[van-discuss] We Lost -- assistance... help

Wed Sep 10 02:08:56 PDT 2003

After 7 years and fighting for a block and a hood and trying to make a
life for me, my dog, the peoples in my Hood I lost my home in a
Residential Tenancy (Ms Knots) decision which took 20mins with no
background as to my life and my work and not caving into the harassment
of the landlord in favour of a slum lord Robin Kimpton who will occupy
my home in less than two months then move out and double the rent and
sigin it over to the wealthy.  I lost my home today and maybe my hood to

a man who 'cleaned" out his apts. of Natives and will not rent to
nonwhites or poor or working -class now that he's had to actually tend
to the basic needs of the slum flats which he owns. We can't live in
decent places and once we fight to make it decent we are asked or
pressured to leave to make room for "decent" people. This is not right.
I know that Spawn would never let this happen. It may seem a bit loco
but here me out and I'll tell you how Spawn #29 made sense to me and I
figured that sonics, words and a little heart could do something and
chase the badness away and whip darkhearts. I guess I failed. I'm sorry.

But hear this out-- I just want to holla.

It was 7 years fighting crackheads, pimps, dealers, stumbling and tryin
to keep my and maybe a few other peoples' heads up and trying to do more

than just consume and take up space on this block and when it seemed
livable again I'm ejected and my home is taken over by the slumlord who
tried to destroy us all.  Basically, me and my dog did the dirty  work
in cleaning up the place and trying to be community minded and now the
soldiers are DISsed and DISmissed.   ...or as Professor Long states;
"Gentrification and caucasation, the new urban renewal." They tell me
that he can get away with this injustice. They tell me that all people
can get away with this sort of injustice and the response is to shrug
and say 'oh well' and lose a little more of your soul and move on. I
think we're runnin out of soul, though.  Can the good guys actually get
a little break -- I guess that's only for 'paperback heroes', ri? I
guess that was funny.

Me and my dog would like to stay in Fernwood/The Hood/some call New
PAlestine cuz we have not just lived here -- it is our home and our
hood. It has become a character/a persona in my work, my short stories
and it is spark in my heart. It is a place I wrote a whole love letter
to and made it into novel -- with respect (fwuh -- i never laughed this
place or the people in it). It is a place I was a scribe. I took that
seriously as all scribes should when they write of the peoples who are
and once were. I don't find all this funny. Some may find it odd and bit

crazy. It just happened and when I looked around it was 7 years and kids

had grown up and I had written poems, short stories and a novel about
the place -- one I hope more like singing than reading. It was a place
where no matter where I went from San Francisco to Atlanta to New York
for literary events and they  knew I was from Fernwood in Victoria, BC.
It meant alot to me and people loved the stories of the peoples here and

they never laughed about them cuz I never made my home and hood a joke.
The people here are not a joke. It was my purpose to recite and write of

the lives which were being neglected -- lives which sometimes even the
peoples here felt didn't matter or deserved notice. They did and I
wanted to be a part of this place -- me and my dog.  I could do very
much about world affairs but I could do more than most writers here and
I could use what little fame or notoriety I had to drop some Knowledge
and energy here. I was hoping add respect to this place cuz it already
had it goin on. I've seen kids growup here. I seen the a school yard at
George Jay turn from a drug pickup joint to a place where kids play.

Some people, and you got to hear me on this, have found a place they say

which holds magic for them which inspires them to write poems, plays,
music, novels, today; films, for some it was Berlin, America, Dublin,
Morocco, but for me it was an odd little place with special tough people

who really shouldn't get along but managed to do that -- in their own
way. Fernwood is like that odd little house, just on Pandora I believe,
which the city can't tear down and is hidden away between corner chain
stores, highways and government buildings -- it has vines all over it
and just chills in ti's own yard. That's Fernwood for me -- just a place

which wasn't meant to be anything and then just chilled so right and you

could get codes and graphs from Ghosts to Village Idiots to community
events, music shows and radicals trying to warn us of a prophecy which
we didn't listen to and now "they've come for us".  If you assemble
those codes and write it as a poem -- what may seem random becomes a
narrative-- a perfect linear pattern of semiotics and fable. You can
watch that from your lawn in the mornings and by walking around the
blocks carefully respecting physical spiritual and verbal  language.
You see that in the spirit of the kids as they growup in front of you.
You can feel it in all the peoples who once helped build this place dead

and alive. You can see it in the people who move to our Hood and get a
new life -- breath again. Maybe I'm crazy and maybe even amusing "a bit
ridiculous" but it's not too crazy. People will watch movies or listen
to music about places which others would call "hick" but they can't see
how this place is my Nebraska, My Matewan, my Dublin, my Patterson, my
Brooklyn, my Long Beach, my Hood and home and the place which breathes
with a story to tell which goes back ages.  If you can't be proud of
where your from, and the peoples who live there. you can't be proud of
very much in life now can you?  and this is the only place I have ever
felt the need to fight for.

If we have to leave Fernwood something me and mine don't want to do,
then I hope that people don't let slumlords make schoolyards into needle

parks and bullies make kids afraid to play and watch as girls and women
are turned out on street corners or simply shut their windows when they
here a woman , or anyone, scream or let slumlords bully tenants. I would

hope that they would watch the shop keepers and backs so they know that
no one is alone here.  I would like to see kids having free breakfast
served to them by our Fernworld occupants/peoples -- just so they know
they come from a special place and that they are special in a
community's hearts. Then it's harder to help destroy your self or your
hood when you know that they care.

This may seem odd or even funny but I do suggest that folk read a book
called The Dogg Father by Snoop Dogg and David Seay. Despite whatever
opinion people may have about or have judged the musican/rapper on
being, it has a few points to make on history and communities. You see
in it Snoop Dogg speaks about how it was engineered that a
communites/hoods were turned into slums, programs cut, communities
centered destroyed and kids offered no other opportunities of histories
but depression. slumlords and gangs. In the Snoop Dogg book he makes
note of the choices he made due to the social engineering. However, he
does note that he could rise above it because he did remember when a
community was supportive. He could remember who were responsible for the

fall of his hood -- it was a city, greed merchants, the right-wing greed

government who made shiesty deals with slumlord property owners at the
expense of the peoples. .. B.U.T. the peoples could have fought together

and not given into fear and police state tactics.

This is, if you know you urban history what is occurring here in
Fernwood and in other old working-class communities. The choices offered

-- crack it out, project; force out all poor and nonwhites and leftist.
There were places where we all uses to assemble and chill with pizza or
coffee. Now, rents are so high and shops spaces are kept closed. apts
are rented at unreasonable rates and only wealthy and certain class of
people are allowed to rent there. Slumlords on a free right of terror.
OUr hood has become exclusionary and not in favour, as if exclusion of
any kind is good, of our peoples but made in an effort to push our
peoples out and make the place another greed and wealth centre with no
heart. They wish to gut our home.

So you may laugh cuz to take things serials or have passion is a
laughable thing and weak thing now but I did love this place. Only
someone who loved it would write and do so much for it for free. Every
place needs a mythology. It sings for it. When it gets to the point
which it is singing then it only hopes that it is heard. I hope I got to

transcribe the notes right. It has a certain tone to it -- a certan
bassline.  This place/my hood/barrio/community, well, it became a place
where you knew people cared enough to help each other out.  Where we
have a generation who were playing with each other as children of all
faiths, races and ethnicity's -- where colours gang or skin tone didn't
matter. It was place that should take itself seriously -- everybody else

who I've spoken with or met in other countries certainly have. It's not
really the author it's what inspired the author to write that carefully
and passionately about. I did love the place -- it was a place which
inspired me, please believe it. Now lost to a slumlord, geed,bullying
and gentrification.

Peace for letting me holla at yuh.

Me and mine, we lost our home today . ...maybe our hood. I t breaks a
man's heart.

I just thought you'd might want to know.

Lawrence Ytzhak Braithwaite(and my buddy)
2319 Cook st
Victoria, BC
Fernwood/The Hood/New PAlestine
09/09/03

--
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___
Stay Strong

"Peace sells but who's buying?"
Megadeth

http://www.sleepybrain.net/vanilla.html

http://awol.objector.org/artistprofiles/welfarepoets.html

http://ilovepoetry.com/search.asp?keywords=braithwaite&orderBy=date

http://www.dpgrecordz.com/fredwreck/

http://www.lowliferecords.co.uk/

http://loudandoffensive.com/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/THCO2