Friday, January 11, 2008

Sick and sad

A 10-year-old boy is struck by a stray bullet as he's taking a piano lesson. The kid may be paralyzed. This happened five minutes from where I used to live off Piedmont Avenue -- one of the safest-feeling, cleanest, nicest areas in Oakland.

The majority of Oakland is a cesspool. And the thugs who make it a cesspool are bleeding into other, nicer, areas -- Rockridge, Lakeshore, Piedmont. Crime is way up in the Bay Area. It's insane that any parent should be afraid to send their kid to piano lessons at 4:30 in the afternoon, at Pleasant Valley and Piedmont.

Fuck these thugs. I don't know what else to say or do, but I'm sick of seeing them standing around with their long white t-shirts and their gold teeth and their ignorant attitudes. There's a reason downtown Berkeley sickens me. Now Piedmont. Where next?
Posted by at

4 comments:

Max Airborne said...

Hey Allison,

When you say that most of Oakland is a cesspool that's bleeding into the "nicer, cleaner" areas, it sounds to me like your blame is misplaced.

I feel like the only thing that can really help is to look toward the root causes of the violence, like racism and poverty. Why the huge class/race disparity between the "nice" neighborhood and the "cesspool?"

In the spirit of productive discussion and healing,

Max

April 17, 2008 at 4:38 PM
Allison Landa said...

Max, thanks for giving me something to think about. This post was made in anger and I do regret its vitriol.

My reaction is against the stupidity of what happened -- the randomness and tragedy of a child sitting down at a piano and never walking again.

What's more tragic is that this could happen anywhere, at any time. Out of that anger and, frankly, fear, I misspoke.

Thanks for reminding me to think about my words before pressing that Publish button.

April 17, 2008 at 4:54 PM
Max Airborne said...

Yeah, I certainly understand and agree with you about the stupidity of random suffering getting rained upon innocent people.

Before I saw your reply I was thinking about what if we could take the sadness and anger of experiences like this, and see it as a way to connect with others who suffer from this kind of thing. I think about this particularly as someone who lives in the heart of Deep East Oakland, where random killings of innocent people happen a lot. It's always horrible, and comes with so much suffering. So maybe the suffering could be a point of connection, rather than a point of separation, between the two seemingly disparate communities/neighborhoods.

Just a thought from a human, hoping to create a world we can all stand to live in.

I appreciate your open-hearted thoughtfulness and self-reflection.

April 17, 2008 at 5:59 PM
Allison Landa said...

And I, in turn, appreciate you helping me to see things in a different way -- from a point of reconciliation rather than blame. A good lesson, that!

April 17, 2008 at 10:23 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)