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| U.S. neglects its own |
America deserves a vote “but we need a whole lot more,”
Powers says
Editing by Carolyn Bennett
Powers pens a terrific article whose substance deserves more
than an edited excerpt so I urge you to read the entire piece in The Indypendent.
It reaches beyond superficial rhetoric and offers critically reasoned historical
context, underlying conditions bearing on contemporary consequences. Here is
some of Nicholas Powers’ “Red, White & Bang.”
Wounded
Powers begins with friend Frankie, caught in a crossfire as are U.S.
Afghan/Pakistani civilians.
Frankie: Rolling up his sleeve, he tells Powers, “I was shot
six times”
Powers: When Frankie peeled back the gauze, I saw holes in
his forearm as if he had been stung by a giant metal insect. [He asks:] “What
the hell … “What happened?”
Frankie: “Kid from Brownsville running down the street,
shooting wildly at another kid … I was in the doorway and got hit. None of the
bullets struck an artery or a bone. Someone was looking out for me.”
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P
|
owers continues the narrative from the start of the conversation with
his friend, Frankie.
“In a parked jeep, a light came on and I saw Frankie, my
scruffy neighbor. He told me of being on the stoop when a boy ran up, firing
his gun at any moving thing, how bullets punched his body, how he prayed for
life as blood gushed from his limbs.
“Frankie rolled up his pant leg and showed me a crusted hole
in his calf. I grasped his hands and said, ‘I am so thankful you are alive.’
Numbed
|
“
|
We knew people had been shot on our block; but in order to
go about living, we numbed our minds to the risks. And it wasn’t hard.
“The young men killing each other were locked in their own
world — you just had to step around it; but every once in a while, a gunman
shot so wildly, so carelessly that a shell pierced the invisible walls between
us and them.
“Studying Frankie’s face, I remembered kicking a soccer ball
with him and loosening the fire hydrant so kids could splash in the water. We
stared at each other as I repeated ─
I am so thankful you are alive.
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| U.S. neglected |
Further into his article, Powers brings together seemingly parallel realities. Gun toting youth do not exist in a vacuum or rise from nothingness
without connections with historical contexts and contemporary conditions.
History-hardened
“Oppression, when internalized by its victims for too long
and too deeply, eventually becomes their culture. So it struck me, on the night
that Frankie told me about the shooting, that as I walked up Nostrand, I heard
a group of young men around an open car rapping along with 50 Cent: ‘We
rolling, whip stolen, AK loaded, I’m down to ride tonight. We smokin’, straight
locin’, locked and loaded, somebody gon’ die tonight.’
 |
| U.S. endless Global violence |
Wikipedia
note: Bedford-Stuyvesant is made up of four neighborhoods: Bedford,
Stuyvesant Heights, Ocean Hill and Weeksville. Nostrand Avenue is the main
north-south thoroughfare. Colloquially known as Bed-Stuy, Bedford-Stuyvesant is
a neighborhood in the central portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn.
|
“
|
I thought to myself,” Powers continues, “with all the guns
and rage and nihilism here, you just might [follow the rapper’s philosophy]. And
I thought, we on the left don’t address crime for what it is, a violent form of
street-level capitalism.
“On the way to the bar [the Vodou Lounge to catch the
presidential debate], I kept seeing Frankie’s bullet wounds in my mind like a
giant photograph. My friend almost died; he almost died, I kept repeating it.
And who was seeing the invisible
victims of violence?
Who was peering beneath the tragic
headlines of mass shootings to see the cities being hollowed out by the multiplying
voids of our dead teenagers?
 |
| U.S. Neglected Homeless |
Who was willing to speak about
their deaths?
Pandered politically expedient, empty promises
Narrowly drawn rhetoric
“Finally, I entered the Vodou Lounge and everyone was
staring at the TV as President Obama and Mitt Romney debated. In the cross-fire
of their words was a white college student named Jeremy. The candidates tripped
over each other to promise him a job. Obama said, ‘… [T]here are a bunch of
things we can do to make sure your future is bright.’”
 |
| Flimflammed |
|
R
|
hetoric post-inauguration, post-Newtown ─ Powers continues
his narrative. “The bar was nearly empty; I sat with a beer watching the State
of the Union address. Obama tensed his mouth ─
‘In the two months since Newtown,
more than a thousand birthdays, graduations, anniversaries have been stolen
from our lives by a bullet from a gun … More than a thousand.’
“The presidential election had come and gone, washing over
us like a giant wave of noise. And I was relieved Obama won. I didn’t share the
view that a Romney victory would galvanize people into protesting. It was to me
an admission of a lack of vision on the Left, by those who see having a common
enemy as the only thing that can move the masses.
“What about a common vision?” Powers asks, and answers:
I looked out the window and
imagined a neighborhood with midnight basketball to absorb the energy of youth
whose homes were falling apart.
Or taxing Wall Street and creating whole new
job sectors?
|
“
|
So much of the violence in these streets is read as simple
personal violence and not as the effect of the violence of capitalism.
 |
| U.S. neglect |
“How can an economic system dominate the earth, make
exchanging labor for money as the principal way to meet basic needs, and then
not be able to provide full global employment? It is the contradiction grinding
in our world.
|
“
|
We are surrounded by ads for a life we can’t afford and are
told that no other world is possible.
“When can we get a federal buyback program that lets people
sell their guns, while shutting down the gun factories and melting the steel
into solar panels?
“[The president], squinting his eyes, talked of a young
woman named Hadiya Pendleton.
‘Just three weeks ago, she was
here, in Washington, with her classmates, performing for her country at my
inauguration; and a week later, she was shot and killed in a Chicago park after
school, just a mile away from my house.’
“[The president] called for sensible reforms such as a
universal background check, a ban on assault weapons and laws to reduce the
number of bullets in ammo cartridges,” Powers recounts.
“I nodded, all very sensible,” he says.
Mr. and Mrs. Pendleton stood and applauded as President
Obama “demanded that the House and Senate allow for a vote.” His voice rising in
rhythmic rhetorical flair: “‘They deserve a vote. … ‘They deserve a vote.’
|
“
|
Yes,” Powers rejoins: “We do deserve a vote. But we need a
whole lot more.”
Sources and notes
“Red, White & Bang” by Nicholas Powers, February 21,
2013, Issue #184,
https://indypendent.org/2013/02/21/red-white-bang
The Indypendent
The Indypendent publishes articles that look at news and
culture through a critical lens, exploring how systems of power — economic,
political and social — affect the lives of people locally and globally.
Founded in 2000 as the print project of the New York City
Independent Media Center, the multi-award-winning Indypendent is a New York
City-based free newspaper and online news site. Its print edition is published 13
times a year on Mondays. The website is
updated daily along activity on Twitter and Facebook. http://indypendent.org/about
The Nicholas Powers' article appears in the February 20-March
20, 2013, edition of The Indypendent.
Chicago Tribune, February 12, 2013
“Two reputed gang members were out for revenge from a
previous shooting when they opened fire on a group of students in a South Side
park last month, killing 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton in a heartbreaking case
that has brought national attention to Chicago’s rampant gun violence, police
said.
“Michael Ward, 18, and Kenneth Williams, 20, were each
charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder and aggravated battery with
a firearm in the Jan. 29 attack that also left two teens wounded.” http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-02-12/news/chi-hadiya-pendleton-charges-20130211_1_area-central-police-headquarters-gang-members-rival-gang
Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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