A Silver Lining?

• Work Stoppage To Strike Illegal Immigrants

"COVID 19," I guess I'll call this ugly thing...

I think I was "dissociating" the past couple days; trying not to think of the fact that I had nothing, and no way to get anything.*

But then, yesterday, I hopped on my bike, and armed with misinformation, set out to get a bag of ground coffee from Starbucks.

I have always confused Claibourne Street with Carollton Street, and I did so again, yesterday.

Arriving in the 2800 block of the latter street, to see no Starbucks, I realized my mistake and headed towards the former street.

But, had it been a mistake?

On a certain corner, I saw an older black man with an acoustic guitar, standing at the corner where beggars are a fixtures, holding signs.

He had his case open and was apparently jamming away and probably making pretty good money, if my past experiences in Florida are any indication.
He was way out of the French Quarter, in the part of the city where people are still seen, going to an from jobs that are virus-proof, like health care workers and security guards...lot's of security guards.

So, there was the solution.

The only problem would be finding a corner where I could jam away with maybe a sign that reads: "No stimulus money for the lowly musician" or something. Just about any corner in the city is going to be contested by bums who might feel like they own the real estate: "That's my chair and my cooler right there; it just stays there; ain't nobody messes with it; they all know this is my corner; I been here 18 years, since before Katrina..." etc.

But, then I realized that the corners right around our building have been "held down" by certain residents of Sacred Heart.
And, since they are not formidable physical specimens, I wouldn't have to bring a sharp knife with me when attempting to occupy their corners and play music.

I could also tell them that I stood to make 4 times as much as they would, because of "actually doing something" (and the fact that the people who travel that way every day have never seen me there before and I don't look like a drug addict -compared to them, at least) and that, if they hardly make anything after taking the spot from me, I would, I don't know, buy them a couple beers, or something.

Then the good news came that 6 gigabytes of data are to be given to myself and any other Assurance Wireless government phone holder, for free to help with the current crisis.

And, I believe that the stimulus checks that will be meted out to "everybody" will be to everybody who took the 5 minutes to enroll in the census for 2020.
This will yield a more accurate census count, most definitely, and will put the squeeze on the illegal immigrants.

As long as their jobs are closed down, where they work for cash under the table, and they are not on the census roll call, then, well. What goes around comes around; maybe they will feel like they are getting screwed by the system, for a change.

I saw Latinos standing in line for the food bank at the school across the street from our building, which gives out food each morning (most of which [milk, soy] I won't eat) and it was the probably the first time I have ever seen a Latino anywhere like that.

It could be that everything is fine and the Mexican mafia is keeping them in work and money and that they are just adding the free food like icing on the cake (since no ID is required to get the bags of food, just walk up) and that they are just getting over as much as possible, but it could mean that, because of the virus, we are making headway in solving the problem of undocumented immigrants.