Boxed-In: April 2008 Archives

This week I have been wondering, "What happened to me?"

The cops who shot Sean Bell were acquitted late last week and there was protest going on at the Queens Courthouse, which is only a subway ride away.  Normally, I would have been happy to grab a picket sign, chant and take a stand against police brutality and growing police power in our country. 

However, finals are coming up and I couldn't afford to waste any time. 

But wait a minute, waste?  Is that what I think of protesting nowadays? 

Since I have started law school, I have yet to go to a single protest.  It could be because the American Bar Association has scared with the prospect of not passing the bar if I prove to be unfit for the profession; after all, I have already been arrested before and it is in my permanent record that I was nearly expelled from my undergraduate institution not once, but twice.  But I can't help feel that there is something else going on. 

I suddenly came to the realization that I am on my way to becoming a professional, the same kind of people I used to sneer at and say that they weren't hardcore enough to make change happen.  Shit, I'm one of them now!

It's no surprise that I feel more and more alienated from the anarchist, feminist bookstores I used to hang out in.  As I continue into this professional track, I feel as if I lose more and more ties to activist circles.  While I keep reminding myself that I want to get a law degree so that I can fight within the system, I still can't help but feel as if I have lost my street cred.

For instance, back in February, I went to a public interest career fair to try to find a summer internship.  (Don't worry-- despite the fact that I am going into law, I'm going into public interest law.  Public interest means legal aid, public defense, impact litigation for the ACLU, etc.).  At any rate, I had to wear a suit for the numerous interviews I had.  However, the interviews were spaced out over several hours and I had a three hour break between my two sets of interviews for the day.  I decided to kill time by going to one of my favorite coffee shops-- it is complete with indie music and flyers for radical poetry nights. 

But I forgot that I was wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. 

It was almost like a scene from a movie. I walked in and the place became quiet.  Obviously, I am being dramatic, but I am not exaggerating that my coffee order was screwed up and my bagel and cream cheese took forever, despite the fact there was no line ahead of me.  I also noticed a few glares.  Yes, of course, I thought, I appear to have either 1) infiltrated your "too cool for school" spot and/or 2) am obviously in the wrong place. 

I wanted to speak about how much social justice work I had done in the past. About how I threatened to sue my undergraduate university more than once and about how I canvassed door to door to defeat an abortion parental notification bill.  I wanted to explain that I was only wearing a suit to play the part, but that I was hoping to get a job with the Drug Policy Alliance, Brooklyn Legal Aid, Center for Reproductive Rights or the Sex Workers Rights Project.  I wanted to explain that I, too, wore beat up converse and torn jeans and that my hair was usually wild and curly and not as gelled and tamed. I  wanted to explain that I had a job once that only paid for 2 out of my 3 bills and I took turns rotating which bill would be paid late, which screwed up my credit and resulted in creditors calling my house (and then my job) every day.  I wanted to tell them about how I cried when George W. Bush was elected (sort of) in 2000 and again in 2004 and how I was interviewed once on NPR about student activism.  I really was the true thing-- it was just under the suit.

Unfortunately, there is no way to say this.  I just grabbed my coffee and burnt bagel to go and then headed over to the Starbucks around the corner.  Sure enough, I walked in, and no one gave me a second glance. 

We are in an environmental crisis.  There is no doubt about this, unless you happen to be one of those people who ignores scientific evidence and believes that fossils are the footprints of the devil. 

As we have heard from news stories, public service announcements and Al Gore, the time has come for us to reduce our impact on the environment.  A simple way to do this is to drive less (or not at all).  I'd also like to think of driving less as an anti-war effort too. 

I also live in NYC, as in the best public transit system in our entire country. Admittedly, DC and Boston have good metro transit as well, but NYC has got to be the best.  After all, it is one system for everything and $2 gets you all the way from Coney Island to the Bronx and from the Lower East Side out to the Far Rockaways.  You just can't beat it.

That's why it surprised me so much to be asked where someone could find parking in downtown Brooklyn.  Are you kidding me?  You are actually going to drive?  There are 7 trains that go to downtown Brooklyn and more buses than I can even keep track of.  Really, you have to drive? 

I am challenging anyone who lives in a large enough city to have mass transit to use it.  I promise you, it is not nearly as scary or difficult as it seems. After all, it was built for the masses.  So get a move on already, grab your bus/train schedule and truck your way to where you need to go by bus/train/foot/streetcar/monorail.  You'll do something good for the environment and you'll never have to worry about a parking space ever again. 

P.S. I have heard complaints before about people not using their city's mass transit system because "it sucks" or "it doesn't go anywhere" or "it's inconvenient," which might very well be true.  If you want your transit system to work, however, you need to use it.  As a whole, cities normally won't spend money on things people are not using.  So yes, it might suck for a bit, and yes, you may have to still use your car a bit to get around, but public transit is still worth it.