A problem with organizing in America

Today a young Spanish speaking woman showed up at the door asking for me. She turned out to be the sister of a client. She had come to ask me if our psychiatrist and I can write a letter to help get her brother, a gay man, out of ICE detention. He’s being held up in Goshen, NY two hours north of the City, and I hate to imagine what he is going through up there. I tell her I’m not sure it will help, that the system lacks compassion, but that we will try. First, though, I am going to speak to his lawyer to make sure we don’t accidentally say anything that could make the situation worse. I could see her anxiety when she walked in, but as we talked she relaxed, and when we finished with her brother’s situation, she decided to ask if I can help her too. She lost her work permit and needs to replace it. We went over the form, and she asked me about the fee – this administration has jacked up the prices for everything immigration related, so the filing fee for this is a whopping $460. She looked discouraged, so I dug around and found out that you can submit a fee waiver for this and we did that as well. As I moved through the day, up and down our many stairs since this old church does not have an elevator, my ankle was really bothering me. I have had problems with the achilles tendon on that side for a long time and it’s bad today, but lately something else has been happening. It’s like a lightning bolt from my ankle out the bottom of my foot, but only at the end of the day and only when I’m going downstairs. It’s fast but it hurts so much that I have to stand on the stairs on one foot like an awkward stork for a few minutes after to recover. “That’s nerve pain,” said my radical ankle doc when I saw her last week. No kidding. “I can’t inject it again,” she said several times until I finally said “I’m not asking you to.” “I know,” she said, “I’m just frustrated.” “You want to be able to fix it,” I said and she nodded. She wants an MRI because she wants to see if something in my ankle is putting pressure on the nerve. “I hate to say this but it could also be coming from your back,” she said gently. “There’s a waiting list,” I told her jokingly “because I have a brain one next week.” I thought about the 19 MRIs in my medical records. “I’ve had so many they could be the plans to build a new me.” We’re laughing but it’s rueful. Writing up the documentation to try to get the MRI approved, she asked me when I first had trouble with this ankle. I think hard, but I really can’t pinpoint the year. “I know it made me late meeting someone at Curry Hut, but I can’t think how many years ago that was.” She spun away from the computer. “What did you get?” she asked. I don’t remember that either. “I usually get aloo gobi matar,” I told her . “That’s a good one,” she said. “You can vary the level of spice and the spices really transform the potatoes” and suddenly we were in a whole conversation about Indian food. “When I was in high school, learning to cook, I learned from this huge book called ‘Indian Vegetarian Cooking,’” I said. Indian herself, she asked me why I chose that. “Back then, there wasn’t much mainstream vegetarian food, and India has a lot of vegetarian options.” She nodded in agreement. “I really worked hard on it,” I told her. “I can even make Poori.” “Wow! Even Indian people go to restaurants when we want Poori.” “It’s not easy,” I replied, remembering the many failed attempts before I got a feel for it. Finishing the paperwork, she asked me about No Kings. I told her about the meeting place and the route. After I saw her, I ducked into the supermarket to buy some fruit to take to work. The woman checking me out looked at my abolish ice shirt and smiled. “I like your shirt,” she said. “What are they doing at the airports? He sent them there just to bother people. Have you been to any of the protests?” I told her I would be a marshal lead at the back at 7th Ave. “He is not my president. He is all about money,” she says. “My husband says that when things go up, he probably tells all his rich friends to buy now before they go back down.” “Insider trading, definitely” I said. “Have a good protest,” she said. “I will be working.” This is one of the challenges of organizing in America. Unlike in Europe and Scandinavia where people have a lot of time off and strong worker protections, people here can’t all walk off the job to protest without really risking their livelihoods. Although I love the idea of a national strike, I think too many people are only one check away from homelessness or other disaster for it to work.