Posted by grillcover on Jul 23, 2022
Reflections: (November/December 2021)
The final months of 2021 were rough, but they weren’t without their highlights. When November began I was still miming in Colorado, out of time and space with friends and collaborators in another world. It really felt that way. Our shows had finished over the weekend but we had a two workshops scheduled for Monday, November 1st, one with a high school and another with local artists in Denver.
Things got rocky after I returned, though. Despite my first physical in years the day after I got back confirming good health, a few days later I ended up in bed for almost a week with a miserable cold. Thankfully I’d tested negative for COVID, but it made the whole “hitting the ground running after the tour” thing impossible. I also formally stepped back from my role as a Research Lead for the DSA Defund campaign; I’d already informally taken some space, but it was good to check in and be straight with folks.
It wasn’t all a bust on the organizing front, though. On November 19th I received a new batch of chestnuts from my supplier in Vermont. I wasn't quite prepared to store them, so I hastily placed them in containers in my fridge with every intention to get materials and do it properly soon. I’d had enough leftover soil to comfortably bury about half of the nuts, and looking back I should have done as much as I could right away. (Foreshadowing…)
Below: For some reason these nuts went from Vermont, to New Jersey, to San Francisco, before coming back to Brooklyn. If that’s true, my concern is more than just about the delay– last year my nuts had chestnut weevils, which haven’t really made their way to the West Coast yet, and one must be careful not to spread them.
Then later in the evening I turned out for a rally and march in solidarity with Kenosha, WI, as that day Kyle Rittenhouse had been found not guilty on all charges related to his murder of two protesters in August 2020. Having followed not only the original case but also the right-wing valorization of Rittenhouse over the last year I knew just how deeply disturbing his acquittal would be. It’s one thing to see 4chan memes and punditry, but something entirely different to see militias around the country training “the Rittenhouse maneuver.”
The next day, on November 20th, I attended the campaign kick-off canvass for David Alexis in my home neighborhood of Flatbush. I was excited to finally have an insurgent DSA candidate running in my own district, and this race in particular is one of the more important battles for power in the state legislature, and a serious test of the org and our electoral allies (WFP, Sunrise, etc.) in New York City. I’d met David in March when he helped organize our Tax The Rich constituent meeting with Kevin Parker’s office. A first generation Haitian immigrant and father of two, he’s a former home health aid and ride-share driver turned labor organizer who helped create The Drivers Cooperative. Now, he's running to replace Parker.
Kevin Parker, long-time State Senator for NY’s 21st Senate District, sits as the Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Telecommunications. As such he has enormous power in setting the agenda for New York state’s (in)action on energy and thus fossil fuels and climate change. He even is the sponsor of the Build Public Renewables Act in the senate, a key priority across the local electoral left. But despite widespread support and his considerable sway, perhaps because of the large campaign donations from fossil fuel companies, the bill had been languishing in committee.
Above: A formidable turnout for David Alexis in central Flatbush, almost a year out from the general election here. The uphill battle of this race cannot be overstated; Kevin Parker is deeply entrenched and keeps a well-polished public profile despite his abusive manner as a boss and colleague.
Broken Box Mime
The period of high activity with the mimes continued, and after a little time to cool my heels from the tour I was looking forward to a busy December. We had a mix of teaching, performances, and preparation for our annual Black & White Ball, but because of everything else going on I decided not to perform at the party. It’d be my first time attending without performing, but I knew better than to overload myself again so soon.
First up was co-teaching a course called Body Language 101 with some other mimes and in partnership with the Lower Manhattan Community Council and AHRC NYC, an advocacy organization for neurodiverse people. In November we dropped in on some of their other programming to observe and meet some of the participants in preparation for our class in December, and had an internal training on how we were going to approach the work and this population.
We had three classes a week for three weeks in December, but I was only slated to lead the weekday classes for adults with developmental delays. The weekend class was intended to be a mixed class for neurodiverse families. Either way, we thought it was important to emphasize that we’re not prescribing a “normal,” but building awareness of the stories our and others’ bodies tell, through observation and play– lessons everyone can learn.
Overall it was a great experience, with a range of students from regulars who would come back twice a week to people who dropped in when they could. Teaching physical practices through Zoom is a challenge, of course, and I’m sure it would have been more fun and effective in a live group setting. But it was a much-needed dose of positivity every class, even when things got tough the week of the 20th, for reasons we’ll get to.
We also had two pop-ups of our kids’ show, Destination: Everywhere, on December 3rd at The Green Building and then December 10th at the Brooklyn Transition Center, P373K. The second performance was particularly special, as a public high school for students with special needs making the transition into mainstream settings. The school gathered to watch in the auditorium, and we were also streamed to other students watching remotely. Then some students performed for us and we had a Q&A. We made this delightful trailer of footage from the show and teacher testimonials, and it really captures the warm vibe of the day.
Below: The Broken Box Mime ensemble all dressed up at the 2021 Black & White Ball. Despite the cold we performed and partially mingled outdoors for COVID safety reasons. Don’t ask me about the pose I was feeling goofy.
I hadn’t been involved with the planning or performance for the BKBX Black & White Ball on Monday, December 13th (also at The Green Building) so I rolled up early to find my collaborators working through a minor COVID crisis: they’d just found out that the performing cast had been exposed to an asymptomatic case at a recent rehearsal. They’d all tested negative on rapids, but a quick series of decisions needed to be made about whether the event could go forward, and if the company could even attend, much less perform.
We ended up making a relatively safe compromise. Thankfully some company members like myself hadn’t been (to our knowledge) exposed, and would be able to schmooze (masked) with supporters who came through. We already had a remote option ready to go, and some folks opted to stick to that. And the performing mimes themselves would remain offstage until they joined the party outside for a masked performance. All in all, it was a valiant effort to navigate the miasma of shifting protocols and variant strains nearly two years into this mess.
Later that week I was planning to help my parents with their move. But considering the spike in cases, the B&W Ball scare, and potential exposures I’d had in the last week (like the overly affectionate school children) I got a PCR test. I’d encountered a line at my local mobile LabQ before, but the Omicron wave was evident in the wait. And then the results, normally back in under 24 hours, didn’t come for four days – and came back negative.
But that Thursday, December 16th, I needed results that day before visiting my 70-plus-year-old parents. So I went to the local pharmacy around the corner to see if they had a rapid test. Looking back from an age of free USPS tests, I can’t believe I paid $40 for a single rapid. A single seemingly expired test – until they pointed out the manufacturer had issued a correction.* The only instructions it came with required connecting to a technician on an app. They had no trouble walking me through the test instructions; walking me through my denial when I realized I saw an extremely faint line was another story.
Below: My nearly invisible but positive COVID test. *Fun fact about Abbott: they destroyed tests and laid people off as sales dipped last spring, just before Delta hit and created yet another shortage of tests. And Abbott has been at the center of the baby formula shortage since at least February. A+, no notes!
Sure enough by the evening I was feeling some symptoms, a sore throat and elevating temperature. The next day I felt the fatigue, body aches, and other flu-like symptoms. When I finally got my negative PCR test, I realized the delay and overpriced rapid test was a blessing, perhaps sparing my parents an infection. I got off (relatively) easy with moderate flu symptoms for the next week, and had one of my co-teachers take the lead for our Zoom class. On those days, though, those 90 minutes at my computer were about 90% of my non-horizontal time.
But outside that I was fortunate to be able to just isolate alone in my apartment with some incredible books I’d recently acquired, one work of fiction and one work of anthropological history / political theory – but both radical, forward-thinking, and supremely well-researched. The non-fiction work, The Dawn of Everything, by archeologist David Wengrow and late anthropologist David Graeber, is a groundbreaking tome of historical and human insight. Graeber is best known for his books Debt and Bullshit Jobs, and as a sometime-anarchist who helped organize Occupy Wall Street.
The other book, Ministry For The Future, by hard sci-fi giant Kim Stanley Robinson might as well be non-fiction as it imagines the next 50 years of climate crisis. But it pairs well with TDOE, because both alight my imagination and strengthen my belief that radical positive change is possible in our lifetime. So I rested, read, and resolved that I would come back strong. After two years of trauma since the pandemic began that fateful day in Kansas, I’d finally faced the final boss. There was a sort of hero’s journey poeticism to it that I embraced from my convalescence.
But one thing that freaked me out was that my sense of smell didn’t disappear until I was starting to feel better from the flu symptoms. Great, I thought, here come the bizarre Long COVID symptoms! Thankfully my smell and taste returned after another few days, but the exhaustion stuck around for a while. Even after I was asymptomatic, testing negative, and clear of quarantine, for about a month if I got any less than nine hours of sleep I would be useless and feel like I was backsliding into a cold. To this day I wonder what the real impacts have been.
Having quarantined through Christmas and skipping family visits, I worked up the strength on December 28th to attend a rally and march in Crown Heights to support the extension of the eviction moratorium (now set to expire January 15th with no further protections in place), to abolish winter evictions entirely, which was organized around Crown Heights Tenant Union tenants fighting to get heat and other repairs. It seemed as good an occasion as any to finally return to the world— and it ended up being a really significant decision.
On my way there the crowded subway already had me feeling anxious, so when I first arrived and saw the very small crowd I was tempted to turn around and leave. After isolation I wasn’t sure I had the social energy for an intimate event where I couldn’t just disappear into the crowd. But in the end I decided this was exactly the kind of event where every single body counts, and any awkwardness was probably worth it.
And indeed it was a little awkward to start. I had my Housing Justice For All mask on and was greeted by a woman in a similarly-branded shirt, but the various housing and socialist groups were self-arranged talking amongst themselves. A few organizers were passing out fliers, but mostly to each other. Feeling quiet in the freezing cold I certainly didn’t have the initiative myself, but I wondered how attendees could be better mobilized to canvass the many commuters and passersby while we waited.
Below: Our small but mighty group of community members and activists on Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights. The notion that evictions would resume in an unprecedented wave mid-winter, mid-pandemic, is an almost unthinkable cruelty. It happened anyway. Photo credit: Crown Heights Tenant Union
Once the rally got going the group spread across the Eastern Parkway median and speeches began. We heard about the impending eviction crisis and the plight of the tenants in attendance who were dealing with disrepair before they opened up the mic. No one jumped in, so an older organizer from Flatbush Tenant Coalition was invited to share her story. She had great things to say, but unfortunately a lot of it was lost due to volume.
When she was done there was another call for testimonies, and again no one jumped in. I started to feel an itch that maybe I should, especially with my outrageous sewer rat story, but just then a member of the Trotskyist org carrying their signature signs stepped up. It could only be described as “classic” – a bookish, old school soapbox about the importance of organizing the working class that maybe went a little long. But when the megaphone was offered up again, for the first time, I finally decided to take it. My anxiety had transformed into righteousness and the performer's ritual need to conjure our energy. So I unleashed it all and boomed through the intersection.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t know what I was going to say. I’d been present for maybe dozens of moments where I let the mic pass because I didn’t want to center myself. But over the years I’d seen how my apartment fight is at the intersection of the housing and climate crises, and how police and prisons are the primary solution to deal with the effects of collapse and displacement. I shouted out the Trots, affirming the necessity to organize in our workplaces, to organize everywhere. I closed by thanking the organizers and the tenants for giving me the opportunity to stand in solidarity and inspiring me to stay in the fight. It was kind of fire.
Before moving out for the march, one of the tenants we were there to support got back on the mic and kicked us off with a powerful statement. She seemed to have renewed vigor after I’d gone, and I hoped I’d been able to warm her up a bit on that icy day. We set off down the median for a few blocks to rally again outside of their building, where we had a great closing round of speeches before dispersing.
On my way out I ended up touching base with a couple of different people I’d only bumped into tangentially in digital organizing spaces. They had heard my story and were interested in helping out, as we were all already working in parallel within NYC-DSA. For both people, that day was the beginning of organizing relationships and friendships that I’ve learned from and done a lot with. It was a good lesson after years of painfully decentering myself: if I hadn’t spoken up, given voice to my own struggle, there are certain balls that may not have gotten rolling; history will tell whether or not that was significant.
Intentions: I was feeling determined on New Year’s Eve to flip the script on the last two years. I had a lot planned, and some of it even came to pass…