Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 196

“I’ve had some bad luck with living arrangements. I’m on my...

“I’ve had some bad luck with living arrangements. I’m on my seventh apartment in three years. My first place in New York was a room in a warehouse with a semi-translucent piece of plastic as a wall. I found it on Craigslist. I shouldn’t have moved in but the guy told me he had three other people waiting so I panicked. My neighbor was an eighty-year-old photographer who sat around in his underwear all day and either watched violent porn or really sexualized war movies– I’m not sure. I got out of there after a few months, and found some new roommates who accepted me on the basis of a tarot card reading. That place wasn’t too bad, actually. But the lease ended and I moved into a place with no heat or hot water. Then the landlord was caught siphoning power off a nearby streetlamp. I did get to go to housing court that time, which was kinda cool I guess. My next apartment had smoke alarms that randomly went off at four in the morning. Then I lived with my girlfriend for awhile but we broke up, so I started sleeping on couches. But I’m in a really good place now. I almost don’t want to say this, because it sounds like I’m bragging, but there’s a washer and dryer in the apartment.”

“God is a strange man. Sometimes I feel like he’s an alien...

“God is a strange man. Sometimes I feel like he’s an alien watching me from the sun. When I’m alone, he talks to me. He made me psycho about the moon. I was sitting at the wounds of the Twin Towers and he had me screaming Lady Gaga at the moon in weird strange tones. He doesn’t care. He’s toying with me. He wakes me up every day. He turned me into a St. Louis Cardinals baseball fan. One time he had me at Central Park Zoo acting like a seal. Yesterday he made me spend my last dollar on cheese doodles when I really wanted a butter roll. He almost made me a suicide case. He made me jump on the railroad tracks outside the mental health facility.”

(4/4) “I applied for a maintenance job here at the Harlem...

(4/4) “I applied for a maintenance job here at the Harlem Commonwealth Council. When I showed up for my interview, they sent me straight to the president’s office. His name was Dr. Tait. He’s a very business-oriented person but he’s also versatile. The whole time he had me feeling like I was talking to a real ‘OG.’ I told him everything. I just gave it to him raw. And at the end, he said to me: ‘I like your fucking style.’ I couldn’t believe it. The president said ‘fucking.’ He told me: ‘I know people make mistakes. But right now, the only thing that matters is who you want to become and how we can help you get there.’ Then he walked me out of his office and told the interviewer: ‘I like this guy.’ And that was it.”

(2/4) “We didn’t really have any struggles. We had all the...

(2/4) “We didn’t really have any struggles. We had all the newest things: color television, Atari, those big ass cellphones. My dad had a limousine service that drove us to school. And we always went to private Catholic schools. I’d come back wearing my uniform and all my friends would make fun of me. I even had a horse on Long Island named Apples. Each of my siblings had a horse. Mine liked apples so I named him fucking Apples. That was our life. But then one day my parents decided to go legit. I was seventeen or eighteen at the time. They sat us down one Saturday afternoon at the big glass table in the living room. You know how Caucasian people do Sunday dinner? No disrespect, but that was Saturday afternoon for us. They sat us down and told us they were stopping everything. And they did. No more drinking, no more drugging. They sold all the businesses. Both of them worked regular jobs for the next 25 years. My dad became a train driver and my mom became a drug counselor. They told us they wanted to set an example for us. They told us they didn’t want us getting involved in drugs. But that was all we’d ever known.”

(¼) “My parents were big in the hustling game. It...

(¼) “My parents were big in the hustling game. It wasn’t like it is now. Now it’s a bunch of kids on the corner trying to get sneakers. In the early eighties it was a group of older dudes— just some local cats who got together and decided: ‘This is how we’re going to eat.’ Nobody was coming to our house to buy a dime bag. Everyone who came over was buying weight. Those were the people who we’d see all the time as kids. They were like our family. They’d give us a hundred bucks to go to the store and tell us to keep the change. It was all very friendly and civil. There were even three police officers that would always come over and smoke– two white guys and a Spanish guy. They’d sit down in our living room at a big glass table, and my dad would come out from the back and hit them up with envelopes. Pops looked out for the whole block. He’d throw block parties. He’d organize bus trips for all the neighborhood kids. He’d take everyone to Great Adventures and pay for the whole thing. And at Christmastime, our doors would stay open. There would be a huge pile of presents and kids from the block would come inside and take whatever they wanted. It used to make me jealous because it seemed like they got more than we did.”

“I identify as being queer. I also identify as being a social...

“I identify as being queer. I also identify as being a social worker, a metal head, a goth, sort of a pagan, and maybe a witch. But I think that I most strongly identify as being a nerd. Nerds have the least amount of rules. For the most part, they don’t care about any of that other stuff. They’re just excited about the things that they’re excited about and they’re happy to share it with you.”

As I’ve said so many times before, the community that has grown...

As I’ve said so many times before, the community that has grown around this page is a special group of people. In addition to the people who follow this page, so many of you choose to routinely engage and participate in the community. You’ve created such a unique and supportive culture in the comment section. And you’ve donated nearly $5 million to our fundraisers in 2015. I think the HONY community is largely composed of people who try to choose compassion over cynicism, and that’s why we’ve been able to accomplish so much this year. In short—this is a group of people who ‘shows up.’ So thanks so much for showing up last year. Here are some of the things we were able to accomplish:

In January we raised $1.4 million to provide summer programs, college trips, and scholarships to students at Mott Hall Bridges Academy. The money is being administered with the assistance of The Fund for Public Schools. Earlier this year, the students took their first class trip to Harvard. This summer, they participated in a new summer enrichment program featuring such courses as horticulture, financial literacy, and social justice. Vidal, who inspired the effort, is beginning a new chapter as a high school freshman. And Ms. Lopez (The Lopez Effect) has continued to be recognized for her dedication to students, recently giving a TED Talk and becoming a finalist for The Global Teacher Prize.

In August we raised $2.3 million to help Syeda Ghulam Fatima in her quest to end bonded labor in Pakistan. Fatima has been extremely careful and deliberate in her acceptance of the funds, consulting with many other stakeholders and advocacy groups about how best to maximize the impact. She recently received the final installment, and plans to break ground on a new Freedom Center in 2016 to shelter and rehabilitate freed workers. Since our fundraiser, 105 slaves have been freed with the assistance of Fatima’s Bonded Labour Liberation Front, including one of the slaves featured on HONY. Earlier this year, the Clinton Global Initiative chose Fatima for its Global Citizen Award.

Most recently we raised $750,000 to assist thirteen Syrian refugee families selected for American resettlement. We are partnering with the nonprofit Together Rising (www.togetherrising.org), who will be helping us receive the funds and get 100% of the donations to the families– in a smart way that doesn’t conflict with other aid they may be receiving.

Finally, and closest to my heart, we are supporting Aya through her appeal process for American resettlement. Our petition ended at almost exactly one million signatures. (I’m choosing to view this as a favorable omen.) Now comes the less glamorous but critical process of filing the appeal itself. Aya’s lawyers at the International Refugee Assistance Project have been working over the holiday to get the appeal finished as soon as possible, and plan to be done next week. I’ll share all major developments on the blog, but as we move forward, I will be providing more detailed updates on the petition page here: http://chn.ge/1OxgK7F

Thanks to everyone for a wonderful year.

Excited for what’s to come.

“Life during the week sucks. But when we’re...

“Life during the week sucks. But when we’re together, we’re good.”

(3/3) “I had one student who came to my school as an ‘emergency...

(3/3) “I had one student who came to my school as an ‘emergency transfer.’ He was fourteen when he came into my class. He’d kick, bite, scream. He’d even pee his pants just to take them off and throw them at you. I taught him for several years. Recently he graduated, and to celebrate I took him to see The Minions. He stood in line to get his popcorn. He sat still through the entire movie. He was able to ‘be there.’ And that’s what gives me the most satisfaction. Getting my students to the point where they can be in this world.”

(2/3) “Even in special education, our curriculum is based on...

(2/3) “Even in special education, our curriculum is based on Common Core standards. I’ll have to teach about seasons to a child who doesn’t know his own name. I’m expected to teach To Kill A Mockingbird to a classroom full of nonverbal students, some of whom may be wearing diapers and haven’t learned their ABCs. I think it’s insulting to tell students what they’re going to learn, regardless of their abilities and needs. But I try to work some magic and design a lesson plan where everyone in the class can take something away from the story. For the least advanced students, we just use To Kill A Mockingbird to practice the alphabet. Then I’m also expected to teach Algebra. I try my best using lots of velcro and lamination, but I can’t say that many of my students have ever learned how to solve for x. We spend so much energy on learning how to sit still. I think special populations should be focused more on vocational training like filling out forms and budgeting money—things that will give them confidence and prepare them for independence. But I keep my mouth shut and do my best to work within the system. When I first began teaching, my mentor told me: ‘If there’s anything about the system that you want to fight, just make sure it’s the hill you want to die on.’”