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Sunday, July 20. 2008
The Hustle
Not the disco dance, but the daily routine. In every city of moderate or large size, there is a segment of the populace that hustles every day, all day, just to survive. Most people have no idea what it means to “hustle” for survival.To survive, usually without the family support network. Maybe they’ve abandoned you, or most likely, you’ve ran away from them, too far gone to even care they’re no longer a part of your life, or, worse yet, you’re too humiliated by your circumstances to ask them for help, so you resort to all manner of degrading acts and behavior, all in your private, unspoken world of shame. No one, not a soul, can ever learn of the specifics of your hustle, the humiliation would be too cruel and to heap that on the already putrid mound of self-loathing would be more pain than one can bear. So you endure and struggle in silence. It’s the only way.
How do people hustle to survive? There are many ways; if you spend anytime in a urban area you see the men and women at the intersections with the cardboard signs that have all sorts of come-ons before they ask for your donations: “I’m a veteran” being one of the most popular. Having crutches or sitting in a wheel chair makes good use of props.
Or …
It’s three days before payday and you’re down to your last two bucks, what do you do? Got anything to pawn? Something so precious to your soul, being without it will cause an emotional tear down the center of your heart, something you once said you could never part with because of it’s value … and the pawnshop guy says it’s only worth 20 bucks, but because you’re so desperate he’ll give you 25.
You wanna know what feeling worthless is like? The humiliation grows quickly like unexpected vomit hurling up your esophagus to splay all over your shirt. Go and pawn something you think is precious, but unless you’re hurting, can’t find enough cash to feed yourself for three days, the bile of facing the pawnshop man won’t be the same. Cause when your back is against the wall, you know you’re going to take the $25.00 and be grateful.Everyday in the El Cajon Blvd. corridor you can see the hustle going down on a hundred different corners. At the bus stops someone is always hustling for change to get on a bus or stop at one of the many mercados y grocerias for a quart or a 40-ounce of beer no one in La Jolla — or even Carmel Mountain Ranch — has ever heard of.
Shit! I’ve never heard of them!
Mothers buy combo meals from fast food joints to share with their children because they can’t afford two or three Happy Meals. Can’t spend money on produce, enough produce for the family, because it’s too expensive. Yeah, for five bucks you can get some produce, but that $5.00 might be the last cash you’ll see for a few days, or maybe it’s all you have for the day. Either way, trying to decide how to use the last of your cash is laden with doubt and despair, sometimes so thick it’s debilitating, so you don’t do anything.
Some people are born into the hustle, it’s the nature of poverty. See someone with a nice bike getting on the bus? What’s the chance of stealing the bike? Don’t have change for the bus? Try and bullshit the bus driver with a bent out of shape expired day pass, or maybe you found a transit system disability ID so you flash that and try and talk your way into getting a seat. And when the bus driver says, “get off” you look to the rest of the riders and ask for change to pay the fare.For some, that isn’t humiliating because it’s a way of life. Hustling to survive is the occupation. A “real” job, what’s that? And what kind of “real” job could someone get to get off the hustle?
Telemarketing. Everyone “hates” telemarketers, but for many, that’s about the only job available that can put enough cash in the pocket so you can pay the rent on the small apartment, or, in some cases, the rented room. And when you do well enough, going to the grocery store is in the cards.
Then, of course, there are always the fast food places. You can work for minimum wage serving Big Macs and Jumbo Jacks. Notice lately, many of the people working in the fast food places are adults, not high school kids, as in years past?
The “service” industry is growing quickly and the vast majority of people moving into the service industry are adults who once had jobs that paid living wages. Now those jobs are elsewhere. So, the man or woman who was making widgets in Akron is now serving burgers in Cleveland.
Who are they serving? Those of us who can still afford to drive cars, who can make choices about how to spend our disposable income. They “serve” so we can go on living like we own the place. We take it for granted because when we worry about money, it isn’t a question of whether we spend our last five bucks on food or spend it on transportation, it’s about whether to buy the new “toy” or buy the new furniture. Sure, you’d like to afford both, but you can’t so you only buy the furniture. This month. Next month you’ll get the new “toy.”
What do the two major candidates for president have to say about poverty in America? John McCain really doesn’t have much to say about it. His “vision,” which is the tired old “the free market will fix it” vision, is just more of the same from a tired old party that has sent this nation into a shit hole that will be deeper than the shit hole of the Great Depression.
Actually, John McCain says nothing about poverty, nothing about the millions of Americans who are moving from the middle class into poverty. His campaign web site has a link about “The Economy” that basically says nothing other than let’s continue the status quo. The “highlights” of McCain’s plan for the economy: tax cuts. Six years ago, hell, three years ago, he called the Bush tax cuts wrong and voted against them or extending them. But when he decided to run for president, his mantra became, “tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts! Tax cuts for everyone!”Barack Obama, on the other hand, got his start in community organizing. Obama knows the hustle. He’s lived with it in Chicago. He’s helped to alleviate it — or try to alleviate it — in the City With Big Shoulders.
On his web site Obama has a link for the economy, but unlike McCain, Obama actually has a link for poverty. On that page he has five bullet points linked to an additional page that addresses those issues. Can Obama reverse the trend of expanding the poverty class? I’m a pessimist so I doubt it. Too many others in government with ties to companies that are making money off the expanding poverty class; or more accurately, the conditions that are expanding the poverty class. But, Obama addresses the issue of poverty. McCain doesn’t even give it the benefit of a mention.
That’s really the big difference between Democrats and Republicans. The “Right” looks upon those in poverty as non-existent at best, and most often as “opportunists” looking to take advantage of a welfare system that actually no longer exists as it once did. For Republicans, the people in poverty are the problem, i.e., Black people in particular. They get to use the word “nigger” and we White people can’t. Whatever the discussion is, concerning poverty and/or African-Americans, in the White community it always comes to that “inequality;” the use of a racial slur. It just isn’t fair! If Black folks can call each other “nigger,” why can’t I?
In the Republican worldview, the face of poverty in America is always Black. Poverty in America, for Republicans, is synonymous with race and making poverty an issue of race, with “welfare queens” always depicted as overweight Black women and “welfare cheats” as Black men in gansta or “pimp” clothing, with at least one gold tooth and driving a Cadillac Escalade, is their most powerful tool in getting poor whites to vote against their own interests.
If you vote Democrat, the nigger dating your neighbor’s (white) daughter and turning her into a “ho” is gonna continue to get rich off the welfare system you pay for with your tax dollars. That’s the unspoken, unwritten message coming from the Republican Party and they know it. We know it. The news media knows it. And it works, primarily because no one wants to call the Republicans on a policy that is unspoken and unwritten. In fact, some news organizations validate that message by giving the proponents of it airtime without any serious challenge to that all-important, unspoken message.
Democrats, on the other hand, see the conditions that create and perpetuate poverty as the problem. A tax philosophy that rewards the rich and penalizes the middle and poverty classes, health care designed for a health care industry that puts profits before health and is so expensive over 40 million Americans go without health care.
Was just talking with a friend who declined needed physical therapy because it would cost him $500.00 — despite his having health insurance. The health insurance industry is making record profits and yet my friend can’t get the care he needs. How fucked up is that?
The party of the Left, such as it is, wants to pull all Americans up out of the gutter and give everyone who wants it the opportunity to pursue the “American Dream.” They don’t believe large corporations need anymore tax cuts and incentives to cut jobs in America to export them overseas. Democrats believe health care should be about helping the individual have a better quality of life, not padding the bottom line for the industries making record profits from it. And Democrats, regardless of ethnicity, generally don’t approve of racial slurs, regardless of who uses them or what the context is for using them.The biggest hustle this year: the campaign for president. Which one of the two major candidates actually gives a shit about the conditions on the ground in the El Cajon Blvd. Corridor? That’s who I’ll vote for come November.
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