h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

French roits in November 2005

I cannot write here what I should like, because it's to much effort to translate.

I have worked with kids on the streets about 13 years, and I had my own childhood in a rich village that had high status and a father who was a lawyer (1940 - 1990) and local politician,etc.

In 1980 I went straight to a addicts rehabilitation center in Harlem,
New York. I was there for a few weeks. It was asif I was on the moon.
A total different world.

But there was óne thing that shocked me the most; a HUGE wall of glass around this ghetto. You did not see it, but the more you could féél it. No living space for poor skilled coloured people. No way.

I came to know kids from the age of 18, who néver in their whole childhood had seen more then two or three blocks in Harlem.

Anyhow, my point is in relation to the riots in French;
Let the rich white middleclass turn down the walls and reach out.
Let the unskilled poor coloured people stop hiding themselves behind "discrimination" and use their talents.

The rich hiding behind body guards and police.
The poor hiding behind victim-cults.


I want to finish with one experience, from the bottom of my heart.

In those three weeks I had never in my life experienced so much
human "warmth" then there, in the A.R.C.in Harlem.
It was for me like a warm bath.I had never experienced that...



The poténtial among the poor is there, but meeting must come from both sides.
From the whites we might expect three dubble effort because they are the "haves".
But the other side cannot escape their prison on the wings of the victim-cult, although there would be much reason for it. But it doesn't help. It will never help them to create a better life.

I was there in 1980 at the ARC-Harlem , because it was run by former black addicts,who worked with a lot of engagement and realizing the need for real order.(250 addicts in óne building).
It was accepted, because there was no arrogance, no prejudice. If someone disagreeded he could call the chief staff day ánd night, seven days a week.

The "whites" will need the "blacks" to brake these prejudices down,
because it's almost impossible to do that from their/our/my heavely protected homeground.


http://c250.columbia.edu/c250_events/community_festival/arcbio.pdf



P.S. Do we know why the USA is that agressive to Holland in case of extacy? Because it's the ónly drug that is sold by their own white middle class kids and they don't like to send them to prison. Therefore they only want to stop the basic supplier = Netherlands.(and of course it should not be produced, etc.)
This political ánd police-strategy, has a racist element.

It makes me think of a cartoon in the New Yorke Times.

A woman looks from her appartement in Brooklyn to the ghetto Harlem and says to her husband; "what a próblem".

His answer; "it's not a próblem, it's a solútion".