ER

I have been in the ER this last two weeks at County UCLA

I keep hearing the lines
from suheir hammad's poem on the louisiana floods in my head:

"who says this is not the america they know?
what america do they know?"

and Barbara Bush's

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you
know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this is working very well for them."

The poorest of the poor in LA come in to our hospital.
Only those without insurance. The working poor, the
undocumented, the homeless. They are almost without
exception black or latino. And it is not working out exceptionally well for them.

Just yesterday two folks with gun shot wounds to the
chest came in. A 19 year old girl. she died. A
black man, 34 years old. he died. before we
pronounced him dead i cut into his chest to put a tube
in and massive amounts of blood came pouring out. the
bullet had filled his lungs with blood. and his eyes
were so lifeless. I keep thinking that the bullets
just finished them off. there is a destitute
hopelessness that brought him to the point that
bullets were just the final blow.

my friend was telling me that violence is a chronic illness. if you get shot at 18 or 19 and survive there is a ridiculously high chance you will be dead by 35. and she takes the time to tell them that bluntly.

and it is this America I am getting to know well.


sri

it was also blog quake day so help out
blog quake day

los angeles hip hop

i am on the ER shift right now and i had a day off yesterday and dont have to go in till 4 today. My aim was to read medicine some but I basically went swimming in the morning and looked up trips to cuba and yellowstone or yosemite for my break coming up since Cuba doesn't look like its happening. Then at night I headed out to this awesome underground hip hop music club. it was 5 bucks to get in and this is the first time outside the hospital since i have been back in Los Angeles that I have felt that LA is an amazing city.

The place was packed with a mix of so many black white asian folks and it had none of the I'm a thug and gonna front like i'm hard. no dress code. the women were super fly not over dressed very little make-up- very around the way women that would just dance with you if you rolled up to them with no pretentions. reminded me of the I-house at berkeley. where everybody just wants to dance. period. and everybody could move. there would get to be a spontaneous circle and then a guy would roll in and start breakdancing. amazing. little japanese guys, big old black guys, big old japanese guys, mexicans, white dudes. 21 year olds 35 year olds. i never seen breakdancing like that. it looked like what every corporation is trying to artificially pull off in there ads. (speaking of which MIA, the new sri lankan artist who is off the hook just did a honda add and i couldnt help feel a little dissapointed but...) or what real comradarie between races is supposed to look like. it was beautiful. there was supposed to be no breakdancing so this bouncer would break it up every once in a while and then the circle would inevitably form again and the breakdancing would resume. it was like it was the job of the bouncer to break it up and the duty of the breakdancers to resist.

at 2 am when we left- when i left actually since everybody i came with had to work early and had already left a bunch of guys were kicking it on the corner rhyming. out of nowhere this guy had a beat up boombox with writing all over it and real run down and he looped the same song back and everybody on the corner just rapped and the rest of us listened and bobbed our head and danced a little. i left at 3 in the morning. every thursday night. i'm gonna try to go as much as my schedule allows---

gotta head to the 4pm to midnight shift.

sri