{"id":452,"date":"2024-02-09T01:23:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-09T01:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/?p=452"},"modified":"2024-01-10T13:21:53","modified_gmt":"2024-01-10T13:21:53","slug":"streetwork-1973","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/?p=452","title":{"rendered":"Streetwork [1973]"},"content":{"rendered":"

What are you doing?!<\/em><\/p>\n

Being a Streetworker at Voyage House included going for long walks with throwaway kids trying to get them to see a future for themselves.\u00a0 Geri was very bright and already living in one of our group homes attending a private high school on a scholarship.\u00a0 On this particular Saturday she told me she was high on some hallucinogenic drug and wanted to go for a walk.\u00a0 We left Rittenhouse Square and walked past the Art Museum into Fairmount Park.<\/p>\n

At the Glendenning Rock Garden we stopped and sat next to a small brook running down to the Schuykill River.\u00a0\u00a0 It was all very quiet and peaceful \u2013 not another soul around.\u00a0\u00a0 Geri was being pretty insightful about her life, the world, and her future.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ll always remember her telling me how humans should expect higher cancer rates, after all we give cows these chemicals to grow faster.\u00a0 She was just beginning to tell me about how she hoped to date this Black guy, and what all that might mean (she was a 15 year-old white girl who ran away from the suburbs to escape the racism she saw there), when this tiny man walked up with two packages wrapped in brown paper, one dangling in front and one in back, from a stick he had over his shoulder.<\/p>\n

\"Any<\/a>

Not another soul around<\/p><\/div>\n

He came right up to us, didn\u2019t say a word, didn\u2019t look at us (as if we weren\u2019t there), and began to unwrap the packages.\u00a0 From one he took out a scrub brush and began scrubbing the rocks over which ran a small waterfall.\u00a0 I had to ask, \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cF******g Nig***s pissing in it all the time,\u201d he said.\u00a0 No sooner had he said the \u201cN word\u201d when literally at least a hundred black kids came swarming right towards us.\u00a0 He gathered his belongings and went off a short distance standing behind a big tree so as not to be seen.\u00a0 We were glued to our seats in disbelief at how our quiet solitude had so quickly changed.\u00a0 Each little black kid took a turn getting a drink of water from the brook cupping their hands under the tiny waterfall.<\/p>\n

Finally an older kid came up and I asked him what was up.\u00a0 He said he ran an outdoor adventure club for some inner-city kids and this was their spot to get a drink – the water in the brook was pure from deep down.\u00a0 Nobody I saw took a piss.\u00a0 Finally they all ran-off; the little man re-appeared, and recommenced to scrubbing.\u00a0\u00a0 Sure enough he then used his stick to set up a spigot for the water to run off, and filled two plastic bottles with his drinking water and headed home.\u00a0 Geri continued to be one of our success stories and stayed with us until off she went to college.<\/p>\n

Not every kid I worked with turned out a success story.\u00a0 The word on the street was that Hunter had taken the rap for his dad having seriously assaulted his mother because his dad convinced him that as a juvenile he\u2019d only get a short sentence.\u00a0 Hunter was an angry young man no matter how many walks we went on.\u00a0 Once I took him to the Puerto Rican neighborhood near where I lived and immediately upon seeing a small group of Puerto Rican kids playing in the street he kicked off his shoes and charged into them fists flailing.\u00a0 (Apparently\u00a0sans <\/em>shoes was the signal for a fair fight.)\u00a0 I had to race after him and drag him out before the kids\u2019 parents beat the s*** out of both of us white guys.<\/p>\n

Hunter never changed.\u00a0 After I left my street work job I read in the paper where he was killed by a police sniper because he was up on a roof shooting at people below.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow:\u00a0 Streetwork???<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What are you doing?! Being a Streetworker at Voyage House included going for long walks with throwaway kids trying to get them to see a future for themselves.\u00a0 Geri was very bright and already living in one of our group … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3154,"href":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions\/3154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}