By: Daiyu Tang
A lot of things can happen in just over a month. Bombs can be planted. Hostages can be nearly hung. Love can be found, property is constructed, gossip is spread. These things bind and pull and push us around this city called Hathian. Some events are marked in grandeur, some with horror and some by creation.
Yet, in my view, sometimes it’s the conversations, those held in a café, a library, a private home or even an alleyway that can be the most meaningful. Sure someone tried to blow up the HPD Captain, but how will that effect you today? It probably won’t. Yet, a conversation with someone directly, just you and them can make your mind and body open to new ideas, feel new things or go in a new direction.
So dear reader, this article is about philosophy and for me, it arose in an unlikely place from an unlikely person.
“I myself would go for nonviolence if it was consistent, if everybody was going to be nonviolent all the time. I’d say, okay, let’s get with it, we’ll all be nonviolent. But I don’t go along with any kind of nonviolence unless everybody’s going to be nonviolent.”
Malcolm X
Where to Start…
I thought it important to start with a quote I was sent in September. It came to me in regards to a plea that I and some citizens have had regarding how the gangs and the police fight and rage against each other. It spoke to the struggle that different groups have had in the not distant past around racism and applied it to the situation in Hathian where many ‘isms’ coalesce together to form oppression and violence. Where the so-called ‘Blue Gang’ faces against the City Gangs in a war (at least how some see it).
Hathian has had protests. God it has had a lot of protests. These protests focus mostly on the tension between the Hathian Police Department (‘HPD’) and Civic Society, although often that Civic Society is represented by gangs such as the Vipers, Rejects or Yuugen who see the HPD as being an obstacle.
The general view is that the gangs see the cops as rivals and that HPD is ‘Hathian’s Biggest Gang’. The Blue Gang.
Perhaps there is more to it than this?
It’s Not Hard
Of course what ‘more‘ isn’t that hard, at least initially, to determine. Gangs and Organisations with an identify (like HPD or the Yuugen) bind themselves with uniforms, rituals, phrases and sayings. There maybe mantras, a social-outlook or common cause and enemies.
For example I’ve seen the Reject Arm Band as more than just cloth and I’ve seen HPD use that symbol as if it was a ‘holy’ book, trampling on it and worse to make a ‘point’. Symbols, rituals, and phrases take on an almost numinous quality and those opposing each other cannot understand them, or their value (except as a way of ‘hurting’) others.
Readers, it’s the same with simpler things. Things like your cultural and tangible heritage.
I’m speaking plainly now readers – but many of us will have lived by an identity (Asian / Woman / Man / Black / Hispanic) and found that identity, in particular in America to sometimes put you into the camp of ‘other’.
This is especially true, at least to my student mind if you’re black and this isn’t a Hathian thing. We’ve all seen protests, we all know the names of people lost to wider injustice and we all can research statistics.
So let me keep it focused on Hathian, focused on thoughts here…
Outside the Front Door
“I watched dem mufuckas… Shoot my homie, beat and savage my homegirl… She was all kinda fucked up. Fo’ a long time afta’. Me too. Mufuckas beat me and shocked me till I died. Cardiac arrest. Taser prongs. Same time Dale lost an eye.”
Hathian Resident talking about HPD interaction
No, reader, this won’t be a selection of accusations and injuries traded back and forwards, but it will look at some of the things that make some of us feel marginalised and targeted in our own skin.
We don’t get to choose where we’re born, nor do we get to choose our parents and sometimes the circumstances of simply those two factors makes life very challenging. Sometimes it’s the formative years as well. Bad schooling, bad peers, lack of investment into our future or even chance encounters that send life spiralling in a new direction.
I spoke to a number of people about this and gathered some thoughts. People spoke about how living in Hathian made them appear (at least to others) as the enemy. It was almost as if Hathian was a scene where cooperative action wasn’t rewarded (except in close knit groups) and competitive, even destructive action was that which was most valued. When you know that stepping outside your door means some see you as ‘enemy’ and sometimes that is because of things inherent to you, such as your accent or race or identity, it’s disheartening, “We’re always the enemy… (when) we live in this shithole…”
I wondered if this was just a Hathian thing, but most thought it wasn’t and that while our crime and gang and corruption in civic services was… significant. That this hate, this divisive split of people into ‘buckets’ was everywhere and reader, I am not unfamiliar to this.
We Made Mistakes
I remember giving a platform as a new journalist to Landon Fyre, former HPD officer. The man (a giant of one) mixed unorthodox police tactics, with anger and passion. He once threw a former reporter out of a window, was alleged to have beaten up a woman and in a wrestling match proclaimed that he should fight against ‘team gay’. Yet he also did proper police work, at one point busting another officer for a murder basement dungeon.
One thing he also did was just display casual racism and sexism. Whether it was that I was a ‘Japper’ (I’m Chinese heritage) or his issues against certain women his flaws shone through brightly. I made a mistake giving him such a large platform but the point is that he (and many others) saw nothing wrong with his comments. He had been brought up and developed into this figure and that figure included discrimination as a default. I am not excusing it. People should and can unlearn these behaviours, but it’s the environment that poverty, jail, crime, injury and a lack of interest in the wider world brings.
Think about it for a minute. Unconscious, or conscious, (or both) bias baked into every interaction in a city and we know that it wasn’t just Fyre and being honest, it’s not just HPD (although they get called out on it more easily).
“I don’t see any watermelon around here, I can only assume his monkey ass is up to some trouble.”
This was a call from a citizen to 911 in 2016 and it was awful and unacceptable then, at least in some areas the world has got a little together (metoo for example), yet we know in Hathian so few are willing to stop and call this out. The quote below is from last week…
“He called me a camel jockey, and a dog fucker.“
So against a backdrop of casual racism where can we go and how does it impact us?
What is the Destination?
“People just don’t get it. Dats da point of da quote (from Malcolm X). It speaks to not just here but all ova America. Dis how it is across da tracks. Its politics got it this way. Its they actions. Its a lotta shit that got this shit like it is. Aint no stopping da train once its off da rails. There should be a betta way. But they aint. Been too much bloodshed. Weda neva been violent like we us if it wasnt fo all da shit folks around here face. And been facing.. fo generations. Cant change dat shit. Its like dis all ova da country. All da hoods and ghettos. Just like dis east side. And it neva stops, not here not no where. Right? Why cause of gangs? Violence? Naw… HPD a gang. Da mayor… he da bossmane. Goddamn Brass cant control it. Gangs is all da city got. From da top to bottom. Wha big city aint like dis in da hoods. All of em.”
Quote from a Gang Member
It’s a miserable situation to find yourself in reader. A bleak and dark assessment of this city and the wider country. People banding together because those in power (and it doesn’t just mean mayors or police, it means those who choose to control others) will take and grab if you don’t fight back.
And this all with a lens of power and because of power, often racism and hate.
And reader, it is… everywhere… I can’t claim to be that well travelled, but digging into it with our affiliate newspapers, it didn’t matter. In Hathian you were a Bone or a Reject, but you could be a Mexican gang down towards the border, or the old famous names like ‘Bloods’. There were groups and gangs in Chinatown, in large cities and smaller. Some had no cause but their own, some were worse than others, but many formed because their neighbourhoods didn’t get what the ‘gentrified’ parts of America did.
Of course not all mansions in Hathian hide do-gooding upstanding citizens. Rich people can be just as cruel and bad as others, but never-the-less, it’s striking that the change in lifestyle, services, access to help and support means that rather than waiting for a trickle down of help that never comes or is not enough, they can live healthier, longer, less scary and safer lives. Do they have gangs behind those huge mansion doors? Maybe, but most likely they have private security and long guns and that, in America, buys them what the rest of us can’t have. No wonder there is resentment. No wonder as well that those with it push back on those who don’t have it and some of those resent. Why can’t their kids do well and have nice things? America teaches us it’s because they didn’t work hard, but that’s… we know that’s wrong. Hard Work is part of it, but nature and nurture play a part… and your nurture is impacted by Hathian and your nature is impacted by the damage done to your parents who didn’t escape the cycle.
“Us being violent round here against them, keeping them away. That’s what changes shit. Standing up for your shit against them united works.”
We like to think it’ll get better and we praise one who breaks through and out. But in Hathian… it’s even harder to do so. The few ‘examples’, like some of the ‘pop stars’ have some defining features… some form of spoon in their mouth, even though they will often not see it.
So What about Change?
Meeting people, violence was often thought about as a solution. This scares me. I fear for our city and my friends and colleagues as violence has often caught people in the middle, yet to some people we interviewed that wasn’t a bad thing. You either fought, or you were fucked. If you accepted a racist, sexist, power-imbalanced status-quo then you couldn’t complain if your comfortable ‘middle-class’ life sometimes came crashing down, at least not in Hathian. Our interviewees suggested this was the price sometimes paid for trusting that politicians actually cared.
Having met Mayor Bobby Boxer and his sociopathic thoughts. I have to say they have a real point and did we expect different? The Observer has Bobby reportedly down taking Crack Cocaine and not giving a shit and he’s still mayor. We’re being sheep in the view of many of the more militant people I interviewed.
So change? How did people think on that? Universally they thought it wasn’t through the politics of any party. It, in their view, takes uprising…
“Tearing shit down and burning it. Top to bottom. People gotta buck back. Start kidnapping these mufuckas. Killin em. The truf is.. Its how dey do all us round here.. Da Ignance of dis fuckin city… Dah politicians and da politics of it all keepin folk down. How da police blame gangs when it had come to all dis violence an hate going on?”
I’ve covered protests and I’ve seen HPD explode and be rebuilt. I’ve seen and researched more attacks and crimes, but it’s never been torn down and I want to challenge a little. While the ‘Blue Gang’ (HPD) is clearly in some ways the same bucket as others, I am not sure that the protest movement knows what to do. We’ve seen HAC, the Scarlett Hand, we’ve seen Defund movements, and because often, there is no goal except the ‘tearing it all down’ someone, the people with power, those who pull the strings manage to rebuild.
This is why I, personally, don’t agree with violence against low level police officers and the like. They’re just bricks that get replaced. We, in my view, which is also a view shared by some, need the weapon of the ballot box.
By Ballot or Bullet
Will this break a cycle? The Ouroboros I’ve written about before that HAC took and likely corrupted? I would say that bullet has failed. Money though, money talks and perhaps, just perhaps through taking the key positions in this city… HGH, FDH, even the Observer and having good people run them, then perhaps… if we (as a city) took the Mayoral chair and his deputies… Maybe then the taps of money could be used differently? It’s a thought… Victory by ballot…
“Polticians politiking to fill pockets not feed people. Big head mufuckas wit smol ideas. See money take money. See power take power. Can’t change dat.”
We’ve had elections in Hathian. We’ve even had campaigns for a council… yet around 2017 Mayor Boxer got himself seated in power and he’s never left. Few were willing to go on record to talk about the effectiveness (or not) of the previous council and mayors such as Nick Matfield, yet one can assume that the state of the City did not miraculously become the way it is today just because Mayor Boxer took over. Sure, he might have skimmed or creamed or taken more, but this city has been broken for a long time.
“But there are people who want it to change for the better.“
Yet even with a few citizens who do, (or think they can) and egotistically I try with the Observer, I really do… this is what we’re fighting against as a city. A perception and in many cases, a reality that is brutal.
Also, let’s be real… I don’t see that much diversity in that council. If one of the root causes of issues is the marginalisation of communities, how do those who are not in the majority get spotlighted? I’m not going to be as crass as to suggest token appointments, but are those who represent those often downtrodden and hurt listened to? I am not sure.
“But lemme come punch you and beat you and all dis shit.. And kill yo family members.. and shoot chu and chain you and cage you… and do all sorts of shit that makes yah either almost die or wanna die. Den tell you Ima sorry. Fuck outta here. Would you care? Would it make some sudden flash of change come ovah you? Fuck no. Vengance an bloods da only way. Its da system. Da nature. Its all ah it. Aint no stopping nothing. Folk gotta see it for what it is and pick which worser fo them”
Quote from a gang member
Nihilism with the Smallest Dash of Hope
More than one person said to me that they ‘Had to be like that, otherwise they’d get done like that’ and reader, don’t you find it scary? Yet behind that, I saw real evidence that some gangs (and we’re not talking the crazies like Lucas and Ain) were doing more for their people than the Government did. When you’re a family, united with an identity… you can be strong, even if you have to be savage.
I look at the photo above. I took it over two years ago in Hathian. Before I was burned, before a lot of things, but not before violence had found me. Was it the Jackals? Was it the HPD? I was never on top, but that’s what a lot of those interviewed suggested they needed to be. Without being on top, racism, sexism or worse would come to them and their families.
‘The City see us one way… But its not really what it seems. We do better with less and still have shit on lock, people paid, a night and day difference’
I started this article and have bit into something more than I imagined.
- I started with a view that I would talk to social and economic factors that drag people down. I found those.
- I then thought about the racism and sexism that blights Hathian, probably as a consequence of both oppression but also the social and economic factors. Poverty Katrina. I found plenty.
- I meandered into why there isn’t change and why previous change didn’t work. Hope wasn’t enough to overcome money and interests and the Blue Gang. This was fact.
This is my opinion, it’s ‘Op-Ed’… I just want to capture that there are so many facets to this City and that sometimes, ‘Protest’, ‘Terrorism’, ‘Violence’ and so on and so forth, hides far more nuanced items and real Philosophy beneath it…
