The Migrants

  

About 3 weeks ago the city started taking in Venezuelan migrants. About a thousand a week to date, still climbing, we are a sanctuary city. It is a complicated experience. Nearly all of them have been relegated to the poorer, Chicano/Latinx neighborhoods. Or said equally: exactly where I work and live. It has been a surreal and irritating experience. So many facets to cover that I don’t believe I can do it justice here. I can get into the strange surreal ashamed feeling as they beg for money under the freeway overpasses, 4 children in tow, next to the homeless. Able-bodied men, strung-out on drugs, blacklisted from the shelters, now made heretical in comparison.  

 

And they are but lambs to the slaughter; to be sacrificed upon the altar of capitalism. Asking for work at- every-conceivable-opportunity (I’ve been asked no less than 40 times for work from them) because they have an ‘asylum’ visa and not a ‘work’ visa. So, they run out into oncoming traffic, flagging down people like a carjacking to ask for work, belligerently oblivious to the drivers of these vehicles. As if this is a ritual to be pretended, completely unaware of how 7 young black men descending upon a beat-up toyota camry in the hood is perceived. You bet your ass some of these people speed up to not get stopped.    

 

What got them here (dodging bullets and not starving) will not get them any further (save for the dodging bullets in public places. Because this is America.) And it is a strange, strange feeling that 3000+ people, that essentially code for homeless have just been injected into my neighborhood. Devoid of community, begging on (literally) every corner, straining the resources and patience of an already difficult experience.  

 

And when asked it's always the same thing: Work experience? No. Legally able to work? No. English? No. Children: 4. Story: sad. How much do you think that house across the street costs? $650. How much are you looking to make? $20 a week. “Why can’t you fucking help us?” He screams in spanish “My children are fucking freezing out here, give us a fucking coat or something!” I’m a 6,2 man. Am I going to give one of your 5 children that’s 3 feet tall an XLT Carhartt because it’s the first time you’ve experienced 65 degrees? “No.” I say, “Buen suerte, señior.” And shut the door on the 12 people that continue to walk down the middle of the street, nearly being struck by my downstairs neighbor, father of two, not expecting a soccer team of people to just be standing in the road.  

 

And it’s no different than the people (meth’d tf out) behind the Mcdonalds stripping wire; “Am sad! Want money!” But the reality is that unemployment in this city is in the basement. There are 700+ pages of job openings with the city alone, said differently: there is a lot of work to be done here. Instead, they seem to see us as if they are the first batch of thousands of migrants to this city, deserving of charity, utterly oblivious that ‘exploitative employment’ is what this country was fucking founded on, and they are here (by proxy or otherwise) to feed the beast. This has been going on for decades, centuries. It is a rotten core that has defined this country and will continue to.  

 

And I want them to be here, free from gang violence. Free of the grip of criminal syndicates. But, we live in strange times. Everything is re-election, everything is political, everything has become more about securing a grant rather than who is the most qualified, or capable, or even deserving. Isn’t that what this is about: what does it mean to deserve pity? To deserve handouts? To deserve? How can we master the art of making it about yourself. MY needs, MY struggle, MY self-referential suffering that I need YOU to fawn over, indefinitely and with income. And it’s some kind of voyeurism: where the mattress actress career path offers better opportunities and accrues less debit. (Pick your own hours, go to the gym for +3 income.) 

   

Meanwhile, around the world, weapons of war (built from the same money) turn humans into pulp and I am powerless to stop it. Meanwhile, my dog has developed an inoperable tumor that is framed with incurable hurt by the word; “terminal.” Meanwhile, the drugs consume their bodies as they desecrate my work possessed by the demon of substances. And the trash blows all over the place, the trains wail in the background, the poverty aggregates down by the river in syringes and foil and all of it is this overwhelming revolting human spectacle.  

 

Years ago, I used to think that my understanding of ‘4th generation warfare’ gave me some sort of edge-lord talking point when reflected against basic people. As if I had some deeper understanding of the chaotic future to come. I realize now; I do not. But I also realize now that I didn’t grasp how pervasive it all would become. Every. Single. Day. A new bombing, a new shooter, a new fresh hell to denigrate us and make us feel even more denigrated. It is there in the child asking me where he can score some “clear.” It is there with the two women that threw their coffee at me and sped off. And it is there in my manic spending on cold-climate bulbs that contribute to my garden, so that I might feel more at peace when I enter the green and slip away. Truth is: the chaos will always be there, don’t forget to brush your fucking teeth.