whatever happened at your daughter’s school? You guys did a strike, and demanded the resignation of the principal, substitute teachers, a security guard—even had a meeting with the Department of Education about the school. Anything ever happen?”

“Not a thing,” said Elizabeth. “Well, let’s see what happens.”

So she’s savvy, in one sense—savvy enough to organize, to make a bit of a stink. But there’s something missing, something that I recall from a book by Malcolm Gladwell. And that was? That the ruling classes—meaning the people who buy the Starbucks coffee, not serve it—train their children quite unconsciously, but no less effectively, how to mediate the world. Is there a simpler way to put it? You bet—the movers and shakers teach their kids how to get what they want.

For three months, Elizabeth’s youngest daughter didn’t have an English teacher. I think now of my mother—would she have let that happen?

In fact, she didn’t. She had stirred around when needed, at one point joining a group of parents who forced the city to enclose a storm sewer that had swept away a child playing in it after a hard rain. The moms came down so hard on the official that they drove him to tears.

Do either Elizabeth or Amir have those skills? Do they have the mentality? And lastly, do they have the clout to back up a threat?

If they don’t, then they need Jobs’ child to be sitting next to their kids in a public school. And guess what? Jobs needs his child to be there, too. Because having a system where the entitled get one education and the downtrodden get another leads to a world and a system that ultimately doesn’t benefit anyone.

Sure, for the short-term it works. But pretty soon, you end up with a society so stratified that it looks like Mexico, which, by the way, is about to unravel.

Could anyone seriously want that?

   

    

In Search of the Number 8 Bus

It was a day when it all piled up, a day when the chikungunya decided to move back in to the left hip, which was completely OK as long as I could lie in bed on my right side. There, there was absolutely no problem! But walking, even so far as to the bathroom? Not so good.

Nor did it help that I had broken part of a molar, and the tooth, feeling aggrieved perhaps, decided to join the left hip in a contest to see which could make me more miserable. So that left me directing traffic to the two extra-strength Tylenol: “hip,” I told one, “jaw” I told the other. Did they listen? Of course not….

I have, in fact, an excellent dentist—true, on an island where personalities tend to be plus sizes, his is a petite, but who cares? The only problem was that he was a bus ride away—but that was no problem, because I had taken that bus for 13 years. The ride would take 20 minutes. The wait could take an hour, so I left with an hour and 45 minutes to spare.

“They don’t have buses to transport people, they have buses to say they have buses, and to get more money to buy more buses,” Jorge had once sputtered to me, after he had arrived late to work, despite getting to the bus stop well in advance of his usual time. Oh, and Jorge lives on the most reliable bus line.

Well, buses are a big issue, right now, since Puerto Rico is in the middle of what has kicked off its shoes, settled onto the sofa, turned on the TV, hogged the remote, and declared that it will never leave. Nor is anybody bothering to use the last name—financial o económica—so familiar are we that it’s just la crisis.

And now la crisis—acting much like the chikungunya in its capricious way of attacking a different joint each day—is attacking the AMA, which would be the Metropolitan Bus Authority. And the AMA is part of the Highway and Transportation Department, and that agency? Seriously broke, says the governor, but fortunately, he has the solution! All it takes is to raise the petroleum tax from $9.25 per barrel to $15.50. See? No problem!

Sadly, the rest of the legislature—that pesky body of tree, not forest, see-ers—are having trouble imaging how they are going to walk through the town plazas and explain that to the crusty old men who gather there. Explain what? Well, the price of gasoline has just declined from record highs of four dollars a gallon, and now the governor wants to increase—functionally—the price by 16 cents a gallon? Oh, and these legislators? They’re from his party, not the opposition.

So the governor has been dishing up plates of cookies and good Puerto Rican coffee up the hill at the governors mansion, and how has that been going? Not so well, since El Nuevo Día has just announced electronically, Poca Asistencia de Legisladores a Reunión con el Gobernador. OK—how “poca” was the attendance (“asistencia")? Well, only six of the 18 senators bothered to show up, and only 11 of the 28 representatives. Oh, and that was two hours after the meeting started.

So how are things looking for the governor? No good, but not as bad as things are looking for the rest of us. Because the governor travels quite well, as I can tell you, having seen him come and go from the mansion. It starts with the cop in front of the wrought iron gate telling me to halt on my walk; it continues with my protest, “why should I stop if the gate isn’t even open.” The answer to this is “security,” and I point out: if I wanted to shoot the governor, I wouldn’t be passing his gate, only to be halfway down the block by the time the chauffeur drives through….

The governor, you see, requires three vehicles at least: a cop car in front, a cop car in back, and the tinted-window SUV in between. Oh, and did I mention the cops on motorcycles that are roaring behind the motorcade?

So is it likely that the governor is going to have a hard time getting to work, if the draconian measure that he proposes is taken? Because unless the governor gets his way, he’s taking his buses and locking them up, so there! No bus service, no ferry service to our two little islands of Culebra and Vieques, oh, and the Tren Urbano—the light rail service that transports 36,000 people on weekday? Well, the governor is closing that, too!

OK—all of this is what you can know, merely by reading—in air-conditioned comfort—the newspaper. But the reality? Get set, because that means a trip down to Covadonga, the bus terminal in the old city. And several interesting things will happen: first, the breeze that has been cooling you on your march to the terminal will abruptly quit, and you will instantly start sweating. Next, the noise level in the terminal will deafen you, since all of the buses are there, and all of them are running.

“Ah,” you say, “but there are buses!”

Very true, and there are drivers, as well. But what are they doing?

Drinking coffee and chatting. Oh, that’s about half of them; the other half? Sitting in their air-conditioned buses, watching us sweat. Is there a schedule? Of course not, so logically you should ask the driver when the bus is likely to move.

This will prompt a flurry of indignation, since it will be clear to the driver that you are implying that he is not doing his job, and since that will be taken as that most dreaded of Puerto Rican slurs—una falta de respeto­ or lack of respect—the driver will be obliged to denounce you and all riders like you, catalogue all the behaviors he has to deal with, classify you as the worst perpetrator of all of them, and then stalk away. Nor is that feeling you have that the bus has just been delayed at least half an hour unjustified. Because the driver will be talking loudly with his cohorts, gesticulating wildly, and throwing eye daggers your way. So everybody’s morning will be fucked.

Rather, you try not to make eye contact with the putative drivers, as they drink their coffee with their mates. And then, at last, at last—a driver gets into the bus! Can it be?

Of course not—remember that air conditioning? So you are sweltering, and the driver? Putting on his sweater!

At last, curious if his vehicle can still move, after so many centuries of inactivity, the driver starts the bus. He drives 20 feet to where you are standing, since that’s the rule: the buses park one place, you wait another. Now what happens?

Well, everybody—every last person—is going to have to ask the bus driver: is this the number 8 bus? Granted, it does have a sign to that effect, it also is in the lane reserved for the number 8 bus, and you have seen the bus driver everyday for the last six years—but still, why take chances? And just because he told the guy in front of you that it was the number 8, well—best to make sure.

Then comes the little problem—where’s my coin purse? Oh, and those pennies that you keep accumulating? Perfect place to ditch them, so it’s a long count—and why is that tall gringo behind you twitching so? Let’s see, 21, 22, 23—oh dear, I’m two short. So an appeal is made—and sure enough, the woman at the very end of the line has two pennies she can spare. Easy enough to go down there, kiss the lady, give her God’s blessing, and return triumphant with the change!

That, of course, is presuming that you pay with coins, since two years ago, the bus system integrated with the train system—and both now use the little train / bus card that you can “top up,” as the British say. The problem? Well, two years ago the system worked just fine. Now? Half of the meters that read the card—and deduct the electronic 75 cents—are broken! So that means that half of the time, half of the bus gets a free ride! This, in fact, was what puzzled the head of the bus authority, when he tried to figure out why revenue was increasing on the train, and decreasing on the buses.

It may be a free ride, but is it stress-free? Very likely not, since the bus will likely be crowded with schoolchildren, who talent base does not include murmuring. Of it could be two guys—best of friends—who chose to sit at opposite ends of the bus and yell amiably at each other. And then there are all the little old ladies who have traveled on the same bus with all the other little old ladies, so that means that when one of them gets off the bus? Well, it’s fifteen farewells—rather in the way families said farewell to young sons immigrating to the new world. Sensible, really, since we all know—little old ladies don’t last forever! Would you want to die, not having said farewell to doña María?

So now it’s time to get off the bus, but that’s a problem, because the driver—completely oblivious to social niceties—has closed the doors and moved from the curb at such a rate that the little old lady goes flying! Or would if there were fly space, but there’s not, since all of the adults are standing crammed next to each and watching the schoolchildren sitting in all the seats! Makes sense, since the school is the first stop, and we all know how tiring mental activity can be!

So the little old lady is unharmed, having bumped slightly man behind her, but no matter, because instantly the bus will erupt! The driver will be scolded, the little old lady will be quizzed—is she harmed, and no, though she does give her entire medical history, including childhood diseases—and the journey delayed. At last, she will move to the exit, which is in fact the entrance, since no one, NO ONE, would exit from the back of a bus? Why? When you can see the door right in front of you?

So the little old lady is exiting just as another lady is entering—not a good mix, since the little old lady is 78 pounds and the other lady could tackle a Green Bay Packer.

Now do you see why I left an hour and forty-five minutes to go see my dentist? Ahh, and I was needing that Novocain more than any junkie could want his heroin. So, down to the terminal, where….

…there was no bus.

Nor would there be a bus for the next 45 minutes, at which time, I boarded another bus to take an alternative, and still more convoluted way to the dentist. This involved transferring to a bus that almost never comes. How rare is it? Well, people have been known to take it, when they see, even if they have no particular need or desire to go where the bus goes. After all, you can boast that you took it to all of your fellow bus-riders!

And that was the bus that pulled up at the bus stop just as the bus I was riding on came up behind it. So that meant that I would again have reason to thank those long legs my parents had given me, since it would be another mad, panicked dash running from one bus to another. A dash involving screaming espere and pounding on the side of the bus and hoping against hope that someone would be in a wheelchair at the bus stop, since that would delay the process by at least fifteen minutes. So all of my blood had shifted to my skeletal muscles, and I was set for the dash—was gonna win it, too—when what did the bus driver do? He waited, in the middle of the intersection, 25 feet behind the desired bus, and refused to move or especially open the door, as I explained to him in three languages (bits of High School French drift through the mists of time under duress) that I wanted that bus. Once, the bus had zoomed off and become a dot in the landscape, a mere memory in the minds of men, only then, I tell you, did the bus pull up to the stop.

Now it wasn’t my hip, it wasn’t my hip, it was my sanity. Or rather, it wasn’t my sanity, since that had fled, and I was hot and sweating and late for my appointment and going down to the other terminal, where I saw that there was absolutely no bus. There wasn’t even anybody waiting. And somehow, I could bear it no more, since I did see three or four taxis, all empty, but did they deign to be flagged? No way—none of that New York foolishness!

And now the governor wants to suspend the bus service? The only question is….

…will anyone notice?                       

The Death Penalty…for Some

It may be a day when it’s better to choose your reality, rather than having it chosen for you. Which means that I could tell you this:

La cruel masacre de toda una familia y un quinto integrante de 13 años herido, ha despertado el debate en las redes sociales de la “Pena de Muerte” ya son miles los que atreves de diferentes medios sociales piden que los federales tomen jurisdicción y que se aplique la pena máxima que tantas veces ha sido tema de debate en el país.

Even if you know Spanish, you may not know the story behind “la cruel massacre,” of virtually an entire family, except for a thirteen-year old son, who was thrown off a bridge and assumed dead. Bad move, since it was he who stumbled to a house, related what had happened, and had the resident call 911.

It’s a story that disturbs, since it disrupts the narrative. Because here, in Puerto Rico, we can make some assumptions about the 700 to 1,000 murders that take place every year. They will happen late at night, when the drugs and the alcohol have taken their toll. They will happen in the street, or in the pubs, or in the parking lots of the pubs. And if they happen at home? It will be the jealous husband, or the abusive man, who kills. And the motive? Drugs or revenge. Whatever happens, it will not happen to a family looking like this:

This hits home, which is precisely the point. These people, gathered at some family celebration, are precisely like us: we know them, or could have known them, and could have been celebrating with them in that marquesina—the carport that often isn’t a carport, but rather a semi-outdoor, private, protected area that isn’t quite inside the house and equally isn’t outside the house. Think transitional area.

So we would have been there—that Saturday or that Sunday, celebraing the  birthday or the anniversary or the graduation…whatever it was. And it would have been a Saturday or Sunday because these people have jobs—just like us!—which means that they, like us, will never be the victims of “una cruel massacre,” since they will be in bed, sleeping, awaiting the alarm that will get them out of bed and propel them on their way to their jobs. There, we will greet them, if that had been our connection to them, and life will go on as normal.

It didn’t for this family. The father, presumably the second of the faces-blotted-out, had rented a dwelling to a man, who had neglected to pay. The father, Miguel Ortiz Díaz, had instituted proceedings to evict the tenants. On Monday night, two men—one of whom was the tenant—went to Ortiz’s house, ostensibly to pay. Instead, the two men killed Ortiz, his wife, and his mother-in-law. Then they abducted the two sons, killed one, and left the 13-year old injured.

And now? Well, the quote above states that the killing has “awakened the debate about the death penalty, since thousands of people in the social networks have requested that the Feds take over the case.”

Why?

Because although the death penalty is illegal under commonwealth law, it’s not under federal law. And that has traditionally been a big source of debate among those who favor independence: how is it that the Feds can come in and impose their wishes over us?

Because the answer to any question about the death penalty? Well, I’ve heard it for over two decades and it still makes me wince: “only God can decide to take a life….”

Look, even if I bought into the “God” thing, I can’t help thinking that we quite easily manage to take lives. There are all those Iraqis and Afghanis that we mowed down, as well as the “terrorists” we droned, and the prisoners in Guantanamo, on their hunger strike, and then what about all the children of immigrants to whom we deny healthcare, to say nothing of our homeless, or….

…get the picture?

So I am, in general, completely unpersuaded by the God thing. I do think, however, that the death penalty has to be approached very, very carefully: how many people on death row have been exonerated with DNA testing? And if there’s any question about the perpetrator of a crime? Forget the death penalty.

So it’s interesting, the fact that this massacre has provoked a groundswell of support for the death penalty—if in fact it has. It’s also disturbing—since I think that one of the reasons is precisely because the victims were precisely like us: job-holding, mortgage-paying, church-going people. Not, in short, people in the underworld.

But wait—isn’t a life a life? Something only God can take? If my son is hanging out in a bar at midnight, and gets in between the gun and the intended victim—well, isn’t his life and death as worthy of justice? Does it matter if someone is killed in a nice home in a good suburb of San Juan—with access control and landscaping, not rotting cars, in front of the house?

The murder has rocked the island. But today? I have gone to the beach, and then  to the café, where I observed a Buddhist monk in the sala poética giving a workshop on “transformando el coraje y el conficto con la meditación.” Coraje—anger. And there are ten people, meditating.

“Wow,” I told Jorge, “came for coffee, and got enlightenment instead.”

“She’s nice,” said Elizabeth, the manager of the shop, and referring to the Buddhist monk, or nun, or whatever she is, “but her voice is so soft and slow, if I listen to her, I’ll fall asleep.” Elizabeth has two elementary school kids: her two speeds are exhaustion and sleep.

Consider as well that I am sharing space with two German children, who are happily playing, and consulting their parents. The girl—only a year or two retired from her job as the Gerber baby—is a sort of made-to-order Nordic. Hitler himself would have patted her head, just to absorb some of that blondness. And the children are behaving well, since Herr papa and Frau grandmamma—sorry, too lazy to look it up—are quite firmly in charge.

Which is what I meant—it’s a day for choosing realities. Which means that I can be inside a bloodied living room, which in one account I read was described as “grotesca.” Or, I can hang in the café, observe two children who are in and soon out of my life, and then go about my day.

Any guess what I’m choosing?