PATRON SAINTS OF NOTHING

by Randy Ribay

In Patron Saints of Nothing, the protagonist Jason is an American teen. His dad is Filipino, but hasn't made his Filipino heritage a big part of Jason's upbringing. When Jason's cousin Jun is killed, supposedly for doing drugs, Jason learns about the brutal war on drugs currently being conducted in the Philippines under the leadership of President Rodrigo Duterte. He decides to go there to investigate his cousin's death and seek justice.

As Jason researches Duterte and his policies online, he does read some informative articles. But what he finds most moving are photographs people have taken to document the injustices of the drug war and humanize its victims. Later in the novel, these photographs also help Jason understand who his cousin was and what he believed in.

ART PROMPT

Is there anything you would like to change in your own community? It doesn’t have to be a major injustice like the drug war in the Phillipines. Maybe there’s a dangerous intersection children have to cross to get to school, or perhaps people are always littering in your local park. Take a photo of a problem you’d like to draw attention to, and include a caption describing the problem and the changes you’d like to see. If you can’t visit the place you want to focus on in person, see if you can find it on Google Maps using the Street View feature, and take a screenshot instead.

GALLERY

EXAMPLE

I used Google Street View to capture this image of the intersection of Delaware Avenue and Route 31 in my hometown of Hopewell Township, NJ. This is the only intersection with a light where people can safely and conveniently cross Route 31 to access the neighborhoods, businesses, and institutions (including several schools) located on either side of this very busy street. The crossing works well enough for pedestrians and motorists. But both the sidewalks and travel lanes on Delaware Avenue are extremely narrow, and there are no bike lanes. If cyclists want to cross Route 31, they have three choices:

Merge with auto traffic, and try to keep up in spite of the steep uphill climb.
Take their chances dodging pedestrians on the narrow sidewalks.
Go about 1.5 miles out of their way to cross at the next intersection with a light.

I believe the town needs to accommodate cyclists by either widening Delaware Avenue and adding bike lanes, or adding a light at the nearby intersection of Pennington-Harbourton Rd. and Route 31.

YOUR

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