Remyth Project: The Ghosts Close to Home

[yeloson]

I spent almost a year living in the Central District. I had just came back from Vancouver, deciding that spending 100 hours a week doing computer animation was not the way to live life. I was staying with a friend, and while he had been there longer, we were both Southend natives, and two hoods had a long history of beef. So, we're walking around, trying to learn what places were cool/not cool, etc.

Just a couple of blocks over from the house, we're walking by a torn out building being renovated.

"Hey. If you ever hear or see any little kids in there? Don't go in there."
"What's up?"
"It used to be a church a few years back. It got firebombed and a few kids died. Sometimes you hear or see stuff at night."

It was one of those classic cases of a bit murder that got a half paragraph in the back of the 3rd section of the newspaper. You know, in super liberal, tolerant "Safest City in the US" Seattle.

Don't be brown in the town.

I chose to avoid that block ever since. I spent two years on the run from gangs, but I wasn't ready to deal with "ghosts", real or not...

I wonder what building is there now. I wonder where ghosts of children go, when genocide is done and gentrification has begun.

Comments

[skywardprodigal.livejournal.com]

I love this.

Would you repost to the cabal?

[bossymarmalade.livejournal.com]

I am so glad you decided to write about ghosts, and to write this way; you and I both know how the ghosts of PoC are appropriated left and right to serve as nameless mindless evil and threats to good white people and plot points for new episodes of Supernatural. Thank you for identifying it as genocide, and for uncovering the polite, corrosive racism of the liberal Pacific Northwest.

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

I think Blue Scholars said it best:

"Chief Sealth- first they conquered you
Then named the city after you
as if to say we honor you"

[kitsuchan.livejournal.com]

Um, which block was this? Inquiring minds in the Central District want to know...

I liked this one, and I think it's a good question. Maybe they just wait.

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

It was southeast of 23rd & Jackson, the opposite direction of where you guys live.

I keep having visions in my head that the building is now something horribly gentrified and ironic, like a boutique for overpriced kids' clothes...

[buria-q.livejournal.com]

damn.

[the-willow.insanejournal.com (from livejournal.com)]

Have you read The Haunting of Hip Hop (http://www.amazon.com/Haunting-Hip-Hop-Novel/dp/0767912128)? I post here because it's a novel that should be shared with others. It deals with this very issue.

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

I'll have to check it out!

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the link! That book is on my wishlist for next month's order.