from the city that always sleeps to the city that never sleeps

After eight hours of travel, I got to ride around New York City in my Oberlin roommate's mom's car. I tried my best to get a grip on my surroundings, but then we'd be on a different block and in a different world where hundreds of different people live (and as my roommate's mom pointed out, poop indoors, which makes no sense). I hadn't really considered when I had coffee in Sweetwaters on a mellow Saturday Ann Arbor morning that this world existed, but it does, all the time. I'm clearly not the first to puzzle over the huge buildings, or the catcalls that Roommate and I got when we took a nighttime walk around her neighborhood. But there you have it. I've thought a lot about what my community organizing (CO) friend said about safety in the city, which is that acknowledging the people we fear can be one of the most productive things to do - one, because it shows confidence, and two, because it breaks down the inevitable stereotypes we use in order to analyze our surroundings. I tried to do that tonight.

Back in queer organizing land, I've been corresponding with the leader of the project I will be working on, called the Welfare Warriors. It's a participatory action research project (PAR), which means that the people involved are actually researching themselves, and people like them - in this case, low-income LGBTQ people. I've done some PAR work before, with my high school activism group Riot Youth. What I remember as one of the most rewarding things about that research is that it felt that not only were we learning about ourselves and realizing we were not alone in our experiences as LGBTQ youth in our town, we were exposing our experiences to the world in a way that was credible and would create change.

I'm not sure how much I'm supposed to talk about the research being done here, yet - I'll ask the project leader on Monday when I start. But I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that the research involves sharing situations that they've had with the people who are trying to help them, but instead hurt them. There's a technical term for this - it's called "spaces of exception" - basically, situations when people don't have all their rights, like protection from the state. I'm sure I'll write more about this in the coming days.

I worry that all the privilege I have as a college student from a middle-class family in Ann Arbor, and the privilege of never having received direct harassment based on my identity as a queer person, will be difficult to deal with as I work with QEJ. One of my goals is to make sure that I dissect it as much as I can, and understand at least where I come from when differences arise.

Tomorrow is a full day in the city with Roomie and nothing to do but explore. And buy a subway pass. It's late and this entry is long. Love you all.