so many incidents in nyc happen in transit. as unbelievable as it my seem, i have another anecdote to share with y'all. today post-work, i decided not to go into lower manhattan for dinner and drinks with a friend cuz i was feelin a bit grungy today. instead, i headed into jackson hts to return a bollywood film that i've been holding on to for ages. after doing that and running an errand, i got on the R train towards manhattan, got off at steinway, and proceeded up the stairs. and you're probably wondering - why is she _still_ blabbering about her day-to-day?
it gets more interesting....believe you me.
as soon i ascend the stairs there's an ad board that's white (with no bills posted) and someone's scribbled: 'deport all illegals' '1. not immunized' '2. closing down hospitals' and '3. (too annoyed by the first three lines i read to remember this one)'
almost instinctively, i went up to this racist, classist, ignorant message and began to rub the writing to see if i could at least make it known that someone disagreed with the message enough to mess it up.
i guess i'm a bit of an odd person because the things that typically irk people don't irk me. but ideological warfare really gets under my skin. particularly when the ideology is founded on privilege, elitism, and entitlement. plenty of 'legals' are not immunized. plenty of working class 'legals' require hospital care that they can't afford and doesn't exist for them. and aside from all this, the so-called intellectually and materialistically wealth that the 'haves' have is something that was passed on to them because they come from generations of peoples that have had access to that language, that way of being, of thinking, of acting.
and what of the families that produce first generation college students, you may ask. well, what of them? - i would ask in return. because honestly, how many of them are there? they'll always, always, always be the exception, never the norm. when the norms change, that's when i'll give another look at this issue, and revise my stance.
oh yeah, when i left it the scribble read 'port all legals.'
4 comments:
port all illegals, huh? port them where? ;) i agree, that is an annoying thing to write in a public place - but it is not what i would expect to see of a typical graffiti artist. i wonder what kind of person would write something like that - most of the people who echo those thoughts seem to be "above" writing on subway walls; do they even ride subways?
how come your other posts (specifically the ones directly before and after this one) don't have the option for me to leave comments? fix this!
correction - i changed it to 'port all legals,' not that that makes anymore sense...
fixed. your wish is my command :)
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