Rush of Activism and Thought, Thursday, July 30th

The Riverside Church food pantry was quiet when I entered. The seating area was dotted with a few little families, mostly middle-aged Dominican women though, come on their own to pick up provisions for themselves and their children, lost in this bad bad Land of Plenty. It was a slow start: there were no information cards in the tray by the administration desk, those little cards that I pull and struggle to read names off of in a good Spanish accent, and there were few volunteers present--just Wim (pronounced Vim) the Dutch guy standing around quietly, and of course the Caribbean duo Olveda and Alida. Jarrit, the manager of the pantry, smiled his little kid smile from burning skin of Bronx color, shook my hand, and thanked me for coming, like a gentleman.

When Jarrit filled out some tarjetas, I grabbed one, and started calling people up out of the airy, quiet seating area. A meek middle-aged fellow, Antonio I believe his name was, edged into the pantry room after a little confusion about his name. We grabbed a shopping cart and began to move through the racks of food. His brow was low, his hair matted down. I asked him, English, espanol? He said Espanol, and I gave it my best as I always do--OK senor, tu puedes cojer dos latas de carne. Hay... so on and so on, yet he responded in pretty good English, albeit whispered, and after a little while I just switched to English and we swooped back and forth through the aisles of canned veggies, bags of dry beans, and juice, and I would say everything first in English then repeat what I could at a mumble in Spanish. He seemed appreciative afterward, and after I handed him his bags full of food in the terrible fluorescence of the pantry room, he said Haf a nai day, and shuffled away.

I brought another client through, a kind of handsome, nearly black mid-age Dominican woman. We pushed the cart among the aisles of food, and she was really stuck on getting more cans than were allotted for someone with her number of family. Mas mais? Solomente tres? she asked frustratedly as her finely shaped arms grasped for more cans of corn, and I told her it was not allowed--quatro personnas, tres latas. Sorry lady. This continued on with the fish, beans, and juice, her asking for more than was allowed in really fast, complex Spanish that left me dribbling Uuuh, no, uuuh, no es possible. But we did make it through, as me and the clients always do, and I scorn her not... she's got to put up with some stingy church pantry to supplement her food once a month in a city that doesn't really think much of her.

When the seating area emptied unusually early, I ended up talking with Christopher, or Cristobal as he introduced himself in Spanish. He's a volunteer that I've seen now and then at Riverside. He started asking where I learned Spanish (the whole glossary of 13 words I know), and I asked where he learned his. I thought he was Dominican with his dark skin and wavy hair, but his strangely formal Spanish accent he used while speaking with clients prompted me to ask where he learned Spanish. He told me about his studies in human geography, a subject I had never heard of before, and that learning languages was just something he did everywhere. Cool, me too. As PJ, another woman who volunteers more frequently at the pantry passed by the rack of tomato sauce cans, they called a couple of short words to each other--osht and ekii--that sounded like Dutch. When I asked if that was indeed the strange tongue they had been uttering, Christopher gave his slight, feminine laugh and said No, it's Chalokee, an American Indian language. Cherokee. This floored me and I immediately began telling him of my interest in languages and Indian issues, anthropology and history and he mirrored it all intelligently as a giggling professor. I found out that PJ is actually his mother, a woman with an advanced degree in linguistics, and that Christopher is Cherokee, and had studied Chalokee on his own. Soon we were discussing the bleakness of Indian reservations like Lone Pine, the Sioux reservation in South Dakota. I began to get very angry as he told me about the failings of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and we spoke of the total marginalization of Native Americans everywhere, and I started spitting some thoughts about the oppressed uniting to fight, and he, with hands folded, laughed wisely like an old monk, Aaah, that sounds like Marxist doctrine! I think it was.

An hour later I was on the little terrace that sticks out from behind my apartment, reading up on The Meaning of Marxism for a study group but hours away. Quietly, distantly, my temporary subleter roommate Kianoush, an electrical engineer from Iran working at Columbia by way of Birmingham University in England, sat on his bed, watching the minutes pass before he would hoist his huge suitcase and leave. As I read about the nature of capitalism's expansion, he would tell funny anecdotes and teach me new words in Farsi. Erin, my regular rommate, arrived just in the nick of time, smiley and tan and laughing, to meet Kianoush with an formal handshake and "So nice to meet you" before he had to head out to the airport to deal with special customs procedures, since he has a passport issues by a member of the Axis of Evil: Iran. I walked him to the subway, told him I would see him again, perhaps in England, that he must teach me more Farsi, and with his balding head and dark eyebrows pearled with sweat, we hugged oddly and said goodbye. More reading on government's historical ties with economic interests, some happy conversation with Erin just returned from her road trip across the groaning American continent, and I was off on the bus uptown to The Meaning of Marxism study group.

In the little West Harlem cafe called La Pregunta, my fellow socialists and I sat around a wooden table covered in Dominican food and notepads, and Matt, the brilliant Columbia student dressed as usual in a plaid skirt, gestured with raised skinny shoulders and gave his ideas on the economy's abilities to determine the political pecking order, and the lack of true democratic representation in American government. We 'mhm'-ed and 'right'-ed and asked questions about loopholes used by corporations to act above the law. I ate a bean salad and took mild notes on the conversation. Wally, an older fellow, got the angriest when he talked about big business, but said some really sharp things when I asked about the relationship of economic monopolies to colonialism, and I was glad to have this wise, impassioned guy in our group. After a half hour or so, the Thursday night band, a Dominican rock group, began to set up and made a lot of noise, as they practiced their riffs and tested the mics. We pushed out of the little spot and headed over to the plaza tables at City College directly across the street, and continued our discussion there. It was magical, as our multicolored band of socialists kept up the conversation at a round table, everyone exchanging democratically and out in the open air. When I raised the question of why separeness is necessary to Lenin's revolutionary vanguard, why the leaders and the directors must be distinct in any way from the masses, a great debate started, with Matt gesturing with his raised shoulders and Dave, a soft-spoken man, adding in comments about the intellectual nature of the vanguard and their duty to constantly recruit and expand into the masses. The sun was crashing and breaking up into gold-orange shards on the mighty Hudson River, and long shadows stretched from the little trees in the plaza onto our table, and it was lively and good-natured and an evening breeze blew and I felt really content. After some minutes of talking we looked at our watches, made jokes about our tardiness, and headed down to the International Socialist Organization's uptown meeting which was unfolding as we spoke. We walked down Amsterdam Ave. in Harlem shadow, and made frustrated remarks and speedy insights about the housing projects we passed, and the inequality they represented.

At the ISO uptown meeting in the quiet little leftist church, St. Mary's on 126th street, ancient and red, we crowded into a big office room and listened to a presentation by ISO member Hadas, a little brilliant Israeli woman, on the workings and non-workings of capitalism. She made some basic and important points in good-humored language (not cold and mechanical as many people think socialists to be) about the boom-and-bust cycle inherent to capitalism, and a great discussion began. Many people stood and preached small truths with big implications about the hypocrisy of a government that gives 13.9 billion bucks in bank bailouts and then allows itself to be co-opted by healthcare biz lobbyists against a billion-dollar healthcare reform bill. Sickening. I took no notes, my eyelids sagged with fatigue, my eyeballs floated in and out of focus, and I kept my ears open. Brian Jones stood and made smart remarks with character, and his actor training shone in every swing of his upper body and bent smile. It was so goddamned hot in the room I felt like a martyr, and people swung pamphlets by their faces in the heat. A little toddler on the sidelines didn't seem to mind, and he climbed around his mother's legs, a smooth Vietnamese woman, as she gently looked on. The comments came in from every corner, people spoke of the bank bailout being a sign of the capitalist government's desperation and structural weakness, and finally the time came for Hadas to respond. She did so briefly to several of the points raised, and then they began the process of democratically choosing the topic of the next meeting, raising the merits of talking about healthcare reform versus talking about gay rights, and so on. I stood and pushed my sweaty way to the edge where I stood and listened for a bit, dropped a dollar on the desk and picked up a Socialist Worker, and then glided quietly from the little wood building attached to the church, where an older bearded white man--I think he was a social worker--was still talking actively with a group of down and out Blacks. True exchange. I eased out the door into the little stone, gated courtyard in the gentleness of night. I made some calls as I strode west along the forgotten tip of 125th street, past projects and a little library, and halted at 125th and Broadway. Looking upon the mystical corner covered in neon light from soulless banks and beat Chinese food restaurants, the bottom of a small valley actually, I watched brown and black faces disperse east north, and south. I thought the ones heading south, in the direction of Columbia, must simply evaporate en route, since when one reaches the university gates but 10 blocks down, none of these heavy Harlem faces, meaningful under the giant bones of the 125th street 1 train station high above the street, are ever seen. Like ghosts in the summer night. I slouched against a brick wall and tried to pour out the truth in that scene on the inside jacket of The Meaning of Marxism, and some street song flowed from my pen before my friend descended from the stairs leading down from the 1 train up in the sky, and we left.