Scary HIV Thing On My Door
Yesterday, I returned to my home, in zip-code 48227, to find a purplish thing hanging on my front-doorknob:
"48227 has the highest percentage of HIV in DETROIT."
At the bottom of the back of this awful little card, it says:
"Resources provided through the Detroit Department of Health & Wellness Promotion and the Southeastern Michigan HIV/AIDS Council."
It provides the phone number of a Help Line, and doesn't say much else.
My son & I both had the same reaction: Did they print these up for every zip-code in Detroit? If not, how did they so positively determine this ghastly fact?
So, I am curious: Anybody else get this damned thing?
Welcome To The Desert Of The Real!
Not suprising, if you have been out there with a lot of Detroiters. Honestly, do you really think that many people choose to live in such deplorable conditions as the sheer number of people that do in Southeast Michigan? Do you honestly think that many people don't care about political issues, don't care about change, and don't care about maintenance on themselves and their home/community?
What groups of people do not care about such things, and who would be somewhat justified in not caring about such things?
Detroit and certain suburbs have become the place we put people and problems who we want to dispose of, or forget about. Those on the margins of our society end up in De troite; our society's throw away children, the poor, those who live lifestyles who majority views as unpleasant, people who make bad decision, those who have lost their way, but above all... the sick and terminally ill. Often, people around here fall into several of the mentioned categories.
Walk through enough Detroiter's shoes, and the sheer scale of the horrors that these people face becomes all too real and apparent.
And those problems and areas are growing like a cancer.
PS: As upsurd as you think my stance and choice of moving my family to ground zero, if you had to do it like I did, you would be as devoted as trying to help these people as much as some former suburbanites turned urbanites.