The following is a bit of an email I wrote to a friend who grew up in the same neighborhood as me. I mentioned various towns. Camden is black and ghetto. Pennsauken is white working class who is always fighting against Camden. Cherry Hill is the Jewish ghetto. Each of these towns was a few miles out of Philadelphia, Camden first, then Pennsauken, then Cherry Hill. This is essentially how I grew up.


I live in Aurora. Think of Aurora as like a mix of Pennsauken and Camden and Cherry Hill. Neighborhood by neighborhood it could be one of the above. if you want to buy a house here that is livable the starting price is like 300 grand. Denver is right next door. They consider Aurora the way Philadelphia considers Camden. Except there is no river choke points. So the Denver Police feel they have to protect Denver from the invading people from Aurora. The Aurora police are just generally mean as s*** to everybody.

Except for the local cowboys. They can pretty much get away with anything.

Obviously current events is triggering this little story. Yesterday the police broke up a violin concert in the park with nightsticks. Seriously there were people playing violins in remembrance of somebody that the police had killed a few months ago. Families were sitting on blankets. The cops came in running with nights sticks ordered people to leave and when they didn't leave fast enough they started beating and gassing. What you see on the news is the slightest blip, I saw it happening in near real time from the Twitter videos that were being posted as it was happening.