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| Photo is from the Irish Times and it may be Dublin but it depicts a worldwide problem. |
We Need to Try Conservative Solutions
I passed the sprawling Salvation Army rehabilitation
center and second-hand store, a four-story, red brick, former textile factory.
The Salvation Army was, as usual, surrounded by garbage. Garbage scattered on
the street and clogged the raceway. Paterson's raceways travel parallel to some
sidewalks in the Falls area. They are manmade channels for water diverted from
the Passaic River. These raceways used to power Paterson's once famous textile
mills that gave Paterson the name "Silk City." The oldest mill is
over two hundred years old; Alexander Hamilton founded this city in 1791. His
"Society of Useful Manufactures" first harnessed the power of the
river and its waterfall. Paterson's architecturally elegant red brick mills, stitched
together inside with massive beams from what must have been awesome trees, are
repurposed into office buildings, schools, apartment houses, the Salvation Army
complex, and sets for retro films
like "West Side Story" and "The Purple Rose of Cairo."
Many of the old mills stand empty. On
July 13, 2013, the day the Trayvon Martin verdict was announced, I was walking
this same route to the CVS. I came across a road block and police officers. I
rejoiced. Finally somnambulant Patersonians had awakened from their stupors and
were doing something. Even if they were protesting a verdict that I
thought was fair, I could admire their civic activity. But no. The cops were
not there because of a Martin protest. They were there because one of
Paterson's former silk mills, the source of Paterson's previous wealth and
fame, Paterson's raison d'etre, had spontaneously collapsed into rubble.
I suspect that the mill sighed before it finally gave way; I suspect that any
accurate coroner would identify its cause of death as "despair." The
police were there to protect the public from injury while playing in ruined
dreams.
The raceways, like the river itself,
choke with garbage: plastic bags and bottles, discarded television sets,
shopping carts. Around the Salvation Army, much of the garbage traveling the
raceway detour into the Atlantic Ocean consists of clothing. I once scavenged
one of my favorite garments, a bright red, Woolrich barn coat, from the piles
of clothing surrounding the Salvation Army. Sometimes those donating clothes
don't wait until the doors open and simply drop clothing outside the locked building.
Sometimes workers don't get to these clothes before the arrival of the wind,
the rain, skunks, racoons, and the other varied forces that bring down
everything else in Paterson. Generously donated clothing, unattended by human
hands, ends up as just more garbage on Paterson's streets.
An empty lot stretches about a thousand
feet between the Salvation Army complex and the West Broadway Bridge over the
Passaic River. The bridge was built in 1897. "The bridge is
considered a nationally significant example of the Melan arch technology and
one of earliest and the most important concrete-steel spans in the
Northeast." The bridge has been deemed worthy of inclusion in the National
Register of Historic Places. I have walked on that bridge through shin-high Passaic
River water during one of Paterson's many floods.
Heroin addicts shoot up, defecate, and
pick through clothing in the empty lot. Canada geese feed on summer's burgeoning
grasses. Beginning with the first real warm spell, sky-blue chicory blossoms and
cloud-white Queen Anne's lace will festoon this empty lot. When passing, I
always admire the round crown of a volunteer oak on the lot's edge, and I
wonder at how long its sculptural beauty has survived Paterson, and I wonder
how much longer it will endure.
The sidewalk is about eight feet above
the empty lot. A concrete berm elevates the sidewalk above the lot, and below
the lot, the river. A fluorescent orange hoodie lay on the shelf of the berm,
about four feet below the sidewalk. I could use a hoodie, so I inspected it as
I walked. I realized it was too small and too garishly colored for my taste. I
moved on. And then I stopped. That hoodie had seemed too bulky to be mere donated
clothing. I walked back. I asked myself if that were just a bulky hoodie, or if
there were something, or someone, inside it.
It was getting closer to sunset. If I
did not move quickly, even Saint Christopher might abandon me. I thought of bending
down and poking the fluorescent orange hoodie with my cane, to reassure myself
that I was imagining things; that no hoodie that close to the ground might
contain anything human. But to poke a living human being with my cane would be
undignified. What would Jesus do?
A guardrail separated me from the
hoodie. A bum was wandering about twenty feet away. If I walked around this
guardrail, and jumped down onto the concrete berm, It would be hard for me to
escape, if that bum were to decide to cause me trouble. The sidewalk was a
place of relative safety, a safety I was loathe to surrender. There were no other
pedestrians around, and, in any case, other pedestrians were no guarantee of
safety. I'd been assaulted and knocked down on this street a few years ago, and
passersby, seeing a white woman assaulted by a "brother," rapidly
exited the scene. Clearly, I was acutely visible to the witnesses of the
assault, but they would pretend that I was indeed invisible.
"Hey!" I shouted. Nothing.
"Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey!" I shouted as loudly as I could, over the
traffic whizzing past.
The hoodie rose up. There was indeed a
head inside. The rest of the short, skinny, negligible body was hidden by the
concrete berm on which the man was leaning. I saw a face. Grizzled. Bloodied. At
least sixty. Ethnicity? Perhaps white, Hispanic, light-skinned black. I was too
focused on other things to make any accurate assessment.
"Are you okay?" I yelled down
at him. No reply. "Are you okay?" I kept yelling. Nothing.
I finally walked around the guardrail
and jumped onto the concrete berm.
"Can you walk? What is your name?
What's going on? Do you need help? Do you want me to call for help?" I
yelled all these as loudly as I could.
No answer.
The man's hand was bleeding, as was his
forehead. The hoodie, I realized, had been on top of the jagged rump of a
rusted metal pipe jutting about an inch above the concrete. It was a safe guess
that this man had fallen and hit his head on the pipe.
I calculated. What should I do?
If this scene had played out in any
number of other cities, towns, Third World villages and Eastern European
capitals I'd lived in, I would not have hesitated, or asked what I should do. I
would stop and help. Now? I wasn't sure. This wasn't the first time I'd
encountered a person in immediate medical distress on a Paterson street. In
fact, this has happened so many times that I have lost count. It's now around
ten times, and each time, I have hesitated, and not known what to do.
I remembered Friday, December 28, 2012.
That day, too, I was on an emergency errand; I was, again, out too close to
sunset for my own comfort, but I had to deposit a paycheck to cover January's
rent.
I saw a man, supine, limp as a rag doll,
on the sidewalk in front of a Rite Aid drugstore. His face was a hideous color.
Not "white" as in "Caucasian," but "white" as in
the color of newspaper. Grey splotches, every bit as grey as the cement
sidewalk on which he lay, interspersed with the white of his cheeks. His pants
were pulled down below his buttocks. My first thought was "I don't want to
look at this. It is ugly and it nauseates me. Watching this man die will ruin
my day."
A black man was leaning over the white
man. A black woman hovered near the white man's side. "Get his
money," the black man instructed the woman. A wad of bills was jammed
between the white man's shoe and the sidewalk. The woman grabbed the money. The
white man began to convulse.
I wondered what I should do. Maybe
whatever was happening here was just between these three, and I was in their
way. Maybe I should just move on.
The woman was using her cell phone to
call 911. The black man was talking to the white man on the sidewalk.
"We are calling 911. You are right
in front of a drugstore. Can we get you anything? Will anything help? Try to
remain calm."
I realized that I was staring at the
man's pale face as if he were putting on some kind of a show. I tried to look
away, but then realized I was trying to figure out what to do to be helpful,
and that required that I look at the pale man.
The man's arms, hands, and legs began to
shake. His head lolled against the bricks of the drugstore.
I could hear the woman shouting into her
cell phone. I could hear the 911 operator asking all the tedious question they
are instructed to ask. "Where are you?" asked over and over, even
after the woman clearly and definitively stated the location. "What is the
man doing?" asked over and over, even after the woman reported events accurately.
I decided that I would squat down next
to the convulsing man and speak to him in a soothing way as he died. I was trying
to map out my space on the sidewalk next to him when I could see some pink
reappearing in his cheeks. The convulsions lessened. He stood up.
"You shouldn't stand up," I
said. "You are still weak. You may fall. Then you will have a
concussion."
"I need a cigarette," he said.
"Do you have a cigarette?"
The black man approached a white man
standing nearby and smoking. "Give that man your cigarette," he said.
The smoker did so.
The pale man took the cigarette and
began smoking. More color appeared in his face. "I need to raise my blood
pressure. That's why I'm smoking. I need my medication. I need my
medication," he said, as if we could give it to him; as if we were failing
him by not doing so. The woman handed him his money. The cash exchange reminded
me. Sunset was coming and the bank would close soon.
The man seemed annoyed at all of us, as
if we had caused the convulsions, as if we were denying him his medication. I
was pissed off that he insisted on standing. We had become involved with him by
giving our time and presence. Any head injury from a fall would be our problem.
He should relieve us all and sit back down. I was dumbstruck that he regarded a
cigarette as a health aid. I wanted to move on! I just stood there. I would not
leave till he was okay.
"I'm going to get my
medication," he said.
"But the ambulance has not arrived
yet!" I said.
"I'll be fine," he said. He
tossed away the cigarette and entered the drugstore.
The woman and I stayed outside, waiting
for the ambulance. Finally, off in the distance, the sound of a siren.
A big black guy got out. The woman and I
explained that the man in distress about whom we had called had entered the Rite
Aid. We described his clothes. The ambulance driver pursed his lips as if we
had made a mistake by calling him, or maybe as if the man had made a mistake by
leaving the scene. The driver was not happy about something. But he did his
duty. He entered the drugstore. I rushed to the bank.
On December 1, 2020, I was walking toward
Garret Mountain, a park I visit as often as I can. I was on McBride Avenue
Extension and I saw a young, black woman, barefoot, on all fours, in heavy
traffic, across from the 77-feet-high Paterson Falls. Drivers, focused on their
commute, swerved around her. No one stopped.
In every other city or town I've lived
in, if a woman was barefoot and on all fours in the middle of heavy traffic, everyone
would stop. In my small, poor, ethnically diverse hometown, people would
stop. They would drive her to a hospital. They would follow up with offers of
food, clothing, shelter, employment. She would have been visible. She would
have been memorable. The difference between a visible woman and an invisible
one on all fours in the middle of rush hour traffic is not a difference of
biology or economics. It's a difference of culture.
The rules change when you cross the
border into Paterson. Because you know, or at least you assume, that the human
decay is so advanced, that you just lock your car doors, step on the gas, and
escape. Maybe you fear a racial incident. You fear this especially in December,
2020, because any white person in the vicinity of any black person might be
accused of racism and trounced on social media. Maybe this is how people have
fun around here. It's not my place to interfere. So you just keep moving.
I called the police. The dispatcher gave
me a hard time. McBride Avenue Extension is very short, only a thousand feet
long. We were not at a cross street. The dispatcher also didn't seem to
understand why a woman's presence in the middle of the street required
emergency services. "Is she bleeding?" I said I didn't know. I
struggled to explain over the sound of traffic. Then I yelled to the woman.
"Do you need help? What's going
on?"
"I'm trying to get home," she
said.
"You are in the middle of a
street," I said, explaining what was obvious to me but evidently not
obvious to her. "You need to get out of the street."
She stood up. Her posture looked the way
people looked on old TV sets when the "horizontal hold" was on the blink;
as if two different people, who had never met, were operating her body parts
above and below the waist. The woman wobbled her way to the sidewalk.
"I called for help," I said.
"Help is on the way."
"No. Don't call for help. I don't
need any help. I'm just trying to get home."
"You're not wearing any
shoes," I said.
"I'm fine. Don't call the police. Whatever
you do, don't call the police!"
Well, great. The dispatcher didn't see a
problem. The person I was trying to help didn't see a problem. I debated with
myself. Clearly this woman didn't want me to call the police. I could call back
and cancel; I could lie and say she was fine. There had been so many reports in
the news that year of "Black Lives Matter," of calls made for
disturbed persons ending badly. I determined to stay with this woman until
emergency personnel arrived. Nothing bad would happen to her as long as I was
watching, I decided.
"You're a beautiful young woman.
You deserve better," I said.
"God bless you," she said.
She began to walk toward the fence
around the Paterson Falls. I panicked. More people have committed suicide near
me in Paterson than any place else I've lived.
On February 21, 2017, I was walking
along this very spot, toward Garret Mountain. My workday was over, I was
shrugging off my cares, and heading to the park. Right behind me there was a
plunge and a splash. I realized what happened when I saw the emergency
vehicles. It's an eerie feeling when someone ends his own life just as you are
passing by. He jumped over the Wayne Avenue Bridge into the Passaic River.
NBC News called the Passaic "The
River of Death." "If you were trying to guess at random the local
waterway where two bodies turned up in one day a week ago, the Passaic River
would not be a bad bet … over the years, with depressing frequency, bodies have
been dumped and tossed into the river or suicides
have chosen it as their dreary last stop … The Passaic is a pretty decisive
argument against human perfectibility," writes the New York Times.
On April 25, 2018, I was stopped by a
policeman as I attempted to enter the Garret Mountain park.
"Why?" I asked, angry.
"Dunno," the cop shrugged. I
could tell that this police officer knew, but did not want to say, why the park
was closed.
I skirted around the police barricade at
the main entrance and snuck into the park via a slender trail slinking through
trees. I saw emergency personnel in rafts on Barbour Pond. I put two and two
together. "Oh, no, not again." Samuel Nunez, an adjunct professor
like me, who taught at Paterson's community college where I used to teach, had ended
his life just before I arrived for my walk. Eventually Prof. Nunez's body
emerged from Barbour's Pond, and the police barricade was taken down.
A 15-year-old Kennedy high school girl
jumped off a Garret Mountain cliff on October 7, 2015. I was visiting Kennedy
high school that week as part of my job. Our host explained to us that the
students were subdued because their classmate had just flung herself off a
cliff.
I did not want another suicide near me.
I kept following the barefoot young woman, who was holding on to the fence around
the Paterson Falls. I determined to tackle her if she looked like she was going
to go over.
After some time, I could hear a siren
and see flashing lights. The ambulance pulled up beside me. Stopped commuters
honked their car horns. Jerks. The ambulance personnel were suited up for COVID-19.
They looked like spacemen.
I indicated the barefoot young woman
holding on to the fence. "I'm concerned about her. Can you help?"
"We're on it," they said.
I walked away, continuing my walk up to
Garret Mountain, and I cried.
I thought of all these incidences and
many others as I shouted at the man in the fluorescent orange hoodie on March
23, 2022. I thought of people who seemed desperately needy but who seemed
annoyed when I offered help. I thought of rescue workers who seemed annoyed to
be called. As before, I thought of my own selfish focus. I wanted to get to nice,
clean suburban Wayne, to the efficient, functional CVS, pick up my new
prescription, and get back before nightfall. I re-christen the streets I walk
along after the name of the person most recently shot on that street. What
would Jesus do?
The man in the orange hoodie began to
mutter incoherently and sway. He did manage to ask for money for "A cup of
coffee." Coins lay on the ground. I gathered up the coins and pressed them
into his palm, but, I said, "I'm not going to give you any money."
The blood on his forehead cinched my
decision. "I'm calling for help," I said to the man. He showed no
awareness.
Remember when I said nothing works in
Paterson? I told the dispatcher that I was in the empty lot along the Passaic
River between Broadway Bridge – worthy to be an historic landmark! – and the
huge Salvation Army complex on Van Houten Street. She claimed that I was being
uncooperative, that she had no idea where I was, and that she wouldn't send
anyone. Any Patersonian had to know these landmarks. There are just a handful
of bridges over the Passaic River, and you usually have to cross one to enter or
exit the city. The dispatcher yelled at me as if I were a misbehaving child in
a dysfunctional school run by a sadistic principal. Communicating with her was
harder than communicating with the elderly junky I'd just awakened from a possible
concussion.
The ambulance sped right past me. The
dispatcher called me back and demanded to know, not just "Van Houten Street,"
but the exact name of the cross street on which I was standing. I felt like
saying, "I could tell you the expletive-deleted exact name of the expletive-deleted
cross street if there were any expletive-deleted street signs!" I told the
dispatcher to tell the ambulance that I saw them speed past and if they just
turned around they'd see me waving.
The ambulance workers, two black men,
looked young, handsome, strong, and compassionate. They pulled on bright purple
Nitrile gloves. "He's high," one ambulance worker said to me, as if
that were something really obvious and unimportant, as if I should have just
kept walking past.
"I wasn't sure if I should call or
not," I said, plaintively. "But when I saw that his forehead was
bleeding … " I trailed off. I felt, as I always do, as if I were a
stranger in a strange land and everybody else knew the rules around here and I was
the only one who did not.
"You didn't do anything
wrong," the ambulance worker reassured me, but the indulgent pity he
showed me suggested that I did do something wrong. He and his partner hopped
over the guardrail, down to the concrete berm, and the "high" man.
I started walking to CVS, I shook, and I
cried.
I see junkies every day. They anger me.
They set fire to buildings, endangering us all, taxing the city, and reducing
more of Paterson's landmarks to soot. They threaten mothers with children. A
neighbor left quarters on his console, quarters he used to pay parkway tolls. A
junky broke the car window and stole the quarters. Junkies defecate in Paterson
City Parking Lot # 7. They use the parked cars as privacy shields from the
adjacent heavy traffic on Curtis Place, traffic they stop to panhandle. There
is a sign announcing that panhandling is illegal, and that drivers, rather than
beggars, will be punished if caught. There are no police officers to catch the flow
of cash from rolled downed windows into grimy palms at the end of track-marked
arms. City Parking Lot # 7 reeks of human feces. Drivers must tiptoe to avoid
gathering feces on the soles of their shoes.
Paterson Mayor Andre Sayegh is very
proud of the taxpayer dollars he has siphoned into Paterson. Costello Park was
recently renovated. It is now a playground specially designed for autistic children.
No sooner did the construction wrap-up than junkies, bums, and sidewalk
partiers re-colonized the area around the park. As five-year-olds slide down itty-bitty
kiddy slides, Patersonians lounge on overturned milk crates, drink and litter
the sidewalk with discarded bottles and the plastic mouthpieces of their sickly
sweet Black and Mild flavored cigars. Junkies demand money from passersby, drop
their pants and crap, and no one interferes. Sayegh was able to suck taxpayer
dollars into Paterson but he was not able to import a culture that protects
children from deviance.
The junkies don't need drivers trapped
at a red light. The junkies are mere feet away from the Salvation Army and
multiple other services that would feed, house, and counsel them. They reject
help because "help" means "No drugs; no weapons." They'd
rather have drugs and weapons than help. Every "good" person who
gives them money subsidizes the damage they do to themselves and an entire
city.
What would Jesus do if he saw that
suspiciously plump orange hoodie? He would see, in its contents, a creature
made in the image and likeness of God. What being, created in the image and
likeness of God, would choose an empty lot during cold sunset rainfall instead
of a roof, cleanliness, stability? Who, and what, could save that man? The left
or the right?
Paterson has the bones of a once-great
city inhabited by industrious, risk-taking citizens. Paterson can claim
Hollywood celebrities Bruce Vilanch and Abbot and Costello, poets Allen
Ginsburg and William Carlos Williams, baseball-bat-wielding high school
principal Joe Clark and also Larry Doby, the first black baseball player in the
American League, as former residents. John Holland launched the
first modern submarine in the Passaic River. Samuel Colt manufactured
revolvers with mother of pearl handles on the river's banks. The engine for the
Spirit of St. Louis, Charles Lindbergh's plane that made the first solo nonstop
transatlantic flight, was built in Paterson, as were locomotives used in the
construction of the Panama Canal.
Paterson is now inhabited by too many
broken lives. God took Ezekiel to a valley of bones. "Dry bones, hear the
word of the Lord! I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and
cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life."
What could work this miracle in Paterson?
I
used to be a leftist. Years ago, I went to a David Horowitz lecture. Horowitz
is a former Communist who turned rightward. My friends and I regarded him as
Satan incarnate. I attended his lecture expecting to protest, or to mock. But,
for months afterward, as I walked Paterson's streets, Horowitz's lecture echoed
in my head. Horowitz was right. The carnage around me has many causes. Industry
fled to cheaper labor. But one significant cause: Democratic efforts to help.
The very giveaways and lowered standards meant to help actually hurt.
The left promotes the disease model of
addiction. The disease model insists that addicts do not exercise choice, but
are powerless victims of a disease comparable to cancer. Conservative author
and former prison doctor Theodore Dalrymple disagrees. In his book "Romancing
Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy," Dalrymple
argues that culture and personal choice drive, and can stop, addiction. Dalrymple
claims that Mao Zedong cured twenty million opium addicts. Mao, Dalrymple
writes, "shot the dealers out of hand, and addicts who did not give up
their habit … within a mere three years, Mao produced more cures than all the
drug clinics in the world." Mao was pure evil and I do not endorse his
approach, but the success of that approach proves that human choice plays a
role in addiction. If Mao had threatened to execute cancer patients, that would
not have cured a single one of cancer.
I once had a student I'll call
"Josh." Josh was the tallest student in class. He moved with that smooth
charm that handsome athletes wear as easily as broken-in Levis. Josh came from
a loving, white, middle class home in one of America's most desirable suburbs.
Josh cruised toward an A, till the middle of the semester, when he decided that
his final project would be something I could not approve, because it was
totally extraneous to the subject matter we had studied. Josh could have
accepted being told "No," and adopted a different topic. Knowing that
I would have to fail him if he persisted, he persisted, and he failed. He later
died of a heroin overdose. After his death, I lurked in an online discussion
among mothers who had had a child who died from opioids. One mother said that if
she could do anything different for her dead child, she would have told the
child "No." Apparently she never had.
Chris Rufo is currently famous for this
work on Critical Race Theory. Before he began that work, he wanted to
understand poverty and broken lives in America. He made the documentary
"America Lost" about cities like Paterson. Amidst the rubble, he
found hope in traditional institutions: the family, and the church.
Conservative values could enflesh
Paterson's dry bones. Conservative values embodied in traditional institutions
like solid, self-supporting nuclear families. The church, like the family, is a
conservative institution. Some churches focus on the litany of the left:
"You are a victim and you are entitled and owed. Cultivate your grievances
and blame others for life's inevitable unfairness. Never allow yourself to feel
satisfied. Never allow yourself to feel grateful." Leftist churches damn
rather than save. The salvific church demands answers to conservative
questions: "What can you do for others to acquit the debt you owe those
others?" That church believes, along with Auschwitz survivor Viktor
Frankl, that no matter how reduced your circumstances, or unjust your fate, you
are blessed with free will and you exercise that free will to make choices. A
church that recognizes that we are all made in the image and likeness of God
also recognizes that we all face consequences and personal responsibility for
the choices that we make.
When I voice, on social media,
observations fashioned by conservative values, rich, white liberals – RWLs –
lecture me. "You have to understand histories of oppression. Racism.
Despair. Pain. People don't want to become drug addicts. They are injured,
their doctor prescribes opioids that the big companies distribute like candy so
they can earn big profits. The problem is rich white men."
I have repeatedly been prescribed
opioids for illnesses that sidetracked my life and caused me great pain. I took
not just hydrocodone, but morphine. I recognized the threat opioids posed,
discarded them, and lived with pain for years.
"How do you help a weak
muscle?" I ask RWLs. "You work it. You exercise it. You force it to
overcome resistance, to lift weight. And you force that muscle to function
according to a rigorous pattern dictated by an external formula. Sit-ups.
Push-ups. Not 'Just thrash around however you feel like moving' but 'Perform
this disciplined movement ten times and meet these external criteria.' The
real-life analog? 'Dress and groom in this specific way. Arrive on time.
Achieve this goal in this manner in this time frame.' The left attacks the
performance principle. The left tells people that they can't and they shouldn't
be required to. Arriving on time, grooming oneself, achieving a goal, being
polite, are now suddenly denounced as 'white.'"
"Racist," they say.
I Google the names of towns where these
RWLs live. I invariably discover that they live in majority white towns with
average incomes tens of thousands of dollars higher than the average income in
Paterson. But these RWLs fancy themselves oppression experts.
I tell them that what has kept me alive
so far, what has kept me off the needle, out of jail, and above Paterson's
Falls, at least so far, are conservative values. I was raised in a Catholic culture.
Nuns were every bit as mean as you've heard, and they did beat the stuffing out
of me. But they hammered into me that I was made in the image and likeness of
God, that my body was "the temple of the holy spirit" and anything I
did with my body I shared with God, that my every action had eternal
consequences, and, not that I was entitled, but that I owed. I owed my
grandmother because she was smart but a peasant and never had a chance at an
education, so I had to get an education. I owed my parents who worked miserable
jobs to put food on the table. I owe the men who fought for this country. I
must not sin, against myself or others, or I will suffer eternal consequences.
An old joke: the Jews invented guilt but the Catholics perfected it. That
Jewish/Catholic guilt is supposed to cripple. At its best, it doesn't cripple;
it protects. The training I received made it impossible for me to make the same
choices Josh made.
Frank was born in Paterson seven decades
ago. In 1968, after Martin Luther King was assassinated, Frank's siblings were
walking home from Eastside High School. They were assaulted and "beaten
bloody" by a group of black youths. Police intervened and drove them home.
Neither Frank's parents, nor his siblings, had played any role in the
assassination of MLK, slavery, or Jim Crow. Frank's parents were born where
borders shift with atrocities and wars. They and their parents had been victims
of czars, emperors, Fuhrers and commissars. Three family members had perished
in camps. They were post-World-Two Displaced Persons, and came to America as
contract manual laborers. They were abused, underpaid, and overworked. The
police attempted to explain to Frank's parents what was happening in the city,
but Frank's parents hadn't yet learned English. Frank, the only family member
born in the US, tried to explain to his parents in Polish language the concept
of "race riot." They understood enough immediately to move the family
out of Paterson.
Frank remembers a Paterson
that was "poor but decent" where homeowners and store proprietors
were fined if the front of their buildings were unclean. Frank remembers
streets where he played with black friends, streets that, after 1968, became
no-go zones. Frank remembers textile mills still clattering, and smokestacks
emitting smoke, but little garbage or crime in the streets. Frank remembers
intact families and intense community engagement. Fathers protected their
neighborhoods, and mothers protected their own and others' kids.
One person looks at the Passaic River
cascading over the Paterson Falls and says, "Hydropower runs machines.
Let's start an industry!" Paterson's former residents looked at the
Passaic River and built an historic bridge over it. Today Patersonians look at
the river and see a place to dump garbage. They see a way to end a life, their
own or someone else's. One person finishes a bag of chips and stuffs the empty
bag in his pocket till he arrives at a garbage can. Another person tosses his
garbage onto the street. One person sees a park full of playing toddlers and
watches his language and smiles beneficently because you have to be nice around
little kids; you must protect their innocence. Another person sees a park full
of playing toddlers and exploits the surrounding public sidewalk to shoot up,
to smoke a joint, to drop garbage or human waste. These choices have nothing to
do with genes or "histories of oppression." These choices are cobbled
by culture. Culture can and must change.
Danusha Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery
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