WCS 73: My two young + homeless Latinas
w/: + Tacoma magic mushrooms + Paypal Mafia + Naked vape pen explosion suit
In the last month of my fall job as an after-school activities coordinator, two fifth-grade Latinas were added to my group. I was told that they were experiencing homelessness. Of course we bonded instantly; I’d just been unexpectedly bounced from my Echo Park crib just days before taking the northeast LA gig.
At this unforgettable fall gig I had a dozen playground favorites, but these two were right up near the top.
Ten-year-old Maribel—not her real name—was wounded and tentative, but essentially an exuberant child. One afternoon she was skipping between the cafeteria-style tables singing at the top of her little lungs, “They’re eating the dogs! They’re eating the cats!” I stopped Maribel, told her it wasn’t a good thing to be singing: She and her mother and brother were clearly new to and just barely hanging on in this country.
That shit did not work.
“They’re eating the dogs! They’re eating the cats!”
Santa Cruz sunset
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Lucia carried herself with more confidence than Maribel. Though she was new to campus, a band of girls would trail her all around the playground. On many of the boys’ lips was Lucia’s name.
It was clear enough that she, too, stood on shaky ground.
Right before Lucia’s first volleyball game, she confided that nervousness was getting the better of her. From past conversations I knew she was aware of Amy Winehouse, so I relayed to her the story Tony Bennett told me—didn’t bother checking to see if Lucia knew Tony—about when Amy Winehouse first sang with him.
Amy was freaking out over performing with a legend. This had been in the summer of 2010, and Amy was actually still among the living as the late Tony Bennett shared this anecdote.
Lucia hadn’t even been born.
“Don’t deny the nervousness,” I told Lucia. “That singer Tony Bennett told Amy that it’s good to be nervous—it means you care. What you do is, you put that nervous energy into the performance.
“Amy Winehouse did that, and she and Tony Bennett made a great duet together.”
The girls team lost its first match, but Lucia told me that she tried the Tony Bennett technique. She’ll eventually forget me, but my sense is that she’ll return to that technique again. Some of us would would pay a great price to feel centered.
Maribel and I were setting up to play charades in the library when she rolled up her pant leg to show me the scars she had picked up in her travels up from Venezuela. My prevailing sense was that Maribel wanted me to know more about her life.
Before the current POTUS was even regarded as a serious Presidential candidate, I was paying attention to immigration in America. About 10 years ago I was hanging out at the Mexican Consulate in Portland, trying to learn what illegal immigrants did for health care.
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In 2015, immigrants called President Obama “the Deporter in Chief.” Even then I was fascinated and horrified by the impact that the mere threat of deportation had on the lives of people who do the nation’s hidden work disproportionately. In 2025, the White House is presently kicking about the same number of people as Obama, but the means are more cruel. The collateral terror is way more calculated.
On Monday, 190 Venezuelans were sent back home after the US reversed its temporary policy. At first I wondered if Maribel was on a flight. Then I accepted that half of the homeless girls with whom I had with such brief intensity is probably just in class and suffering a depth of insecurity that we won’t ever know, if we remain lucky.
The Rick James banger you don’t know
When Rick “Super Freak” James made his 1997 comeback from prison and hardcore coke addiction, he was effectively cancelled. Very few people heard the damaged genius’s mature Urban Rapsody album and “West Coast Thing,” one of James’s most infectious compositions.
Now for 10 news takes and 10 news bits, served up so to represent one journalistic week in The Sojourn District.
10 Re-birthing the same damaged nation
A professor back East received the above after publishing a political essay last month.
America is where I’m from. A Californian is what I am.
If you read last week’s WCS newsletter, you know that I’m in the process of consuming and analyzing 1915’s The Birth of a Nation, DW Griffith’s seminal silent film and racist propaganda piece. The reason behind giving myself this excruciating assignment is to highlight the lying and bloodthirsty racism that powers our political crisis.
If you can understand White supremacy as a lever to kleptocracy, you’ll get why I’m so into Calexit.
West Coast Sojourn
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