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So last night we went down to City Hall to check out the protesters, who were protesting that the City Council drop the charges against the Kelley Square Four, which they had already agreed to drop. Anyway, there wasn’t much to see that we haven’t written about five million times before. Been there blogged that.

RBG did another hot poetry slam, the ACLU and Deb Powers held signs and alleviated their white guilt. Old Man Gordon Davis (AKA bizarro Santa) held his usual sign about racism and jobs:

This is it folks. This is the face of the Worcester protester movement. A senile old man whose tools include a sign he’s been using since 1994 and a fluorescent winter hat so his wife can find him if he gets lost. The funny part is, according to yesterday’s organizer Michael Jerry – the guy who said he thought he’d be happy when he heard two NYPD cops were killed – the public supports these geniuses:

It’s official folks. They are completely delusional. It’s like we’ve said all along – these people are on a different planet from everyone else living in normal civilized society. Hey Mikey Boy – there’s a reason our numbers grow by the day while you have Old Man Gordon and his hand-me-down sign. It’s because no one likes you. We’ve never liked you, but every day that goes by more people who previously had no opinion about you come over to our side. You make it too easy.

I mean, what are you supposed to say when you see signs like this:

An Aryan kid holding a sign saying “end white supremacy.” Classic. This is why the Justice Department coming here for a “conversation” is bullshit. Because there’s literally no point conversing with some asshat lilly white boy who is holding a sign that says, “End white supremacy.” Because everyone knows white supremacy doesn’t exist in 2015 America. FYI, this is the same kid from the Mosaic Cultural Koom-Ba-Ya video, who awkwardly tried to dance next to Urkel glasses but completely lacks the rhythm:

White supremacy isn’t working out too well for this guy on the dance floor. His name is Nicholas Choquette and he’s a riser in the social justice warrior rankings. And he’s well-versed in urban dynamics as well. Guess where he’s from?

Princeton and Concord. Only two of the richest and whitest towns in the Commonwealth. I’m sure this kid knows all about the struggle.

Anyway he got me thinking. He’s basically the face of “white privilege” right? Well, I watched this whole thing from a bench across Front Street. I was minding my own business when all of a sudden I heard, “Hey someone’s on our bench.” I thought it was hippies. But low and behold it was another pair of people whose profession has been a hot topic of our blogs – panhandlers. And let me tell ya, it was an eye opening experience.

There names are Chris

and Arriane

And I fell for them as soon as I saw their signs.

Now they didn’t make me get off the bench or anything and were quite cordial about it. But Turtelboy writers are men and women of integrity, and we respect downtown the Worcester dibs hierarchy. So I gave them the bench, since they were tired from a long day of panhandling. All they really wanted to do was talk, and all I wanted to do was listen, so it was the beginning of a nice little downtown friendship.

I talked to these good folks for over half an hour and I feel like I know them better than I do my own father and mother. But that’s probably because they died in the 1917 influenza epidemic. Nevertheless they opened up to me since this was a topic Turtleboy writers have taken a lot of heat for (because of our perceived insensitivity).

The first thing they wanted to tell me was how much money they’d made that afternoon – $65. According to them this was a “slow day” and on other days you can “make bank.” The most they’ve ever made is $200. But today they were apparently working a slow corner, and had only been out for about four hours.

The problem of course was the location. They were standing somewhere on Main Street, I’m not quite sure where because Chris is a man who goes off on many tangents and yells quite loudly when he speaks. I asked them why they don’t hold signs at the Kelley Square or Route 9 exits on the highway. They nearly spit out their Subway sandwiches.

“You don’t hold signs on the ramps.” 

When I informed them there was a guy holding one a half an hour ago, they got pissed and told me he’d be picked up by the cops in no time. After all, everyone knows that panhandlers have to respect the panhandler’s code.

Although neither of them are homeless, their stories are nonetheless sad. At the same time though, they basically exposed to me that all of our preconceived notions about panhandlers were true. They live in an apartment on Belmont Street that charges $900 a month for rent. They pay for it with money they collect and Social Security.

Naturally I asked them why they don’t work. That’s when the shouting began, starting with my girl Arriane:

“I’m fucking tapped. I’ve had a lot of shit happen to me in my life, and if a boss speaks out against me, I’ll lose it. Plus my leg has this thing so I limp.”

What about Chris? He seemed healthy enough?

“I can make more money panhandling and collecting SSI than if I was working, so what’s the point? I only wanna get a job where I work less than 10 hours a week so I can keep collecting SSI, cuz you can’t if you work full time.”

But clearly this could not go on forever I told them. She is 24 and he is 25. So what were their long term plans?

Arriane: “We’re going to California and he’s gonna sign a big record deal cuz he knows people out there. He can fucking sing. Sing something Chris.”

At this point “Alexander Morgan” started singing Creed. Because when he sings, he’s no longer Chris – he becomes Alexander Morgan. He wanted to make that clear to me so that when I saw their album in Best Buy I’d know it was him. When I informed Alexander Morgan that Creed does in fact suck, I thought he was gonna poke my eyes out with his crucifix. I’m just kidding, I told them. I’m really more of a Nickelback guy.

So how did two people so young get themselves into this situation? Where did the system fail them? Arriane has lived everywhere she says, and is one of nine siblings, none of which share the same set of parents. She also has two children – a five and two year old. She can’t remember the last time she saw her oldest son. She estimates it was over three years ago.

She is working on that though, and told me about her big plans to sue DCF. Since DCF has plenty of problems, this, along with Alexander Morgan’s record deal cash, should give them enough to live off of for the rest of time.

Apparently she’s got something big in the works because she’s not allowed near her kids. We mostly talked about the older one, but were interrupted frequently by Alexander Morgan’s Christian rock renditions. From what I gathered he lived in New Hampshire with his father and she’s not allowed anywhere near the place. I genuinely felt bad for her. I figured this would upset her to talk about, but she didn’t really seem to give a fuck.

So why can’t she see her kids? Well, I guess this “asshole” was one of many of her ex’s who she accidentally assaulted. Repeatedly. With and without weapons. I didn’t press for details, because at points none of it really made any sense. But I do know this – if the Mom doesn’t get custody of the kids, something went very, very wrong. Hell, Meryl Streep got to keep her kid in Kramer vs. Kramer and she abandoned him for two years!!

How’d these love birds meet you ask? Panhandling – the Tinder of the streets. But their relationship is a lot more work than just holding signs, claiming a bench, and eating subway. Ya see, on top of being an aspiring singer, Morgan Alexander is also a trained MMA fighter. Thus the courts have ruled his fists to be weapons. And he has used these weapons many, many times. Mainly to people who talk shit. And it’s landed him in and out of jail.

During his most recent stint a couple years back Arriane was unable to visit him in the Worcester House of Corrections as she was living in Connecticut. That’s when an old “friend” started showing up at the House. According to him she helped him get through this tough time, and when he got out of the slammer, “somehow she ended up pregnant.”

Somehow.

This doesn’t go over well with Arriane to this day. She recognizes that he has a child with this “slut,” but she still wants to smash her face in. Things got awkward and so I wanted to change the subject.

Right on cue an African-American teenager came up to us. He didn’t look pleased. Am I going to be outed as a Turtleboy blogger?? Did they finally figure out who I am?

“Y’all got weed for six bucks?”

Wait…..what? Oh, Worcester. I let Morgan Alexander do the talking.

“No man, we don’t do drugs man. WE DON’T DO DRUGS!!!” 

The kid didn’t look very pleased, but when someone starts shouting “We don’t do drugs” in downtown Worcester, generally it’s a good idea to get the hell out of there.

“Do you guys know what’s going on across the street at that rally?” I asked them.

“No fucking clue,” said Alexander Morgan.

So I told him it was a rally for the black lives matter people. They’d never heard of it. So I asked them if they’d heard of Michael Brown and Ferguson. Nope. I told them they were protesting police brutality. Their response was to go off on a tangent about this one time they saw the cops beat the shit out of some assholes in an alley. This conversation was clearly going nowhere.

I thought about the situation they were in. Life sucks for these two, but they’re trying to get by and they actually have a positive outlook on life. Obviously their obstacles are many, and not likely to be surmountable. I’m 99% sure there’s a lot of mental disease going on here, and their future is entirely planned around Alexander Morgan’s singing career. How can they POSSIBLY make it? They have no families around to support them. No realistic plans. No savings. No desire to get a job. No guidance. Nothing.

That’s when I told them about their ticket out of poverty – white privilege. Ever heard of it? Of course there answer was no, but they were nonetheless intrigued. They wanted to hear more about it. So I told them that “white privilege” means that because they’re born white they’re going to have it easier in life than people of color.

That’s when they both started bursting out in uncontrollable laughter. Here they are holding signs that say, “I bet you can’t hit me with your change,” and Turtleboy is trying to tell them that everything is handed to them in life because they’re white. What else could they do besides laugh? It’s just such a stupid, stupid concept.

There are definitely “privileged” people in our society, but it has nothing to do with race. Alexander Morgan and Arriane don’t have the privilege of having someone tell them as kids growing up that they should go to college. They don’t have the privilege of having loved ones close by to act as a support circle. The government enables them to keep this cycle of poverty going. They are white, yet they are the exact opposite of privileged.

That’s because “privilege” is a term used to describe your influences rather than your race or level of poverty. Tons of immigrants come here impoverished nations and demand the best from their kids so that they can have opportunities that only exist in America. Their future is determined largely by their parents and themselves, not race or poverty.

Others are born here to parents who don’t give a shit and thus they end up stuck in the system. Their privilege isn’t determined by their parent’s skin color or level of poverty. It’s determined by their parent’s level of apathy. Arriane and Alexander Morgan are wiser than all of us.

Want to have your business advert seen by over 600,000 people per month? Email us at Turtleboysports@gmail.com for more information, and check out our website about types of advertising we offer.

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