A quandary

We have had a strange and disconcerting week. I am taking today off to re-coop and because I needed some time to myself--something I really do not get much of.

Last night I woke up at three a.m. to "i'm going to get you you fucking faggot." It was yelled at the top of some gruff, drunk,too-much testosteroned college boy's lungs who lives (or parties) across the street. I pretty much abhor the actions of those boys. They have lived there not even a full year and they party like their small-aimless-natural light-worlds are the only thing in the universe. I get doubly pissed thinking about them when I think about the sweet family that lived there before and then decided to move before selling their house; they rented to 4 college asshole boys who, once again, think that they have some innate right to party real loud every night. I dislike their antics and more than that I hate getting shocked up out of my sleep.

The words fucking faggot do not bode well with me. And they are especially troubling coming in the middle of the night since I have been sleeping on alert since tuesday night/wednesday morning when some asshole tried to break into our house as we peacefully slept in our bed.

Yep, that's right. We woke up to find our back gate open and back porch screen door pushed out and the sliding lock unlocked with the door ajar. Luckily, the audacious prick got on our porch and realized that our back door and kitchen window are not very easy to get into. As much as I try to never rely on the cops for anything at all, K and I went by the cop shop which is almost in our back yard and let them know what had happened and they let us know that a house seven doors down from ours had been broken into at 2:30 a.m. that same morning. The girl woke up to a guy crawling in her bedroom window. She screamed at him; he said "oh i thought this was my friend george's house," and then he fled on foot. Thing is nobody would slice open all the screens on his friend's house to try to get in which is what aforementioned home invader did.

The girl who got awakened to the man crawling in her window is a friend of my friends and it all really happened--the cops weren't just trying to raz us. So, we figure audacious prick tried our house first couldn't get in and so he went down the street.

Of course, I would mind if someone broke into my house and stole my shit at anytime (not necessarily for the void of the shit that might get swiped but rather because of the invasion of space), but what irks me the most is that this guy tried this when we were sleeping--when we were vulnerable. It is just stupid on his part. Come steal my shit in the day when I am at work or in the evening when I am out, but busting into my house when you full well know there are most likely people sleeping up in here, that is just dumb. He is setting himself up for a potentially violent altercation. His motive may have been to get some stuff to sell to feed his drug habit or his belly (maybe even his kid/s' bellies), but when you bust into a locked place in the middle of the night, what can you expect but possibly bumping in to a warm body and then what are you just going to run?

Besides getting irked due to invasions of what K and I have tried to make our own safe space (hearing "i'm going to get you you fucking faggot" is also an invasion of this safe space), I have been deliberating all week in my own head about the failings of the "public safety" systems we--society--have put in place and what a sham these systems are.

I think about this stuff all of the time because of the work I am engaged in on daily basis, and then when it strikes a bit closer to home--like my back porch, or front porch, or resounds on the equinox air outside my bedroom window, I begin to desire desperately to have a network of community that we can call on in times when our constructed safety is encroached upon. A network different than that of the current "justice" system. A network of people devoted to intervening to get at the root of whatever is leading another person to move into our safe space and make it feel less safe. I do not believe policing and incarceration get at the roots of the human behavior that leads to harms done among people, and even though I believe this with all of my heart, I still do not have a network or group within my community that I can call on as an alternative to the police.

This quandary takes up a lot of my thought life. It makes me question my own definitions and perceptions of safety. It makes me think of how safe I really am compared to people living in war torn countries where there is active warfare. That is not to say that there is not gun violence, other forms of physical violence, or mental violence in the town where I live, but it is not as insidious as the brutal violence connected to the warring of Iraq.

It all makes me think of the valuing of some lives over other lives. Who are the laws set up to protect? We see time and time again that they are used against poor people of all colors,people of color, people with mental illness, and queer people. Most laws are there to enforce a status quo reality that is based in a white hetero-normative foundation. And I am not just spouting theory here. I see it day in and day out. I work with people in prison who were addicted to drugs and people who sold drugs to get by, trans-people who tricked to feed themselves because they could not find jobs because of who they are, people who resorted to violence to save themselves from the violence they were surrounded by, and people with various mental illness who stumbled into the criminal "justice" system because of behaviors and actions that were deemed unlawful.

And once we cycle people through the prison system do they come out healed and whole beings? Maybe some--and that is only through their own initiative (the system does not have good programming). Mostly not. Most folks are inflicted with new experiences of trauma while inside. And then we send people back on to the streets with another identity that is also marginalized in this society--the label of felon.

I could go on and on about this, but I will stop. In the meantime, I'll keep pondering over this quandary and maybe someday--through the work of many--things will change.