Stereotactic CD release and the mob attack on the War Days actors - By N.L. Belardes
Friday night began downtown with the excitement of the Stereotactic CD release party. At the same time, the War Days director and two actors from their film about coming of age in the Vietnam era were off to the BHS-Stockdale football game at Griffith Field. “Hey are you from The War Days?” some kid said at the game. The game wasn’t close for the first three quarters until Stockdale came storming back from a 21-0 deficit…
I showed up downtown, ready for the new Pizza-a-go-go, ready for the hometown CD release show of Stereotactic. I’d been emailing Kyle from the band. I was prepared for a great hometown show, even though I was making a descent into Bakersfield’s underground cavern of rock and roll. I hadn’t been fond of the changes in the venue over the past ten years... but maybe tonight was the night I would come to accept what the Pizza-a-go-go had become: a historic rough-and-tumble downtown venue for music and camaraderie.
Right away I saw Joel from Gramercy Riff. I said hello and he asked how the War Days director and one of the actors were doing. “Hey. It’s the king of the local art scene. You’re covering everything. How are ****** and ******…” he said. He sat in a booth with several guys. I was happy to see his band had gotten back together.
“They’re good. They’re at the BHS-Stockdale football game,” I smiled.
“We’ve got a new drummer. He’s only been practicing with us for a week.”
“He’ll do fine. I can’t wait to hear,” I said.
Joel thanked me for helping out in the music scene and then I was off to see the downstairs…
The pizza joint’s basement stairs seemed as dark as ever. I looked over to the counter. Jerry sat and talked to some folks. He was a bit more grey than when I met him in the 1990s. He seemed in a jovial mood as he sipped a beer.
It was time to see the new resurgence in downtown music in Bakersfield underground punkdom. Jerry’s Pizza A.K.A. the Pizza-a-go-go had been a haven for ill tidings in Bakersfield at the time I entered the music scene as a writer/photographer in January. Word among local bands about drugs, violence, an intimidating promoter, and pay-to-play scams had reached an angry pinnacle early in the year. I wrote several articles on such followed by the Blackboard Free Press writing one of their own. That was followed by a piece from me where I made a descent downstairs into what I was to write as “the sleeping black dragon’s lair of downtown music.”
Although there were no more gigs at Downtown Records, and only a ghost of Gigantic Vintage remained, Jerry’s Pizza was clearly a changed venue. Right away I saw red-painted walls and the new sound system electronics boards blinking away on the far wall. Perhaps Jerry’s had become “the sleeping red dragon’s lair of downtown music.” Band equipment lined brick walls in the deepest recesses of the cavern. These were eerie walls with lots of gum stuck to them and I wondered if there was an unknown area of the wall that covered some bricked up hole to a 1930s era Chinese tunnel. Where were the ghosts of such speakeasy era gamblers? Could they haunt the darkness, or even infect the stage with their distant opium den past?
The rock and roll farm had clearly begun a new era in promoting shows in an environment with much better sound and few harsh words. In other words—there was no aire of defiance, dislike, or hatred. Of course I have heard since that a fight and arrest occurred Saturday night in the Pizza-ago-go—which attributes to its rough nature when local angry punks are allowed to frequent the cavern. Friday night was just the venue doing what it does best: providing a dark underground venue for Bakersfield, a dark stigma of Bakersfield music traveling rock, where bands and kids can congregate among underground shadows.
Kyle of Stereotactic stopped me in those shadows and said “Hello.” I shook hands and he thanked me for coming… I then wandered back upstairs and went straight to Jerry himself. “Thank you for coming!” he also said. Jerry in his rock and roll farm establishment appeared grateful, happy that someone from the local music scene was covering a show. All press is good press, right? I had simply set out to describe what I saw, in narrative fashion.
“There needs to be unity in the scene—a unity article,” I said as Jerry smiled. Even though someone had torn down a Hurricane Relief Show poster I put up on 19th Street and Eye the day before. I was still ready to do what I could to help unite the Bakersfield music scene; but I’m not dumb. How horrible is it to tear down a poster? I know Tim Gardea is disliked by a certain downtown crowd and the Coley-Zill camp and his name was on it amongst a host of others. But to tear down a poster for a Hurricane Relief Show because his name is on it, when Gardea wasn’t even one of the 2 or 3 guys who spearheaded the idea? Tim Gardea is a resource to help in show development to help gain a headliner and to possibly help with some logistics. I’m disgusted by whoever tore the poster down. But I will appear next week with a new one, and then what will the rebellious revelers do when the poster is hung in a store window? Not a damn thing…
I snapped a picture of Jerry who then kindly passed me a beer. We shook hands as a gesture of solidarity and then I was off downstairs to see Gramercy Riff.
The Pizza Punk Entrepeneur, Jerry Baranowski
There was a large crowd of bodies crowding the low stage. Yes, this is the dismal aspect of Jerry’s. Unless you’re crowding the stage, you can’t see the bands. You can’t build a higher stage in Jerry’s; musicians heads would all be bloodied from smacking against the rafters. The Pizza-a-go-go is what it is: a low-ceiling underground venue in a strategic area of downtown Bakersfield where a cross-segment of fans likes to watch shows, eat pizza, and if old enough, drink enough beer to cause them to stumble down the steps… it’s just they can’t see much of the shows except for the tops of heads. But kids don’t seem to mind. At Jerry’s Pizza there is a history of rock and roll and punk where many bands have played in the underground; kids just might want to feel a part of that history. And with recent changes, Jerry’s underground is still dark, hot, lively, raucous, and filled with camaraderie of bands and fans.
I snuck onto the stairs to snap some pictures of Gramercy Riff. Their new drummer didn’t seem to have any problems with the hardcore style. But then, I’m no musician. The crowd was into it, and Gramercy Riff, a talented hardcore Bakersfield band, appeared to at least have more room to move around on the larger stage area.
I popped back upstairs during the set where Matildakay hung out with some friends. I met Trent who was manning the Stereotactic booth and spoke with Kyle again. He brought me a CD and said he was interested in my Lords of Bakersfield conspiracy fiction, Lords: Part One. “When’s it coming out?” he said.
“Within weeks,” I promised.
“You’ll like the first two songs,” he said. “They’re about JFK.”
Downstairs again, I listened to Joel growl vocals to the crowd…
BHS was supposed to lose its game against Stockdale—or so I heard. Griffith Field was alight with roars and cheers. The score was 28-26, and reminiscent of the old Taft-Bakersfield rivalries, this was going to go down as a classic match-up in local high school football lore. Although Stockdale made a valiant last effort, this richy-rich school lost to inner city Bakersfield High on inner city turf… that’s where I live.
The War Days director and the two actors, still on the high school campus, excited from the big game suddenly witnessed a mob of 20-30 kids randomly attack a boy on campus. The mob threw him to the ground, kicked him in the face, and continuously punched him. Where the police were, I later listened as one kid from the game said, “Cop cars were on the other side of the stadium, sitting in their cars and talking, not patrolling.” High school campuses are supposed to be protected after big rivalries. I remember hearing of the Bakersfield race riots in the 1970s. And this sounded like a terrible mob attack. Were these BHS students attacking who they thought was a Stockdale student? Or was this a racist attack because of color? Latinos in a mob attacking who they perceived as a white student?
Having to walk down ‘H’ Street a main thoroughfare that connects to Bakersfield High, and just a few blocks from the downtown police station, no sooner had the War Days director and two actors crossed the street they felt something further was wrong. They continued along for a short block, and then on the corner of Blanche St. and ‘H’ they heard, “Get him!” The attack was on.
One of the actors, also a cross-country runner, yelled, “Run!” and instantly disappeared down the street for help, fully knowing he couldn’t take on a mob. The War Days director ran too but was tackled on ‘H’ Street by two Latino youths. The other actor was attacked by at least fifteen juvenile Mexican-American hoodlums. He was quickly brought down in a flurry of punches and kicks to his head to which he fell into the bush of a corner antique store. He covered himself. It was all he could do. The fight was unprovoked.
Meanwhile, one of the thugs had thrown down the War Days director, and started to pummel and kick him. He jumped up, ducked a punch from another youth, slugged that kid a few times, then made his way up the street…
Just as Gramercy Riff’s fire-charged set came to an end I received a call from the War Days director. He had just called the police because one of the actors was missing and because they had just been in an unprovoked mob attack.
Yes, this was across the street from Bakersfield High School, where no policemen or school officials were in sight, and where an altercation on campus had spilled off campus onto a main thoroughfare, which I had assumed, was protected by police after a rivalry game. “If I know police, and I know a lot of cops,” a guy later said, “then those cops were all standing around and talking about where they were going to drink beer after their shift.” I don’t know if that statement is true, but I do know a mob attack occurred on the Bakersfield High campus that spilled onto ‘H’ Street in an unprovoked attack on the War Days actors..
The War Days director was breathing hard as I set off from the Pizza-a-go-go. Within minutes I arrived to discover one of the actors was missing.
This is the America we live in. One of the boys could have been lying dead in an alley. For what? For kicks and giggles because a mob thought it was be fun to attack bystanders, perhaps who they perceived as ‘white’ bystanders? I called the police: “There’s a fourteen year old boy missing…he’s been attacked…”
Of course calling 911 was no help. First, it took 5-6 calls just to get through. This is the same Bakersfield police station that takes two days to respond to a burglary where glass is strewn all over a house. This attack a potential deadly situation? Yes. The 911 lady said units were on the way. They weren’t.
The police station is close, just a few blocks down the street on the corner of Truxton and ‘H’. It would literally take one minute or less for a squad car to respond.
I drove up and down Oleander streets and alleys looking for the boy. Nothing.
“The boy is at the police station,” she suddenly said.
“What? Thank God. I need to pick him up. Is he OK?”
But then moments later we discovered it wasn’t the same boy. He was still missing.
This is the America we live in. Where a hurricane devastates a city; where twin towers are attacked. But where the hoodlums of society only care about themselves, their cowardly attacks, their poor sense of self. Just Sunday morning Al Qaeda warned of attacks on LA. Would that be East LA? What would it take for American gangs to have a sense of America, of a larger threatening world of bombs, disease, famine, and global terrorism… I address such thoughts in the novella Thick White Crust as I wrote of riding in the back of a Bakersfield transit bus with gangbangers who naively saw the World Trade Center attacks as simply upon rich white society.
What’s even more tragic is these were Latino thugs. The missing boy is half Mexican. His father is a first generation immigrant, having come to America in the trunk of a car after walking miles through the hot Baja desert, and then was locked in a cage—a way station of sorts for illegal immigrants. He came to America, didn’t know any English, didn’t have a job, but worked toward his own vision of the American dream. He worked odd jobs as a cook and then for a grocery store, and learned the language as best he could. He now manages a grocery store for a major food chain and speaks fluent English. He and his wife have three children, all successful students.
But thugs stereotype those of us who are lighter-skinned. They can’t see our Latino surnames; we don’t tattoo them on our foreheads. They would kill their own for being light-skinned, thinking lighter skin means ‘white’ here in melting pot Bakersfield, America. The War Days director and the other actor also take great pride in their Latino heritage as their great great grandfather fought alongside Poncho Villa. During the Revolution he rescued a young woman raped by the local priest. He murdered the priest and took the woman and ran to America for a better life. This is the heritage these Latino thugs attacked. Makes you wonder is Americans themselves ever have the American Dream, or if such is simply an immigrant dream…
We tore down an alleyway, then flew down Blanche Street and made our way back to ‘H’ Street again. I imagined the missing fourteen-year-old boy dragged into an alley, stabbed and dying. This is the America we live in, where gangs of thugs are modern day tribes. America is no longer a society where Native American tribes are forced onto the shoddiest of landscapes and left in turmoil, conquered. Modern age tribes aren’t relocated, or even disallowed from their tribal warring behavior. Today, American cities, police, society picks up the pieces after the bloodshed; the tribes are allowed to war. Why is that? Because today’s tribes infiltrate hospitals, schools, city government, and could be your very child with an affiliation to something called family, but isn’t. Modern American tribes war and kill and maim and hurt, and it’s not stopped. When ultra-Conservatives wrongly say to pull out of Iraq and nuke the site from orbit, perhaps they need to look at their own soil where tribes because of drugs and guns war on themselves and the innocent. This is the America we live in, where a recently relocated African-American in Utah city .2% black, wondered, “Can such cities adapt to me?”
That’s hard to say. Such tribal attitudes seem prevalent in racism across the board. Just ask the War Days director and his actors after they were pummeled.
We found the lost actor walking down ‘H’ Street. Some people had come out of their homes to help and so he walked with them. Still, no police cars. The 911 operator said, “Do you still want an officer to arrive?”
“Of course,” I said. Was this operator this ignorant? Other innocent kids could be lost, beaten, warred upon. God knows how many the thugs attacked.
After fifteen more minutes or so the police arrived. The officers asked if the boys were OK. They asked a few standard questions if the thugs could be described: Juveniles; Mexican-American; baggy clothes. One of the officers then attempted to place blame on me. “This is a rough neighborhood. If I were a parent, I wouldn’t allow my child to walk home.”
We’re talking three blocks from the Bakersfield city police station after a major rivalry football game. “I accept blame for wrongly assuming that police would patrol main streets right after a major rivalry football game,” I said.
“Our officers work overtime at these games,” he said.
“And still, I assumed there would be protection,” I said. Who is this police officer to displace blame and make excuses for the tribes of modern day society? By making his statement he accepts the idea that police to not maintain societal control because they are overworked, understaffed, and so on, and dare I say it, complacent to act in a rough neighborhood a mere few blocks from the downtown police station because warring gangbangers are simply American citizens?
Thrown in this bush and pummeled...
Scene of the crime (lawn in foreground)
Yes, this is the America we live in. There is opportunity, there is violence, and there is a lack of unity and respect, even from a Latino subculture that revolves around notions of machismo and respect. A cowardly fight of 20-30 against a few? Unprovoked? There is respect in such? The police were not even going to take a statement. I made them do such. I wanted a record of the attack, not just a record that stated I had phoned, and that the War Days director had phoned, to no avail...
I apologized to Stereotactic for missing their performance. But then, I had to go deal with the current state of America…
I showed up downtown, ready for the new Pizza-a-go-go, ready for the hometown CD release show of Stereotactic. I’d been emailing Kyle from the band. I was prepared for a great hometown show, even though I was making a descent into Bakersfield’s underground cavern of rock and roll. I hadn’t been fond of the changes in the venue over the past ten years... but maybe tonight was the night I would come to accept what the Pizza-a-go-go had become: a historic rough-and-tumble downtown venue for music and camaraderie.
Right away I saw Joel from Gramercy Riff. I said hello and he asked how the War Days director and one of the actors were doing. “Hey. It’s the king of the local art scene. You’re covering everything. How are ****** and ******…” he said. He sat in a booth with several guys. I was happy to see his band had gotten back together.
“They’re good. They’re at the BHS-Stockdale football game,” I smiled.
“We’ve got a new drummer. He’s only been practicing with us for a week.”
“He’ll do fine. I can’t wait to hear,” I said.
Joel thanked me for helping out in the music scene and then I was off to see the downstairs…
The pizza joint’s basement stairs seemed as dark as ever. I looked over to the counter. Jerry sat and talked to some folks. He was a bit more grey than when I met him in the 1990s. He seemed in a jovial mood as he sipped a beer.
It was time to see the new resurgence in downtown music in Bakersfield underground punkdom. Jerry’s Pizza A.K.A. the Pizza-a-go-go had been a haven for ill tidings in Bakersfield at the time I entered the music scene as a writer/photographer in January. Word among local bands about drugs, violence, an intimidating promoter, and pay-to-play scams had reached an angry pinnacle early in the year. I wrote several articles on such followed by the Blackboard Free Press writing one of their own. That was followed by a piece from me where I made a descent downstairs into what I was to write as “the sleeping black dragon’s lair of downtown music.”
Although there were no more gigs at Downtown Records, and only a ghost of Gigantic Vintage remained, Jerry’s Pizza was clearly a changed venue. Right away I saw red-painted walls and the new sound system electronics boards blinking away on the far wall. Perhaps Jerry’s had become “the sleeping red dragon’s lair of downtown music.” Band equipment lined brick walls in the deepest recesses of the cavern. These were eerie walls with lots of gum stuck to them and I wondered if there was an unknown area of the wall that covered some bricked up hole to a 1930s era Chinese tunnel. Where were the ghosts of such speakeasy era gamblers? Could they haunt the darkness, or even infect the stage with their distant opium den past?
The rock and roll farm had clearly begun a new era in promoting shows in an environment with much better sound and few harsh words. In other words—there was no aire of defiance, dislike, or hatred. Of course I have heard since that a fight and arrest occurred Saturday night in the Pizza-ago-go—which attributes to its rough nature when local angry punks are allowed to frequent the cavern. Friday night was just the venue doing what it does best: providing a dark underground venue for Bakersfield, a dark stigma of Bakersfield music traveling rock, where bands and kids can congregate among underground shadows.
Kyle of Stereotactic stopped me in those shadows and said “Hello.” I shook hands and he thanked me for coming… I then wandered back upstairs and went straight to Jerry himself. “Thank you for coming!” he also said. Jerry in his rock and roll farm establishment appeared grateful, happy that someone from the local music scene was covering a show. All press is good press, right? I had simply set out to describe what I saw, in narrative fashion.
“There needs to be unity in the scene—a unity article,” I said as Jerry smiled. Even though someone had torn down a Hurricane Relief Show poster I put up on 19th Street and Eye the day before. I was still ready to do what I could to help unite the Bakersfield music scene; but I’m not dumb. How horrible is it to tear down a poster? I know Tim Gardea is disliked by a certain downtown crowd and the Coley-Zill camp and his name was on it amongst a host of others. But to tear down a poster for a Hurricane Relief Show because his name is on it, when Gardea wasn’t even one of the 2 or 3 guys who spearheaded the idea? Tim Gardea is a resource to help in show development to help gain a headliner and to possibly help with some logistics. I’m disgusted by whoever tore the poster down. But I will appear next week with a new one, and then what will the rebellious revelers do when the poster is hung in a store window? Not a damn thing…
I snapped a picture of Jerry who then kindly passed me a beer. We shook hands as a gesture of solidarity and then I was off downstairs to see Gramercy Riff.
The Pizza Punk Entrepeneur, Jerry Baranowski
There was a large crowd of bodies crowding the low stage. Yes, this is the dismal aspect of Jerry’s. Unless you’re crowding the stage, you can’t see the bands. You can’t build a higher stage in Jerry’s; musicians heads would all be bloodied from smacking against the rafters. The Pizza-a-go-go is what it is: a low-ceiling underground venue in a strategic area of downtown Bakersfield where a cross-segment of fans likes to watch shows, eat pizza, and if old enough, drink enough beer to cause them to stumble down the steps… it’s just they can’t see much of the shows except for the tops of heads. But kids don’t seem to mind. At Jerry’s Pizza there is a history of rock and roll and punk where many bands have played in the underground; kids just might want to feel a part of that history. And with recent changes, Jerry’s underground is still dark, hot, lively, raucous, and filled with camaraderie of bands and fans.
I snuck onto the stairs to snap some pictures of Gramercy Riff. Their new drummer didn’t seem to have any problems with the hardcore style. But then, I’m no musician. The crowd was into it, and Gramercy Riff, a talented hardcore Bakersfield band, appeared to at least have more room to move around on the larger stage area.
I popped back upstairs during the set where Matildakay hung out with some friends. I met Trent who was manning the Stereotactic booth and spoke with Kyle again. He brought me a CD and said he was interested in my Lords of Bakersfield conspiracy fiction, Lords: Part One. “When’s it coming out?” he said.
“Within weeks,” I promised.
“You’ll like the first two songs,” he said. “They’re about JFK.”
Downstairs again, I listened to Joel growl vocals to the crowd…
BHS was supposed to lose its game against Stockdale—or so I heard. Griffith Field was alight with roars and cheers. The score was 28-26, and reminiscent of the old Taft-Bakersfield rivalries, this was going to go down as a classic match-up in local high school football lore. Although Stockdale made a valiant last effort, this richy-rich school lost to inner city Bakersfield High on inner city turf… that’s where I live.
The War Days director and the two actors, still on the high school campus, excited from the big game suddenly witnessed a mob of 20-30 kids randomly attack a boy on campus. The mob threw him to the ground, kicked him in the face, and continuously punched him. Where the police were, I later listened as one kid from the game said, “Cop cars were on the other side of the stadium, sitting in their cars and talking, not patrolling.” High school campuses are supposed to be protected after big rivalries. I remember hearing of the Bakersfield race riots in the 1970s. And this sounded like a terrible mob attack. Were these BHS students attacking who they thought was a Stockdale student? Or was this a racist attack because of color? Latinos in a mob attacking who they perceived as a white student?
Having to walk down ‘H’ Street a main thoroughfare that connects to Bakersfield High, and just a few blocks from the downtown police station, no sooner had the War Days director and two actors crossed the street they felt something further was wrong. They continued along for a short block, and then on the corner of Blanche St. and ‘H’ they heard, “Get him!” The attack was on.
One of the actors, also a cross-country runner, yelled, “Run!” and instantly disappeared down the street for help, fully knowing he couldn’t take on a mob. The War Days director ran too but was tackled on ‘H’ Street by two Latino youths. The other actor was attacked by at least fifteen juvenile Mexican-American hoodlums. He was quickly brought down in a flurry of punches and kicks to his head to which he fell into the bush of a corner antique store. He covered himself. It was all he could do. The fight was unprovoked.
Meanwhile, one of the thugs had thrown down the War Days director, and started to pummel and kick him. He jumped up, ducked a punch from another youth, slugged that kid a few times, then made his way up the street…
Just as Gramercy Riff’s fire-charged set came to an end I received a call from the War Days director. He had just called the police because one of the actors was missing and because they had just been in an unprovoked mob attack.
Yes, this was across the street from Bakersfield High School, where no policemen or school officials were in sight, and where an altercation on campus had spilled off campus onto a main thoroughfare, which I had assumed, was protected by police after a rivalry game. “If I know police, and I know a lot of cops,” a guy later said, “then those cops were all standing around and talking about where they were going to drink beer after their shift.” I don’t know if that statement is true, but I do know a mob attack occurred on the Bakersfield High campus that spilled onto ‘H’ Street in an unprovoked attack on the War Days actors..
The War Days director was breathing hard as I set off from the Pizza-a-go-go. Within minutes I arrived to discover one of the actors was missing.
This is the America we live in. One of the boys could have been lying dead in an alley. For what? For kicks and giggles because a mob thought it was be fun to attack bystanders, perhaps who they perceived as ‘white’ bystanders? I called the police: “There’s a fourteen year old boy missing…he’s been attacked…”
Of course calling 911 was no help. First, it took 5-6 calls just to get through. This is the same Bakersfield police station that takes two days to respond to a burglary where glass is strewn all over a house. This attack a potential deadly situation? Yes. The 911 lady said units were on the way. They weren’t.
The police station is close, just a few blocks down the street on the corner of Truxton and ‘H’. It would literally take one minute or less for a squad car to respond.
I drove up and down Oleander streets and alleys looking for the boy. Nothing.
“The boy is at the police station,” she suddenly said.
“What? Thank God. I need to pick him up. Is he OK?”
But then moments later we discovered it wasn’t the same boy. He was still missing.
This is the America we live in. Where a hurricane devastates a city; where twin towers are attacked. But where the hoodlums of society only care about themselves, their cowardly attacks, their poor sense of self. Just Sunday morning Al Qaeda warned of attacks on LA. Would that be East LA? What would it take for American gangs to have a sense of America, of a larger threatening world of bombs, disease, famine, and global terrorism… I address such thoughts in the novella Thick White Crust as I wrote of riding in the back of a Bakersfield transit bus with gangbangers who naively saw the World Trade Center attacks as simply upon rich white society.
What’s even more tragic is these were Latino thugs. The missing boy is half Mexican. His father is a first generation immigrant, having come to America in the trunk of a car after walking miles through the hot Baja desert, and then was locked in a cage—a way station of sorts for illegal immigrants. He came to America, didn’t know any English, didn’t have a job, but worked toward his own vision of the American dream. He worked odd jobs as a cook and then for a grocery store, and learned the language as best he could. He now manages a grocery store for a major food chain and speaks fluent English. He and his wife have three children, all successful students.
But thugs stereotype those of us who are lighter-skinned. They can’t see our Latino surnames; we don’t tattoo them on our foreheads. They would kill their own for being light-skinned, thinking lighter skin means ‘white’ here in melting pot Bakersfield, America. The War Days director and the other actor also take great pride in their Latino heritage as their great great grandfather fought alongside Poncho Villa. During the Revolution he rescued a young woman raped by the local priest. He murdered the priest and took the woman and ran to America for a better life. This is the heritage these Latino thugs attacked. Makes you wonder is Americans themselves ever have the American Dream, or if such is simply an immigrant dream…
We tore down an alleyway, then flew down Blanche Street and made our way back to ‘H’ Street again. I imagined the missing fourteen-year-old boy dragged into an alley, stabbed and dying. This is the America we live in, where gangs of thugs are modern day tribes. America is no longer a society where Native American tribes are forced onto the shoddiest of landscapes and left in turmoil, conquered. Modern age tribes aren’t relocated, or even disallowed from their tribal warring behavior. Today, American cities, police, society picks up the pieces after the bloodshed; the tribes are allowed to war. Why is that? Because today’s tribes infiltrate hospitals, schools, city government, and could be your very child with an affiliation to something called family, but isn’t. Modern American tribes war and kill and maim and hurt, and it’s not stopped. When ultra-Conservatives wrongly say to pull out of Iraq and nuke the site from orbit, perhaps they need to look at their own soil where tribes because of drugs and guns war on themselves and the innocent. This is the America we live in, where a recently relocated African-American in Utah city .2% black, wondered, “Can such cities adapt to me?”
That’s hard to say. Such tribal attitudes seem prevalent in racism across the board. Just ask the War Days director and his actors after they were pummeled.
We found the lost actor walking down ‘H’ Street. Some people had come out of their homes to help and so he walked with them. Still, no police cars. The 911 operator said, “Do you still want an officer to arrive?”
“Of course,” I said. Was this operator this ignorant? Other innocent kids could be lost, beaten, warred upon. God knows how many the thugs attacked.
After fifteen more minutes or so the police arrived. The officers asked if the boys were OK. They asked a few standard questions if the thugs could be described: Juveniles; Mexican-American; baggy clothes. One of the officers then attempted to place blame on me. “This is a rough neighborhood. If I were a parent, I wouldn’t allow my child to walk home.”
We’re talking three blocks from the Bakersfield city police station after a major rivalry football game. “I accept blame for wrongly assuming that police would patrol main streets right after a major rivalry football game,” I said.
“Our officers work overtime at these games,” he said.
“And still, I assumed there would be protection,” I said. Who is this police officer to displace blame and make excuses for the tribes of modern day society? By making his statement he accepts the idea that police to not maintain societal control because they are overworked, understaffed, and so on, and dare I say it, complacent to act in a rough neighborhood a mere few blocks from the downtown police station because warring gangbangers are simply American citizens?
Thrown in this bush and pummeled...
Scene of the crime (lawn in foreground)
Yes, this is the America we live in. There is opportunity, there is violence, and there is a lack of unity and respect, even from a Latino subculture that revolves around notions of machismo and respect. A cowardly fight of 20-30 against a few? Unprovoked? There is respect in such? The police were not even going to take a statement. I made them do such. I wanted a record of the attack, not just a record that stated I had phoned, and that the War Days director had phoned, to no avail...
I apologized to Stereotactic for missing their performance. But then, I had to go deal with the current state of America…
This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on
Sunday, September 11, 2005.
You can leave your response.
leave a response