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| It could be much worse. by Mischief Maker 04/11/2008, 7:46am PDT | ||||
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| A couple nights ago I showed the results of a WIP study I've been doing on a local park (that's been steadily getting used more and more aggressively by the homeless and local crack dealers as a 24-hour party spot) to the mayor's office. They liked what I had and asked me to give the results to the park commission's meeting that night. I was warned that the media might be there etc, but I jumped at the opportunity.
Now bear in mind that this presentation was originally an hour long with questions. I figured that I could compress it down to 10 minutes. Also bear in mind that a local group has been going around the papers saying the chief causes of homelessness have been racism and poverty while the research of everyone in my class indicates the problem is really mental illness and alcohol, with drug addiction a close thrid. So I step up to the podium dressed sharp, the printed slides from my powerpoint are handed out to the commission, and they tell me I have only 3 minutes. In retrospect I should have said that's not enough time and gone back to my seat, but the staffer from the mayor's office is sitting right there behind me. So I panic and try to rush through the presentation. I know that half the fuckers taking over that park aren't even homeless, they just drive in for the drugs, gambling, and prostitution, and I know that at least one homeless person using that park managed to drink himself to death last summer, so giving a bunch of mentally ill alcoholics an unsupervised hangout, especially a $3 million lakefront park, is not doing them any favors. Unfortunately I'm not able to put my points in context, so when I put in a small joke aside one of the commission members snaps at me not to joke about it. Oh great, now I'm officially and publically declared an evil racist fuck and I have exactly one minute to dig myself out of this hole. So I blurt out the fact that half the troublemakers aren't homeless and speed through the main points of why this park is attractive to the crack dealers instead of other nearby parks and go red-faced back to my seat. So I figure it was only 3 minutes, I'm unlikely to be mentioned in any news reports, and the worst is over. But then one commission member with a serious axe to grind with the mayor's office, points me out specifically and says sarcastically something along the lines of, "And this young man! This point he brings up about the convenient parking. Finally, a reasonable solution! Let's just tear up the parking lot!" I'll take a roid freak bugging out over the placement of a pile of copies over that any time, thank you. |
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