| After Germany was defeated, the Austrian government threw us out and we found transport in a box car full of refugees from somewhere else. After a night-long crawl, the train crew deposited us in the rail yard of the Munich train station which, like everything else in every direction, had been reduced to rubble. Nevertheless, this being her home city, my mother led the way on foot in the direction of where she presumed her friends to be living still. And, sure enough, we arrived at an almost intact house whose wall on the street side was propped up by a substantial timber and where a placard pronounced the building to be seriously damaged and uninhabitable.
But, there was a bell button next to the garden gate and soon after I pressed it the ladies of the house appeared on a little balcony, announced their delight that their worries had been for naught and invited us in to stay. We again lived on the second floor, while the ladies shared the first where the kitchen was. My mother scrounged up a little coal stove and ran the stove pipe out the windows whose glass had been replaced by boards anyway. Eventually, I even found a cap for the stove pipe to reduce the down-draft and keep the rain out.
It turned out that the house had been placarded by the American occupation authorities. By the time we left, four years later to come to America, the house and most of the neighborhood had been repaired and rebuilt. The streetcars were running and the Opera had a program for children during the winter holidays. Even though relatives and friends typically referred to America as the land of wild Indians, I knew that couldn't be right because the soldiers were always friendly and polite. Even the cigarette butts they threw down in the street weren't a nuisance because I could collect them, strip the tobacco and make a present of it to the ladies so they could roll their own smokes. When it was decided that my mother and I would go to America, I wasn't particularly keen, but I was also not given an option.
In any event, having experienced the aftermath of strategic and carpet bombing by the Americans, it wasn't hard to imagine the effect of five years of continuous bombardment on Iraq, even though the dissemination of images of the destruction and carnage were being routinely interdicted under the umbrella of "national security considerations"--America's, not Iraq's. Besides, I had seen both the process and the strategy designed to relocate, disperse and otherwise remove the resident population more than once since the American military supervised the rebuilding of Germany, but never with the courtesy and consideration demonstrated by the troops.
The gradual destruction of New York city had already started by the time I left for college in 1959 and while it prompted me not to go back and face the continuous disruption of ordinary living, I didn't anticipate that at the end large swaths of the South Bronx would resemble in every sense the destruction the bombers had left behind in Germany. Nor was it surprising that it wasn't being rebuilt. After all, the destruction continued for decades and all the people were gone. Which, it later turned out, was what urban removal was all about.
But, I didn't realize that until I discovered neighborhoods in North Florida where municipal services were at a third world level (just like the slums ringing Santiago, Chile, to be exact, where I was resident for a mere nine months), but the houses bore placards declaring them unfit for human habitation. They were slated to be taken down as part of an urban renewal project for a neighborhood whose residents, variously identified as "tenants" or "transients," were presumed not to mind being removed to somewhere else. I put the designations in quotes because it turned out that the real tenements, producing rental income for slumlords, weren't slated to be removed, while all the owner-occupied houses, where the same families had lived for a century (since right after the Civil War), were to be acquired and torn down. Since, for all intents and purposes, these vernacular structures were the spittin' image (except for the porches) of the colonial houses we cherish in New Castle and Portsmouth, it was obvious that the removal had an ulterior motive--one that was being aided and abetted by the inflow of federal dollars, disinvestment by the local lending institutions and a reluctance to make property insurance available, regardless of how much equity the owners of the houses had. The proximity of the neighborhood to the downtown financial district insured that the land would be more valuable once the residents were transitioned out.
It took a combination of strategies to successfully derail that train. It involved years of rewriting a housing code to insure that health hazards were clearly defined and quantified and that property owners would qualify for assistance to renew the uninhabitable to current standards. It involved pressuring the federal agency to demand an assessment of the historic significance of the neighborhood, which ended up with a listing of the Pleasant Street District on the National Register of Historic places. It involved organizing the community to lobby the city for their own interests and it involved setting up a non-profit organization that's about to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary.
Is that anything like what's being planned for Iraq? I doubt it. Clearing out a swath in the heart of Baghdad to build an "embassy" with twenty-five foot radiation-proof walls is hardly consistent with restoring the cradle of civilization to its prewar grandeur. Neither is segregating the remaining population by erecting concrete barriers with check-points to keep track of residents and deter potential insurgents. Calling them "gated communities" doesn't change the reality that people are imprisoned in neighborhoods, while their homes are under constant threat of being invaded by the providers of "security" and "protection." That's not the behavior I would have expected from an American occupation. But then, I wouldn't have expected the destruction of an inoffensive population, either, until I saw the urban renewal plans with my own eyes. It's almost as if World War II and the aftermath were an aberration and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency planning for urban guerrilla warfare is the rule. In a way, it makes sense. One way to win the war on poverty is to get rid of poor people. Which might lead one to reconsider, for example, New Hampshire's apparent financial success.
But, that's a bigger issue. At the moment I'm concerned by the following missive which was posted on the door of one of our property tax paying seniors of whom some of our public officials don't approve. In this case, transience is not the problem. The owner-occupant seems to have been resident in the same place for more than half of his eighty-nine years.
Dear ......
As ....... Health Officer I visited your property on Tuesday, December 30, 2008 at the invitation of the ... Police Department for a "welfare check," I then posted your property as a "Danger" for an inadequate sanitary sewer system. You have repeatedly refused assistance or suggestions to relocate to other housing. The Town ... has made temporary arrangements for the delivery of a portable toilet to your property.
Based on my observations during that visit, along with the observations and reports received from the ...Police Department and the ...Fire Department, I am hereby ordering you under New Hampshire law, specifically RSA 147:4 to remove within the next days all human waste, trash, mold, garbage, all the contaminated personal contents of the trailer, and all the contaminated interior floor, wall and ceiling finishes. All of this matter shall be disposed of in a proper disposal facility. All of these items constitute a public health risk to your neighbors, your friends, visitors or Town of... personnel that have been trying to assist you. No occupancy of the dwelling is permitted at this time.
Upon compliance with this order, another inspection shall be made to determine the structural, electrical, plumbing, heating, sewer and water integrity of the building. At that time it may be necessary that we have to condemn the entire dwelling unit if adequate repairs cannot be made.
I regret having to take this approach; however, your continued insistence to live in this uninhabitable dwelling under these conditions exposes many to this public health risk.
Sincerely,
Town of ...Health Officer
The reason I wrote this up is because I find that I cannot help. Though this old man's problem is not nearly the size of the problem in Iraq, where the United States invasion and occupation and five years of bombardment have rendered most sewer, water and electric systems inoperable and caused actual death, not just risks to health, to hundreds of thousands, and which I have also been unable to do anything about, the problem here is that I can't help because I can't be objective and dispassionate. It hits too close to home. What if I had been denied shelter in a house that was condemned? I'd not even have the illusions about America that still sustain some hope.
How is it that such smug, self-serving, sanctimonious parasites get to be in charge?
NB: Since the communication was posted on the exterior door of the dwelling, it is already a public notice. However, I have omitted the names of the individuals and New Hampshire town because the citizen's right to privacy has already, in my estimation, been violated more than enough. |
