BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD ON ON ON YOUR YOUR YOUR HANDS HANDS HANDS
I can’t shake it off.
I am still haunted by the stories of tenants and people without homes who I talked to on the KC Tenants Crisis Hotline
It was my job, but it was also my passion.
Tenants and working class people had created the Hotline at the beginning of the pandemic when we realized that our elected officials were not fighting for our protections
So, we did it for ourselves
Photo by Julia Cole
I remember Nathan
and he couldn’t pay his rent for March and April because of a pandemic-related layoff, and his property manager was getting aggressive and threatening eviction when the moratorium expired, and Nathan didn’t qualify for stimulus payments because he couldn’t work legally due to his work permit needing to be renewed, but the immigration courts were closed, and he couldn’t get unemployment benefits, and so he was out of options and trapped, and his family was overseas, and then when he got evicted he ended up living week-to-week in an extended stay hotel, and then all Nathan’s belongings and cat were condensed to a suitcase and backpack, and he had to rely on the mutual aid of our community to pay for his housing, and
I don’t know where he is now.
I remember Big Mike
Sometimes the feeling of powerlessness gets too heavy to bear.
Every morning I woke up grinding my teeth and unable to eat for hours. I couldn’t help but wonder if there was something else I could have done. Was I in some way responsible for someone dying or having to go back to domestic violence?
I still carry the weight of their stories
Organizers help others turn their private pain into public power, to find joy in rebellion and solidarity, and to fight back and win.
But where do organizers go when we are worn out and overwhelmed, when we are oversaturated with trauma?
Photo by Jeremy Ruzich
I needed comfort
I picked up my phone and scrolled my contacts down to the Zs. Zac Mueller. Click.
Click.
“Yo, dude, what’s up?”
“Hey, Zac, I can’t fucking take this anymore. Everything about the pandemic is finally getting to me. I can’t handle this pressure It’s too much ”
Zac was one of the people who had brought me into movement work in 2014. I was a student at the University of Missouri - Kansas City. We worked together on the Fight for $15 Movement to organize low wage workers and students to win $15 an hour and union rights.
“What’s going on?”
My feet stepped onto the wooden porch as I opened the black metal storm door. I walked into the backyard; the trees had finally come into bloom. I sat down and squinted up.
It was a beautiful June afternoon. It was mocking me.
“You know we’ve been fighting to win an eviction moratorium since the shut-down began in March? We won a ban on evictions until May 31st, which seemed like a good start Then we flooded the phone lines and sent emails and tweets demanding that this Judge do something –he’s literally the only person in the city who has the power to stop this all happening.
“We just went to his place and had an action - in Kansas City! You know how Kansas City is Actions don’t happen like that, you don’t go to the target's house.
"But we did that!
"People shared testimonies about being homeless He’s religious, so we asked faith leaders to talk about his moral obligation to act.
And you know what he did?
“All of his neighbors could hear, too, because he lives in an apartment. He’s a fucking renter - he should care more!”
Photo by L Hudson
“People are going to die,”
I choked.
“Working on the Hotline has been a nightmareI have to listen to tenants tell me how scared they are of dying What hope can I give them now?”
"Yeah, dude. People in positions of power don’t give a shit about ordinary people.”
“I thought we could do it, though, Zac. We did it before. We’d won an eviction moratorium twice. I don’t get why he wouldn’t extend it I thought we did everything right, you know?
“We did our homework. We organized people in his personal circle to talk to him, to beg him to extend it. We got people to hand write letters to him and take them to his apartment. And… fucking nothing!”
“It sounds like you did everything right. But sometimes, you know, even though you do everything you’re supposed to, you still don’t win.”
“But Zac, I’m talking with all these tenants who are scared for their lives and their family’s, too I can’t help feeling like I’m failing them personally, that people are going to die because of me, you know? This is my paid job.
I feel like we picked a fight that we couldn’t win
“What if I didn’t do enough? What if it’s my fault and now people are going to die?
I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m twenty-five and I went to school for creative writing
I’m not a social worker or a teacher. I don’t know shit!”
“Elie, you need to breathe, ok?”
“Yeah, I know.”
I took my first deep breath.
Zac was in COVID-19 lockdown in Prescott, Arizona.
I imagined him pushing his circular hipster glasses up his nose. Running his hand behind his short, wavy brown hair.
Smoking a cigarette and drinking PBR with a shot of whiskey. Doodling or writing Cooking with his wife, Diana.
“First off: it is not your fault if people die. It’s the whole broken system that makes all this happen.
You are not responsible for these people’s deaths.
“You just took your first hit in the face. It’s going to hurt The first time hurts the most. I’ve been hit hard, too, dude, believe me.
“But each time you get hit you get a new piece of armor. You harden, you know? It hurts like fucking hell, but ten, twenty hits later and you won’t feel it as bad. I promise.
“I’m going to keep it real with you. You know I always do, right?”
““But But this, this, what yo what you feel u feel righ right now, t now, remem remember this ber this feeling. feeling.
It’s the re It’s the real weight al weight of of racial racial capitalism capitalism and and white s white supremacy. upremacy.
It It has real has real life o life or death r death consequ consequences. ences.
You’re experi You’re experiencing encing people’s people’s re real pain." al pain."
Photo by Jeremy Ruzich
“You hear it on the Hotline and with every person you organize. You won’t ever be able to shake this feeling. You get to live with this from now on, because there’s no going back to life before
“You can’t escape it.
“We’re cursed with knowing how the world really works These systems are so deeply ingrained in our society, and you know how every level of fucked up it is. It’s supposed to be impossible to escape. Us organizing isn’t supposed to happen. Organizers aren’t supposed to exist. We aren’t supposed to be able to fight back the way we are. But we do And sometimes we win, and sometimes we lose.
“I’m really goddamn proud of you, dude. Even though the judge didn’t extend the moratorium, you still did amazing, powerful work to get to where you are now. People you don’t know, will never know, have a chance at some sort of hope because of you. You have changed people’s lives, even saved their lives. Maybe you didn’t win the full demand, but you still accomplished something huge. You’re building a social movement of real working class people. A real god damn social movement. You’re doing things that people will read about.”
“This is how they struggled too, Elie, one small step at a time. You are changing the hearts and minds of people, showing them how to follow our North Star.
“It’s not going to be easy. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you it’s going to be okay, because it may not be okay. But we as organizers get to live with that. We know the horrors of why things are this way, and we know that organizing is the only way to attack a system at its core ”
“Right… like Fannie Lou Hammer and Bayard Rustin and Malcolm X and Fred Hampton and Stokely Carmichael and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee…”
I breathed again.
I scooted down three more steps until my feet touched dirt I leaned back against the handrail, gazing at the wooden fence with its rows of black spray-painted question marks.
“The thing is, Zac, I just feel like I’m in a war and I don’t even have a gun!”
“That’s movement work, dude. We’re fighting oppression and hatred that have been rooted in this country since the very beginning
“Poverty is violence. It’s murder, but you can’t always see the gunshot wound or knife stab.
“People are literally dying because they can’t pay a bill, or get medicine, or go to the doctor, and for what?
So some rich-ass white guy can just take a huge shit every morning and then smoke cigars and drink expensive scotch with other old rich white guys, and at the end of the year make more money than you, and I, and Diana, and Caleb, and all our friends combined, times one hundred?
“It impacts real people. I still have dreams about the fast food workers I organized…”
Zac sighed.
“You remember Terra and her five kids?”
“Yeah, her and her move strike with us. The babie anyone! They taught me
“We be that w will w
“And Mr. Benny?”
“How could I forget him?
He was working at McDonald’s on Van Brunt during my first Strike Day. There were a dozen of us in the shop. The manager wanted us to leave. We kept chanting over her She pressed the button for the metal gate to lower.
Mr. Benny saw us with our red shirts, shouting 'come on out, we got your back.’ He slid under the gate right before it closed and went out on strike with us. It was like an action movie.”
“Did he get his GED yet?”
“Yeah, he did.”
“I think about them all the time. Real people with real lives, whose hopes and dreams and stories get fucked with.
“We are worth more. We have our own strategies, and we even have our own weapons and ways of infiltrating the other sidethey just don’t look the same.
“Organizing is fighting back: It is a kind of war, and we’re willing to wage it because we know that there’s better than this.
“I brought you into this shitty world, Elie, and I know it sucks You can’t escape it.
You need to find ways to turn off your brain. y phone off and watch Saturday Night Live and drink cheap beer. I go camping.
ow I hate the outside and bugs, but at least I’m not thinking about all of this. ed to find something for you, or else you won’t make it.”
“We’re all so hopeful about the world when we first start out. er when I met you, dude, you were ready to do whatever it takes. I was like that, too This work eats you up and spits you back out.
t now you need to get up and dust yourself off. You know I’m in your corner.
on’t let the first punch knock you out forever. first hit is the hardest, but it gets easier from here."
I sniffled.
“Thanks, Zac. You really know how to give a pep talk.”
“We need you in this movement, Elie. You’re a fucking amazing organizer.”
“Talk to you later.”
Click.
Zac laughed.
“You know it, dude.
"I got your back.
"Talk to you later ” Click.
I hung up the phone and stared beyond the fence towards the top of the hill. Green treetops swayed in the distance. Birds twittered at each other.
I dug my toes into the dirt.
It was only one punch.
I raised my hands and ran my fingers up and down my jawline. I felt behind my ears.
No broken bones.
No missing teeth.
No bruised eyes or swollen cheeks
One punch to the face and it didn’t even leave a mark.
I stood up and stretched my arms above my head, wiggling and waggling my body to the birds’ chattering
I can punch back And I will punch hard
