Happy New Year 2011! How strange it is to be in 2011 already. I still remember clearly the turning of the century, with the Y2K scare and everything. The entire United States has become completely paralyzed by astounding amounts of snow, except for the state of Florida. That means even Hawaii got snow! Georgia was pretty much paralyzed for four days by several inches of ice, spreading across the city. I personally did not fall on the ice, but I've heard a number of humorous stories of people who have fallen, victim to the ice. Having lived in Georgia for eleven years, I must say that this is the strangest and unfamiliar weather I've ever seen, and convinced that climate change is more prominent than it has ever been. But this is normal, for the Earth goes through its cycles, with or without our help. Nature will do anything to stay stable anyways, so we can only expect it to wipe us out completely if we mess around with it too much.
However, this post is not a vent on climate change and the sad excuse of the human species, but rather a post on some interesting articles I came across yesterday at the archives. For clarification, I have been working at the Atlanta Housing Authority as an archivist of public housing documents. The position is well paid, and we benefit from working for a government organization, who likes to take a good amount of vacations. We've moved onto the second series of the archiving project where the newly appointed Chief Executive Renee Glover moved away from the traditional public housing format and moved towards mixed-income communities, where people of different income levels would be able to live together in privately owned apartment complexes. I found two major points in the articles and letter I read in the boxes I was archiving that really re-enforced my distaste for the AHA, despite the rather large paycheck I receive from them.
The first concern I had was the approach that Renee Glover took to deciding who would be approved to move back into mixed-income communities after their homes at the projects had been completely razed down. Residents were either able to apply or submit a ticket to a lottery for a home. Selection was very harsh and almost unfair, to the point were only about sixty families were allowed to move back into Centennial Place once the Techwood/Clark Howell homes had been torn down, which had housed hundreds of families. I feel a certain rage for people who are forced out of their homes for the sake of city appearance and privatized residential space, and even more when so few of them are allowed back to their homes. The rest were either then left at the mercy of the AHA to approve them for a Section 8 voucher, move into another blighted project, or even the boot and left to make it on their own. I cannot put into words how enraged I am at this government who continues to push policies that dehumanize the disadvantaged. It seems to me that those who depend on government aid are constantly trampled on and have no say in their life course. If you live in a government funded project, you are constantly at the mercy of policy makers to not tear your life apart because you don't have the money to make it on your own.
This problem, however, is not a question of dehumanization of residents, but dehumanization of people. People who end up in public housing generally are there because of the lack of respect they receive from the general population. People who are poor, elderly, disabled, or otherwise not able to provide for themselves are viewed as some sort of virus in society, and Atlanta is on a mission to remove the plague from the public view. Schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods are poorly funded and often the hurdle that new teachers must jump before they are promoted to nicer suburban schools. I used to volunteer for an elementary school in south Atlanta, were we would sit with the children and help them as they poured over math and reading worksheets. One Saturday Hands on Atlanta took us and the children to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, where I spent the majority of the time running around with these two adorable little girls, one who was Black and one Hispanic. I took them to go see the orchids and we walked together through the jungle and desert exhibitions. We sang songs on the way home in the bus and make goofy faces at the cars that passed by. As we approached the school, the girls started to talk about boys and what their ideal boyfriends would be like, and I was heartbroken by the nine-year-old Hispanic girl who said "I want a boyfriend who won't leave me if I have a baby." I told her she didn't need to have a baby if she didn't want to, and she could go to school instead and do anything she wanted, though I felt like I was lying through my teeth.
Lack of education, especially in this country, is a prescription for poverty. With high school degrees almost meaningless and Bachelors degrees heading for the same fate, a chance for a decent career is becoming a chance that the financially advantaged are entitled to, with a few less advantage slipping through the cracks. This brings me to my second point of thought: the importance of education, and how we perpetual poverty by not giving help to those who need it most. One of the article mentioned that a woman of 34-years-old with fifteen (fifteen!) children was not approved for a home in the newly constructed Centennial Place. There was a little clipping stapled to the article of a woman who was raging mad that her taxes were going to help a family of one mother raising fifteen children, and this disturbed me so much as I at the point of laughter. I'm curious to find if that woman would have also opposed sending her taxes to other, underfunded school districts, or to fund a "safe-sex" sexual education curriculum. Perhaps if this young woman had been giving a stimulating, vigorous education that pushed her to college, and a sexual education program that had taught her to put on a condom, she wouldn't be stuck in projects with so many children and a pitiful welfare check.
I also read a letter of a man who had served in Vietnam and had had both of his legs blown off in combat. After being on the streets, homeless for five years, he finally manage to pull himself out of homelessness and find a small apartment in the East Lake Meadows (I believe). I found a three page letter, front and back, written by hand to the AHA, begging for release from prison and the right to return to his home. I don't know if this guy was telling the whole truth, but he seemed pretty torn apart that he was back in misery.
I just can't fathom the point of such dehumanization, and how people can live solely responsible for themselves. No one has the sense of community and compassion. I see this over and over again as the world continues to eat itself from the inside out. So here to my New Year's resolutions: Compassion and Love!
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