All in COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT
This is my story of moving to Los Angeles. [3300 words]
“We passed Joshua Tree National Park where I would head with a former partner 2 years later. The Salton Sea was about an hour southeast of Joshua Tree. I’d make a trip to the Salton Sea and Salvation Mountain with another wonderful person in 2017. We’d explore the bizarre anarchism of Slab City and navigate the East Jesus art gallery in the empty yet serene desert”
I don’t know how much money I’ve given to God-emperor Bezos at this point. Today, I spent about an hour looking for “The Library Book”, by Susan Orlean. We’ll be reading it in our book club. I even went to the library to look for it. There’s an overt joke in there, somewhere…
The homelessness crisis in LA is untenable. We’re living in a world class city and not the slums of fucking Karachi. LA inhabitants regularly deal with trash and hoards of shopping carts left on the curb and the street. [513 words]
There’s been a lot of talk about the diction of the “immigrant child detention centers” used to house hopeful families at the southern United States border. The left wing feels that concentration camps" is acceptable. Meanwhile the right wing feels that concentration camps is an unacceptable term. So, what do we call such facilities where families are separated and some neglected to the point of death?
Another week has gone by and more students have become statistics of gun violence in our K-12 school system. Kendrick Castillo died protecting his classmates and was deemed a hero.
“Yeah, the library looks nice, but the projects are on top”.
“What? You mean, like lower income…on top of a library?”
“The neighborhood wasn’t too happy about it”.
“Ah, maybe the homeowners, but it looks like a nice spot to relax and read a book”.
“The Massachusetts Senator announced today that she had developed a plan to forgive about 95% of student loan debt, that is $50,000 of debt per household earning less than $100,000 per year. She also wants to implement tuition-free college through taxing the wealthiest households and corporations in America.”
With the prevalence of smartphones and instant gratification, anxiety is becoming more and more common among millennial and future generations. Smartphones allow for us to look up nearly anything available to human knowledge in a few seconds. An unread text message, a ‘read’ text, but no response. These are causing us to develop new avoidance behaviors from ghosting, ignoring friends, and skipping out on social events. At this point, why even read the text if it’s going to cause you harm?
