A Building Collapses in Harlem...

This post is helping me to process some of my first reactions to the Harlem building collapse that occurred last week and the media coverage following it. After only finding formal press coverage of the issue while Googling, I would like to be in dialogue with people who are actually on the ground and working on this particular issue -- please email me or Tweet @thecowation with your thoughts.

  
The first thought I had was: "How dare they?"

There was an explosion in Harlem, the news alert said. Two buildings collapsed. After a while, I turned off the TV and closed the open tabs filled with articles. They all said the same thing. They lamented; they listed the dead.

How dare they portray this as a casual accident, an unexplained tragedy -- a backward glance and then, boom? Anyone you ask could tell you those apartments have been crumbling for years. No landlord in sight, no incentive to be.

One life lost unfurls into three. Then six. Then eight. For every life that is extinguished, five are impacted by life-changing injuries, mental and physical. Maybe more. Yes more, endless more.

The injured are always shuffled to the end of the sentence, always the follow-up. But they remain present, devoid of context after the news cycle has run its course. In ICUs and family homes, unable to get insurance or with insurance that will not cover their care, they survive. Some will end up on subway trains begging, while other riders turn down their heads. Long after the initial event, these people will continue to navigate a world not designed for them.

My best layperson theory about the housing situation in NYC is that it's a ticking time bomb -- the buildings are old and there isn't much incentive to renovate unless you're knocking them down to build condos (read: gentrification). There are few city interventions for communities that aren't cared about, and when there are they always come after they're needed. After the crisis.

How do you mourn when your everyday life is a crisis? This is the same question I asked after the Rana building collapse in Bangladesh, where the death tolls were in the thousands. I continue to ask them now as the bodies are carefully dug out of the rubble in Harlem and the area becomes just another hole in the ground. Who lives on? Who benefits from their misfortune? And how, as onlookers, do we do anything at all?

I am wrestling with these unanswered questions. I have looked back at my social justice influences -- interviews and articles by Mia Mingus for disability justice in particular. Taking a workshop with her a few years ago completely changed my understanding of how social justice work can be connected with healing. As she mentions: we should center disability justice because we all have the potential to become disabled, whether or not we began that way. With that in mind, the question becomes "How do we change this?" Healing work should not only be responsive after a tragedy occurs; it should focus on preventing violence and creating accessible services for those who experience it.

So how dare they? How dare they separate this violent incident from all of the structural violence that led up to it? Its causes are echoed in a laundry list of ways that the system has failed us -- lack of adequate housing, lack of resources for homeless people, and lack of mental and physical healthcare. Not to mention how the myth of U.S. superiority hides its connection to broken infrastructures abroad.

Very few sources connect us with these answers; now, we must write our own.

Enamored With Architecture

Today was an especially amazing day. So much so that I am going to post doubly to include my writing experiment and my thoughts! [and conveniently catch up on my posting schedule, muahahahaha...]
Below is my writing experiment for today, and above is a picture of an awesome building in Seattle. I am enamored with architecture these days apparently.

Can we fly away tonight?
Stare at the moon and the sun so bright,
That we catch glimpses of our faces in the strangest of places,
And believe that the mewl of the tomcat holds all of his might.

Believe me when I tell you that there was something wrong there. Please?
When I stepped into the room, there was no sound. There were no cries, no delighted hurrahs, no whole-hearted snickers or sneers – it was silent. And, also… there was no breathing.
I sucked all the air into my lungs without really thinking about it. I could hear it whistle through my head, past my sinuses, up, in and then down to my chest. I felt the air expand there – every breath was a blessing. There was something wrong there.
I didn’t take a seat, rather, a seat took me. I was tossed backwards without quite seeing my assailant. Their fish lips and wide eyes all looked so dead that I prefer to think none of them touched me. But then I wonder… what did? If it was the force of God, I don’t think I would mind. But if it were something else… well, there’s nothing I can do about it now.
The seat was hard and deep; it sucked me into an uncomfortable position that I could not escape. There were no wrist cuffs, but I felt as if I had to keep my hands level with the desk – for fear of punishment. It was just like high school. Only quieter. Everyone was staring straight ahead at the white-washed wall. I tried to turn around and see who was with me, but they all looked the same: paralyzed. I wish I could have gotten up, but there was absolutely no way.
Trust me, please trust me, when I say there was something wrong with that place.
I waited for the better part of an hour, I think, though it could have been five minutes. No one was coming. The walls began to pulsate as I stared at them, beating in and out in a firm rhythm. It matched my heart beat. Bu-bump, bu-bump.
I wasn’t scared exactly, but everything around me was… magnified. I thought I could see every freckle and hair on every arm, leg or face that was in front of me. I lost the courage to look behind. Bu-bump.
When my breathing started to disappear, that was when I knew something was seriously wrong. I was so keen on keeping my heart in my chest that I had forgotten to listen for that welcoming rush of air as it passed through my nasal cavities and into my lungs. All I could hear was bu-bump, bu-bump like the tone of an invisible war drum. I panicked and tried to gasp. I wish my lips had opened at that point.
I’m not kidding, there is seriously something wrong there! Please, please believe me…
If you don’t believe me, I think that I won’t be able to go on living. Right here and now, I will step off this balcony and fall into the empty street. I will smash my skull open and it will all be on your conscience. Do you want that? I’m sure you don’t.
I wish I could say that I fully got out of that place. But, really, it’s still there. In the back of my mind, it is floating around like a sea of jellyfish – every person in that room truly was dead. I can’t explain to you how I knew, but they just… they just…
They couldn’t feel.
When I got up to leave, yes, I got up and walked towards the door. It was perhaps the hardest thing I had to do in my life. The weight on my legs tore at my pant legs and I felt them sticking down like some sort of magnetic pull. But I concentrated. My heart beat quickened from bu-bump, bu-bump to bump-bump-bump-bump-bump-bump. I struggled and struggled to breathe. But I got up. And marched to the door.
I avoided all hands along the way. They were inconsiderate, and unhealthy. They were sprawled out over desks in an oddly symmetrical pattern – as if they were trying to say something to me. When I touched the door handle though, the room changed.
Every pair of eyes shifted to look at me. I felt the gaze of thirty, fifty, one hundred students sitting at their prim wooden desks, eyeing me. I saw them all shift slightly, hungry, their bloated expressions even larger when they were pressed in tandem to the shape of my palm. They looked at me, but what they saw was opportunity.
I left then. I couldn’t take it. I fled through the door and tried to run down the hallway, tripped, and fell. I remember seeing you walking past; I almost called out but I could barely move. I hoisted myself up and came here instead.
Believe me, please. There is something wrong there. We really have to do something about it. I don’t know what but—
What?
You can’t be serious. We can’t just tell them about it. They probably know what’s going on! What are you saying? They want those people to die! They’re already dying! I—
No… it can’t be. You’re one of them, aren’t you?
You’re clever, you know that? Tricking me into thinking… well, no more of that. Don’t tell me again. I’ll make good on my claim. I promised you that I’d walk off this rooftop and fall right here. And I’ll do it.
Goodbye.

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More writing and stories are also available for your reading pleasure.