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If I'd been at the subway station five minutes earlier, I'd have seen the suicide jumper. As is, I just saw the stopped train, the policemen, and the crying women. And above-ground, a swarm of paramedics, somebody saying "DOA, DOA" over the radio. Dan said maybe it was just a track worker who died in an accident, but of course, being me, my immediate thought was it was a suicide. Looked in the Bklyn news online tonight and my theory was confirmed. I suppose until the end of my days, I'll have a sixth sense for suicides. My thoughts today kept racing like a runaway train. These past few days have been one of the worst possible backdrops for this act of bearing witness. Tags: suicides
Current Location: home
Current Mood:  blank
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So this is a few months old, but I just found out about it today, and I'm pretty tickled by it. Former Yonkers superintendent Hornsby sentenced to prisonI no longer do a very good job of keeping up with news from that city where nothing is on the level, but I'm pleased to see there is at least some justice in the world, if not in Yonkers itself. I'm hoping John Spencer is next. (I felt a little like people from Wasilla must've felt when Sarah Palin entered the national arena when that man tried to run against Clinton for the Senate and boasted of all the wonderful things he'd done for Yonkers.) A crook of a schools superintendent, a crook for a mayor, a crook of a DA protecting all these people. The rot spreads all the way down the tree. Even as a high schooler, I knew there was massive nepotism and corruption plaguing the ways things were being run in the school system. I remember things like that contract to put iMacs the teachers didn't want in every classroom which were then thrown out the windows by students during the chaos of the teacher strike and the intentional sabotaging of programs at our blue ribbon school by diversion of funds to the superintendent's pet project, the IB program. I remember our protests outside of the system's administration building which was conveniently right next door to my high school, the cuts to school security officers which were simultaneous with the attempts to make the physical layouts of the schools resemble prisons, his my-way-or-the-highway steamroller towards school uniforms no one wanted. I remember the high-paying jobs he gave to his family and friends who were completely unqualified. Everyone in the city and the public school system knew how terrible this man was, but because it was Yonkers, he knew he would forever be immune while he was there. In a way, though, I owe Hornsby one because I doubt I would be as politically involved as I am today if I hadn't been exposed to that sort of thing when I was a teenager. I started caring about politics when I realized one of the major reasons Yonkers was such a shithole was because people refused to WAKE UP and see what their own elected officials were doing to them, because they refused to demand accountability, because they refused to find decent alternatives to run against them (I don't know that the local Democratic party was much better than the Republican dictatorship). Classic story of people getting the leaders they deserve and those of us who realize what's wrong being lone voices in the wilderness (wilderness of Getty Square, that is). Tags: city of hills with nothing on the level, politics, yonkers
Current Mood:  jaded
Current Music: Anti-Flag
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http://lrionline.com/ <= I got an ad for that site on my gmail for reasons I can't comprehend, and it's freaking me out. "We provide a consultant who is assigned the task to “probe” the facility as if he or she were attempting to organize it from the outside... Based on this report you will be able to identify strengths and vulnerabilities in as closely as possible to an actual attack by a union organizer." "LRI videos provide a solid foundation from the start of an employee’s tenure with your company. These videos are a concise, repeatable way to deliver the message of your corporate culture, and to dispel myths and provide accurate information about union issues" "The LRI Persuader deployed to your campaign will be the right fit for your workforce. Former union affiliation— as well as issues of culture, language, and industry—are all considered when you and the Labor Relations Institute make the critical decision of which and how many Persuaders are needed to assure victory." And finally, this slogan at the bottom: "Helping the workplace work" So Orwellian it makes my head hurt.... Tags: corporate scariness
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I just got back from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, where I was viewing what was possibly the sketchiest apartment on the planet. The entryway was a dimly-lit and rickety staircase, the front door barely locked and we had to struggle with the key for about five minutes, there were ugly bars on the insides of the windows (which opened out onto the roof of a commercial space), it was dirty and full of crumbling plaster and debris (srsly, what kind of apartment broker doesn't even vacuum before a showing?), and some large roaches were camping out in the bathroom. Also, the entire apartment was carpeted with a hideous bright purple carpet. And it wasn't entirely empty. There was no furniture or anything there, but the fridge still had some food in it and there were things like trash bags and soap in the cabinets. Dan suggested maybe the tenant had died and they didn't even bother to fully clean the place out before putting it on the market. The neighborhood itself was cool, but that apartment looked like it should have been some horror movie set. I opened the closet halfway expecting a dead body to fall out. ... now I know what one gets when looking for a one bedroom under $1000/month. :p Yes, I'm desperate for Dan and I to get our from our thieving, passive-aggressive asshole of a roommate, but not that desperate. :p Tags: apartments
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darkladymara's journal
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