by Juliana Maronilla

end of August 2015, start of MHC

I am walking towards the MOMA when I see the homeless person sitting against a building. As I pass him, the thought of stopping and simply talking with him crosses my mind. “I’m supposed to be going to the MOMA” is what my mind tells me. I walk up to the front of the museum and enter. Inside, I see a line of people and turn around. “When I get back, the line will be shorter”, I think to myself. As I head towards the homeless person, subtle feelings of dread pervert my mind as I ponder how the encounter might go. I come right in front of the person and say, “Hi, my name is Juliana. I don’t have money but I’d be willing to hear your story”. The person, who has a baseball cap, ripped jeans and a lengthy cardboard sign, gets up to shake my hand. I stare in slight shock, as I realize this person is a woman. “Hi, I’m April! Nice to meet you. I’d be glad to tell you my story. If you just wait a while, my husband will come around”, the woman replies in a cheery Southern accent. We shake hands and she proceeds to speak. Her nice white complexion and long blonde hair suddenly become visible to me. The woman explains in great detail and passion her story. She and her husband, who are from Indiana, had been living a nice middle-class life. She, in particular, was working in a Chrysler factory, making automobile parts when one year she lost everything- car, house, money, material possessions and family support. She and her husband have been living in New York ever since, as a way of protesting against Chrysler (and as a means of survival). Her greatest request has been that someone, most likely a reporter, would broadcast the injustices she and her husband had faced from Chrysler. And, she hopes to have a better life.

As she speaks, a man comes around the corner and toward us. Similar to her, he has a baseball cap, jeans and an unfamiliar Southern accent. We shake hands and April introduces her husband Eddy to me. Eddy, like his wife, speaks to me with much pleasure. The three of us converse more, discussing our shared faith as Christians. I leave the couple with promise to come again, and I make my way towards the MOMA.

As I enter the MOMA, I think of the encounter I just had-how surprisingly friendly the couple had been. I was soon interrupted by a man. “Excuse me, would you be interested in coming in with me? I have an extra ticket”, the man says.

I ask the man to repeat what he said. He explains that usually he and his wife go to the MOMA together as members (who can go straight into the museum), but his wife was not there. I have the eerie feeling that he asked me because I am Asian and could pose as his daughter. Although I already had a free pass from Macaulay to enter the museum, I agree to go with him and we enter.

After finishing with my assignment at the museum, I head out. Naturally, my eyes search the nearby area for my homeless friends. I did not see them again that day, but knew I would another day.

Like many New Yorkers, my personal experiences with homeless individuals, strides no further than brief encounters on the streets and on the subway carts. I’ve lived in NYC my whole life, and for most of it homeless individuals for me where made up of a man who lived under a bridge near my elementary school, and the foundations to which I donated my old toys, and clothes to. Moving to Manhattan has changed much of that image. I know think about the countless numbers of homeless people I see on the trains asking for help from any individual willing to make a contribution. Many times I see most people ignoring someone who is homeless, and just proceeding with their daily routine. Once in awhile however I see one person willing to reach into their own pockets and give something. Whether it be a sandwich, a few dollars, or even coins there is no doubt that the people receiving this help are grateful. As of recent I feel as though I have seen the amount of homeless individual increase over the past two years, as I keep on seeing more and more people making rounds on the trains looking for help. Last semester my Macaulay poster representation was actually about homelessness in New York City, and the first thing I noticed is that homelessness is increasing at a rapid rate. While the efforts by Mayor De Blasio have been able to slow down the rate of growth of the increasing rate of homelessness, it is clearly not enough.

There is no denying that there is an issue with corruption in police forces throughout the United States. Police officers are often targeting innocent, unarmed people from minority groups which creates and maintains tension between the community and the uniformed officials. The basis of identifying someone as a minority is based on stereotypical appearance; it’s based on a generalized idea of what a person from that race looks like. I have been told on various occasions that I do not look Hispanic, which makes me lucky. While I am proud of my heritage and will flaunt it whenever given the opportunity, I do not deny that I am privileged in not looking like the typical Dominican adolescent. My hazel eyes, light skin, and easily straightened hair heavily contrast the frizzy curls, tanned/dark skin, and brown eyes that are “typical” for Dominicans and other Afro-Latinos. In fact, my parents told me that on a trip back from the Dominican Republic, they were stopped and questioned by officials at the airport because they were travelling with a child that had blonde hair and green eyes, which did not correlate with my parents’ features. When I tell people where I’m from, they say, “Oh, I sort of see it now…” But they didn’t see it before, apparently. While this makes me wonder what they did see, it also means that a random police officer also will not see “it”. I am lucky because the probability of me being on the nasty end of an encounter with a police officer is no where near that of my obviously Hispanic-looking family… and that only serves to make me worry more.