Click on the headline to link to a Sunday Boston Globe article, dated January 30, 2010, that details a story of how "the projects" ran roughshod over yet another family.
Markin comment:
Normally this space does not comment on individual cop-killers, drug addicts, drug pushers and street gangsters straight out of the daily news but this story of the Boston Maverick Square Cinelli brothers rates comment here because it is a classic case study of the what "the projects", the ethos of the projects, and the dead hand that it holds over the lives of too many youth. Of course these guys are responsible for their individual criminal actions but the projects dead hand , as I know from very personal experience, still holds as a factor. The ease of access to drugs, the daily hustle (mainly against fellow denizens of the projects) to keep the habit in check, the easy violence done in many way, many not newsworthy ways, the "cult" of the gun are all very, very familiar. And these guys came from respectable, seemingly caring parents, parents like mine. And like many other parents in the projects who got catch up in the throes of just plain being too poor to afford better digs. Even when this pair, like the Markin family, moved away from the projects the ethos of that place, the way of dealing with life, the expectations of life, still hung over the future.
Let me put this case study in perspective, from my own personal perspective, coming out a similar Massachusetts housing project, with a mainly white ethnic population (Irish and Italian, reflecting key populations in the state and their relative lower social status as well), although we lived in bunched together four-apartment houses (fit in size for one family, maybe two) rather than the Cinnelli brothers high-rise brick structures. Different structural set-up but same ethos. As is always the case, in America and internationally, some people will "survive" any tough situations. And many will make it out enough to survive later.
But let me give a graphic example, although it is seriously only of anecdotal value. In my "the projects" sixth grade elementary school class of the twelve boys that I graduated with only three (including myself, and I only barely so) that I know of made it out without getting in trouble with the law or some other criminal episode (one kid, infamously, got caught up in the Mexican drug trade early, and died early as well). My "home boy " Billie, William James Bradley, whom I have written about in this space humorously, sadly, did not make it either. In my own three brother family only one (me) made it. What a waste of human material even if my numbers are skewed. The failure rate is high, too high. Is there any wonder what I have spent a good part of my life fighting under the banner of organizing a workers party that fights for a workers government? More later on this as I revise a few entries that I wrote a couple of years ago about the old time projects life.
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