He talked about the hypocrisy people embody when they can step over the dying alcoholic sprawled outside their front door on their way to the newsstand where they buy a paper and become horrified at a printed photograph of a starving ethiopian.

from Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration by David Wojnarowicz- page 178.

  1. it’s noble to want this world to change. why not? people are starving. aids is still a killer. there’re civil wars and genocide.
  2. all of those things are happening right here, in the united states, in hartford.
  3. the hungry go to soup kitchens, or find a meal with food not bombs on the weekends.
  4. aids is thought of, it seems, by this up & coming generation as a treatable virus, as something you have to take medicine for. the medical advancements are good and bad. people don’t die right away. but people don’t die right away, making it not seem so serious. and for especially young people, if a bad outcome is not immediate, then it falls off the radar far too frequently.
  5. there are civil wars being fought here, sometimes with guns, sometimes in other ways. there’s gang violence. stray bullets.
  6. genocide can be systematic and horrific without machetes. a lack of quality healthcare means that the working poor are often screwed. it means dying from treatable illnesses.
  7. people still picket the war. good. but there’s another split. there’s not much crossover between the peace community and those working on domestic issues. those who would drop everything to take a bus down to an anti-war march in dc are rarely at the anti-violence rallies in hartford.
  8. it’s like the problems here are invisible in consciousness. sure, the tv blathers incessantly about people being shot in the north end or frog hollow, and people stay away from the north end or frog hollow, but they don’t get blood boiling over our teens right here being hauled away in body bags, so to speak, just about every other week.
  9. i’ve heard people wonder why the anti-war movement, at least here in connecticut, is overwhelmingly white. i would throw out a few guesses, starting with an essay by bob jensen.