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tryst-art-archive · 1 year

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October 2010: "Until I Sleep"

Los Angeles Police Department, Officer Dawe: Interview with “Dani California”

I went gray in elementary school. At first I just left it that way, but when dealing with the other kids got too hard, I started dying it. By then the damage was done, though, so it didn’t really help all that much. It wasn’t until Calez entered middle school with us that I started just wearing it gray again. He wasn’t called Calez then – I mean, that’s a nickname I gave him, not his real name – and he wasn’t as much of a scruffy musician either, and I guess if he had been he might have fit in better. He could have passed as a stoner that way. But back then, he hadn’t grown into his lankiness so when he walked it was like a daddy longlegs on ice. He did have the beginning of the goatee then, but his hair was too tidy for it. Turns out he needed the shaggy brown mop to complete the look.

Anyway, Calez has been into the flute for pretty much his whole life, so he was already a crazy talented flutist when he came, and he joined the school’s concert band right off and put everyone else to shame. They were struggling over sixteenth notes while his fingers choreographed strings of thirty-second notes. He’d add mordents to the compositions and play in harmony to the rest of the flutes when he got bored. So he inhabited this bizarre place in the school’s social spectrum. On the one hand he was this awkward music nerd with no appeal to the ladies, but on the other he was too talented to not leave you staring slack-jawed. For the first few days, the other kids jeered at him, and that landed him in with me and the rest of the misfits, but then the band held practice. After they heard him play, people had respect for him, and since he’d already fallen in with the losers, that meant we gained some points by association. And me? I was already becoming his best friend, y’know? So I stopped dying my hair, and in high school I decided to kick it up a notch, dye my tips crazy colors. Eventually I settled on the pink, but I went through the whole rainbow, mixed it up, just whatever I felt like. That’s when I started dressing in neon colors and accessorizing, too.

Well, anyway, the two of us were pretty much inseparable before long, so after we spent high school learning trivia through a haze of smoke – I’ll let you guess what kind – we figured we’d just go to the same college. I mean, neither of us were very into the idea of college, so I just picked a random state school and went with it. Calez tried in some other places, though. He actually got into Berkeley, but we were in Florida then, and Massachusetts was too far away, he said. So he was going to state school with me, in the end. We never wound up going, though.

Y’see, we had both packed all our stuff up, just had a duffel bag to carry us through the week before we moved, y’know? So one of those nights in the middle, we’re bored out of our minds. Our college was starting later than all our friends’, so it was just the two of us, and that was alright of itself, but all our things were packed away and that left standing around in the Floridian sun. I don’t know if you’ve ever spent a summer in the swamp that is Floridian heat, but it is not an atmosphere you want to walk through while having skin. So that pretty much left us with malls and waiting until night took the edge off a little.

We headed into town sometime in the afternoon; Calez had his flute, something he’d busted his savings on, and I had a pair of drumsticks and a tambourine ‘cause I’d taken up percussion so that the two of us could jam. I’ve got a decent sense of rhythm, and Calez pretty much taught me anything else I might need to know, so we’d go down to Miami, lay out Calez’s flute case, and just jam for a few hours at a time. When we got to the city on that particular day, though, it was sweltering so we set ourselves up in an air conditioned shopping center, sometimes jamming, sometimes dodging security, and sometimes just window shopping. Sometime after the sun had set, a group of security guards finally caught up with us and kicked us out for playing in the mall without permission. It was still too hot to be out, really, but we figured it would cool down soon so we wandered into the party district.

A couple weeks before this, a new nightclub had opened up down there. It was some kind of gay bar, and it was drawing customers like sugar draws ants. No one really seemed to be sure why since it wasn’t offering anything particularly different than any of the other gay bars in the area, but rumor had it that the place had male dancers just being sexy for the crowds and that one of them was particularly stunning. It didn’t really matter to us why the place was overflowing with people, though. Me and Calez were out to jam and make a little pocket change that night, so we headed down to the new club and parked ourselves close enough to get the attention of the people trying to get into it but not so close that its local pounding would drown us – well, mostly Calez – out.

We actually made a decent sum that night. The line into the club was long enough and boring enough for people to notice us and anyone who’d come in a group would send one of their party over to give us what they could spare. Since we’d gotten out there so early in the evening, the crowd just engorged the longer we stayed out there, so we were there for a pretty long time. Long enough for some of the dancers to come out and take a break.

We weren’t even paying attention, really, so we didn’t see them come over. Calez was just immersed in his playing, rocking with it, feeling it with his whole body, completely gone in the melody, and I had the tambourine out then so I was spinning and dancing and whooping, keeping beat and throwing in little rhythmic flairs. We just had a party of two going on right then; we were in our element. And then, bam! There’s these four slim gay guys around us, and they’re dancing with me, and one of them is singing nonsense lyrics, and another one’s invoking the spirit of Stomp, and then there’s this one just leaning against a building, smoking a cigarette, watching, and when I saw him, I stopped breathing.

I mean, he was Michael. Hair like terracotta and skin like sand and – the ridiculous part - eyes the color of blue highlighters. No joke. There he was, a tangible waif of a man in too-tight pants with a light sweater as if he weren’t in Florida, dragging on his cigarette so that the ember illuminated his face and the smoke curled through that red-brown hair falling into his face, hiding the ice of his languid stare. Michael. He just stood there with one arm folded over his chest, one foot against the wall, watching so that you knew he was watching without ever actually catching him at it.

Well the dancing guys noticed what I was staring at – I mean, I’d just stopped mid-spin, mid-laugh – and they laughed at me and said, “Don’t worry about the old sourpuss! Come on, come on, get dancing!” So I did. I danced with them and laughed with them for their whole break – you’d think they’d be tired of dancing, but no - and I kept watch on “the old sourpuss” the whole time.

Well, they had to get back to work, so they left us some money and asked us to come back another night. I told them we would, for sure. Michael tapped his cigarette out against the wall and led the rest of the dancers inside. Calez was still playing then; he actually more or less missed this whole episode. When it got late enough that we had to get back home, I had to explain what had happened to him. He agreed to come back to that spot partially for the money but mostly because he wondered why I was so eager about it. I mean, I explained to him what Michael looked like, but Calez just laughed and said, “I doubt that dancer’s prettier than you.”

Well, so we came back the next night, and the dancers joined us again, and Michael watched again. So I elbowed Calez in the side when they came, and he opens his eyes and looks where I’m pointing him, at Michael. Calez’s flute gives this stutter, the wind getting knocked out of him, and I don’t know how, but Calez managed to recover in a beat, and he was right back to the flow of his melody like nothing happened. Michael noticed it, I think. He glanced up at Calez and gave this little nod.

Well, the dancers left us money and followed Michael back in a little after that, and I said to Calez, “Well?”

Now, Calez, he’s bi, so I was expecting him to have tingles in his stomach as much as I did. Well, Calez just watched the door to the club for a while, and finally he says, “Well. He’s striking.”

I said, “Striking? Is that it?”

Calez shrugged. “I can’t get excited about someone I don’t know.” Then he grinned and elbowed me in the side. “You’re prettier anyway,” he said.

So I punched him in the arm for being stupid, and we jammed for a little longer before heading back home.

We kept going down to that corner to jam at nights for pretty much the whole week before we were supposed to move in. It was addicting, in a way. There was one night where my mom decided she and I needed to spend an evening together “like a family” – as if we counted as one after dad left – before I headed off to college, so I couldn’t go to the club to jam. Calez went without me, mostly because I told him to, though, and he said that the dancers had shown up again and told him they were disappointed that I wasn’t there. I had spent the whole night just shaking, I wanted to be down there so badly. I asked Calez, “What about the blue-eyed one?”

“He didn’t say anything.” I must have looked upset because he added, “He never does, Dani. He probably noticed you were missing, though. How could he not?”

We were pretty much obligated to spend the night before we left with our parents, and I was planning on stopping in to see Calez’s folks then too since they’re as much mine as they are his. We made it a point to be at the club the night before that.

We set up shop and started jamming, and a handful of hours later the dancers came out for their break, and Calez had this lively melody going on, and I had so much energy that night. We were glowing with the music, and the dancers noticed. They picked up on the energy, and they danced with me like they never had before. We were all just pure energy, writhing in between the waves of heat coming up off the sidewalk.

While we were dancing, one of them asked, “Is this a special occasion?”

I said, “It’s the last time we can be here!” They pretty much all gave some version of “No!” so I told them, “We’re supposed to move soon.”

Well, Michael was leaning against the wall as usual when I said this, but he was also watching like usual, and he heard. He tamped out his cigarette on the wall; it was only half-finished. He stood up straight, stretched, and walked into our dancing circle, evolving from an aloof observer into a party creature not only wrapped up in the music but being pulled by it. It was as if every limb and joint were connected to the notes flying out of Calez’s flute; he moved to the music like it was a way of life, not just the act of dancing, and he let it pull him wherever it would.

Once he was in the circle, our collective energy doubled, and we were a frenzy. The line outside the club started cheering, and some of them were clapping, and some of them were dancing, and the security guard couldn’t help but tap his foot, and it was beautiful. There was a transcendence in it.

We probably could have kept up at that the whole night, into the morning, through the day; hell, we could have kept that up for the rest of our lives, if we had a chance. Calez cut us off, though. He wound the song down and stopped. All of us except Michael were pretty much caught mid-stride. Michael followed it down, though. He collapsed with it, subsiding.

I turned to Calez, and I said, “What the hell, man?”

He said, “There’s a guy in a business suit over by the club. He looks kind of pissed.”

The dancers swore. One of them said, “Oh shit, break’s over.” They all hugged us and said they’d miss us and ran back over to the club, apologizing to the guy in the suit. All of them except for Michael. He was still standing with us.

This was the first time I’d seen him up close, really, and I was hit by his overwhelming physicality. His simple physical presence in a space just obliterates anything else. He’s there, and that’s the only thought your mind can really hold. He’s there, and he’s real, and if you touched him, he’d be a firm, solid body under your hand. But you don’t dare to touch him because it would be too much. You’d be overloaded. Because he’s got the shoulders of Adonis, he’s “Venus as a Boy,” he’s an anchoring point in your space that leaves you crossing your legs and whimpering. And then, oh, and then he flashes you one of his cocky, winning smiles, and you know you should hate that confidence, hate the assured way he looks at people, but you can’t, and you melt. You’re not a person; you’re just a pile of jelly, wiggling giblets, and what is breathing again?

Somewhere in there, your ears stop burning, and you remember that you have a pulse. You’ve got tunnel vision, but the helium in your skull is seeping away, and you realize he just said something to you. What he said is “Hi. I’m Michael. You guys are pretty good.”

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. Part of my brain knew I needed to be responding, but it couldn’t scrabble any language together.

Calez said, “Thanks, man,” and it sounded normal if you didn’t know Calez, but I do, and I could hear a little breathlessness there.

Michael flashed us a grin. He looked at us from the corner of his eye, looked at the guy in the business suit who was still standing outside the club, glaring at Michael now and tapping his watch, and then Michael swung his body around to us, looked us in our faces and said, “You wouldn’t happen to be off to college, would you?”

I blinked. There was air in my lungs again. “Yeah,” I said. “We’re supposed to hit up state school. How’d you know?”

He shrugged. “I been around. You’ve got that look.”

Calez said, “You’ve been around? You can’t be much older than us. Three, maybe four years?”

Michael laughed. “You’re sharp. What’s your name?”

Calez gave him his real name – which I sure as hell ain’t telling you – and then asked him to call him Calez.

“Calez?” Michael said.

“It’s what Dani calls me.”

Michael nodded to me. “I take it you’re Dani?”

“Yeah. It’s a nickname, too, though. I don’t suppose Michael’s your real name?”

“It isn’t.” He laughed. “It’s easier to not be found when no one knows your birth name.”

“Why wouldn’t you want to be found?” Calez asked.

Michael rubbed the back of his neck, furrowing his brows just a little, and I nearly died on the spot. “Aaaah. Well you know how society is. They find you, they make you live by their rules. You gotta get a job, or you can put that off with college, but either way you gotta get a job, and they mean a respectable job.” He laughed. “Thing is, if you stay in one place too long, even unrespectable jobs start making demands.” He glanced back at the man in the suit, who was fuming. “What say we go for a walk, lady and gentleman?”

I tripped over myself agreeing while Calez said, “What about your job?”

Michael just shrugged, beaming. “What job?”

We gathered up our earnings, and Calez put his flute away. Michael hustled us away from that street, ignoring the shouts of the man in the business suit, and walked us down toward the water, making idle chat along the way. Mostly, he inquired about our lives, drawing out every fact about us that there was to know while deflecting almost every question we asked about him. Where was he from? Some Podunk town up north; nothing worth mentioning. Where did he live in Florida? Everywhere. How long had he been in Florida? Not as long as he normally stayed, but too long for his tastes. Where had he been before? Wherever his feet took him; wherever he could hitch a ride; anywhere with a clean bathroom and a free shower and whatever luxuries he could steal.

“Steal?” Calez said.

Michael shrugged. “It happens. So riddle me this, friends: why are you heading off to college? What do you aspire to that requires thousands of dollars’ worth of education?”

Calez glanced at me, then raised his flute. “I have everything I need.”

I just shrugged. “I dunno that we’re aspiring to anything in particular.”

“Hmm. That sounds like a familiar story. Let me tell it to you.” He sat us down on pier where we could see the moon ripple in the ocean and stood with his back to it, so that it outlined him in white. “Once,” he said, “there was a scrawny little fag trying to eke out a life in the frozen northern hills. He wasn’t very good at it. He went through elementary and middle and high school struggling to find a way to live. He tried being straight, he tried being studious, he tried being hard-working. He couldn’t be straight because have you ever looked at a man’s hips? He couldn’t be studious because why put effort into something you don’t care about? And he couldn’t be hard-working because getting minimum wage to flip burgers just didn’t fill the gap in his life. Well, the people around him, they said he should go to college, get an education, become something based off that, so he looked into it. Of all the things in the world, he loved music and dance the most, so he sought out those paths, tried himself a university, tried to get the education and make the career. It didn’t click for him, though. He learned about the technicalities of music, but that wasn’t what he meant when he said he loved music. He learned every variety of dance they could teach him, but that wasn’t what he meant when he said he loved dance. When they gave him a project, he did what came natural, he let the love show, and they failed him. They failed him right out of their university, in fact. Well, he wasn’t such a little gay guy anymore. He’d grown into himself. He knew who he was, and who he was was too big for the frozen hills, that was for sure. So he left. He picked a direction and started walking, and when walking got too tiring, he started dancing, and he danced his way over the country.”

He paused, looking us over. “Now,” he said, “I’m going to say it plainly to you because I’ve been watching this past week, and you two love music and you love dance, and you love it the way I do. The real way. So I’ll be plain with you. I’ve been wandering across this country for a few years now, and it’s a mixed bag of good and bad, but there’s something in the homelessness that lets you dance like you’ve never danced in your life. You’re unfettered, and there’s nothing but you and the music. All the same, it gets lonely when you’re crossing the interstate at three in the morning or squirreling yourself away under some bushes and hoping the next motel you see has an unlocked window. Had someone following me around for a while, but he tied me down to him, and I couldn’t dance the way I want to. He didn’t understand the music, so how could he be anything but cement boots for me? But you two. You two understand, I think. I don’t mean to be bold, but I intend to get out of this sticky city ASAP, and I wouldn’t mind some musical accompaniment, so let me ask you this: Do you want to live the life prescribed to you by society, or would you like to live the life given to you by music?”

He laid a finger under each of our chins and looked us each in the eye in turn. Then he laughed and pulled away from us. “It’s a crazy thing to ask, but sometimes life is better crazy. I’ll come to this dock round midnight tomorrow night to say a fond ‘Fuck you!’ to good old Miami. If you’d care to break the mold, maybe you should be here. That’s all I’m saying.”

He ruffled our hair and passed between us, lighting up a cigarette and swaggering away, disappearing into an alleyway. I noticed that he was wearing the same pants he had been when we first saw him. There was a hole in the sole of one of his shoes.

Calez and I stared at each other. We said we’d think on it; we’d meet up elsewhere earlier to compare notes. I think, though, we already knew what our decision was. I wanted to go, even though it was crazy, or maybe because it was crazy, or maybe because I knew that if I didn’t go, Michael would disappear forever for me, and I couldn’t stand that thought. It closed my throat, thinking about it. And Calez? His face said he’d follow me. Because why would he go to a college when the only reason he was going there was to keep hanging out with me? That’d be pretty ridiculous.

Still, it was a monumental decision, so we said we’d go home and think on it. So we laid awake all night – or I did – thinking on it. I couldn’t get the feeling of Michael’s physical existence out of my belly.

Well, when we got to the dock the following midnight, there was Michael silhouetted against the moon again. He was still wearing the same clothes, but the way he stood in them, he might as well have been wearing a fine tuxedo hand-woven from pure silk. He could make a trash bag look good, though.

He saw us coming up, and the moon caught his teeth. He pierced us with those electric blue eyes and said, “To a new friendship.” He raised his arms up to Miami and gave it the double bird.

I guess our families thought something had happened to us since neither of us had thought to leave a note. There was something of a police search, so we had to be pretty sneaky on our way out of Florida, but once we’d crossed into Georgia, it was easier going. After a few weeks when we figured the search for us would have calmed down some, Calez called his family and tried to explain it a little. They didn’t understand, but what was he going to do about that? They were just going to have to.

By the time we’d crossed into Alabama, we’d already gotten used to each other. Calez and I could practically read each other’s minds in the first place, but it wasn’t long before Michael was in on it. It was as if we’d never been without him. He was just another one of our limbs. We were all each other’s limbs. We still are.

In Tennessee, Michael asked why I didn’t call my mom. I said, “I don’t need that anchor.” He just nodded.

So for the past few years we’ve just been wandering the country, jamming and dancing. Sometimes we take a job if we get stuck too far north or south in the wrong season, just so we can live a little easier. Not freeze to death. The usual. Most of the rest of the time, we gather up what we can, make some pocket change, try to look anything but homeless, and dance across the country. We light up every state we cross. When Michael steps into a state, it gets butterflies, and Calez makes his flute sing so the butterflies dance and whirl and live, and then I flirt with all the butterflies and ask them if they’ll be me and Michael’s concubines, and then Michael laughs, and he kisses me and Calez on our open, laughing mouths, and the whole world is bubbling syrup and heat and music, and when we dance on out the other side of that state, all the boys and girls wake up in their beds, wondering at the dream and the heat between their legs and the music in their ears, and maybe tonight, maybe tonight, they’ll live. In spite of the rules. They’ll live.

…So we aren’t vagrants, officer. We’re just musicians who dance across the country.

#old writing #writing archive #oc writing #assignments #Dani #Michael #Calez #original characters #10s #2010 #Age 19 #short story #vagrancy

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robonoba-zorbo · 3 months

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Okay, Hi. First post. uuum... I love Trafalgar Law, I'm currently in the start of Wano aaaaaaaaand I'll probably just end up posting nonsensical doodles cause I don't think I've ever had a coherent thought in my entire life

#one piece #trafalgar d water law #trafalgar d law #this will not be the last time you see me post about Law's whole “collecting coins” thing #if Oda didn't want me to focus on this one small piece of information then have made it cannon #and yes I know #it's not his whole personality #also the fact that vagrancy is his one of his hobbies is so funny to me #trafalgar law

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posteremerson · 18 days

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untitled

210mm x 297mm

the 2024

coloured pencils, paint pens, acrylic paint, ink, oil pastels, mixed media

on card

poster emerson

please consider checking out my other art here, and on my instagram profile linked here:

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if-you-fan-a-fire · 2 years

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"INNES HAS A HABIT OF LOSING MONEY," Toronto Star. October 1, 1912. Page 3. --- Second Offence of Dropping Employer's Cash Leads to a Long Term. --- CASES IN POLICE COURT --- Two Men With Two Bags of Potatoes, Which They Say Were Given to Them. --- Though there was little force behind the blow which Thomas Petrie directed at Constable Young's face, Magistrate Denison chose to fine the intent rather than the act when the man came up in the Police Court.

"Was taking his name," Young stated, "when he struck me."

Petrie's two fines, for drunkenness and assault, were a dollar and costs. each, or thirty days, with time to pay.

The Sentences Grow. The sentences of Edward Innes have been somewhat disproportionate. This morning before Magistrate Denison, he admitted that while working as a collector for Joseph McQuilian's liquor store in Queen street west he retained $11.80 from the returns, and offered the defence that if he was given time he would refund the money and have it taken out of his wages.

"I lost it," he suggested.

"It's not the first time he's lost money," Crown Attorney Corley. commented. "A year ago when he was given $400 to buy Exhibition tickets he lost that. His term then was sixty days." Now, for the theft of of the much smaller amount, Innes will go to Central for a much longer term, four months.

Two Bags of Potatoes. Once more Charles Beamish, an aged character well known to the police, is charged with theft. Last night he was taken by Constable Ox-land, who saw him walking away with a bag of potatoes on his shoulder. A few paces behind was Lou Parsons, with a like load. The constable, knowing Beamish, went after the stranger first.

"Parsons dropped his load and ran," Oxland stated, "but I caught them both."

The charge is that the potatoes were stolen from a G.T.R. box car.

"Given to me," declared Beamish, confidently.

"Whom by?"

"Don't know his name."

"Where does he live?" "Don't know."

"Who is the kind man, anyway?" Magistrate Denison demanded, a bit impatiently.

Finally Beamish decided it was either the carmen or an officer of the M.O.H. Department. The couple remain in jail a week until they can give more definite information.

After arresting Mrs. Louisa Fifield as she came out of Eaton's. Detective Wickett want to her home at Prescott avenue, West Toronto, and a large quantity of goods, which the woman is charged with stealing.

When arrested with her 12-year-old daughter Queenie, Mrs. Fifield had an umbrella and six shirt waists which could not be accounted for by sales checks which could not be accounted for.

Ivy, another daughter. aged 15. working at Gillies' factory. 121 Prescott avenue, the police say, has admitted the theft of 11 neck scarfs, 197 neckties, 4 spools of silk, and a spool of brass wire.

The bundle of goods that the police recovered includes ribbons of all recovered in sizes, fancy lace bags, six umbrellas, lace, shirt waists, collars, hat plumes, and numerous small decorative articles. More were recovered this morning but none of the articles have yet been identified as coming from the Eaton Store.

When Mrs. Fifield appeared in Police Court, T. C. Robinette, reserved election and did not obtaining a week's adjournment.

Detective Wickett was with woman most of the morning, but she denies stealing the goods. She came to this country about nine months and ago.

Accused of Burglary Wm. J. Bell is being held in connection with the shopbreaking at 280 Church street on the night of September 14, when the warehouse of the John Sloan Company, wholesale grocers, was broken into and burglarized. Entrance was forced through a rear window, several desks were broken open, and the burglar, whether Bell or another, proved so clever that he found the combination of the be vault. About 260 postage stamps, $28.07 in cash, medals, and a quantity of jewelry was stolen.

Bell was placed under arrest on King street by Detective Mitchell in pawnshop, where it is alleged he was attempting to dispose of jewelry which, the police say, corresponded to the stolen articles.

Bell was remanded a week without bail.

A Real Estate Deal. "If you can't do business better than that you had better not do it at all. You've been here before. If you come again I'll know better how to deal with you." Those were the comments of Magistrate Denison to William Campbell, a real estate dealer, charged with the theft of $320 from Adam McMillan. There was a conviction, with a remand till called upon.

McMillan said that he bought a lot in Brandon for $320, and that when was fully paid for Campbell kept putting him off for several weeks and never furnished the deed.

Campbell's defence was that he had purchased a group of lots and that he hadn't fully paid for them to obtain the deeds himself.

"Carrying them on McMillan's money," the magistrate commented. "That is no way to do business. But you'll be remanded till called on." Campbell will now furnish the deed.

Back to Blue Grass Land. Hyde Nelson, colored, declares he will go back to his Kentucky home, and Robert Beatty is short $5. Beatty said that ten days ago he handed the colored man the amount at the Woodbine, to put on a "sure thing" which really won.

"And I never got my winnings," was the complaint.

As Nelson was positive he passed the money along to a third person who misplaced it, the ten days already spent in jail seemed enough, that is, if he keeps nis promise to get town.

Chinese Liquor. "Ing Kopy" was the plain English lettering on a carafe of Chinese wine which was seized upon the the premises of Ing Ding at 192 York street by the police when Inspector Dickson led a search party through the Chinese quarter two weeks ago..The charge was illegal sales and keeping.

"'Ing Kopy' means medicinal wine," explained J. W. Carry, defence counsel. "The proper analysis is printed on the side. That complies with the law."

Not when written in Chinese," Magistrate Denison replied.

Some of the police contended that the while the liquid was labelled "Ing Kopy," it was in reality only whisky colored red. As a test, the magistrate had whiffed a little from a glass, thought it was stronger than rose wise, and demanded an analysis. Ding was accordingly allowed a week's remand.

Lee Dun of 184 York street, was to have sold whitish stuff rice wine, for which his fine was $100 and costs or 3 months.

A Real Estate Deal After several remands, John Hanley, real estate agent, was convicted of false pretences. The complainant was John Bain, who stated he placed Welland and Port McNicol lots in Hanley hands for sale.

"He told me he had a buyer," Bain explained, "so I gave him $35 commission. Then he turned in a $100 check from a bogus buyer, and I couldn't get the money."

The court allowed Hanley three weeks remand to produce this buyer, but when he still failed to do so this morning, he was sent to to jail for 20 days.

John A. Brooker, of 54 Margueretta street, was fined $100 and costs for illegal liquor sales. The case has been on the books since July 20.

#toronto #police court #assaulting a police officer #drunk and disorderly #real estate scam #swindlers #illegal possession of alcohol #chinese canadians #vagrancy #shoplifters #women in the toils #fines and costs #fines or jail #sentenced to prison #central prison #crime and punishment in canada #history of crime and punishment in canada

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odinsblog · 11 months

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De-escalation is a skill set.

It is something that every single one of us could learn. It is something that could even be a matter of public education and public-health campaigns. Sometimes a person may be at a 10 emotionally, and the smallest gesture of humanity can help them out. I had a situation two weeks ago on the street in D.C. where it seemed like someone was popping off, and I said, “Hey, man, I’m gonna get you some lunch.” Jordan Neely was saying exactly what he needed, which was food. He narrated this tragedy himself. He said, “I’d rather be in jail than try to navigate what the city has become.” Every single one of us is at the brink right now.

Rents have skyrocketed to these absolutely extortionate prices.

When housing prices go up, homelessness goes up. It’s not a grand mystery. I’ve been just dismayed to see what the response to this has been at the highest levels.

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#jordan neely #aoc #blacklivesmatter #homelessness #criminalizing poverty #criminalizing homelessness #criminalizing vagrancy #alexandria ocasio cortez

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reasoningdaily · 7 months

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Schools do a poor job of teaching about America’s legacy of white supremacy, according to a scholar who researches racial discrimination.

A Ku Klux Klan parade in Washington, D.C., in 1926

When it comes to how deeply embedded racism is in American society, blacks and whites have sharply different views.

For instance, 70 percent of whites believe that individual discrimination is a bigger problem than discrimination built into the nation’s laws and institutions. Only 48 percent of blacks believe that is true.

Many blacks and whites also fail to see eye to eye regarding the use of blackface, which dominated the news cycle during the early part of 2019 due to a series of scandals that involve the highest elected leaders in Virginia, where I teach.

The donning of blackface happens throughout the country, particularly on college campuses. Recent polls indicate that 42 percent of white American adults either think blackface is acceptable or are uncertain as to whether it is.

One of the most recent blackface scandals has involved Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, whose yearbook page from medical school features someone in blackface standing alongside another person dressed in a Ku Klux Klan robe. Northam has denied being either person. The more Northam has tried to defend his past actions, the clearer it has become to me how little he appears to know about fundamental aspects of American history, such as slavery. For instance, Northam referred to Virginia’s earliest slaves as “indentured servants”. His ignorance has led to greater scrutiny of how he managed to ascend to the highest leadership position in a racially diverse state with such a profound history of racism and white supremacy.

Ignorance is Pervasive

The reality is Gov. Northam is not alone. Most Americans are largely uninformed of our nation’s history of white supremacy and racial terror.

As a scholar who researches racial discrimination, I believe much of this ignorance is due to negligence in our education system. For example, a recent study found that only 8 percent of high school seniors knew that slavery was the central cause of the Civil War. There are ample opportunities to include much more about white supremacy, racial discrimination and racial violence into school curricula. Here are three things that I believe should be incorporated into all social studies curricula today:

1. The Civil War was fought over slavery and one of its offshoots – the convict-lease system – did not end until the 1940s.

The Civil War was fought over the South’s desire to maintain the institution of slavery in order to continue to profit from it. It is not possible to separate the Confederacy from a pro-slavery agenda and curriculums across the nation must be clear about this fact.

A Confederate treasury note from the Civil War Era shows how reliant the South’s economy was on slave labor. Photo from Scott Rothstein / www.shutterstock.com.

After the end of the Civil War, southern whites sought to keep slavery through other means. Following a brief post-Civil War period known as Reconstruction, white southerners created new laws that gave them legal authority to arrest blacks over the most minor offenses, such as not being able to prove they had a job.

While imprisoned under these laws, blacks were then leased to corporations and farms where they were forced to work without pay under extremely harsh conditions. This “convict leasing” was, as many have argued, slavery by another name and it persisted until the 1940s.

Southern jails made money leasing convicts for forced labor in the Jim Crow South. Circa 1903. Photo from Everett Historical / www.shutterstock.com.

2. The Jim Crow era was violent.

While students may be taught about segregation and laws preventing blacks from voting, they often are not taught about the extreme violence whites enacted upon blacks throughout the Jim Crow era, which took place from 1877 through the 1950s. Mob violence and lynchings were frequent occurrences – and not just in the South – throughout the Jim Crow era.

Racial terror was used as a means for whites to maintain power and prevent blacks from gaining equality. Notably, many whites – not just white supremacist groups like the Klu Klux Klan – engaged in this violence. Moreover, the torture and murder of blacks was not associated with any consequences.

During this same time, white society created negative stereotypes about blacks as a way to dehumanize blacks and justify the violence whites enacted upon them. These negative stereotypes included that blacks were ignorant, lazy, cowardly, criminal and hypersexual.

Blackface minstrelsy refers to whites darkening their skin and dressing in tattered clothing to perform the negative stereotypes as part of entertainment. This imagery and entertainment served to solidify negative stereotypes about blacks in society. Many of these negative stereotypes persist today.

3. Racial inequality was preserved through housing discrimination and segregation.

During the early 1900s, a number of policies were put into place in our country’s most important institutions to further segregate and oppress blacks. For example, in the 1930s, the federal government, banks and the real estate industry worked together to prevent blacks from becoming homeowners and to create racially segregated neighborhoods.

This process, known as redlining, served to concentrate whites in middle-class suburbs and blacks in impoverished urban centers. Racial segregation in housing has consequences for everything from education to employment. Moreover, because public school funding relies so heavily on local taxes, housing segregation affects the quality of schools students attend.

All of this means that even after the removal of discriminatory housing policies and school segregation laws in the 1950s and 1960s, the consequences of this intentional segregation in housing persist in the form of highly segregated and unequal schools. All students should learn this history to ensure that they do not wrongly conclude that current racial disparities are based on individual shortcomings – or worse, black inferiority – as opposed to systematic oppression.

Americans live in a starkly unequal society where health and economic outcomes are largely influenced by race. We cannot begin to meaningfully address this inequality as a society if we do not properly understand its origins. The white supremacists responsible for sanitizing our history lessons understood this. Their intent was clearly to keep the country ignorant of its racist past in order to stymie racial equality. To change the tide, we must incorporate a more accurate depiction of our country’s racist history in our K-12 curricula.

#3 Things Schools Should Teach About America’s History of White Supremacy #white supremacy #american hate #american white supremacy #education #white lies #white history of hate #homegrown supremacy #systemic racism #convict leasing #13th amendment #vagrancy laws #racism in american systems #systemic oppression #Jim Crow #Jim Crow Laws #Black Codes

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