3 10 tent city
There’s this place in Portland called Dignity Village. It’s an encampment for homeless people out by the airport, and they’ve created a little society out there where they can live together , have their own political structure, and generally pool their meager resources to help one another. It’s more of a place for the “permanent” homeless, rather than the temporary I’m guessing. But what about the new tent cities popping up all over the country? Sacramento has a new one, Miami has a new one. Mostly people who lost their jobs and houses in the past few months. Is this the future of the suburbs for america? Tent cities and vacant houses in the middle of nowhere? Slumburbs? America can be a bitch sometimes, you know?
It’s a hard lesson to learn, especially if you’ve bought into it your entire life: This country isn’t supposed to give a fuck about you. That’s not it’s job. It’s job is to get your money. And I don’t mean the government, I mean the people who live here, the strangers around you, they don’t give a fuck about you. It’s your job to find allies, people you can trust and enjoy, and to convert some of those strangers into allies who won’t fuck you.
It’s a difficult job acquiring people, especially when people you trust screw you over. I learned to not trust a good portion of my family when I was young(which I recently forgot, like an idiot). Just because they’re related to you doesn’t mean they give a shit about you or are there for you. You have to go with your gut a lot of times, and try to find out who cares, and build your own system of people. You gotta build your tent city of outcast friends and homeless step siblings and stray-dog people, and the remnants of families poisoned and fractured by money and lies. Cause were all just bums in tent city.
