Dear editor,
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Deanna and her editors determine the tone. A transcript of my interview, for instance, would include a sequence where I described five kids beating up an adult. Deanna asks, “Were they black, black kids?” I answer, “Yes.” Deanna, perhaps for good news reasons, thought it important to include that fact. When I stated that the pimps, prostitutes, and drug dealers had moved onto our corner from their former spots under the Morse el one block over, I suggested that the police had pushed them off the Morse corner in response to years of complaints. They just moved up a block. Deanna chose not to print my theory as to why crime increased on our corner. I thought it was an important part of the story.
Whenever one talks to the Reader one should expect the story to underline the Reader’s concerns: controversy, gossip, depressing failures, remarkable successes, artistic and political oddities. All that being said, I don’t regret talking to the Reader–one will get a fairer shake from it than from the dailies–or the story. Kids beat up people in the neighborhood where I, members of my family, and many of my friends live. This happens especially on the corner where I go daily to make art and to invite audiences to see that art. There is a prostitute who spends the day shuttling between the corner to the doorway of the apartments above us. It is also the door to our office and the door to the building where a member of my family lives.
You’re obviously angry, perhaps scared, Tom-from-the-Cocoabean, and for good reason. But I don’t beat people up. I don’t determine where people shop.
