AKEILA FROM DOUBLE SHOT OF LOVE SERIES
AKEILA FROM DOUBLE SHOT OF LOVE CRACK

AKEILA FROM DOUBLE SHOT OF LOVE CRACK

Maybe then we will take notice and not stick to the safe - and, I think, sometimes hidden - assumption that this happened to them but not us.Īnd when you talk about the crack epidemic to many residents, you realize it is commonly accepted here that crack was introduced by the government. The death of one way of life with no replacement jobs, with no opportunities or hope to fill the void, will only create more corners, and next time not primarily in black neighborhoods. The death of working-class America does indeed, transcend race. And side by side, it created a marketplace where finally, young black men had a chance to make money, by selling those drugs.īut the underlying message is haunting. Ready addicts whose depressed circumstances and lack of economic options made it all too easy for them to fall victim to a drug that dulled the pain. The introduction of crack cocaine here filled a double bill. It created the corner, that poverty and lack of hope created the culture of the underground economy. There is a message in Burns and Simon about the psychological cost of the death of the working-class American dream. “This is an existential crisis rooted not only in race-which the corner has slowly transcended-but in the unresolved disaster of the American rust-belt, in the slow, seismic shift that is shutting down the assembly lines, devaluing physical labor, and undercutting the union pay scale” (The Corner, pg. But with the closing factories and the mass exodus of (mostly white) middle class families, it started to become the streets we now know as epicenters of violence. There is nothing like Harlem’s depressing bleak mini skyscrapers, or Chicago’s Cabrini Green.

AKEILA FROM DOUBLE SHOT OF LOVE SERIES

Despite sharing a sister status with Baltimore, Oakland has (other than possibly the San Antonio Villa Projects made famous by local kingpin Felix Mitchell) no major series of government-built housing projects. This is another unique aspect of East Oakland. Before this it had been practically suburban, something still evidenced by the houses and street layout. Following the 1970’s, Deep East Oakland became known as home to some of the most notorious streets in California. You can still hear the Southern twang mixed into the accents of many residents of East and West Oakland.īut when the Southern Pacific railway went silent, so did many industrial jobs-factories like the regional facility for Granny Goose, and for Gerber, closed their doors as they did in so many places, leaving people without employment. Many African Americans relocated to Oakland from the Southwest, in search of jobs with the railroad and other industries. Unlike these Northern cities, which integrated in unprecedented numbers as an aftermath of slavery, Oakland was part of California’s promised land. Oakland is very different than Baltimore, and even Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit.

Some of the best, smartest, and most compassionate television ever made, in my personal opinion. David Simon and Edward Burns, The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner City Neighborhood, pg 58.įor any of you HBO junkies out there, Simon and Burns are also the minds behind The Wire.

lives without any obvious justification are given definition through a simple, self sustaining capitalism.” The men and women who live the corner life are redefining themselves at incredible cost, cultivating meaning in a world that has declared them irrelevant…. That’s where it all began, to be sure, but thirty years has transformed the corner into something far more lethal and lasting than a simple marketplace. “Get it straight: there not just out here to sling and shoot drugs.

Akeila from double shot of love