“All literature is protest”

- Richard Wright

Called home to see how things were going and heard about the shooting at the football field. Three teams were having a scrimmage, one was Bernie and Jack’s old High School Northeast. As some kids from the Roxborough team were leaving the field, five youths jumped out of an SUV guns blazing… all five with guns… 70 rounds in all… five kids shot, one exection style… one dead.

And of course there is all the talk about why, prayers that it won’t happen no more, all the usual bullshit. All the pretending about how much we care. Words about how it doesn’t make any sense. But it does make sense. It makes perfect sense to me. These youths may be failing out of tenth grade, but I assure they thought very deeply about their reality, the reality of the streets, of the concrete jungle where pretty words don’t last long. Thoughts and prayers and crocodile tears, but nobody gave a fuck when their father was locked away for 10 years for dealing drugs. Nobody cared that their mother worked a job 50 hours and still needed food stamps to survive. If homework was done or not done, if school was attended or not attended…. nobody cared…The teachers pretended to care, one or two, but when you’re getting paid money to care… that’s kinda horseshit type of concern, they never visited the house once i graduated and the social worker who is supposed to care that the water is coming out cold from the pipes…. well she claims we gotta have hot water, but if she ain’t getting paid to show up, then she don’t care either. The white people claiming to care? They got one rule - whatever you do - don’t send your kids to school with the niggers - but they won’t say that they’ll say things like “ oooh me and bob got a new house - it has a really good school district! The church? oh, get the fuck outta here don’t get me started. And that’s allright. It’s some rough stuff this life and these streets, but you know what, at the end of the day you gotta look out for number 1 - just like everybody else - and I still care. Yes I still care about me, and I refuse to let go of my honor…. the world may not see it, but it’s there, I got it, and it might be all I got left… and no I will not stop caring…I will not give up and let you disrespect that sense of honor - for though I have little hope, am surrounded by death, while breathing I retain my honor and refuse to let you dirty it, disrespect it, step on it, and if you do well then yippie ki yay motherfucker we strapping up and going to war, for I refuse to give that up… and if there are bystanders who hurt, if there is collateral damage… well… well baby boy that’s the world we live in…. and it’s some roughstuff, but better to go out with your boots on, and guns blazing.

And the whiteboys are jabbing needles in their arm. and the veterans are sticking guns to their head (what’s it 50 a day) and the black boys are shooting up the town, but hey your portfolio just went up 2 percent better go stare at it for 5 minutes….

Ohlson Mountain October 2022