Looking for peace.....on a Saturday night

Most Saturday nights couples are out having dinner at a nice restaurant or out at the movies but this past Saturday night we thought it would be fun to pay a quick visit to a friend that works at a local hotel and it became an event.

We usually hear from her about how boring the job is and how it at least allows her to get some homework done and that night was no different.  We arrive with coffee for her and we begin to make her laugh and catch up.  After some time had gone by the front desk phone rings and it is a complaint from one guest about another guest on the floor below them.  Our friend goes up to check it out and realizes that it’s a room full of young people having a “good time” as a cloud of smoke leaves the room she realizes that this is going to be a challenge.  She does her job to notify them of the rules and that people are going to have to leave and they had 10mins to do so.  She comes back down and tells us the story.  We continue talking and I start to water the plants (small odd things I do when I visit people) then out the corner of my eye I notice a police car (actually it was my constant paranoia of the police that alerted me) and I ask my friend if she called the police and she said no.  As we stood there and watched another squad car roll up she says that maybe another guest called the police but then I see the officer place his AR-15 rifle on the hood of his car and I turn and say to her “oh man this guy is taking it too seriously!”

I suddenly feel comfortable in this situation police, guns, confusion, more police, and I start to wonder how I will react to their poor reactions to whatever it is that is going to happen.  The officers come into the lobby of the hotel and state their purpose and it was to enter a room of a guest in the hotel that had nothing to do with the young people having a “smoking” party on the same floor as these officers were looking to go.  So once the officers were ready to go up, a total of five, they had shields, one AR-15 with a double clip locked and ready, and Tasers in hand with the warning of not letting anyone use the elevators.

As people were asked to evacuate the floor where the police were at people began to gather in the lobby wondering what is going on.  Some looked very scared others were talking about going to the exercise room to be as far away as possible from whatever will happen.  I was impatient because two people that I care about are there and I would want anything to happen to them so like a paced back and forth to keep an eye on what was going on.  I’ve seen these types of things go wrong quickly and sometimes these cops are like a light switch, once they’re on you gotta make sure someone hits the off switch quickly.

So in the end the cops come down with a guy that seems to have made a call about killing himself and the police felt the need to react the way they did but the adventure doesn’t stop there!

Back to the room filled with young people smoking…after some of these young folk saw the police some left the hotel and others just hung around.  Four youth walk into the lobby and one asks to have a room opened so that he can get his hat and once my friend saw that his name was not on the room she told him that she couldn’t do that.  He got upset and sat down to charge up his phone.  He was with three young women and one of them was obviously drunk and not realizing what was going on other than wanting to go home.  They started to be loud as they found out that their ride had left without them and had no plans on coming back for them my friend has a job to do and cannot risk having this sort of thing play out in the lobby.  My friend starts by asking them if they are waiting something and they said they were waiting for a ride but since they were only a few feet away it was clear that no one was coming for them.  I started to let them know that they couldn’t hang out and be cussing and being loud in the lobby and that they could keep trying to find a ride but they had to act right.  They did for about three seconds then one young woman started to yell because the guy that was there with them said ‘naw they ain’t coming back’ so she was upset.  I got close to them and said “hey keep it down, do you guys need a number to a cab company or is there anyone else you can call?”  The young brother says to me “hey call me a cab!”  I made sure he understood that he needed to be responsible for that and gave him the number to a cab company I stood back and watched. 

A few minutes went by and they started to argue and cuss and getting loud and my friend had enough and told them that they now needed to leave.  I saw how upset she was and jumped in and approached these youth.  I told them that I had already asked them to please keep it down and now they had worn out their welcome with the hotel and that they would need to leave.  The young woman that was drunk starts to sit up and says to me “I don’t give a fuck who you are and what you saying you gonna have to call the police to get me outta here!!”  I usually don’t like to change my tone with someone in these cases but this was one of those times I had to do so and I looked at all of them and said “hey listen just because we out here in the burbs don’t mean shit to me I’m from the fucking West Side and I don’t put with this bullshit!”  Once they heard that one of the young women stopped her friends from talking and said she wanted to hear what I had to say.  I told them that my friend had a job to do and in no way was going to risk it because they decided to get drunk and high at a hotel and can’t find a way home.  I told them that my friend was accommodating to them but that they had the responsibility to act right and they didn’t so these were their consequences and being mad at us was not going to help them out.

I looked at this young woman’s eyes and I could see her desire to not be who she was at that moment but I could also see the lack of hope in her eyes.  I told her “listen if you don’t like being in this situation then make sure not to find yourself in this same spot ever again.  It’s really simple all you got to do is NOT hang out with the same people that abandoned you here change your friends don’t do this stuff”  she looked like she wanted to hear more and her friends kept cussing.  The young woman then says “hey y’all I got papers on me and don’t want to get caught up!”  So I told her that the best thing for them to do is leave before the police come and once outside if you see them just let them know you leaving and they will leave you alone but if you here when they get here you burnt up!”  She understood that and got up and started to leave and I made one more pitch to her and said “all you gotta do is change who you hanging with.”  She turned back to look at me and kept walking and once out the door it took about 30 seconds before the police rolled up.

That evening could have been a lot worse for those youth (as I hope that they all made it home safely that night) as well as for my friend if these youth had already sold themselves the idea of “who gives a shit” point of view. 

My heart goes out to these youth and in particular that young woman that decided to hear what it was I had to say to her and her friends.  It is a shame that I had act like a Brother from the hood and cuss for them to hear me but there are times you have to speak to where people are at in their lives. Sometimes I have to cuss, at least for those I come across, and sometimes it’s making a harsh statement to shake people into listening when they are doing things or saying things that are not helpful.  What does that say about the people that have to have that happen to them to create a reaction?  It could mean a lot of things but one thing that stands out for me is that means the person that has to be shaken into a reaction is someone that is struggling to the point of losing the ability to communicate effectively.  When I come across someone like that I have to quickly think about what is the context of the situation to respond effectively and in this case I had to make sure they understood I was from the ‘hood’ and I was in control not them and they responded in their own ways but it was a response.

Take some time to sit back and think about what it is that has to be said to you for you to be shaken up to the point of reaction and you tell me if that is an effective way to live.

Peace/AMOR

Gerardo

Looking for Peace.....but not in a gun law.

Right now as you read this someone is being violently attacked, do you care what kind of weapon was used?  I would hope not I would hope that as a human being you would have concern that a violent attack was committed and that alone should drive you or someone into action but that is NOT happening today.

We have managed to compartmentalize violence as if one action was worse than the other.  Some people might think a killing is the worst violence but a survivor of sexual abuse might disagree and that is because it is impossible to rate violence on a level of what is OK and what’s not.  The interesting thing is that our culture in our society that is exactly what we’ve done, it’s better to get shot in the hand then in the head.  In terms of survival it may very well be from a simple perspective of survival but in terms of the act it is truly one in the same.  How can we stop ourselves from thinking that violence can be compartmentalized and see it as one big issue?

To do that we would need to confront many things dating back hundreds of years and not because there is anyone alive from back then but because people today feel the effects of actions taken by those in powers hundreds of years ago.  Part of the violence issue is denial of the actual violence by people that rather not talk about certain things because “our family doesn’t talk about controversial issues…” or “I really just rather live my life and let God deal with it” those two points of views, and many more, are part of what keeps different types of violence in a neat little box.

Let’s look at the gun issue people right now are angry with the thought that the government wants to put restrictions on owning a gun.   Many quickly go to the 2^nd Amendment and I quote “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”  What people make out of these 27 words really amaze me and what really sends me in a loop is when non-whites defend the that very same amendment , do they not realize that their ancestors were not even considered a full human being by the people that wrote this?!  I do believe that plays a role in this because a written document is expressive of what the writer(s) believes and what they stand for and I’m sorry to break it to you but most of the people that signed the constitution were slave owners!

So is it valid to say “gun” violence is different from gang violence? or domestic violence?  If a gang member shoots a gun a kills someone how can we separate the event?  What if an angry man shoots and kills his wife/girlfriend in their house can we truly separate the event from the gun?   When we talk about things like domestic violence it is said in that way to direct attention to where it happened and mostly is used within legal and social service settings.  There are events geared towards domestic violence but that is to raise awareness to victims to seek help and funding for programs that deal with that issue but we don’t go to the owner of the house and protest that the domicile being used by this couple is causing the violence so we want the owner to fix it.  There’s the difference with the gun issue is that we are attacking gun companies and ammunition makers for the violence being inflicted by humans.

Yes pause for a minute because I’m sure you’re asking yourself if I just defended the gun industry.   I’m not but what difference would it make if we attack the gun industry but don’t hold our government accountable when they decide to cut services to those in need, when they defend people on Wall street that have committed crimes and not paid for them, when school funding is not even taken seriously?  In our minds that would mean that we would have to leave one compartment and move on to another compartment to deal with those other issues and frankly people that SHIT ain’t working!

I have had guns in my hands over periods of my life and I have never had the desire to kill anyone and it can become reality if things move along a destructive path.  I’ve had the opportunity over the years to have conversations with people that have been accused and/or admitted their participation of using a gun to kill someone.  NONE of them have ever bragged or even defended their actions that lead them down that path several have even admitted to blacking out while the shooting took place and I have corrected them in letting them know that it’s not so much a black out but blockage that your mind knows you are unable to deal with right now.  So many people believe it to be a right as an American to own a gun and if people really took the time to sit down and read why the 2^nd amendment in the Bill or Rights exist they would understand that it had nothing to do with the “right” they believe today.  There’s a lot of possible reasons that historians have talked about around why the 2^nd amendment was written one of them has to do with an event in Boston when the British basically took away everyone’s gun powered and guns.  The British wanted the colonies to buy guns from Britain as well as the gun powder and the colonist said screw that!  If you really know your history and military strategy you would quickly realize that the 2^nd amendment was a big FUCK OFF to the British Crown.  It was a nice way of saying ‘want this land back come and get it just know that everyone you encounter has a gun.’ Also there was strong support to have a monarchy here with its pledged allegiance to the British Crown so this country started off with a very strong paranoid schizophrenic society.

Back in 2013 there are people with several hundred rounds of ammunition in their homes with a shotgun over the front door, guns in every room, gun magazines as reading entertainment on the kitchen table, and weekend trips to somewhere to shot off that ammo, and in many cases, just for fun.  There are also people that are very concerned with their safety but when we compare ourselves to other “developed” Nations we are really on the “no need to freak out” list simply because everyone the country has pissed off and willing to take a shot at this county is thousands of miles away and when they do attack its big like 9/11.  What would 5000 rounds and 3 heavily equipped submachine guns do that could have changed 9/11????  Nothing!  So what is it that you are worried about?  Taking on the government is implied where the 2^nd amendment talks about “…a free state…” based on the reasoning for the call of independence.  Do you know how much you would have to own to take on the government? A lot!  So what is it that YOU are protecting yourself from?  Is it the criminal that might break into your house??  Well that’s a sign of a larger issue so if you address that larger issue then that criminal disappears, don’t believe me?  Well I’ve placed a lot of things into play and I have proof of how being active in someone’s life and giving them positive feedback and supporting them like a Brother will and can change things.

There was a Brother on the East Coast that was hell bent on making a name for him and felt the need to “impress” those that he thought needed impressing.  I spoke to him about the fundamentals of our Nation and how we needed to focus on making sure everyone was fed, housed, educated, and generally taken care of.  At some point our communication stopped and a couple of years later he was indicted by the federal government.  All of the accusations took place AFTER our communication had stopped and the proof was that my name appeared in his indictment as someone he communicated with. 

I don’t feel bad for him because he was forewarned about negatives actions and where that would lead and he obviously took a path that lead him to really “impress” someone somewhere…maybe not.

So are you still going to rally around anti-gun slogans or are you going to impact someone in a positive way to cut to the core of the violence issue in our country?   

I hope you chose to impact someone’s life and stop bullshitting yourself in believing that if we didn’t have guns we wouldn’t be going through this.

Peace/AMOR

Gerardo

Looking for Peace.....in your love for violence.

Why do you like violence so much?  Have you ever thought of it in that way?  Why not?  Here is an example; do you like the movie “gangs of New York?” how about the new movie “Gangster squad?” Do you like violent movies that are rated as “action and adventure” movies? If so then that makes you a fan of violence…so why did the violence at Sandy Hook elementary bother you so much?  You know it’ll be made into a movie one day or at least it’ll be reenacted as a situation in a TV series.  Just to be clear I am trying to offend you on purpose.

I’m not saying that you enjoy violence but let’s both be honest with each other we do enjoy watching shit blow up!  So how did we get to that point?  Some say it is human nature and others say it’s a disconnection our society has from actual violence due to watching the horrors of Vietnam on TV and normalizing it.  I’m not sure where it started but I do know where it needs to end and it is right here and right now.

Before we start to talk about how to address this issue we first need to understand how we contribute to it EVERYDAY.  Where do you think the street gangs get their drugs? (I actually hope to receive emails/posts with answers to this question)  Well if you really think about who is selling the drugs on the corner you’ll quickly realize that it’s nearly impossible for that individual to hatch a discreet plan to bring drugs from South America and didn’t get caught.  A drug dealer on the corner isn’t like someone at the farmers market that loaded up their truck with produce from a farm just outside of the city and set up shop.  Cocaine is processed and packaged well over 2000 miles from the city limits of Chicago so can you imagine how many people are involved in the production of getting that cocaine to the streets of Chicago.  Now think again about the drug dealer on the corner and ask yourself, is this guy capable of orchestrating such a task of running a production crew in another country, supplying the means of transportation, the bribing of officials through at least seven different countries, ensuring there’s security around the shipment while in transport, then the careful distribution throughout the country to help pay for the shipment, then arriving on the streets of Chicago, THEN risking death and prison while trying to sell that product in an open air market?  I bet you see this differently now…

So if this guy on the corner is incapable of doing all of that who is?  I can come up with a lot of possibilities or I can give you what I have experienced.  Let’s just paint a picture; someone out there is more interested in making money at any cost no matter what they have to do let’s call him BOB.  Bob is in a unique position that he can make money look legitimate by running it through his company with of course a cut under the table for himself.  What is this company?  Well it can be any of the big banks and some have been recently fined for doing such things even though life in prison is really the only true punishment for the executives of these banks.

So if you research which banks took part do you find yourself as an account holder at those banks?  If so do you realize that your money and the money of large cartels were all part of the same pile to invest and create more wealth for criminals?  Does that bother you?  It should considering that at this point millions have been affected by the drug trade at the cost of making money and keeping these big banks in business by YOU having an account with them including your mortgage.  I know I know you didn’t know and how could you have known, right?

So if Bob is running the money through the wash, who is letting him do it?  Because Bob is not king of the hill he’s actually a few steps below that.  Is there just one king of the hill or is it more like a parliament…well it’s a bit of both but who is not up there is the guy selling drugs on the corner.  I keep bringing him up to help you understand that by YOU dismissing that guy on the corner, when they’re killed or shot, as a piece of shit that deserves what they got is only playing into the hands of the people on that hill. 

So if Bob is working with someone else, who can that be?  Bob has to be able to escape prison time because someone out there knows he’s doing this so there are people getting paid off in some form with drugs, money, and young girls being brought into this country to be sex slaves (human trafficking.) Who is on the receiving end of all of these payments?  Well obviously it has to be people that have the power to make criminal charges disappear or never come up.  It has to be people that are sworn to serve and protect and keep in mind that police officers are NOT the only people sworn to serve and protect!  

What it comes down to is that illegal drugs is a multi-billion dollar operation and people that do not live in poverty, have to punch a clock every day for work, have to take public transportation, etc…really don’t care how their money making affects other people.  But yet we continue to support their businesses and make them out to be great companies because they are willing to hire Gay people and have policies for domestic partnerships and let you expose your tattoos. All the while these companies are funneling BILLIONS of drug money and investing that money to turn it into TRILLIONS but it’s OK because they are a progressive company, right???

I know that this may sound farfetched but for those of us that have decided to educate ourselves away from Main Street know these things to be true.  Now, if this sounds too complicated and too deep for you and you rather look the other way or “let go and let God” then you are the worst of them all because you simply do not care about the lives being lost every day, you don’t care about the young girls being promised of a better life being brought into the US and used as sex slaves, you don’t care about that sweet humble mother of four in Mexico that has worked hard for her family losing her son because someone thought he was part of a drug cartel so  the killed him and tore his body apart and scattered his body parts all over the city, you simply do not care.

I do hope that you feel like I am taking a jab at you because I am.  Don’t ask me “then what do we do?” you know what needs to happen, can you do what it takes to solve this issue?

Peace/AMOR

Gerardo

Looking for Peace.....in a PAC

Someone can spend a lot of time thinking about what a writer had in mind when they read their writings hundreds of years later and some of those writings are the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.  If you read it carefully you can almost hear time slow down and as it does you can see that in 1776 they had no idea what they were building.  Did these men really think that it was OK to have other people as slaves?  They did and not only that but it was a “rich man’s” right to have slaves from where they came from in Europe. 

See, in England things have their place so not everyone was called ‘My Lord’ there was an order to things.  So these men in colonial 1776 wanted to be their own Masters of their lives and have what the “rich” or royalty had back home in places like England.  So the whole “…all men are created equal…” really is pointing to a specific group of people.  It excluded Women, Blacks, Native Americans, well basically everyone except for White men, but not all White men were included either take the Irish for example.  The Irish have always been looked down upon by the English so no Englishman would dare rate himself as an equal with an Irishman so again it really was pointing to a small group of specific men of that time in 1776.  For the most part the Declaration is one big flip off to King George of England and not some God enlighten act to show humanity.

So what would these men say if they were brought into 2013?  They would all most likely try to take over and establish some sort of martial law so that they could “fix” things and we would most likely see every advancement in civil rights and human rights be violated and thrown away.  I say that because I believe these men of 1776 had no intention of ever letting Women and “others” advance past them because they obviously thought themselves to be superior above all others. 

So here’s a question: if the writer of a founding document felt himself to be superior to others can that same document be the fundamental basis of rights for those “others” the writer felt superior over?   

I believe it cannot.

I say that with all certainty based on this one example; if a slave ran on his “master” in 1776 NOT one of those men that signed the Declaration of Independence would have hesitated to lynch that salve for doing so.  I ask again, can these founding documents be the basis of rights for all in the USA?

So what does this mean when we want to talk about gun control and violence in our country?

We cannot ignore that the basis of this country is established on uneven ground and since a lot of these politicians like to throw the Bible into their actions I’ll do the same here Matthew 7:24-27 where Jesus talks about having a home built on a rock and those that have it built on sand and I do believe that this country’s foundation is on one big sand lot.

Yesterday a new PAC opened up by the name of Americans for responsible solutions started by U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords and her husband astronaut and US Navy Captain Mark Kelly.  They will be the opposing force to the powerful gun lobby of the NRA and though I think the subject is being whitewashed with lots of reactionary emotions I believe they are missing the point of why we have certain “rights” and why we don’t have a better grasp on the "why ‘s" of violence.  It’s not about the amount of guns in the country it’s about the demand for violence in our country fueled by anger, mistrust, and hate.  But we need to attack things on different fronts and I truly hope that they are successful in accomplishing their objectives.

In the meantime how does this change anything on the corner of 63^rd and King Drive? Or in North Lawndale on the West side? In Pilsen? I guess it doesn’t until something tragic like Newton happens in these communities…but then again some people might just think we deserved it.

Peace/AMOR

Gerardo