goin' postal...

Mike Davis's "Fortress Los Angeles" was quite difficult to follow at first. I'm not sure if it is just me but he seemed to use a lot of intense vocabulary and in some parts it got really confusing. After deciphering, there were a lot of sentences that I highlighted. I think it's horrible that the government and police officers in Los Angeles would treat the poor like that. They created a place along Fifth Street, called Skid Row, that was a outdoor poorhouse. It said "Skid Row transformed into the most dangerous ten blocks in the world." Also, he talked about how the government made the new barrel-shaped bus bench that was very uncomfortable and offered not near enough space for someone to sleep on. He also talked about how the city opened up Skid Row Park which had outdoor sprinklers that would go off randomly in the night in order to keep bums from sleeping in the park. How ridiculous is that? They spend more time and money trying to keep poor people out of the land than they do in trying to help them. It just goes to show how messed up our society really is. I liked the last line of his selection, "For public-housing tenants and inhabitants of narcotic-enforcement zones, the loss of freedom is the price of 'security'."

Thomas Hine's "Goths In Tomorrowland" was good. It talked about how there are all sorts of groups of teenagers and that most adults are threatened by them. In the beginning, there was a line that said, "The presence of sullen clusters of costumed teens showed, some argued, that Disney had given up its commitment to family values. It was no longer possible to feel safe in Disneyland." This is a little ridiculous. Just because there were kids dressed in black clothes with make up on their face, the park is unsafe? I knew lots of kids in highschool that dressed like that, and were the most softspoken, well-mannered individuals. I also liked a line on page 70, "The typical suburban high school is occupied by groups of teens who express themselves through music, dress, tattoos and piercing, obessive hobbies, consumption patterns, extracurricular activities, drub habits, and sex practices." Well put. haha...Towards the end of the selection, he refers to "tribes" of teenagers and says, "Tribes are about a yearning to belong to a group---or perhaps to escape into a disguise.