Photo by ResistFromDay1 | CC BY 2.0
In previous submissions to CounterPunch, I refer to our little Cafe/coffee shop in Utica, New York as “a safe place for human beings.” I say this in almost no other context because the statement would be meaningless to most people, other than their assuming it means safe “for all human beings,” as in all colors, ethnicities, religions, immigrant status, LGBTQ, etc., a refusal of Trump’s xenophobic racist America. I assure you, it does mean that. But I am referring to some other rarely met condition that allows me – and this may be just me – to feel safe there, as I do in precious few other places.
Living on an inner city street as we have for over a quarter century, among multiple ethnicities, mainly poor, some working and a few middle class people, I’m clear my feeling of unsafety does not come from America’s “usual suspects.” Though not always pleased as punch with my neighbors, I am not especially afraid among them. It is among “my own kind,” that I feel unsafe, in particular when I am unsure of the unspoken underlying assumptions or of the understandings we supposedly share that others seem to take for granted. Oddly, unwilling outsider that I am, I am most likely to feel safe, that is, at home – when in the presence of art making, especially jazz performances and poetry readings held from time to time in our small art space next door to the Cafe. I feel safe when my friend Gene…