Hey we’re already a third of the way through

Fresh Corner had their team huddle as they usually do on Thursdays. It was immediately apparent that both of my bosses had reached a point of critical exhaustion, although when I expressed my concern, they brushed it off reflexively. The professional distance between the cofounders and their interns wasn’t clear to me until today. I’m sure, though, that this delayed epiphany was due to my naiveté and not anything truly mysterious about the nature of their work. It makes me all the more proud and grateful to have earned the damns that they very well do not have to give. Even during the moments that they seem physically and mentally unable to give a damn, they still do.

Of course, none of this stopped Val from first committing to getting some coffee at three in the afternoon and then quickly resigning to an afternoon nap.

I’m avoiding the obligatory transition by admitting that my monologue is shifting from what I’ve seen in my community organization to what I’ve seen in Detroit, although the two do intersect.

The performance we attended on Tuesday affected me profoundly. I’m always so shocked to watch these travesties unfold from such a privileged position and this one was no exception. The speaker who delivered the poem that I will assign the moniker “Black Poem” for the sake of convenience surrounded me with her words, passion, and desperation. Indeed, I felt trapped and scared from her speech alone, and that speaks not only to her incredible ability to perform and to her connection to the material, but to my diminutive capacity for tragedy. That, too, was frightening because no matter how far any of us feel from misfortune and devastation, it eventually arrives to us if we do not go and meet it. One of my favorite poems is one many of us, I’m sure, have read and heard recited by Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

This poem is a bleak one, and I think it precludes any possibility that true altruism exists, but only because the things we do and the ideologies we propagate carry such far-reaching consequences — results and problems we cannot even begin to perceive.

To that end and in that spirit, I committed to understanding the human capacity for tragedy. I look for it in the faces of the Detroiters on the street, the teachers in the charter schools, and the children in the cages. Suffice to say, it was like a dam breaking. I had kept my finger stuck in the only hole I could’ve seen the suffering through, and when I finally pulled it free, the water rushed out, over, and through.