Lenny

Lenny Heading to the subway to work, wearing my Fuck Trump shirt, a young woman coming out of the train says “I like your shirt.” Once you would never have heard that in conservative Bay Ridge but things are changing as younger, more progressive people get priced out of places closer to Manhattan (or The City as people from Deep Brooklyn call it) and wind up in Bay Ridge. As I’m thinking this, an older man across from me is studying my shirt and I stiffen a little because it’s the older folks who usually give me shit, but he too says “I like your shirt,” and when I hear his Brooklyn Jewish accent I relax. So I tell him “there’s a big march on Saturday and give him the details.” He moves over to the bench next to to me so he can hear better and we begin a conversation. When I hear his Brooklyn Jewish accent, I start to relax. We talk about Jimmy Kimmel and how all these behemoth institutions are cowering. “Trump is a bully,” he says. As the conversation continues, I notice a man who has just gotten on with shoulder length white hair is listening in, smiling to himself and nodding. “It must take some courage to wear a shirt like that in Bay Ridge,” he says. So I tell him about the decades of harassment I have experienced from conservative neighbors, the time they called and got me a ticket for weeds in the sidewalk, etc. “but it’s changing," I say and he agrees. “I heard that young woman about your shirt.” There are MTA personnel with flashlights walking through the train prodding and jiggling the doors, which is never a good sign. They announce that there is a mechanical issue and we have to wait for the next train across the platform I can tell my new friend can’t hear this so I tell him and we move. “I wish more people had grown up like I did, listening to survivors from the Holocaust. I feel like if people knew more about Hitler’s Germany they would have a better idea of what’s happening now.” He agrees, and says “they don’t want people to have education, history, black history. And they are defunding public media so they have no information.” “Except Fox,” I add, and tell him about Truth Tuesdays. “My wife and I read a book about a couple in Nazi Germany who wrote short anti-Hitler messages and left them places,” he tells me. “So we got some index cards and started writing our own messages and leaving them places. I put 'Trump makes your grocery prices rise' in the supermarket.” I’m smiling at the idea of this elderly couple organizing their own resistance campaign so he continues, “So then we had a few parties and told people what we were doing and got them doing it, too.” “That’s great,” I tell him. “You know about the red cards?” He asks me. I tell him I do. “We’ve been giving those out and nobody reacts badly. They thank us and ask for more. People need to know their rights.” I agree and then tell him about my migrant clients and how even when they do everything right in terms of following the legal immigration process they still are in danger of being snatched up by masked men. “Are you a social worker he asks?” I tell him I’m the Director of a homeless LGBTQ youth center. “My wife is a clinical social worker,” he says. I wonder if he means currently but I don’t want to be rude by asking if she’s retired so I just nod. We get to the stop where I would normally grab the express but we’re deep in conversation and I can get the express further on so I stay until we reach 9th St where he’s planning to switch to the F. “My name’s Lenny,” he says and i tell him mine. Right before he gets off, I tell him "Rise and Resist has a calendar of protests on their website" and he nods.