Seeing Differently

I remember that summer when we were about 18, when we were on the Metro North train heading into Manhattan, kids from the Connecticut suburbs planning to spend the day in the big city after riding through the quiet, manicured towns of Putnam and Westchester Counties, just before diving underground to arrive in Grand Central Station.

We passed through the Bronx and then Harlem. I spotted a block with lots of people sitting on stoops, playing double dutch, cooking out in front of their buildings, playing music and even dancing on the sidewalk. I don't think I had ever seen anyone dance outdoors in Connecticut. I commented that I thought it was a beautiful scene. Do you remember your response? If you like human suffering, you said, I thought for a second and said, No, that's human survival.

Maybe you saw the run down buildings and vacant lots. I guess I probably saw them too, but they weren't the parts that caught my attention. 15 years have passed, and I've spent over a decade working alongside hundreds of teenagers, gardeners, vendors, cooks and neighbors to cultivate gardens, grow food and build a community market in East New York, a neighborhood that endured the same discrimination and neglect that ravaged Harlem.

I've met people who saw a vacant lot filled with trash and pictured a garden bursting with the fresh vegetables they grew at home in Alabama, Jamaica, Nigeria, Bangladesh, people who also had the dedication to make that garden a reality and keep it going year after year after year. I've met teenagers with the courage to take on odds you and I could not have conceived of to imagine and create a better future for themselves and their community.

I have met people who saw their neighbors move out, one by one, and then saw the houses around them burned down and decided not just to stay but to gather others together and fight for their community. They show me every day that East New York is far from defeated. They've given me the confidence to keep being someone who sees things differently and to be proud of it.