Things about people
In Overtown you learn quiet truths about people. You learn about Jamaicans from the valley who only listen to country music, long for it as they scale the steep mountain passes. You meet a Chinese man from Trinidad who wants to know why you have a difficult time seeing that he is Trinidadian not Chinese. His soca mixes right along with his Chutney and he never has set a foot in China. He scolds me for my ignorance borne from years of race coddling. “Are you an American? He asks me? He continues, “Are you an African or an African-American or a black-American or any one of those hyphenated subclasses of the country that you should belong. Cast away those pretenses and take your birthplace as your home. Be an American. Let the others hide their country in their pockets. I tell him that I was born in Germany on an army base and then I ask him if he is a Trini first or a man first? He smiles and agrees with the direction of that thought.
You learn that a woman with a face of a teenager is a fifty-five year old grandmother with three young grandchildren that she raises on her social security check. She thought her kids would grow into adults and have a bunch of grand kids for her to love. Nobody told her that all her kids would be crack addicts and jailbirds who would leave their kids to the world to raise themselves. In a way she is grateful that she is still useful and has learned valuable lessons to instill on the next generation of kids. She tells me, “I am happy to have a second chance to give the world someone to be proud of..”
I learned that most of the kids around here rarely if ever get to go to the beach. We are surrounded by beaches and water but very few of them ever go. A simple 15 minute bus ride will take you from here to the beach at 5th and Washington. We went last week and when we returned several kids surrounded my daughter and peppered her with questions to describe what the beach was like. Later more kids asked about it and we found out that nine or ten of them had never been to the beach. I imagine that a day at the beach would change the perspectives for most kids as soon as they gaze over that vast horizon. Immediately they would realize that the world is larger than a trash littered neighborhood.
A new restaurant called Teresa’s is opening across the street from our apartment building in the old motel building. It is exciting when someone gets that spark of entreprenuerialship and takes the risk to succeed. That leap of faith is what should power the development of this community. I keep seeing these blue and white signs everywhere announcing an October 26th demonstration to stop the development of the Crosswinds condos in Overtown. We sat around with some neighbors talking about it and someone joked about how they used to have to drink from the water fountain that was rusted and barely worked. Above it said Blacks. They went on to explain that back in de good ol’ days blacks and whites never sat at the same lunch counter and now today nobody sees anything wrong with separating the middle class from the poor. At least back then the black doctor lived around the corner from the shoe shine man. Today we will demonstrate to keep our neighborhood an impoverished ghetto in order to keep the rich and middle class out. This is not socialism in the poli-societal sense. It is now called empowerment. My neighbor, an old lady who still works part time at the church down the street finds the whole mess “troubling” and wonders why this group did not buy the land before the developers got to it. I think the consensus is that most people do not want to settle for second best or have someone else decide that for them. Most people recognize their means and most strive for better. But is it fair to deprive those who can afford to live in high rise condos that chance? What should we the poor and the impoverished working-class expect when we work our way into a nicer place? Hopefully, if the real estate continues to adjust to true market values then it will become possible for many of us in the not too distant future. I have not settled on any one opinion about the Crosswinds development. I do believe that the over valued real estate market will implode and render half the city into an inner city ghetto. I remember Houston, Texas after the Savings and Loans debacles of the ’80’s. It is easy to see that the price of money inflated the values of houses in the region and now a vast majority of people are suffering quietly with the payments, the refinancing and the insurance. I am waiting for the property tax revolt when city officials will have to account for the schemes that have driven the property tax rates upward. Especially when the market starts ratcheting the home values down. Above all, maybe it is time people in local organizations start asking the residents of Overtown what they want.
*4/704/13*
