After a rough first night of sleep in our New York home away from home, the 6:45am alarm wasn't quite enough motivation to get me out of bed. It had gotten progressively colder throughout the night, and I couldn't bear to come out from my sleeping bag + blanket cocoon. Instead, I had the daily internal war with myself that I always do when I'm supposed to get up early; I call it the Battle of How Much Longer Can I Sleep and Still Look Halfway Presentable. After several minutes of sleepy, silent debate, I finally forced myself out of bed as my stomach growled: food is always a decent motivator. But as the haziness of too little sleep the night before wore off, I remembered we hadn't ended up buying any groceries yesterday. "That's okay," I thought, "They're not gonna let us starve."
Little did I anticipate the surprise that came with breakfast. On the table near the kitchen, all sorts of junk food was laid out - Ritz bits, candy bars, fruit snacks, Capri suns, Cheetos - with a sign reading, "Food desert: Geographic areas where residents' access to affordable, healthy options are restricted or non-existent due to the absence of grocery stores within convenient traveling distance. Happy breakfast!" I looked over the junk food before me, and as I grabbed some fruit snacks and thought, "This will have to do," I realized how people experiencing poverty very well may feel when they stand at the grocery store picking through the limited "healthy" options before them that fit their budget. The phrase, "Poverty is the lack of choices," from class last week came to my mind. Thinking back to my high school days working as a grocery store cashier, I knew just how expensive the healthy, nutritious food options were, but I have always taken for granted the ability to buy more groceries than necessary from each USDA recommended food group. As I chowed down on an Almond Joy supplementary to my fruit snacks for breakfast, I felt frustrated not only by my lack of options, but frustrated with my own ignorance of the cost of basic needs.
As the day wore on and we took a sobering trip to the 9/11 memorial museum, the biological effects of not having a nutritious meal all day started to set in. Not only is not having the option to eat healthy frustrating, but the long-term ability of junk food to keep your hunger satisfied is minimal. In combination with the many strong feelings of sadness, distress, and heartbreak evoked by the 9/11 memorial exhibits, a lack of nutrients brought on more tiredness and a lack of ability to concentrate. Renee asked us to take how we were feeling in those moments just before leaving the museum to imagine we were children living in poverty whose parents had just had a big fight the night before, and we had to go to school the next morning. I suddenly felt a surge of empathy for the children for whom this is a daily reality; I felt sick to my stomach, dehydrated, and disenchanted by the world around me. I couldn't focus.
If I'd had to sit down and write this blog in that moment, I would have felt set up for failure. I pondered how unfair it is that we hold school children who feel like this on a daily basis to the same standard as children who come from privileged homes. It made me upset as I realized firsthand how those who live in poverty are not set up for success given their circumstances, even just by not having a nutritious meal. Throw that in with emotions of sadness and distress from daily stressors, and possibly a lack of sleep; you'd have a recipe for disaster.
Our next major stop of the day was the Tenement Museum. After spending a while wandering around a snowy and slushy Manhattan, we were ready for a break from the cold. Though our walking tour had been canceled due to the unfavorable weather conditions, we eagerly headed off on our "Hard Times" tour through narrow hallways into the first of two 325-square-feet apartments. It was here in this building that over 7,000 people had lived in the 70 years between the 1870s and the 1940s. Our first story began in the late 1800s as our tour guide narrated for us the lives of the Gumpertz family from Germany, who had lived there for several years as a family of 6 before the husband deserted the family and left his wife Natalie to fend for herself and her 4 children alone.
As our tour guide discussed one of the options for charitable help at the time, we looked over a recovered document from the time determining who in the tenement was to receive charitable financial aid. I was struck by some of the words I saw, in particular the words "worthy," "respectful," and "deserving of aid," which appeared several times. It occurred to me how different this method was compared to how we do things now. Back then, help was given based off a person's moral character - things like whether a person or family was "respectful" was a huge deal. Nowadays, there are strict rules set in place for receiving aid, "poverty" is determined by rigid dollar amounts, there are set processes in place, and there are mounds of paperwork to fill out. It seemed to me how much simpler it may have been for the Gumpertz family and other tenants of the tenement to get the help they needed compared to now. I wondered, what happened to the importance of taking someone's character into account when making decisions? Just yesterday we saw 5 people sleeping on the street; I know nothing about any of them. There's I would feel qualified to make a decision as to who was the most "worthy" on behalf of an organization in charge of distributing aid to any of those 5 people. How can organizations morally determine who gets how much help with just a stack of papers filled with numbers and raw data? Has the problem of poverty blown up to such a large scale that such giving based on a person's moral character isn't possible? This single paper on our tenement tour raised 100 questions in my mind as I realized just how complex and huge the problem of poverty is today and how simply deeming someone "respectful" isn't enough to determine someone to be "deserving of aid" anymore.
As our tour guide continued her narratives of families living in the tenement we were standing in, we delved into the topic of immigration. The tenants of the apartments we explored were all immigrants to the United States, and as such they faced many hardships including racial, language, and economic barriers. As we learned more about the immigrants who overcame the poverty they were living in while in this tenement and the admirable work ethic they must have had to survive, the conversation turned from the early 1900s and Ellis Island to 2017 and the refugee crisis. It made us think about the power of language; while I somehow associate the word "immigrant" with someone who is hard working and moves to another country in hopes of creating a better life, the word "refugee" when I hear it evokes the idea of someone who is escaping some sort of persecution or hardship. While growing up and learning about immigration to the U.S. in elementary school I thought of immigrants with admiration, I hear the word "refugee" in the media today and don't quite know how to feel as various political parties play tug-of-war over this global issue. In the end though, whether we're talking about Ellis Island 100 years ago or 2017 Syrian refugees, aren't we talking about the same idea? Groups of people coming to the U.S., all in search of a better life and in hopes that they will not have to endure the same persecution or hardships they had before - be it the potato famine in Ireland in the 1850s or war in the 21st century. Regardless your political views on the subject, I learned from our time in that tenement that even just the words we use can affect how we feel about a subject. And how we feel about a subject affects what action takes place. It gives us something to think about as we face a major political shift in the coming weeks.
As I lay on my cot on our second night in New York, I have more to think about than I did last night. As a result of our experiences today, I have gained empathy for those experiencing poverty and a greater appreciation for what that means in this world today as we kick off 2017.
All in all, for a day that started out with a pile of junk food, I'd say it turned out to be wholesome after all.
-Alyssa
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