My father grew up in the South Bronx. He carries that with him everywhere he goes, and in everything he does. I’ve seen his childhood home and wondered, a child myself, why it was so dirty and why it smelled the way it did and why there were so many flystrips speckled with dead flies to the point of obscurity. I wouldn’t learn until years later what the actual reasons for these conditions were. It was ironic to read about policies that called for a pullback in fire services because the aforementioned childhood home of my father did actually catch fire some years back.
My father moved to Queens when he was very young. Queens, of all places (like, who goes to Queens willingly?) He didn’t have many friends growing up (or so he tells me), but he always had two friends, Ryan and David. Today, only Ryan is alive. They lost David to AIDS some decades ago. My father’s never told me this himself; I learned it through my mother.
It’s saddening to read about how city policy hindered progress in regards to controlling the spread of HIV and AIDS. Unfortunately, the inner city is like a petri dish wherein one can grow a culture of a germ unhindered. The overcrowdedness, the relative isolation, and the low quality of life don’t only enable the spread of HIV/AIDS, they encourage it. It’s important to note that there is a direct correlation betweent the number of AIDS deaths and the number of injection drug overdose deaths; drug habituation and AIDS are understandably linked. This is why systems such as needle exchanges are so important. I’m glad I got a chance to learn about those when we visited the Harm Reduction Committee.
It was interesting to read about how “planned shrinkage” redistributed people in such a way that injection drug users were sent to different places in the Bronx as well. Surely that would result in harmful spread. I suppose the question from here on in is, how do we combat urban decay such that we stimy the spread of HIV/AIDS?
