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I was in prison
When the protests began, I knew I needed to listen, to read books on racism, to watch movies and documentaries, to hear the lived stories of black people and to sit with the awareness of racism and try to pay attention to where it is—not just in our society and in our systems, but in me.
The difference between this young man’s life and Drew Barrymore's in “50 First Dates,” is he has no supportive family to lovingly help him through each day. His father died years ago. His mother is an addict, who is suffering a long, slow, terminal illness.
They told him to load the dirty dishes into the dishwasher and to empty them when they finished washing. Chuck is a bit OCD, and it bothered him that sometimes dishes came out with cooked-on-crusties.
So . . . I did a thing. I got a tattoo. On my face.
One night he got confused. His mind doesn’t process things well. He was pushing the four wheeler through the long parking lot (where it would have been okay to ride). He got to the intersection of two main streets, climbed on it and rode it through the intersection. A police car was sitting right there.
Some days I cry. Some days I get mad. Zach is one of so many we know who fall through the cracks. There is no place for him.
While I hear Churchians talking about how “the poor are poor because they make poor choices,” I daily watch single mothers working at the drudgery of minimum wage jobs that just cannot pay the bills, and daily facing the temptation to dance (and more) in the strip clubs on our street
The policeman stepped out of his car, and the young man who had called breathlessly rattled his complaint. “These guys are gonna beat me! They threatened to hit me! I didn’t do nothing to them, but they’re gonna kill me! Some of them are Juggalos and some of them are Crips. They’re gonna kill me!”
Matthew is a murderer, but “Carl is a sex offender.” The sex offenders are the bottom of the barrel, even in prison.
The point of this piece is to convey a feeling of the ambiance and sense of community the owners, employees, and regulars of his establishment are creating in a geographic area which could very easily find itself caught in a web of depression and hopelessness. The strip clubs that litter the landscape of this street may provide a few moments of arousal for their patrons, but these feelings are fleeting and are, in the end, detrimental to the overall health of the voyeur. What Joe’s Addiction provides is warmth and hope without judgment. They also provide one heck of a good cup of coffee.
“I’ve been living 50 years of my life entirely for myself. That’s a long time. I know how to do that. I am starting to live a different way now, not for myself, but for others. It’s new to me. It’s a way that I want to go. I think I’m going a new way. But I don’t want to start calling myself something, until I’m really sure that I am actually able to go this new direction.”
