Project “Urban Reject”

Debate this. A financially perfect life giving the people “what they want,” or a very trifling living being sold what your body thinks it needs.

• Could you make a career out of selling drugs to both young and old alike? Could you live with the fact that what you are selling in the dead of night is stringing people out like wet clothes on a line, or sometimes even killing them by way of overdose? How well would you sleep at night knowing your product is the cause of a few stillborns and even more cracked out babies?
• How long do you think you can survive with liquid fire in your veins? How much do you think the woman wearing too much make-up on her face, sitting behind the hospital’s front desk, cares about you? Where are your kids right now? Did you even remember up ’til now that you had kids? Can you remember your old self, before the drugs took hold and made you a shell of yourself? What were your goals, your dreams? Did you ever aspire to be anything more than a shadow jerking around in the streets?

Picture this. A 32-year-old black man is released from prison after serving 12 years for carrying three kilos of cocaine. While inside the penitentiary, he received a master’s degree in business.

What corporate office you know will this man; big from jailhouse workouts, short-tempered, always on his guard, an ex-felon? Will his master’s degree do him any good, once people look at his criminal record? Do you think they will trust him with their important documents and money? Do you think he will even get a job where he won’t be asking if the customers “want fried with that”? Will he always be watched just a little more closely than the rest of co-workers? If something comes up missing, no matter how big or small, will his name be the first on the manager’s lips? Will he end up giving these people a real reason to send him back to prison, the only place in the world where people respect and understand him, without hesitation or criticism?

Imagine this. A 14-year-old unemployed black girl, six months pregnant, baby-daddy gunned down in the corner store (victim of mistaken identity).

Do you think her parents, of no less than six children, would let her stay home? Do you think the dead boy’s family would accept her when the most regular words in conversations today are “paternity test”? Would they welcome her with open arms once they realize he had left the house to go get some food to satisfy her strange cravings, thereby, making his death indirectly her fault? Within the city’s limits, how many jobs would hire an unwed, pregnant 14-year-old? How many housing developments would rent or sell a place to this girl, someone they know won’t be able to pay the monthly bills just by looking at the clothes on her back? Would you help her? Would you give her money, or assume she’d just use it on name brand clothes for herself, instead of on the coming baby?

Project “Urban Reject” shows how one situation can actually be careful be turned into two different points, two branches off one tree. One action can cause so many imbalances in a person’s life. From trying to make an easy living, to indirectly causing fetal deaths. From strange cravings, to a homeless, underage mother. No matter how small someone’s actions are, there could always be even greater consequences. Project “Urban Reject” is not just a comparison of different peoples’ lives. It is Life.