Moments in a Year

On a given day, the intersection at Winter and Washington Street in Downtown Crossing is bustling with activity. The businesswoman walks with a purpose as she talks about the day’s affairs on her phone. Clusters of tourists are stopping to take pictures and look at storefronts. Young people are lounging around in their groups. The smell of food in the air as vendors stand by their carts selling hot sausages and touristy clothing. If one looks closer, one would see another group of forgotten people. People who, at one time, very easily could or had been in those other groups.

Yesterday, that same intersection was empty. Aside from a random person hurriedly trying to get somewhere, there is no one. While it was expected that most people would be held up in their warm homes, I figured I would see at least that one group, the forgotten people, but they had also vanished. I walked into a local place to get a hot coffee, a quick respite from the cold wind cutting through outside. I felt a sense of achievement as I finally filled out the punch card to get a free drink. I got the coffee and asked the lady behind the counter for another punch card. In a quietly strained voice, she replied that the coffee shop is closing. I looked at her, surprised. What do you mean, I asked. She explained that because of the pandemic and loss of business, they had to close for the foreseeable future. Shocked, I walked back outside onto the eerily cold, quiet sidewalk, trying to figure out what was happening around me. Little did I know of what was to come.

The moments flash before my mind's eye. Standing in full PPE in a Covid field hospital, shadowed by military police.

Standing outside the field hospital with patients, staff, and the military personnel as fighter jets fly overhead and salute the frontline workers...

Images violently flash through the mind’s eye. People lying on the ground, pleading with their last gasps of air for their mother. Hatred spewed through aggression, action, and word—flames of protest and retaliation. Standing outside my car, being shaken down by a cop about why I was with a Black man. Anger rushed over me like a rogue wave. Why am I being questioned for being friends with a Black man? The image of the person pinned to the ground in my mind as fear floods through my body, as I hope my friend is safe. We were not just hanging out at the Convention Center; we had just finished a ten-hour shift at the COVID field hospital. 

The moment flashes forward. I am standing in the breezeway where we now have the exchange. Our participants aren’t allowed into the building because of the pandemic. A woman comes up and asks for supplies. While we assist her with what she needs, she proceeds to explain that she had been stabbed three times the night before. The reaction is to give her sterile supplies that might help keep the wounds clean. But yet the feeling of being removed and helpless nagging at my mind as I give her the extra supplies and wish her safety as she stiffly walks away...

The moment flashes forward, and I am standing in the middle of a fenced-in area that the mayor has deemed a ‘safe place’ for the forgotten people. Bloody pieces of material and trash line the ground. Out of sight, out of mind. Events quickly flash into my mind's eye and then play out in slow motion. Kneeling over a young man who is not breathing, hurriedly trying to get oxygen into him so that he doesn’t die, this seemingly being put on repeat. The moment changes to knives and guns being pulled. The scene of standing only feet away from an old man savagely beaten, left in a bloodied pile, and all I can do is be a witness. The same types of moments are playing out like they are on repeat.