Isn’t that great? I want to be a student and friend and assistant to people who are doing things I would have wanted to do. “I just read Plato’s definition of justice–it’s friendship. He discovered a civility, calm, and order that rarely make it into the headlines, and survived to return to Oberlin College, where he is now avoiding his classes, cooking up more ideas to challenge suburban fear, reading Plato, and making friends. Graffiti writer, inner-city journalist, hitchhiker, chronicler and critic of hip-hop culture, “Upski” Wimsatt says that his goal in life is to have “ten thousand role models.” After self-publishing Bomb the Suburbs (1994), a book that showcased his friends in Chicago’s vibrant, tradition-minded rap and graffiti culture and spoke for a desuburbanization (that is, a fearless opening up) of American hearts and minds, Wimsatt embarked on his “Bet with America” (chronicled in The Nation and elsewhere): a wager that he could survive, and even enjoy, deep-nighttime visits to America’s “worst” ghetto neighborhoods.
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