Word: brooklyn
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...free. He had a plan: 1) reconcile with his family, 2) find an apartment and 3) get a job. He filed his housing application and surveyed the scene outside. "If this is a sign, then I think everything's going to be all right." Then he headed home to Brooklyn to watch, along with his mother, his cameo on the evening news...
...street who have had sons in and out of prison. In a three-block radius surrounding her house, there are roughly 50 to 100 men on parole, according to 2000 New York State division of parole data. The police precinct that includes Ophelia's block represents just 4% of Brooklyn's population but houses 10% of Brooklyn's parolees. When a young man disappears off the streets into prison, residents say, in a perverse euphemism, that he has "gone back home...
...oversight. He is booked up with appointments every week. "I'm psycho-socialed out," he likes to say. Each week Sanders is required to attend two drug-treatment meetings in Queens. Once a week, whether he has a job or not, he must appear before his parole officer in Brooklyn. Once a month he must also see his welfare caseworker, an hour away in Harlem. After two months on welfare, he must attend eight hours a day of job training to get $22.50 and $130 in food stamps a month. Some weeks he submits three urine samples for three different...
Then came Sept. 11. Rolling black clouds of smoke and dust drifted over to his neighborhood in Brooklyn. Sanders, like people everywhere else, was depressed by the attacks. His problems and successes were dwarfed by their implications. Finding work got even harder. He had a second interview for a janitor job at a Brooklyn YMCA but was finally told he was "too good for the job." "What does that mean? Was I dressed too nicely?" he says. In October he broke down crying in an elevator in Manhattan after being rejected for a messenger...
Shortly before Christmas, Sanders went around to his family members and handed out crisp money from his billfold. For New Year's Eve, he did something he hasn't done in seven years: he worked. Then he went back to Brooklyn to watch the ball drop on TV with his mother. They said a prayer for the new year, and he went home...