Target: Carl Greene

This article will be published in the City Paper tomorrow.

The author, Andrew Thompson, was one of the first reporters to cover our work when he was a student at Temple.

Andrew sat into our strategy session this Saturday to, “observe the process.” The jargon that we often use in social justice organizing is reflected in his article.

This is case in which I feel like we gave a reporter too much of a look under the hood.

Maybe I am just being self-conscious but I am uncomfortable when I see a headline like “Target: Carl Green.”

“Target,” in our business is short-hand for “decision maker.” Target makes it sound like we are pointing a weapon at the guy.

Additionally, I feel like Andrew quoting me as saying that the bathroom will be sympathetic to the public makes the actual fact that guards don’t have any where to use the restroom sound trite.

It is a good article. I can’t blame Andrew for using the terms that we used during the training session since he doesn’t know the jargon. Over all I think it reads like he is sympathetic to our cause and I don’t think he meant to undermine us by using the quotes.

I do wish that I could have explained these terms in more depth to him, though.

Anyway, if the bathroom will be fixed in a short-time, I guess it is worth it…

Step one: Get a better bathroom. Not one in a dreary concrete-block room without a sink, with spattered dollops of feces and no seat, which makes using the restroom a water hazard for women.

“If you go in there right now, it ain’t fit for nobody,” says one guard. “It ain’t even fit for an animal.”