It is a peaceful setting among the trees, roses and lilacs rest peacefully among the pines, this was your dream. A home off the beaten path, a place where someone would have to want to come see you to find you, you scrimped, you saved, holed away pennies, nickels and dimes just so you could have this little peace of Heaven on earth. You cleared it, planted flowers, built a home, a little walk and even put in a drive way in case you were feeling particularly hospitable, this is it, your dream and wouldn’t you know you have to hear the mariachi music each night way past midnight every single night. You call the cops but since they don’t speak Spanish the silence only lasts till they are sure the police have gone and then it is all to do over again. A zoned neighborhood, that was supposed to be what this is but you certainly couldn’t tell it as you drive through your neighborhood, with Junkers lining the streets and beer bottles laying in yards, trash piled high against houses and your favorite the gate at the end of your gated community covered with rival gang signs, this is no where near what you paid for but you know you will never get what you paid so you stay.

They stand out there for hours waiting for someone to pick them up for a job, you have no loitering signs up in English and in Spanish, but the cops drive by and do nothing it is like they think you want them there. You have customers who honestly think that you rent that spot to them and even though you tell them otherwise you are sure they don’t believe you. The girls were just in the yard playing, making mud cakes and being silly until one of them looked up just in time to see the neighbor across the street relieve himself, you ran outside and grabbed them and brought them inside hoping they didn’t see but you spent the rest of the day explaining to them what they saw. It is the fifth time you have had to call the fire department this week, seems they don’t comprehend burn ban, one nearly got into your yard, and did they fine them? Of course not it would have been too hard to make them understand so you watch day and night praying that one of their trash fires doesn’t burn you out. Gun shots, oh yeah you hear them almost nightly you really would not know if someone had committed a crime since that is the favorite activity of your wonderful neighbors when they have been drinking.

You know their kids are on free lunches, they get food stamps but somehow they manage to afford to have a wild party every single weekend, the alcohol flows, the music is blaring and the guns are firing in the air and you wonder just how much more you can take. You drive down the city streets and all you can see are signs printed in Spanish, seems all of the business are either owned by a Mexican or they are catering to them, you can’t even drive down the street with your window open on cool days because someone three blocks over has his mariachi music blaring in his car so loud it sounds like it is coming from your stereo, if it sounds as though I know of which I speak it is because I do, at any given time I have seen or heard or experienced just about everything you just read so I can and do speak very intelligently on this subject. This is small town and big city America, it is my neighborhood and your neighborhoods and the politicians say we have nothing to say about it. They can’t decide if our kids are too lazy to work or too stupid to fill the jobs in America. They say that these people add to our culture, that we are just too stupid to realize it; they say that without them our economy would just simply collapse around itself.

They say we are ignorant backwoods people who hold on to our guns and religion and just don’t like anyone who is different than us, they say we are angry and bitter, that we are upset because of companies shutting down and nothing coming in to replace them. They say that if we don’t embrace this new globalism we are freaks, racists and hate mongers, they say we do not know what is best for us, but they are wrong. When you look around you and all you see are vestiges of what used to be and a totally new culture threatening to destroy everything you have ever known, you know there is a problem, you know there are people fighting to destroy even more of what you remember as America and you decide once and for all that you will fight, that you are not willing to allow these thugs to intimidate you into submission that you will join your neighbors and you will fight till the bitter end. Because this is your country, your community, your neighborhood, your school, your park, your streets and your battle.

Carolyn Hileman
http://thevoice.name/?p=8153