as small as a world and as large as alone

4:30am August 11, 2013

littlequeerthatcould:

Always reblog. Always.

This.

Another example:

Years ago, our housing authority decided to do construction in our (low income only) apartment building without evacuating us or using proper venting procedures.  Construction workers told us they NEVER did this work on occupied buildings. They were drilling large hills in concrete and dry wall, as well as through asbestos.

Those of us who tried to speak up got threatened with eviction. Those of us who tried, at three in the morning, to post local eviction law in the bulletin boards, got those taken down within two hours.  Every single one of us who posted a no entry notice on our doors got visited and wheedled, cajoled, and threatened by the housing authority. Meanwhile a housing-authority-approved group of thugs in the building threatened those of us who became political about this until there were only a handful of us unafraid enough to keep fighting. And people who had once been on our side now publicly screamed at us in the hopes that they would be seen and spared the threats we were getting.

Infighting within the tenants organization damaged things worse. Part of the tenants organization had one woman do all the work, then publicly distanced themselves from her when the heat was on. To the point of libel.

But that’s the other thing about being poor. None of us could afford good lawyers. And the housing authority had one of the best.

At least one woman died. The dust was listed as a cause of death on her death certificate. Others of us, me included, were in and out of the emergency room. It was like having your house turn into a death trap. Inside your lungs, concrete dust turns liquid. It feels as if it is encasing your lungs in this thick hard stuff.  It’s nasty.  You know it’s bad when more than one of you is going to the ER in a group.

This is one of two things (the other, untreated infections) that is thought to have caused my bronchiectasis: permanent lung damage that can eventually be fatal through a vicious cycle of infections and further damage. If you treat it well, it can be less dangerous, but it interacts badly with my gastroparesis which gives me pneumonia on a regular basis.

Anyway, two of us finally realized our lives were in danger if we couldn’t get relocated. (Relocating tenants during this kind of construction is federal law, but we were too poor for that to matter.) No shelter would take us so we had to live on the streets.  But we weren’t going down without a fight, so we brought some protest signs and lived outside City Hall.

The responses we got…

Some people tried to give us spare change, and when we declined, they said “what the fuck do you want from me then?" 

Within hours of our arrival we were offered a home by a man who seemed to walk in circles around downtown. A homeless woman said he takes homeless women home and rapes them. We declined, and he began shouting at people, "I tried to help them and they turned me down. They don’t WANT help!" 

Many different people approached us only to engage in loud diatribes similar to the following: "The housing authority is good enough to give homes to you people, that should be enough, you ought to be grateful for what you have, not stirring up trouble!”

And of course there were the usual hazards of living outside: People trying to rob you, overhearing people talking about hurting and killing people and pretending to be asleep, nearly passing out from heat exhaustion, etc.

But we also got the media involved. Which forced air quality testing. Which meant the housing authority finally engaged in the venting practices we’d been pressing for all along. Which meant they passed the air quality tests and were able to spin it into “those people are troublemakers who complain about nothing, see we were okay all along”.

Meanwhile we did get relocated just so the housing authority would stop being publicly embarrassed by us. But they didn’t relocate anyone else. We were by then really sick and barely able to do anything more to help our cause.

But we still got threatened. People would scream death threats through our door. The housing authority lawyer came and searched our apartment. It was very tense for awhile. And the housing authority conveniently did nothing to protect us.

But most middle class people believe this can’t happen in America. They think the housing authority is wonderful and saintly and can do no wrong. After all, they give housing to the poor. What more do we want, breathable air?  I’m not the only one who has lung damage, either, one woman was coughing up blood and had all the symptoms of silicosis. We had workers in hazmat suits walking past unprotected residents.

This is one of many things, including unsafe working conditions and substandard healthcare, that contributes to shortened lifespans among poor people in America.

And those things they did? They’re ILLEGAL. Surely nobody ever breaks the law! Seriously that’s the argument we heard. Poor people everywhere know better. The law isn’t really there to protect us most of the time. It’s to protect people who matter FROM us.

The housing authority is still endangering lives by the way. They’ve banned the only effective kind of air conditioning, in favor of an expensive and highly ineffective kind (I have it, it cools only what it’s pointed at, the rest of the room 2 degrees, the rest of the house not at all). We are seniors and disabled and very vulnerable to heat injury and death.  When other housing authorities have done this during heat waves, so many people died that mass graves were required. Please visit the following website if you want to do anything about it:

http://www.keepuscool.org/

And please pass that link around, we need all the help we can get. Tumblr saved my life this spring so I know it’s possible.

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