Off The Rails

Fuck Your Expensive Vacation

I can’t stop looking at people on vacation. I can’t stop staring at swimming holes I’ve never been to, genteel picnics, rented houses, meals on boats out to sea, relaxation and forgiving days. Did you rent a castle? I don’t think I’m mature enough to witness the daily life of affluent people and what they want to share. I’m not wired for that kind of Aspirational Life. There’s a danger to it. Not an edgy, sexy danger but a negligent capitalist one that I just am not able to square with. 

We are in the largest food insecurity crisis of our lifetimes, straight up. The financial ramifications of COVID, people not being able to work for months, years, not being able to pay rent, buy food, keep their heads afloat. COVID has been joined by inflation, the powerful Supply Chain Issues and the Russian war in Ukraine impacting the price of food and gas. Everyone along the way seems to be padding their pockets just a little bit and getting off on blaming workers for organizing and demanding livable wages. Is it inflation, or is it greed? We still seem to take the word of the heads of corporations, like they’re not the biggest war criminals on this planet. 

Here in New York, the Good Eviction Cause did not pass. Tenants have no protections against rent increases if they’re not in stabilized apartments. Rents are at an all-time high. The New York State legislation just passed the highest rent increase for stabilized apartments in 10 years. People were evicted during the moratorium, even though it was illegal, because often laws exist only for those with access and means. Or let’s be honest, who those laws were made for in the first place.  The company New York State used to facilitate the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP), Guidehouse, a for-profit contractor, “won” the no-compete bid under then governor Andrew Cuomo. Guidehouse hired longtime Cuomo advisor Joseph Spinelli in the spring of 2021. Hell, Spinelli even worked for his dad Mario Cuomo! New York’s rent relief was the one of the slowest relief programs in the country, along with South Carolina. There were practically no pay-outs for 6 months.

According to the Washington Post article on January 25, 2022, Scott McIntyre, the chief executive, congratulated staff in November 2021 for their $115 million in fees over six months, a 38% margin on the program. He also congratulated them on the extension of the program by the state and new governor Kathy Hochul. 

Could you imagine working for a company where your boss brags about how much money was made for a rent program set up for people in danger of losing their homes, especially at such an incredibly collectively fraught time? 

Here’s the thing, here’s always the thing (almost everything I write can be titled “Here’s the thing…), we are in a crisis in this city, in this country and pretty much the entire world. And that crisis is the rise of fascism and all that implies. 

Many of us have shunned the concept of “going back to normal,” a bit, but a lot of people have been able to continue with some semblance of their lives as they choose it. Let’s be honest, we long for the ignorance, it’s a beautiful bliss. It feels like life is back for a lot of folks, work has returned, socializing is back and travel is on the table again. There’s nothing this country does better than pretend like nothing ever happened. But things are worse, across the board. 

The amount of people who need aid, housing and food in this city is increasing, not decreasing. People ask me on the regular if the need at the food pantry is slowing down. Not at all. There’s been a steady increase over the past few years for so many reasons. The migrants you read about in the New York Times arriving in this city on buses from Texas as some passive aggressive or aggressive aggressive power move by that psychopath Greg Abbott are your neighbors now. You just don’t see them because you only have eyes for you. 

We need distractions and we definitely need joy, but we also need to deal with the bad shit happening. Or it will crush us all. Two years ago there was an urgency in the air and on the streets. It’s such a singular time in this city and in this country, in so many of our lives, but there’s nothing romantic about it, because nothing has been solved. Things are worse now, with more people turning a blind eye. The people still doing the work are burned out and unfunded, but the work remains. 

The work of equity cannot be left to the government, they are not interested in it. And it can’t be an afterthought, because that side hustle is not panning out. It must be integrated into our lives, through a number of avenues. Mutual aid, voting even though it feels somewhat doomed because it’s not totally doomed yet, advocacy, reparations, policy…

I guess this is the moment to say I left my job, the food pantry and soup kitchen where I’ve worked in some capacity for six years. I’m burned out; my health has been a little on meh side, I’ve hit the limit of what I can do there.

In terms of numbers, we are distributing food to over twice as many people as we were two years ago. The average then was 250-300 people, increasing to 400 people daily by the holidays 2020. Now the daily average is between 600-700 people coming for pantry. This doesn’t include the hot meals that are distributed or other organizations that pick-up or have food delivered for distribution. There have been days the numbers have nudged to almost 800.

How are we supposed to deal with burnout when we’re involved in matters so urgent, matters of survival, rights and safety, including housing, food and access to health care? How do we begrudgingly acknowledge the glacial pace of policy and live with every damn gut punch repeatedly doled out by the lawmakers and corporations and still find a way to get up? Knowing that change will come too late for so many? 

Maybe I’m writing this for me, along with you. I’m always there, so don’t feel like I’m always just yelling at you. I’m also yelling at me. I know the suffering is there, and I need to make sure I don’t ignore it, but I also don’t know how to counter that with something truly restorative.

Leaving often feels like an abandonment, a betrayal. Feeding people is like the myth of Sisyphus, push the rock up the mountain, watch it slide down, push it up and it comes back down, over and over again. Hunger always returns, it takes more than a meal to solve it. So many unhoused people and so many hungry people are indicative of a society that has failed. These needs are not aberrations, they are proof of systems that do not work. I am a part of and product of this society that fails so many people by design. What if my hopes and dreams stand directly in opposition of those with fewer resources, access and opportunities, in opposition to their security and safety? How do I ensure I don’t return to being a totally clueless white person? But also, I hope someday to have a beautiful vacation. 

Perhaps I strike you as petty. Oh I definitely can be. But I’ve found that my pettiness is often rooted in something real, a criticism of how we are living and working. Right now I feel like we see some of the problems, and some we do our best to ignore. I truly don’t believe we can move forward with real change and still embrace all the bells and whistles of this fucked up country, this consumption, this constant low grade Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous. We want the comfort of before. The problem with the comfort of before is that it brought us directly here.

We figured out how to carefully distribute a dozen fresh eggs with milk to people along with a bag of shelf-stable food & another of produce. I pride myself on my fast bagging skills.