you dropped this

A bit ago, after some high-school hoodlum shot at our neighbor, as she stepped out onto her porch, I was convinced that it's official: we live in the hood. Of course, the Oakland Police, who assured the distraught woman that "these things don't happen that often," would demur, that, actually, the hood starts at least block and a half down the street, where bullets don't just break windows and lodge into the walls of the house, but actually kill.

My first reaction, when we heard the shots, was not quite as practical as Mychal's. He grabbed Axel and ducked behind the couch while I ran to the window to see if it was a string of firecrackers instead of gunshots. I was totally impressed with his safety-first response, until I put it together that the couch sits in front of glass, and isn't quite the bullet-stopper of a brick wall. Which we have plenty of. So after we'd called 911 and paced around the house a few times and went repeatedly back to the window to watch them run to their getaway minivan (minivan!), we came up with a new plan for shots outside: to duck behind the brick interior wall. Felt much relieved once this plan was in place.

It's hard not to feel like things are falling apart. Shootings happen on a weekly basis in Oakland; thefts, assault, vandalism take place daily. We experience this in our day-to-day lives, tripping over the litter that clogs our sidewalks daily, watching the constant battle between building owners and tagging gang members, witnessing the petty vandalism--snipped wires on streetlights, broken windows in cars and businesses, accounts of hold-ups, burglaries and attacks.

Crime is a fact of life. But knowing this in a rational sense doesn't resolve either my anger--that one cannot protect oneself from crime, or my feeling of injustice: why can't we all just get along? I know there are many reasons why we can't all just get along, discrepancies in wealth, privilege and opportunity being, perhaps, the most compelling and common cause.

Which makes the new Honda Civic ad on t.v. all the more interesting: two drivers, white men of privilege, wearing respectable, professional suits, driving nice, new sedans, appear as relative equals on most counts except that one of them litters and the other doesn't. The ad shows driver #2 repeatedly picking up the trash that driver #1 tosses out of his car, and ends with driver #2 presenting #1 with an elaborate tree constructed out of his litter.

I've been collecting the litter that the high students have left on my yard for exactly one week. It's not quite enough for an elaborate tree (I'd have to collect the litter off the whole block for that), but I think it's plenty for a nice flower to present to the principal.