This is from Julia.
The sober living I work with was close to the Metrolink crash. Many of us talked about the "fatal texting" which at first people shook their heads in disgust. After talking though, I said so what if the guy was texting, people's lives should not be dependent on one guy getting distracted when a light comes up, what if there was a fire right then and there, or if he dropped his glasses. Who knows? We concluded that if texting was the problem it would be all over the news, if it wasn't we wouldn't hear a pep about it again.
That day Art was coming home with me on the bus. He had his bike which meant that instead of sitting in the back of the bus ( my favorite seat) we sit in the front to watch the bike. After riding for a bit from the once glittzy Hollywood and Highland we get to border entrance to the ghetto and half way to my home: La Brea and Venice. By this time the bus is packed, standing room only with tired Black and Latino people ready to get home and be with their families. You can tell we are all regulars because regulars ignore the little physical contact we have to have (elbow contact, legs touching) cause there just isn't enough room. Its too cold outside to open the windows but inside its almost steamy.
I hear a noise behind me these two guys start yelling at each other in the very back of the bus.When I turned around I see them: both in their late twenties, a Latino guy with long hair who looked kind of like a metal head a Black guy with his puffy black and silver Rocca Wear jacket. I caught pieces of " No one calls me a wetback" and then swiftly they come to blows. They had to swing hard because their bodies were surrounded there are so many people. The Latino guy is kicked down the back stairs but reaches back through the door to swing, the Black guy comes down to return blows. They both end up outside and two other young Black youth jump off their bikes and start to hit the Latino triple teaming him. The Latino guy gets out of the rain of blows and pulls out a knife and starts to slice at them. The Black guy looks like he has a knife too. The bus starts to pull up to the red light and strangely ( like comic relief) they all three line up obediently to get back on the bus! One of the smaller Black kids sucker punches the Latino in the head who turns around to return the blow.
The bus pulls off with that only for the driver to stop across the street. The Black guy in the Rocca Wear jacket runs and the people on the bus say " Drive off don't let him on!' But the guy gets on the back and sits down as if nothing ever happened. By this time several people have called the police but come on, the police are not going show up for another hour and they aren't going to chase a bus- we are going to our neighborhood where "we should be" and they wont want to hold that up.
The rest of us who are all either Black or Latino, start to look around and rush to let each other know we are cool with each other. There was a moment of solidarity, nods of understanding and a few strangers spoke with each other. Art and I both commented that we are all the same and we are on the bus because we are poor and that the bosses are the only ones who benefit from us fighting each other. Mostly, people just looked tired and nervous. A young Latino kid rolled a blunt indifferently. An older gentleman with a Caribbean accent sitting directly behind me says, "Ya see, if on-lee mo-ah people smoked da ganja we 'ouldn't be abeen so much a dis fightin". The front part of the bus laughed while the guy in the Rocca Wear jacket started to pontificate about Jesus who died on the cross for us. I wanted so badly to tell him to "shut the fuck up, no one wants to hear your bullshit" but how would that go over? The Black girl with the Latino boyfriend is talking shit from in front of the bus. Yeah right- better to be like everyone else and get home safely.
I wonder however, what would have happened if this scenario would have happened on that Metrolink? Would the engineer ( also Latino) have been blamed for being distracted while the passengers went to blows. Who would they blame? Would they blame Metrolink for willingness to pay lawsuit settlements instead of paying for technology to prevent people from dying? And the fighting... Would they blame the bosses for paying people such insulting poverty wages that the working class turned in on itself? Would they blame the government for using immigrants as another pawn in political gaming, along with aborted fetuses, gay fiances and non-violent drug abusers? Would they blame the government for conducting ICE raids on Latinos while shooting young Black men in the back? Would they blame the distribution of tax money from after school programs to prisons? Hell no. It would be blamed on "ignorance" and " intolerance" and other easy answers whose solutions are forever unattainable.
But the answer is simple. It is unity, solidarity, and fighting our common enemy. The organizing day by day. It wasn't necessary to talk to the fighters but the people who saw what happened on that bus as a symptom to a larger problem. The bosses are the ones who keeps us in poor neighborhoods while we work in rich ones. It is the government that takes our money and feeds it to the rich. Its capitalism and its government pushers, and our blows should be on their heads, not on each other. I know fights like this will continue and one day soon their fists will change direction.
Julia
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