sway the vote

“It’s an eyesore, a blight on our city, which not many of our citizens enjoy,” said an older council member who’d received a handful of complaints from his affluent neighbors. “Therefore, I propose we keep allocating funds to get rid of it.” A few of his younger colleagues knew that it drew people to the city and gave it an authentic and inimitable character. They disagreed with him, but there were too few of them to sway the vote.

And, so, New York City joined a thousand other municipalities across the United States and fitted out squads of workers with paint rollers and long-handled scrapers. They loosed the workers on up-and-coming parts of town, giving them license to paint over, deface, scrape off, and otherwise remove the vast collections of street art that had theretofore covered otherwise blank and underutilized street poles. The workers attacked ten thousand and one unique examples of cunning artistic expression deemed mere trash by a group of disconnected bureaucrats who cared not for the creative potency of Big Apple denizens.

The workers scraped and sprayed and rollered, destroying countless pieces of the city’s unique cultural heritage. Adding insult to injury, the city council had not even had the decency, poise, or foresight to at least take pictures of said priceless works of art before having them trashed. In the wake of the art desecration squads, the city lay bare, raped of its color, efficiently monetized, franchised, and sterilized for the benefit of profits-hungry corporations. New York City’s street-side art museums are dying at the hands of her elected officials, and the world is a less beautiful place for it.

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

dispatch 4 - NYC

In the foyer of the Grigovian Traveller’s Mission, some new arrivals were watching highlights of debate between D. Trump and H. Clinton. Earlier that morning, Erya had read on the news website Russia Today that there were at least four other legitimate presidential contenders but that the two most influential parties had locked all others out of nationally syndicated debates in order to maintain their hold on power. She didn’t trust Russia Today, but counted on it to at least show a different point of view on world affairs. Other sites she frequently perused were Democracy Now!, Al Jazeera, National Public Radio, and the Guardian. Slowly, it was dawning on her how the American people could appear to be so daft, so disconnected from the corruption and abuse occurring at the highest levels of their government - the people they trusted to spoon-feed them the news weren't talking about such things. Part of the preparation for her post of de-facto Grigovian ambassador to the United Nations, Ms. Rovend had studied the politics, history, and economy of the United States. Not that such studies were mandatory for an ambassador, but she had figured that someone from a relatively weak country such as Grigovia should know as much as possible about the relatively strong country that seemed to be bullying states and peoples around the world. No one had elected or appointed her to the post of ambassador - she had been approached by her country’s Foreign Office after having given a speech denouncing imperialism and the unequal distribution of wealth (especially in industrialized nations).

Pulling her coat tightly around herself, she wandered out of the Mission, turned left on Ninth Avenue, and walked slowly south. Some men whistled at her from a construction site, but she ignored them. She had learned long ago to not give men power of her by reacting to their sexist aggressions. Having trained in three forms of martial arts, her body was a lethal weapon. Not knowing exactly what she was looking for, she wandered aimlessly from one side of southern Manhattan island to the other, just another brown-haired girl in a denim jacket out for an afternoon stroll.

© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥

dispatch 3 - NYC

She went to a public house, drank there a beer. Denied entry into a trendy looking club, she decided instead to wander the streets in search of friendly faces. Few were they and far between for many wore a sullen mien as they did drag themselves back home from jobs in banks - savings and loan. That second night, she discovered Washington Square Park, where she felt at least a bit at home. In that place as is most of Grigovia, people from all walks of life were taking the evening air, stopping to look at one another or to talk, walking dogs, playing chess, dancing, singing, being free. Erya Rovend check-mated a gentleman in ten turns then joined a group of university students heading toward Mamoun’s, a falafel shop. She discussed with them how strange it was that few Americans seemed to be aware that their country was at war (i.e. bombing targets with impunity) in five separate nations around the globe. “No one talks about such things, at least not on T.V.,” a young political scientist told her.

Erya bid the group farewell and started walking south, toward a place her folding map listed as Battery Park. On the way she paused at Wall Street, but kept walking when two heavily armed police officers started staring at her and whispering to each other. Such was her culture shock that she just then started to notice the profusion of closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras screwed into the sides of most buildings, unblinking eyes staring out on nearly empty streets. When she arrived, Battery Park was deserted but for a dozen or so homeless persons bedding down for the night. Leaning forward onto a length of cast-iron railing, Erya stared at the empty pedestal where the statue ‘Liberty Enlightening the World’ had stood until the Glorious Republic of Grigovia had bought it - to save it from the scrap-heap. Lost in thought, she was startled when a radio chirped loudly, just behind her. She turned to find a pair of heavily-armed police officers standing on a patch of darkness, a pile of old blankets at their feet. One of the officers, a male, kicked at the pile until the person sleeping therein woke up.
“No sleeping in the park, you. Get moving,” the officer said.
Clad in too few clothes for the fall weather, the painfully skinny man gathered up his rotting blankets, paused to pull up his belt-less pants, and started shuffling toward the brightly lit sidewalk at the edge of the park.
The two officers turned toward Erya. Shocked by the cruel way the officers had treated the homeless man, they caught staring at them, slack-jawed and wide-eyed.
“You too - be on your way,” the female officer told her.
‘No wonder the U.S. sold us its statue of liberty,’ she thought to herself as she exited the park. ‘There are not enough freedoms left here, it seems, to in good conscious justify keep it up.’

© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥

happy evacuation day

  On this 25th of November, let us celebrate the last British forces to leave new york city at the end of the American war for independence, and refrain from needlessly spending money at corporate shopping locations. jp

  場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp