#whatever. classic post of buzz. this doesnt matter and i dont know what the point in talking about it is but i dont have anything else

[girlwiththelightson-god]

so the jail support mutual aid group that i’m a part of has been being antagonized by this cab driver who parks across from where we work. hes not a liscenced cabbie really - my understanding of his “origin story” is that he was a yellow cab guy who has hung out outside the jail for decades occaisionally picking up fares when people are released with money or have family members with cash at the destination. hes been there for so long in many ways its largely social - he has his other cabbie buddy, he rubs elbows with the COs - but he feels very much like its his space. at some point the jail told the yellow cab companies to buzz off, so he just stopped working with a cab company and still sits outside the jail waiting for rides.

since the beginning things were tense - hes a gregarious old school type of dude who can be pretty moody and unhinged. but i always felt deferential to him in a way - he can be a huge help, he can be a funny guy, and it doesnt feel right to gentrify out a cabbie just because we give out free rides. that being said most of the rides we give he wouldnt take anyway - people who cant afford a ride home, who dont have a conventional home to go back to, people who need to collect their seized property from the county -- and on top of that he really just chills in his car most of the time. but for a long time we were like, OK, when we’re at capacity we send some rides his way. No problemo.

Problemo. the things he says start to alienate people. he definitely does not know the agreedupon vernancular when discussing LGBTQ issues. this begins to make people feel unsafe, and he also becomes more moody as the weather gets colder. 

a chicago summer renders the city into a carceral boomtown - kids minding their own business get picked up on bullshit drug charges that get thrown out the next day, legal gun owners get caught in the midst of constantly changing regulations that mean that the way you store your legal firearm today can get you thrown in the pen tomorrow (of course, only if you’re black), everyones out enjoying the weather so if you have a warrant and some cop with a chip on their shoulder sees you, you’re screwed. that being said - in winter, things slow way down. i have no doubt that the economic impact of this seasonal change influences the broader drama of this situation from henceforth.

Back to the problem - soon it feels like him screaming at us that we’re taking his fares, or don’t know what we’re doing, or are giving other cab drivers too many fares, is an every night occurence. People start feeling unsafe - you hear this guy say a couple slurs... and hes loud and angry......but to me i was like. Well you’re white. This is an elderly black man who is pretty much living hand to mouth. I wanted to be in a position where we could provide hims ome material financial support via pay for rides (that, due to our understaffing, we still needed help with) and everything seemed chill. We were sort of telling offended people to check their own privilege and assumptions. Because I don’t have a lot of energy and time for people who criminalize and pathologize black masculinity. 

Regardless our policies and attempts to play ball don’t matter - whatever we do still isnt good enough. Its clear that he views us giving any sort of rides to people as a threat to his livelihood despite, as i’ve said, us only really giving rides that he wouldn’t take anyway, and being as deferential as we can to give rides that seem like a good fit for him - to him -- which also is eating at our financials. And the contingent of people feeling hurt, threatened, burnt out by dealing with him grows.it becomes clear that ignoring this group of people is coming off as callous and silencing voices. there are people whos departure from the organization is clearly linked to this guy bothering us -- and his hassling is getting worse. He starts talking about burning down our tent, slashing our tires, etc.

Maybe coming from a more working class or hick town, being a str8 white boy, i never felt the fear in my dealings with him, just a lot of frustration. But i became one of the few people who can really get in the car with him and talk out how he feels, doing my best to act as a go between from the group to him. I take a lot of verbal abuse and shit talk throughout this but always call him on this. To me the key failure of the young american left is an unability to engage materially with real working class people who do not speak in such flowery language and have not been as understanding of the large-scale social developments that have been undertaken since the obama presidency especially around “microaggressions” and the defied canonization of identity politics from an aspect of Marxism to the underlying dogma of most centrist-to-center left projects. Le sigh! So I tried to fit in where I was effective and act as a filter - sifting out this guys bullshit and calming him down so we can have a good normal talk. Honestly? This begins to wear on me. Im a conforntantion averse person, ask anyone...

We have a referendum on everything and its clear that no one except me and my gf are even open to the idea of still working with this guy. So we (me, some other volunteers) decide to have a sit down chat with him this week. 

Well on Sunday i guess he was walking over to us hollering and talking major shit - normally we can handle this, but this time we actually had people who had been released from jail waiting for a ride as he was coming to talk shit. The people waiting couldn’t bear to hear the way he was yelling at his and start to intervene. He flips out and goes to his car, a beat up classic coupe, and produces some sort of steel pole weapon. He starts pounding on the light post by our tent with it and rushes our tent threatening to kick it down. The situation is deescalated, but holy shit.

So now we’re having a sit down chat with him tonight to figure how what  moving forward looks like. I dont think we’re ever going to work with him again, but he’s also cearly not going anywhere - he’s been at that area for a long time and again, considers himself the don of it - so I simply don’t know what will happen. I’m sick to my stomach thinking about this, how fucked up and weird and sad it all is to have to deal with, when this mutual aid project is otherwise such a beautiful and harmonious thing.