[Government and Politics] Dear Mr. Bloomberg…

There is no doubt in my mine that you are going to win the New York City mayoral election occurring tomorrow, HOWEVER my vote will NOT be marked for you, Mr. Bloomberg. I don’t think you are a bad guy and if the circumstances were different maybe I would have a different reaction to your candidacy, but as of this moment I have to announce that I can not support you. So this election day, I will vote for Bill Thompson for Mayor. Do I think he is going to win? Hell no! You might come off with a bigger margin then the last election for several different reasons. The main one being that the Democrats haven’t nominated a decent candidate in years. Besides, you’ve been successfully painting the man every which way you can while trying to boost about your “accomplishments” in education and he has been unsuccessful at not only decelerating who he is and WHY he is better then you, but the direction New York City needs. After seeing the only two debates on NY1 and on ABC channel 7, those points I made earlier became very clear.

However I wanted to take a moment and explain why you are not getting my vote in the election tomorrow, as meaningless as it may seems. As of late last year, you have constantly blamed the national economy for the woes of the city. While it is true that the world was going to shit in a basket with massive layoffs and bailouts to companies that became to big to fail, the cost of living in New York City had gone up dramatically since you’ve been in office before that time. While it has never been cheap to live in this city, it really says something when you find yourself paying double or triple for necessities and rent. The New York sales tax went up to 8.8% (that was just this past summer, right after the fiasco in Albany), The MTA has raised the fare amount many times on unlimited rides and twice on the base fare as you stood by and did nothing (from $1.50 to $2.25). What happen to the reform of the MTA that you had promised on the campaign trail twice before? The only proposal you have put out there has been the congestive pricing plan (which failed thankfully) to further tax people here in the city. I guess we all have to do our part right? The MTA received a bail out and do whatever they want and new Yorkers get to flip the bill. Whenever the topic is brought up concerning the MTA , you nonchalantly dismiss the asker as some kind of a nuisance. You have a habit of doing that, Mr. Bloomberg and it is very disrespectful.

By the way, Mr. Bloomberg, Downtown Brooklyn is slowly disappearing. I don’t know if you know this or if this is a part of the master plan started by Dinkins and his administration to continue the removal of the middle class from the city of New York. The once focal point of Fulton Street, Albee Mall has been torn down to make way for more and more condos that 80% of the people cannot afford. Why? Because you and your flunkies in the city council have pushed emanate domain to further displace New Yorkers living around the Atlantic rail yards, since that is the site for the future home of the Net’s Stadium. A stadium that was a part of your unsuccessfully bid to win the summer Olympics for 2012.

As you lead your war against tobacco smoking (which I understand, but do not like, because of health concerns), by making the price of a pack of smokes raise from 4 -5 dollars a pack to, in some places 11 – 12 dollars a pack… not once have I seen you go after alcohol or any other product that might have adverse affects to one’s health with that same gusto. It’s like I can’t have a drink at the bar or club and smoke at the same time plus I have to take out a personal loan for pack, but can get a beer for 99 cents and get into a car. What kind of sense does that make?

Honestly, I do not think you know the feeling of what it like to live in a place where you have to struggle with the Landlord for heat during the long winter months. I wonder if you know what it feels like to know that any day you will have to mange without electricity because you had to pay other bills instead of Con Ed that month. As I see from many Youtube clips, you like to ride mass transit, but do you have any idea what it is like to feel the pinch when the MTA ups the fare and trying to come up with the money to pay for your only means of transportation to support yourself AND everything else. Yes, there is no doubt in my mind that you are out of touch with many of the citizens of this city.

However my main concern was this…

You see, right after 9/11 when the whole country was going gaga over Rudy Giuliani and calling him “America’s Mayor” for some strange reason during the last few weeks of him term, there was mention of extending his term beyond the limit. The reason why I voted for you was because you were probably the only person that said NO WAY! That the citizens of this state voted for term limits and it would be up the next mayor to continue the job. That was why I voted for you, Mr. Bloomberg. I thought you understood that term limits was something voted by the people of this city. For weeks you were on the stomping ground trying to pump life into the idea that YOU were the only one that could get this city through it’s finical woes. You however took it upon yourself to go through the city council and had it overturned. What backroom deals did you make to get that done, Mr. Bloomberg? Plus you have the absolute GAUL to belittle, name call and dismiss those that question your motives. When one day you give speeches about how dire the city’s economy was and yours is the only leadership the city needs to get past it… then turn around and give another speech about it was on the rebound, do you not expect people to question ONCE AGAIN your reasoning behind a third term?

This little blog will mostly not matter because you are the status quo. It is better the have the devil you know then the one you don’t right. On election night, while you are celebrating your third tern as mayor, I will seek comfort in the fact that I’ve made the right choice in who I voted for.

You have bought this election, Mr. Bloomberg. I hope it was worth it…

Kenny.

[My Life] The Good Lord will provide, just NOT today… (Pt. 1)

1: Day Three

My body smelled something horrible. I haven’t noticed that fact until I was underneath the weak currents of my bathroom’s showerhead. After spending the past couple of days on energy that I didn’t have, my sore and bruised body felt as if it could not go on. The lack of sleep, food and pain was obviously taking it’s toll. I closed my eyes and let the warm water pour down my body. I was trying so hard to convince myself that this was just really a nightmare I was having and not reality. However, the pain and discomfort of my swollen face, mouth and my blistered hands and body were undeniable. Standing there with my eyes closed, flashes of the event flooded my mind. My grandmother, the fire, everything was coming in like a tidal wave and it was unbearable. Why wasn’t I fast enough? Why did this have to happen to her and not me? Why did we have that stupid fight hours before it happened? Mixed in with soap and shower water, the tears began to flow. Wincing ever so often as I pass the wash cloth over the sensitive areas of my body that were still badly bruised, the odor I smelled was slowly being replaced with the smell of Old Spice body wash.

Twenty minutes later, I stood there naked in front of the bathroom mirror. My right cheek was still red, raw and beginning to blister. My 2 front teeth were gone with three others barely holding on. The tips of my fingers were already blistering and spreading to the palm of my hand. There were blotches on the right side of my body that seemed to develop. Taking some ointment, I smeared them on my wounds and bandaged as much as possible. It will be okay, I told myself half-heartedly. I had spent so much time trying to figure myself out, trying to understand who I was and what I wanted to be in this life that I never excepted something like this to happen… and to all people, my grandmother. One minute I was posting a blog about using Twitter and the next thing I know I was in a borough that I never thought I would ever be in hoping that my grandmother was still alive. None of it made sense to me. Once again, the tears fall uncontrollably.

When I finally collected myself after several minutes, I began cleaning up the bathroom and putting on some underwear. Once I was finally dressed, I knocked on my mother’s bedroom door. She was up, just barely, sitting next to my grandmother’s unmade bed. She wasn’t ready to go to the hospital just yet, in fact she wasn’t even prepared to take a shower. She looked at me with a glazed look and asked me to run to the ATM to take out some money to pay a bill that was due that day and put some money on our metrocards for the trip out to see my grandmother. I agreed, took the ATM card, the bill and her metrocard off her bed without breaking a stride. As I was leaving, I told my mother to listen out for the phone and to be ready to go when I get back. She nodded, but it was obvious that she was in another place altogether.

2: Breakdown

The second I left my apartment building, I could feel the cool breeze hit my freshly washed face. Everything seemed ghostly as I moved out of the door and around a couple of tenants, a man and a woman, that lived on the top floor of my building. They stopped me in mid stride. By now, I suspected that the whole building was a buzzing about what had happened to my grandmother. “Hey!” said the woman in that sweet friendly tone that was almost to diabetic. “How are you? How is grandma?” I gave a shrug and told her that we didn’t know. I didn’t want to nor did I feel the need to share intimate details of my family pain to people that will add to the building gossip pool.

At this time in the morning, kids were running around a local schoolyard, people were making there way to the train station and cars were speeding down the parkway, but I didn’t notice any of it. My thoughts lingered on my grandmother. If this was any other day, I would be in school, my mother would be at work and my grandmother would be at home watching her stories with the bible in her lap and my cat Kimiko at her feet. It was a twenty minute walk to the bank from my house. I had to travel through a couple of long streets, go through a local park and past the busy intersection of Utica and Eastern Parkway. Surprisingly the bank was empty, a good thing since I was in no mood to wait. At the ATM, the card would not work. After trying twice more, I realize what the problem was… the card had expired. So I departed cursing to myself. Arriving home, I told my mother about the problem with the ATM card and she instantly lost it. “I can’t lose her…, I can’t… I’m not ready!” my mother kept mumbling through her tears while tearing through her papers. She threw a box on the floor in frustration and collapsed onto her bed in a heap, burying her face in her hand. I knelt down grabbed her. For the first time I need to be strong for her at a time when I couldn’t even be strong for myself. She sobbed on my shoulder as I fought back the tears. Grandma’s a fighter, I told myself. She will get better. She had too.

“Mama, take your time and look for your new card and if you can’t find it, we will find another way to get the money out of the bank” I told her. As my mother started to collect herself, the phone rang. The Caller ID display on the television scrolled: STATEN ISLAND UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL with a number that I didn’t recognize. It was a mad dash to grab one of the headsets in the house, which I was hoping would work.

“Hello, may I speak with the daughter of **** ***?” asked a soft-spoken woman.

“Um… that’s my mother. Is everything alright with my grandmother” I said with my heart beating a mile a minute.

“Yes, Yes… she is still stable. This is the grandson, right? Kenny?”

I nodded, forgetting that she could not actually see me.

“Yes, that’s me” I answered as I handed off one of the headsets to my mother.

“Hello!!!” my mother chimed in.

“Hi, Ms. ***, I was just telling your son that everything is … still the same, I just wanted to know if either you-“

“We’re definitely coming” my mother interrupted.

“Oh okay, good… I am the Social Worker here at the burn unit and I would like to meet with you when you come here today about your mother and the fire…”

My mother and the social worker spoke for a few more minutes as I listened on. She gave us her name and number at the hospital and after we hung up, my mother took a deep breathe and started the search for her new ATM card once again. After a few minutes, she found it with a sigh of relief. I grabbed my jacket once again and repeated my journey to the bank, this time leaving my mother running around the house trying to get things done. By the time I arrived home once again, she was dressed and made us lunch for the day. At this time, we were now ready to go to Staten Island to face what was to come.

3: Journey

Until this moment in my life, I never had a reason to go to Staten Island. To put it frankly, there was never a reason for it. We were still working out the timing of each ferry, when they arrive at the terminal and how often an hour do they come. When we arrived, there was a crowd forming at one of the doors. Some how we maneuvered ourselves through the crowd of people to get as close to the door as possible. With in minutes half of the terminal was overflowing with people. When the ferry docked and the double doors open it was like this race to get in the boat. Since I was faster, I half walked, half ran inside and got a seat for us in the front of the boat. I held my mother’s hand on during the boat ride. As I stared out of the window, I could not but to take in the beauty of the city. It was weird. At the age of 28, I felt like a kid again when I went with my mother to the statue of liberty… but of course, this wasn’t a good trip or a trip that we wanted to take at all.

Within 30 minutes, we docked and after the ferry departure, we dashed along with the crowd to one of the bus ramps for the S52. It was the only bus available to take us directly to the hospital. As we waited, I sat on one of the benches holding onto my bag and the lunch back my mother had prepared for us. A little girl walked past holding onto her mother’s hand. She stopped, pulled her mother’s hand and asked her: “Why his face all messed up?” Her mother grabbed her up and pulled her along, telling her that it wasn’t nice to say things like that to strangers. At that moment I felt like the Elephant Man, because I forgotten that I had I bandage covering the right side of my face. I did look like a freak, didn’t I… but my wounds were not as bad as my grandmothers were.

As the bus turned the corner, we mounted into one of those hybrid buses and started traveling through out the hill, slopes and communities of the Island. One second you are in the projects of Jersey Street, then you are staring at million dollar homes, the suburbs, a very lame downtown district and more projects. It was something I had never seen before, because it was all within blocks of one another. After almost an hour on the bus, were we in front of the Staten Island University Hospital. The sidewalk was littered with discarded cigarette butts, nurses smoking and people chugging down coffees. Wild Turkeys just walking by wobbling around while people gawk at them. I seriously thought I was heading into the zoo and not a hospital. We entered the lobby, made a couple of turn and started down the corridor to the unit my grandmother was in.

“I am going to use the bathroom” my mother told me as she handed me the lunch bag. I nodded and told her I was going to go on ahead. I entered the Burn Unit ICU and after washing my hands, I went to my grandmother’s room and stopped dropping my bags. My mouth dropped in horror. The bed in the room was stripped bare and the machines were turned off. “WHERE IS MY GRANDMOTHER???” I screamed with tears beginning to form in my eyes. “WHERE IS SHE???”

Kenny.

[My Life] A Broken Mind

Late September, 8 years ago, I died.

Every person has some sort of dark chapter in there lives they would never want to relive. For me, it was a little over 8 years ago when I tried to commit suicide. However before I can talk about that event I must enlighten you the reader about how it happened. 2001 was not one of my highlight years. Besides the events surround 9/11, I was on a slippery slope of self-destruction. Up until that point, I lived my life at arms length from everyone else in the world out of fear that I would be hurt.

The problem was I didn’t value my self worth and often took out all the negative emotions I had internally. I was only 20 and even through I suffered from depression for most of my life, this was something completely different. You see, I couldn’t feel anything. Good or Bad, it didn’t matter because I was just unable to feel any emotion. I started to abuse alcohol and painkillers, behind my family and friends back just to make myself feel something more than emptiness, more than then disappointment I caused others or failure. I faced the real possibility of losing my mind and there came to a point where I no longer cared.

A lot of the time in the African American community, depression or mental disease is something that is not either talked about or even acknowledge. Why? Because there are other things, you are except you to worry about and get through no matter what like bills, work, family, etc… All I kept hearing was: Take it to God, but to me God wasn’t listening. So I was left alone with my destructive thoughts. Until one night while very depressed and drunk, I tried to end my life with a mass dose of different prescriptions medications. My mental state was so fragile at best but it made sense to me that this world would be better without me.

Almost everything around that event is still foggy even today, a side affect of the several seizures that I had. I floated around, that I can remember clearly. I saw the doctors and nurses all around my body pushing things in and out of me. It was one of those out of body experiences that you hear about however there was no bright light or tunnel around me. Just space… just empty isolated space that I wonder through aimlessly without direction. It was similar to the way my life was at that point… and so I died, but I was brought back. For a few minutes my heart stopped and I was brought back to witness what my actions had done to not only myself but my entire family. It was at this point I was diagnosis as Manic Depressive (Bipolar), sent to a psychiatric hospital for over a week and then referred for follow-up therapy .

I was ashamed to say the least and as the days and weeks went by, I pretended that it really didn’t happen. That maybe it was a nightmare. I even went as far as to tell the people closest to me that I had some sort of surgery and never talked about it again. A fact I only realized a short time ago when I was talking to one of my best friends about it and he had no idea that I actually overdosed.

Now that I am older, I’ve opened up more concerning that situation. I don’t hide the fact that I tried to commit suicide anymore, in fact I’ve been open and honest about it because I know there is some one out there that is going through or did go through similar things I went through. So you might ask yourself: Do I believe in man’s version of God saved my life that day? No, no I do not. However, I do believe that something brought me back for some reason yet determined. A reason that I need to find out for myself one day…

Kenny.

[Lifestyles] Blackout

Think back for a second and try to remember where you were 6 years ago today. Most likely if you lived in the north east section of the United States or in some parts of Canada you would’ve been in darkness. A total and complete Blackout.

Picture it!

New York City.

The Date is August 14.
The year is 2003.

It was one of the hottest and humid days of the summer when all of a sudden, just after 4 in the afternoon the day long power outage began. Lucky for me, I just got home from work and began to work on my novel. My mother was out grocery shopping and my grandmother was in the living room with her friend, talking as they watched Judge Judy. Out of no where, everything thing around just shut down. My first thought was: “Oh crap, did I pay the bill”. It took me a second to locate the receipt in a draw and exhale a sigh of relief.

So I was really puzzled on what was going on, now. I ventured out to the living room where my grandmother asked me what I did to turn the TV off. Just like my room, the whole apartment was without power. I told both of the ladies that I was going to find the Super, in which my grandmother told me NOT to because she didn’t want any trouble. For some reason she thought we would get in trouble and get kicked out of RENT CONTROLLED apartment if we complained or asked for help. I really didn’t want to spend the time to explain so I just left. In the hallway a young girl was braiding some boys’ hair and inquired if the power went out in their apartment. She told me yes nonchalantly, as if it something like this happen everyday. Through the stairway window, I could see the 3 train was stuck on the elevated tracks behind my building. The traffic lights and store around were completely dark inside. Cars were cautiously moving to and fro. People were stumbling around in the state of confusion. I walked one floor down where a crowd of people had collected talking about the outage. Many thought this was another ploy by the new landlord, but after informing them that everything was dark outside as well, many started to take out radios from their apartments. After a few minutes of hearing what we all knew, everyone pulled out there cell phones and started making calls since they all said that there home phones (all cordless) were no longer working.

By this time, my mother was making her way up the stair drenched with sweat and carrying the empty shopping cart and I informed her of the situation and after some choice words, she joined the conversation, briefly. We went back into the apartment where I went into my room and pulled out a box buried in my closet. It contained an old corded phone that worked just perfectly. Funny, how everyone in this digital age forget the benefits of a corded phone.

After making a few phone calls, my mother and I rambled around the house to see what supplies we had. It’s funny when you realize how unprepared you are for an emergency when it actually happens. Our family had two little battery operated portable televisions, a container of matches, about 6 flashlights and there were no batteries or candles in the entire house. I couldn’t believe it at all. This presented a minor dilemma. We would have to go out and get as much as we could before people lost there damn minds and did something stupid. It was too late for that. When we went outside cops cars raced pasted our building like a bolt of lightening.

Great. I wasn’t even a thought during the 1977 blackout, but I was going to witness it reincarnate itself in 2003.

Most of the stores on Rutland Road, which is the little shopping strip in my neighborhood, were closing or would not allow anyone in expect for one store right next to the Sutter Ave./Rutland Road 3 train station. It was a small little discount store that people were starting to gather around. Thankfully we managed to get inside within a few minutes. The store was total dark besides that light coming from the outside. One of the employees stood in middle of an aisle, blocking so no one could further back into the store. We scooped up as many batteries as we could, but the small space was no match to the massive amount of people trying to get in.

A guy started, about 18 – 20, started to push pass the employee. The employee pushed back and all of a sudden the store erupted in chaos. It was a blur really, much of it went by so quickly that I moved on instinct. The guy and his friends started a fight that spilled outside of the store. In retaliation that started to throw whatever was in front of the store at anything that moved. A woman and her child were in the middle. I pushed my mother to the side and grabbed the baby carriage to move it out of the way. The child’s mother was screaming hysterically and asking why. When the coast was clear we ran out of the store, breathing a sigh of relief. As we walked the child’s mother kept screaming, yelling and saying: “Why are you people like this!” I placed my hand on her shoulder and told her sternly that she needed to take her and her child home as fast as she could. I don’t know is she realized that even through I could tell she was a fair skinned Spanish woman, she looked Caucasian in a neighborhood that mostly African-American or Caribbean.

For the rest of the afternoon, the family sat around the televisions hearing the updates as they came, watching the interviews with people as they walked around in the blazing sun and saw the Mayor lie about how everything was okay. After the sun went down, my neighborhood fell into total darkness. There was this eerie silence through out the streets only disturbed by the occasional car or pedestrian. By candle light I wrote in my journal, documenting the events of the day and thinking for cool things to combat the humidity.

On the morning of the 15th, the streets were once again deserted, but as time went on, some stores would open while others were completely shut down. Grocery stores that had there own generator limited the amount of people enter while others only sold perishables like milk and meat. Once the power was restored later that afternoon, people wanted to examine the causes. Was it Con Ed? Terrorism? Sponge Bob Square Pants? But like all things in this world everything started to go on as if nothing had happen. The aftermath of Blackout 2003 was seen in neighborhoods like Flatbush for months afterwards. Several stores were broken into, looted, and in one case a sneaker store was burn down, but you didn’t hear about it on the news. The Mayor constantly talked about how nothing went wrong besides little pockets.

Yeah right…

Kenny.

[Faith] Is “Religion” mental slavery?

I wanted to ask those out there a very simple question. Is Religion a form a mental slavery? I’ve been thinking about this for sometime now and when I ask people who consider themselves “religious” they give me this deer caught in the headlights expression and never give me a concrete answer. I wonder many times if “Religion” is just a tool that the powers that be out there use to have us do there bidding in the world.

Growing up, most people in my family were heavily involved in the Baptist church, but I was one of those kids that really didn’t get the whole concept of believing in something just because. It’s not like I wanted to see God himself, I just wanted some one to explain to me why this “religion” was the right one over all others. Being a youngster, my questions were just dismissed and I was told that I had to believe because if I didn’t then I was going to Hell. Threats like that kept in line for awhile. I didn’t go to church because I believed, most times I was asleep in the pewees waiting for that final prayer while people danced and shouted in the aisles because the caught the “spirit”. It was that fear that if I didn’t go then I was damned.

When I began to study in African American history in college, I asked my pastor why any African-Americans would believe in the Bible when it was something that was forced down slaves throats by there masters. I even mention the whole “Curse of Ham” theory (Curse of Ham is supposes to be a curse that Noah placed on his son Ham’s children and descendants to be slaves to Ham’s brothers descendants, because Ham saw his father’s nakedness as he lay in a drunken sleep.) many people of faith used during slavery to justify its existence. Once again, after 15 minutes of bible quotes, I never received a solid answer, which caused me to not to return.

As an adult, I’ve become very wary of “religion”. I do have faith there is a Higher Power in the universe. A being that is just and all knowing, but I believe that many of the worlds “religions” distort it to fit their own agenda. The most horrible atrocities done in world history have been done in the name of God, men like Jim Jones, who used religion as a way to attract followers to come to the People’s Temple in Guyana, comes to mind.

So I am going to leave this to a debate. Is “religion” just a tool to trap people in some sort of mental slavery, being blind followers to something that may or may not be real or is it something good that will bring people closer to the God they believe?

Kenny.