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Notes -
I can tell the story from the mother's point of view as well.
She's a worker, been one her whole life, but opportunity is slim when you grow up poor in the rust belt. She got pregnant in high school like half her cohort, it being the fastest way to a Section 8, but she didn't need it because her parent's house was owned outright. When they died young, she could afford to raise her now two kids with her high school sweetheart on their dual meager incomes. Just barely. The city property taxes were last assessed in the mid-80s, when Saginaw was still rich and prosperous. Now the homes in that neighborhood go for $20k, and there's 8k of property taxes a year. And for that princely sum, they don't get a lot in teh way of city services, Saginaw being a perennial top-5 Most Violent Midsized Cities in the country, until the population drain got so bad we don't even qualify as mid-sized anymore. A lot of those people went out to the townships.
So money troubles, a young marriage and a life of poverty amid violence resulted in divorce, to the surprise of no one. Virtually everyone she knows has been divorced, has kids with different fathers etc. She's the 1%. Her kids are both from the same father, who married her (for a while), and pays his child support. In the 'Nasty, that's called winning at life. But the boys are getting older and the father gets remarried and isn't around much. They're looking for belonging and mentorship, father figures. And all around them is nothing but deadbeats, wanna-be rappers, small time criminals, con men, the perennially partially in college to milk the student funds. Despite the statistics, most of the city is pretty safe, but not where she lives. So she goes out to the county, finds a way to scrape together the rent, sells her house cheap, and risks it all to get her boys a shot at a decent trade job someday. And then her sister turns up, always the fuckup, needing a place to crash, just for a day or two.
But two days turned into two weeks, and while she's at work paying the rent, her sister is hosting hangout sessions for her crackhead boyfriend and his shitstain friends. She tries to put her foot down, but they're the only child care she has. And they won't go without a fight, and that would mean calling the cops on her own sister, maybe having a violent confrontation in her own home with her kids present. And before she can get it figured out, one of those shitstain friends breaks into some old ladies' garage and steals a case of beer out of the refrigerator. Not exactly the crime of the century, but they're old, probably a bit racist already and within six months of her moving in, they get robbed. That's not going to improve community or race relations. The parents talk, the kids talk, everyone knows basically what happened, even if where they put the blame is different.
The white kids wait until school to run their mouths directly at the boys, the vague racial feeling being that black kids are tougher, meaner. Best to talk shit in front of the teachers to avoid an ass-kicking, but it didn't work. Now her boys are suspended for fighting, everyone hates them, and a house just opened up. Those cranky old victims of the Great Beer Heist went to Florida for good. She calls her best friend, the only other one from her neighborhood with her shit together, tells her to put in an offer on the house. With some support in the neighborhood, maybe things will work out after all. The friend's husband was in the military, which might be enough to put some pressure on her sister and boyfriend. And they can swap child care.
Yadda yadda yadda, the military husband has a drinking problem, and after several confrontations with the boyfriend and his "posse", two of them take potshots at him in the street, he gives chase and shoots one of them. A few times, including after he was already down. So now he's doing a nickel for manslaughter (plead out), the two friends are both single mothers, the older people in the neighborhood start moving out when they retire, and their kids sure as hell don't want to live in this area. The neighborhood is friendlier now, more interconnected and dramatic, but also undeniably dirtier, poorer and more violent.
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