Brooklyn Street Scene
November 2, 2012 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
I took a walk Thursday in Brooklyn, from Ocean Hill, through parts of Brownsville, New Lots and East New York, talking to people walking, waiting for buses and hanging out on stoops. The mood overall was open and friendly, but people's underlying concerns were not far from the surface. Everybody said people around them were all OK, and that people had been pulling together and looking after each other. Many noted that there were areas where people are suffering, Long Island, Staten Island, Coney Island.
There was a lot of concern about what 'getting back to normal' would mean, if it was going to be worse than before. An immediate concern is transportation. All but one of the dozen gas station I had passed were closed (3 or 4 were apparently out of business altogether). I passed one station with about 40 people in line with gas cans and the line of cars stretched at least 6 blocks. One woman said it took her 4 hours to fill her cans, another man an hour and a half. People were relieved that they had been able to get this small amount of gas but apprehensive about what lay ahead and although people standing in line were chatting, the motorists in their cars were jockeying for position, and cursing.
I engaged in one more extensive conversation with two men on a stoop in New Lots, 50ish and a 20ish. I presented the Revolution paper and the recognition of the Stop and Frisk on the cover provoked an instantaneous response, I thought for a minute that the conversation would turn to their personal experience with this but the younger man said, "Hold up, look at this!" He pointed to and read the flag on the bottom of the front page of the paper, "What crime would Obama have to commit for you to stand on principle and not vote??" Check this out, it is DEEP! He went on to say that he had been really struggling with all his friends about this, "tell me one thing that is better!" (Never actually naming Obama, he went on to say that whoever was in office, they were going to jump to the needs of the power, yes it is the System. We listed a bunch of stuff, the older man grabbed the paper and started reading it, the younger man ran off after a bus.
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