Sunday, November 12, 2006

Must do more.

This week has been pretty good as far as I'm concerned.

I mentioned last month how I'd caught up with a couple of people I met at a train station way back earlier in the year and I've spent a couple of days with them this week. I was also introduced to a few of their mates on Friday night and it was all just brilliant.

I got inspired.

Rather than plod around as I have been doing for the last 8 months or so, I've decided as of Friday night, that I'm going to go after an office job where I can be a real help and influence to people who have none. I have to get a certificate, then I'm going to bully my way into the state run job network, hopefully with the Salvation Army, and get jobs for these people, jobs they can actually do instead of just setting them up to fail.

By "jobs they can actually do" I mean jobs of which they're not just physically capable of doing, I mean jobs around which they can wrap their heads and their hearts and jobs in which they can stay.

I have contacts and I intend to make the best of those contacts.

Years ago, I wrote an article declaiming the value of talk and decrying the top-down mentality of fuckwits in ivory towers thinking they can run businesses and people from their gilded little plastic box offices. In January of this year, I attended a seminar on communication wherein I outlined my plan to build Infoburger, a resource and outlet for schoolies. I still haven't done that - my machine has been cactus as far as apps go for about 3 months now - but there's a renewed sense of urgency now.

All this isn't just because I've spent a couple of days this week adding up to about 9 hours in the company of teenagers, but last night I was reading a book about the entrenched corruption in the New South Wales police service between 1997 and 2003 and one of the catalysts for a state government cabinet shake-up and the removal of the Commissioner of Police - was a 17 year old junkie heroin dealer from Cabramatta, the heroin capital of Australia.

It further cemented my already pretty rock solid belief in the capacity of young people to make a massive difference to everyone if they only have the support and guidance of decent people. I just don't have the words to convey how fundamentally essential young people are to the health and well being of society and reiterate here for the umpteenth time that old fucks ignore young people at their own peril and to the ultimate detriment of everyone.

I sat around at the train station with half a dozen teenagers on Friday night til about 10pm and we all swapped stories of police behaviour towards them. I knew full well that if a roving cop car happened to pass our group just sitting there talking, they'd have questioned all of us and I'd have been fucked.

They all have convictions for property crimes and crimes of violence so they're all well known to the cops, but I tell you straight from the heart that I felt so in my element, so relaxed and comfortable just sitting there talking and laughing with these kids, and if old fucks just shut up and listened to them, they couldn't help but feel the same way as I did about those kids on Friday night.

Then reading that book on police corruption yesterday put the icing on the cake. I'm not just going to convince anonymous web dwellers of the inordinate value of these kids, I'm going to convince employers of their value and I'm going to have those kids prove to themselves their own intrinsic worth and hopefully, in the process, send as big a "FUCK YOU" to the hoards of deadhearts who put their heads down and scowl when they see groups of young people congregating at train stations late at night.

They each have one talent. Everyone has one special talent, mine's communication with anyone who is honest with themselves and with others. I can't handle manipulative sons of bitches who point score with bullshit and innuendo. (Just getting off topic there for a moment...) But these kids all have one talent as well. I have to find out from them what that talent is so they can put it to better use than just talking about it in places where they're likely to upset the deadhearts and the law.

My blood is up something fierce just now and I have to run off to catch up with my cop mate who needs to know what I'm doing, what I intend and how I intend to go about it. That, and we're cooking up a good bust as well - but that's another story for another day.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey you...

Is this (going to be) your new Swamp article? :D