Mike's Noise

"Amazing Grace" part 2: "We have our hell right here on Earth"

You who turn justice into bitterness
       and cast righteousness to the ground ...

... you hate the one who reproves in court
       and despise him who tells the truth.

You trample on the poor
       and force him to give you grain.
       Therefore, though you have built stone mansions,
       you will not live in them;
       though you have planted lush vineyards,
       you will not drink their wine.

For I know how many are your offenses
       and how great your sins.
       You oppress the righteous and take bribes
       and you deprive the poor of justice in the courts.

Therefore the prudent man keeps quiet in such times,
       for the times are evil.

Seek good, not evil,
       that you may live.
       Then the LORD God Almighty will be with you,
       just as you say he is. (Amos 5:7; 10-14 NIV)

Mott Haven was described in 1991 by the New York Times as "one of the city's most forlorn neighborhoods."  An epidemic of drug trafficking, drug addiction, murder, assault, robbery, and HIV/AIDS had so ravaged the neighborhood that New York City officials tagged the area around Beekman Avenue as "the deadliest blocks in the deadliest district" of the city.  Police officers only drove around the outskirts of the neighborhood.  Social workers handed out clean hypodermic needles and free condoms in an effort to stop the spread of HIV.  In 1991 there were 84 murders in Mott Haven, one every four days.

Writer Jonathan Kozol visited the neighborhood in 1993 and 1994, and soon after published his interviews and observations in his powerful memoir Amazing Grace.  Kozol chronicled the hopelessness that suffocates the neighborhood's residents.  Most of the families living in Mott Haven's housing projects were headed by single mothers or single grandmothers (if the mothers were in prison) and the suffering endured by these women is heartbreaking.  The combination of depression induced by the gloom of their environment, anxiety from the constant gunfire and killings, asthma fueled by anxiety and the vermin and insects that infest their apartments, and AIDS contracted from using contaminated needles or from sexual partners, had utterly devastated their lives.

"You have to struggle to get through the afternoon.  You have to drink a lot of coffee and you smoke too much to keep from crying or exploding at somebody.  You feel nervous all the time and can't calm down."

"Nothin' works here in my neighborhood ... Everything breaks down in a place like this.  The pipes break down.  The phone breaks down.  The electricity and heat break down.  The spirit breaks down.  The body breaks down.  The immune agents of the heart also breaks down.  Why wouldn't the family break down also?
"If we saw the people in these neighborhoods as part of the same human family to which we belong, we'd never put them in such places to begin with.  But we do not think of them that way.  That's one area of 'family breakdown' that the experts and newspapers seldom speak of."

"... Keepin' a man is not the biggest problem.  Keepin' from being killed is bigger.  Keepin' your kids alive is bigger.  If nothin' else works, why should a marriage work?  I'd rather have a peaceful little life just with my kids than live with somebody who knows that he's a failure.  Men like that make everyone feel rotten." (Kozol, Amazing Grace, pp. 180-181)

The only sign of optimism witnessed by Kozol in the Mott Haven projects was in the eyes of its children, who nonchalantly spoke of murder and drug dealing and prison in the same manner that a suburban child might speak of pizza or cheerleading or Thomas The Tank Engine.  The concepts of good and evil strongly resonated in the minds of these kids, along with the deep conviction that their circumstances were clearly the result of the evils done to their people by the wealthy elites who lived on the other side of the island.  Their belief in God, deeply instilled in them by mothers and grandmothers, was also strong, particularly their hope in the promise of Heaven.  Sadly, these children had little else to hope for.

"What do you do with some of these realities?  ... Here is a city in which nine out of ten children born with AIDS are black kids or Latinos, many of their mothers or fathers IV users.  You have 14-year-old girls who are crack users.  If you don't believe in God and don't believe in family or society , and don't believe you'll ever have a job, what do you have?  Even when a good political leader speaks to them, his rhetoric has no effect.  It's like walking into an intensive-care ward in a hospital and saying, 'Rise!'" (ibid, p. 174)

"Amazing Grace" part 1: Mott Haven then and now

(Author's note:  After I wrote this first short essay about Mott Haven, I realized that there was much more that I wanted to say.  So I wrote a second essay inspired by Amazing Grace and the poverty of Mott Haven.  Both essays were conceived and written independently, so there is some redundancy between the two pieces.  But I hope you will read them both.)

My JustFaith study group has been reading Amazing Grace by Jonathan Kozol, a harrowing account of life in New York City's most poverty-stricken neighborhoods during 1993 and 1994.  Kozol centers the book around Alice Washington and her son David, who represent the most exploited class of victims in the South Bronx slums.  Alice separated from, and eventually divorced, her unfaithful and abusive husband; his parting gift to her was the HIV virus.  She survived cancer, but her illnesses left her too sick to work.  She and her son became wards of the City of New York, and ended up in its poorest ghetto.

Much of Kozol's narrative takes place in Mott Haven, a community once known for its striking turn-of-the-century architecture and iron work.  But the Mott Haven in Kozol's book is infested with prostitutes, drug dealers, junkies, violent crime, and rundown, overcrowded public housing.  The hopelessness, despair, and powerlessness of the residents of the South Bronx is heartbreaking and, at times, difficult to absorb without shedding tears.

The downward spiral of New York's ghettos is not traced by Kozol, but here is their sad history. New York City's controversial urban planning of the 1950's, managed in an almost totalitarian fashion by architect Robert Moses, resulted in entire neighborhoods being razed in order to build expressways and highway overpasses.  The displaced populations of those neighborhoods were crowded into old tenement apartments that were already in poor condition before they were leased by the city.  Mott Haven was darkened and isolated by the massive bridges of the Major Deegan and Bruckner expressways, which were designed to safely bring throngs of suburban workers into and out of Manhattan.  Middle class families and small business moved out.  Building owners turned to arson in order to reclaim the remaining equity in their properties.  Mott Haven became the thriving center of New York City's ugly crack epidemic during the 1980's.  Its residents became deeply impoverished and drug-addicted, with no realistic opportunities for jobs and no foreseeable way out.  Sadly, the drug business was the only source of revenue to move into Mott Haven over the span of nearly three decades.

Also, as a result of decreasing city revenues and rising civil unrest, the city reduced the number of police officers patrolling the streets in the South Bronx and adopted a "see no evil" approach to prostitution, street corner drug dealing, and other misdemeanor offenses.

In 1997, Mott Haven was rezoned in order to encourage small businesses to begin populating its outskirts once more.  Crime fell considerably (PDF file in link) throughout New York City in the late 1990's, and today Mott Haven's parks and street corners are generally free from drug dealers and prostitutes.  Many housing projects still occupy a good deal of Mott Haven, but real estate bargain hunters have discovered the neighborhood's scenic hundred-year-old brownstones, and have begun buying them up and refurbishing them.  Construction is slated to begin soon on a new $235 million school for the neighborhood.

Long-time Mott Haven residents are fearful that the influx of white, urban, middle-class residents will push rent and other cost of living expenses out of their reach.  There is also resentment from the borough's predominately minority residents, who wonder if their new white neighbors are just exploiting the neighborhood's current low cost of living, only to move out again when living in Mott Haven is no longer chic.  But more rezoning is slated for the neighborhood, and soon more of the old industrial and warehouse district will be converted into more residential and retail areas.

Still, life in NYC's housing projects is difficult.  Residents are continually plagued with mold, lead paint, rodents, and roaches.  Asthma is far more prevalent among children who live in public housing, and recent studies show that heart disease, cancer, and diabetes also claim a higher number of victims in these neighborhoods.  Environmental problems, particularly pollution stemming from the disposal and recycling of hazardous materials that occurs in facilities rejected by wealthier and more powerful neighborhoods, are still painfully evident.  And even though crime has been drastically reduced, NYC's housing projects still see appreciably more murders and robberies than surrounding neighborhoods.

Perhaps the fundamental lesson that we can learn from New York City's problems is that poverty and isolation often result from a long series of policy decisions and events that, individually, seem insignificant.  But as the effects of these decisions incrementally build up over time, the results can be devastating. 

Where do we build the expressways that carry us from comfortable suburbs into our cities?  Where do we build waste incinerators?  Where do we build landfills?  Are we concentrating public housing, and are we building these concentrations in isolated locations?  Are these locations poorly served by public transportation?  Which neighborhoods have the greatest number of police patrols?  In which neighborhoods are the police more or less likely to make arrests?  Which neighborhoods have the best public schools?  Which neighborhoods have the worst public schools?  Are students given the opportunity to attend schools other than the ones in their neighborhood?  Which neighborhoods have the best city council representation?

Humanity seems to be absorbed in the pursuit of luxury.  We strive to build societies that continually offer more and more "value" to their residents.  Often these values are embarrassingly superficial: designer clothing, cutting-edge technology, exclusive neighborhoods, access to the cocktail party scene, celebrity status ... yet we continue to believe that the more of this stuff we have, the greater our relevance becomes, and the more entitled we are to belong to the ruling class.

It is natural for those with the most money to be the ones who pay the most taxes, and it is natural for the top taxpayers to expect the most in return for their contributions.  But the Bible clearly teaches that when we forfeit the quality of life for others in order to create a luxurious community for ourselves, we spit in the faces of those whom God loves.  We will be held accountable for these choices.