The California Mystique...or why Californians hate poor people (and gays)

"The irony of the law is the people that need it to change the most generally have the least access to the law."
- Me, unless you can tell me who actually said this. i couldn't have made this up...

Positional, locational knowledge necessary for a full understanding of my mindset...i am in route to Albany, NY for the Catholic National Tournament. We flew from the Bay Area, and I know there are many, many, many ways to efficiently travel from one city to the other. I will tell you our itenary is not proof of this. We fly from San Francisco to Las Vegas to Charlotte (which apparently has a skyline) and finally to Albany, where I'll get up at the crack of dawn (i had a friend whose motto

I haven't written in this thing for a few days, and it has been a struggle, as there have been a bevy, a virtual cornucopia of events to talk about...michael phelps, the poster boy for overachieving stoners everywhere...the NBA playoffs and the fucking sham they call the NBA "Lottery" (and really, if the lottery actually functioned the way the NBA lottery does, Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Alex Rodriguez would all win the jackpot, buying only one ticket. in any other world, we call that a fucking sham, but in the NBA, where traveling doesn't even exist and a sport that entertained the idea that Michael Oliawkandi was an athelete deserving of even a league minimum, we all just turn a blind eye, but i digress...The Governator suggesting that we legalize weed to solve the budget crisis...

...but the bottle spun stopped at California, the budget crisis and a couple of propositions on the ballot on the May 19th special election. i will preface this with one piece of relatively critical information. I am not a native Californian. I am from the midwest, a place with good, old fashion midwest values. We are ridiculed by the free thinking, ultra liberal Californians for our behind the times beliefs, and that we should join the world of progress that is California (can you tell now that I'm not a native, and that i have this dude on my shoulder, you might have met him, his name is Chip). I have lived in California for over 5 years on the second go-around, and I can say it is progressive, I mean you all have a medical marijuana policy to be rivaled only in places where it's actually legal (Amstradam is the name that pops in my head- if you ever happen to go, Barney's Breakfast Bar- best food in town, reasonable prices, friendly to Americans, etc.). But sometime during all that quasi-legal bong roasting, you all missed that you all have a $21.3 billion (LA Times 5-21-09) deficit, and there are going to be cuts. massive cuts. devistating cuts. There were two ballot measures on the May 19th special election, Proposition 1A and 1B, which were proositions to protect school funding (they're clearly more compliated that this, one measure held a temporary (sales, not income or property) tax increase for 2 more years, the second secured some budget line being used to prop up the already gutted public school system- this is also a generalization, but i fear the specifics and logistics will bore me into not completing this, and instead picking up this St. John Chrysostom's On Wealth and Poverty. But once again, I digress (I have been known to do this)...

...The implication of Californians indifference to the plight of their public schools (and not sure if you got the memo, but "public schools" do include the "cheap, high quality" colleges your state has been known for) is there will be $5 billion (yes, that's a 5, and yes, that a BILLION) cut from the education. After the devistation of the housing bubble burst (and for those not in the know, public schools are funded primarily by property taxes on homes- home value decreases mean a real loss of income for schools), the public school system is already on life support. This will lead to more layoffs, larger class sizes, school closures, and some districts risk going bankrupt. (LA Times 5-21-09) Hey Californians, didn't you hear your children are your future? Midwesterners may have to buy their chronic (are the kids still calling it that? Thanks, Dr. Dre for making me feel soulful) from some dude in a parking lot of a mall or on some street corner, but we don't smooth fuck our kids over. Minnesota (where I'm from) and Wisconsin (a place i hate, and hate on, but have to respect, in the same way i have to Respect The Rat, even though my day is improved by a full point by a Duke Basketball loss) are two of the top 5 (my numbers may be off on this, i am on a plane, so my research skill set is slightly limited, but definitely within the top 10) states academically. Is it because we're smarter than Californians? Irrelevent, in a world where both MN and WI make a concerted effort to give all kids access to the academic grid, something not done in California (and voting against the ballot measures is a symptom of this).

Voters don't see themselves in the kids and the parents of the public schools that are being devistated by these decisions, so they have no problem turning a blind eye to the plight of these children. But as i stated earlier, this is a symptom of a much larger problem, and that's how we view the underprivledged (which are the kids really hurt in this exchange- if you were going to a top tier public school, your school will still rock the house, just less than before. it reminds me of the Eddie Murphy skit where he's talking about divorce and taking half your shit. He uses Johnny Carson as an example how it sucks if you make $50 million and someone takes half, but if you make $30 thousand, and she takes half...well you see where this is going...the worst public schools, in the worst areas, with the most at risk students, are the ones that are getting jacked. I use jacked for a very specific reason- for a lot of kids at these at risk schools, the extra-curricular and/or co-curricular programs are the lifeline for a lot of these kids to improve their lot, and these are the first things placed on the chopping block. This is a major difference in the positioning of the issue and how the impact of these devistating implications will work itself out. The kid at the suburban high school gets some programs cut, but the impact of that is some discomfort, some unhappiness, but the long term implications to their lives and their ability to raise their lot in life has not been changed. The kid can't play chess at shcool anymore because the chess club lost it's funding, but that kid can still play chess at home, on his/her computer, and although their short term quality of life may be affected, they can still survive, dare I say, thrive. In the at risk school, that program being taken may be football, track and field, speech and debate, programs that can give kids the necessary tools for success, or at worst, a means to keep themselves out of nefarious situations by providing another area to focus on, something else to care about, to keep kids on the right track. How can something like this happen? How can we turn our backs on those in such dire need? The honest answer is one that won't make most of you all very happy- it's because you don't care. you may have some sort of empathy for these kids, but when it comes to putting your money where your mouth is, most people (definitely most voters, and if you didn't vote, you don't have shit to say, as you did it to yourself- didn't Florida 2000 teach you anything?!?) choose to vote to protect themselves, and not vote to help the less fortunate. But these same people will wonder why the crime rate is increasing, gang violence is spreading (i read a story in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune on Cinco de Mayo talking about how gang violence is spreading out to even the suburbs and rural towns in Minnesota, and if you think there isn't causal evidence between shitty schools and school violence, you need to do a little reading- I would suggest Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol, a excellent mosaic on terrible inner-city, at risk schools, and compares them with their richer suburban counterparts- it's one of the more disturbing reads you'll encounter, but a must if you want a snapshot of what damning kids to a slipshod experience does to the kids, and inevitibly, to us....

...Lots of bitching, but not much in the way of solutions...well, i have some ideas, but it involves a word i don't get to use outside of debate formats, a paradigm shift. we need to change the way we evaluate the less fortunate. we need to stop trying to make the poor more like us, and look at the disadvantaged as just that- disadvantaged. Our framing of people in need of assistance is such that we don't help the disadvantaged not because they need our help to get out of being poor becasue that sucks, to a compassion of care, one that allows us to recognize us in the eyes of the disadvantaged, and when we get a chance to see our reflection in their eyes and through their experience, it allows us to helo the disadvantaged not because they need our help, but because we need to help them. William Stringfellow, a lawyer and theologian of sorts, illustrates this well in his book My People is the Enemy. This may simply be an oversimplification of the problems between the haves and the have nots, but it seems that we as people are trained, probably internally wired, to be more comfortable around those like ourselves. it's the reason when, in a world where you know nobody, people naturally gravitate to people like themselves. People are also more likely to put themselves at risk for someone that looks more like themselves (if you doubt this, name the war where the US went to protect people of color...keep thinking....keep thinking). even though it's something we don't think about, that does not mean we don't do it. Most voters like to vote for the status quo, and most revolutionaries want change. Generally, the people that want change the most are the people not getting as much from the system right now, and this is also a motivation for these people not voting, which means the system screws them so they don't vote so the system screws them and then they do vote, but the system screws them, etc. A catch-22 even Joseph Heller would be proud of...

...and while I'm just hating on California, let me just say you all hate gay people too, so the disadvantaged shouldn't feel like they're being picked on. Prop 8. Loses. Loses in all 58 California counties, which means it even loses in the Liberal Lovefest called San Francisco County. And there's a fight in the courts, saying the people don't have a right to vote away those rights. I wonder, if Prop 8 wins, do they make the same argument? It's always entertaining to see how people argue about topics passionately, as if the position they're in does not play in the equation. As if these same people would be making this empassioned argument if they had won. Reminds me of John Milton's Areopatgitica, where the Church, who was against licensing when it was their voice being excluded, but when they got control of the megaphone, wanted to control what comes out of the megaphone. Passion can't be manipulated, or true passion either can't or shouldn't be...