Capitalism is Collapsing and These Are The Ways I can Tell

Week 65
I don’t know how to reconnect with this task of casting my life into words after all this time and all this disruption. Capitalism is collapsing and these are the ways I can tell. Those Machi calls the best of the young men from the barrio, are falling like flies. They grew up with Machi and now: one of them is in prison for the third time (a triple predicate)busted while on parole again stealing a car, one I was hopeful about, Machi was hopeful about. We thought we’d get him into school, a straight job. Machi’s friend Victor says, “Stealing cars is like an addiction. It’s a rush. I used to get it when I was robbing houses. I was with them that night. I said, I’m getting out of here.” So now Pedro’s in jail waiting to be sent back to prison. All those certificates he got in prison as an electrician, as a horticulturalist, they don’t do any good when there are no jobs.
Circus is dead. He was stabbed 23 times on the avenue when he was trying to make it to our place for help, or so Victor says. When the ambulance took him there was no saving him. He was so strong he could lift Machi up with one arm and swing him. None of the others thought anybody would get Circus. He could beat up the Cops. They say 13 other guys jumped him, other Mothers’ sons. He had a Timberland tread engraved into the side of his face from the kicking, so deep you could still see it by his ear in the coffin. You could see it under all the makeup.
Worst of all is F. Serving a life sentence at 28. He just turned 29. He’ll never see his son again.
It’s not true this is the life he chose. This was the life he got. It’s a career path: street crime, jail, prison, cycling again and again. The way I’m a burocrat, and have a job because these guys don’t. They are in this industry because there are no jobs.
A kind of genocide.
It keeps me up at night.
What’s happening to our sons? I hear Lucha trying to reach Jody’s therapist at the emotional growth school. Our daughters. What kind of world have we made? Why can’t we think any better? There has to be more and better we can do.