Voices from the Heart of Gotham

“Le problème, c'est que la société Américaine a commençaient à associer le mal à tout ce qui n'est pas Blanc, tout ce qui est Noir-Américain, c’est ça qui résume un peu le noyau de ce problème. ”

“I had COVID-19. I was in a hospital in a rehabilitation place for a total of five months. I personally almost died three times. And after the last rehabilitation place to rehab me, I had to learn how to walk again.”

“It’s been insane. I feel like I'm going crazy...because I can't go outside.'”

“The positive impact of COVID.... You're in the house by yourself; You have no other choice, but to look at yourself.... COVID forces you to stand still.”

“What we have to do is recognize that we have more in common than we have a part, and try to assist each other the best that we know-how.”

“I [work] in urgent care.... Ninety-nine percent of those patients are for COVID tests, and it's gotten very stressful.... Some patients get rowdy.... We're just trying our best to make everyone happy.”

“It wasn't just a march. It's literally people coming together and sharing their stories on the shit that they went through when it comes to injustice, police force, and everything.”

“I’ve been called ISIS, Osama, and a terrorist. Middle schoolers are not nice, and they forget that people come in all variations”

“The whole year overall, it was just like an ongoing movie. And every month felt like it was four years in one. Every situation was just like, “How could this happen?” No one believed this would happen, [but] it happened; New York City on shutdown, the world on shutdown.”

“I was a troublemaker in school and in those days the United States had invaded the Dominican Republic. My father thought that it would be better for me to be here.”

“At that time America was on top and everybody used to love America so much, that all the time I would hear about USA, USA. So I decided to come here.”

“Aquí hay todo tipo de sinsabores... aguantar humillaciones. En los trabajos te discriminan por no hablar inglés.”

“We couldn't talk to anybody. We were always indoors; couldn't go to the party, you couldn't go anywhere.... My parents were scared because of the immigration status.”

“The sauces and the salsa the citrusy taste of it for me, it’s the best thing I could ever eat.”

“For me it was really hard because there wasn’t much opportunity because I didn’t speak English.... The way that I communicated with people was either in Portuguese or I wrote down on a piece of paper what I wanted to ask.”

“I remember on Columbus Avenue between 100st to 96st they used to have a sign and the sign says “No Blacks, No Puerto Ricans, and No Pets.””

“When you get amongst these protesters...and you get amongst your peers, you really see that you’re not the only one that’s been encountering these things; You’re not the only one who feels as though you’re being harassed by police just because of the color of your skin or because of where you’re from, or how you dress, or where you live, or how you carry yourself.”

“The problem is that it never gets addressed... Police officer [Derek Chauvin was] looking at the camera, people are yelling, 'You're killing him!' and he keeps his knee on the neck of a black man and kills him.”

“I've always had a hard time with my identity because I don't really fit in wherever I go...”

“I miss the judgement-free enviorment where I wasn't judged or violated for who I am.”

“Some people are just too, 'This is a system that works....' It['s] an eviction tsunami that we're facing...hundreds of thousands of people who have died because of the pandemic.... Violent repression out on the streets.... Billionaires getting richer as more and more people file for unemployment. It's very disheartening.”

“Uno se siente muy bien porque uno quiere que le guste su comida, pero cada país o cada cultura le gusta comer su comida”

“I went to a [BLM] protest in Union Square... [but] actually haven't been to a lot of them because my mother has an autoimmune disorder. If she gets COVID-19, it's not good.”

“I think it’s interesting how you, as an officer can look at a protest saying 'stop killing black people' and think that that’s a personal attack on you.”

“There's times when I go play ball with my friends. We sit down and the cops would come and stop us, thinking we're doing drugs even though you're [just] hanging out with friends trying to hoop”

“Its conversation between two people that are humans, it is just that one has a badge...”

“I am protesting as much as I can even though I am scared, even though I am not a protester at heart. I am a scientist. I do it because I believe that's a powerful way of getting action”

“Police need to change how they handle us minorities, us Hispanics, us Black people, us Mexicans... we need to be treated the same, equally. That's what needs to be changed”

“I think that we’re just tired and it’s time to really create change and not just say--say it and it to be a trending topic, but for real change to happen in all different types of systems, health systems, police systems, political...”

“Unfortunately the president does nothing but inflames racial tension.”

“You couldn't go to a certain place, because it was a white neighborhood.”

“All my minority people. I ride for you, you ride for me.”

“If I could pick anyone [to eat a meal with], it would be my uncle.... My uncle is dead, but I still would pick him...and we would eat grill cheese because it was his favorite things to eat.”

“Solo tendría un pedazo de plástico de bolsa de basura para descansar... Pero aun así me sentía con ánimo porque estaba a Nueva York y salí adelante. ”

“Cuando tu llegas aquí tienes muchas oportunidades. Depende si tu quieres cogerlas o rechazarlas.”

“Poco a poco se fueron dando las cosas en que iba conociendo en esta ciudad… Iba conociendo las oportunidades, lo que uno tiene para salir adelante y pues hasta el día de hoy, me encanta esta ciudad.”

“Creo que es un sueño más grande al tener su casa, su familia, y eso sinceramente nos da los Estados Unidos, oportunidades que en nuestro país sinceramente no podemos llegar a tener.”

“la parte más difícil… creo que haber dejado mi casa allá, mi casa de toda la vida... Mis amigos, mi trabajo, y todo, todo lo que era una vida.”

“I expected the typical American Dream that every little child is told when they're moving to America. I expected to be embraced and for everyone to be different, but still accepted.”

““En este país se puede triunfar, se puede hacer cosas que en mi país no lo hay.””

“Society as a whole should take action and come together.... We need to see how we can help undocumented immigrants ”

“Al principio no es fácil, pero si tú quieres lograr muchas cosas buenas, tienes que adaptarte al idioma...Si, es un poco difícil pero hay que hacerlo.”

“I have to make money to pay for everything here and still have to send money to make sure [my family in El Salvador] have food for the rest of the week or month.”

“Not having legal status, there were not many opportunities for me.... They told me made me just stay under radar, you know? So I didn’t see any opportunities.”

“Yo cambiaría para mucha gente en este país de hacer una ley de inmigracion, darle la oportunidad a mucha gente que en verdad es trabajadora.”

“You can’t judge at people by the way they look. You got to talk to people like you know, you find other things that you’re missing.”

“I thought in this country it was very easy to get money and everything was easy. Until I started living here, I noticed everything was hard for an immigrant coming to a new country like this.”

“It's really difficult to get citizenship here.... The first time we applied we had to wait for months before getting a response and it cost a lot of money.... We're not allowed to go anywhere because if we went anywhere it's no guarantee that we can come back in the country”

“We immigrants work very hard...if we want to be prosperous we have to work hard.”

“I love New York! It’s a fast pace, you know like, just everyone’s alive...”

“En algún momento, todos los que vivimos fuera de nuestra patria sentimos una inmensa nostalgia... por lo que hemos dejado atrás”

“I kinda have stay here. I'm under the green card so if I leave the territory for more than six months during a year I lose my green card and I cannot come back here I cannot come back.”

“ If you go by the rules and regulations in this country you have no reason why you cannot be a resident or a citizen of the United States.”

“Le agradezco mucho a este país, hoy mis hijos están en la universidad, son dos adolescentes ejemplares.”

“Dominican food is really rich, so anything Dominican kind of reminds me of home.”

“They say what you eat is who you are. So I feel like if I eat healthy, I’m going to be a healthy person and if I eat junk food, I’m going to be an unhealthy person”

“It brings back memory when we used to cook with mom and dad and my oldest sister, we used to make meatballs with pasta and noodles.”

“Nosotros lo dominicano hacemos de todo. Arroz, habichuelas, carne, mangú, sancocho, asopao.... Somo expertos en todo, pero la tradición es arroz, habichuelas, y carne... y el aguacate que no se queda!”

“Anytime I eat it’s just like home, you know this is where I’m supposed to be.”

“I sometimes go to school without eating, come back without knowing what to eat, just drink water and go back to school. But still go to school and do well so we can get out of poverty.”

“When I do my own cooking, it is healthier because I see and know what exactly what is put into my meal.”

“I would eat with my mother because I haven't seen her since like I was like twelve. I would eat with her because I have questions that never got answered.”

“Las comida en casa es más saludable que la comida en la calle”

“En nuestro país está [la comida] ahí mismo lo produce la tierra, no tiene químico...”

“At Thanksgiving We all together, we all together eating turkey.”

“If you live near a place that sells just fresh foods it’s gonna change the way you eat; It's gonna change what kind of food you put in your body.”

“'Eating well' means...you’re gathered with your family and everybody enjoys the food and everybody gets full and have a great time.”

“Growing up I was raised by a single mother and we didn’t have it like that. So anytime I had the opportunity to eat a fresh home cooked meal I didn’t take it for granted.”

“La comida dominicana me hace ser quien soy hoy en día porque es la que más me gusta y la que me representa...”

“Eating well means eating healthy, but it also means not spending a lot of money on the food. ”

“I would eat with Michelle Obama, and we would eat some snow crab legs with shrimp, because it's hilarious and I've watched too many ASMR videos. So, I can just picture Michelle Obama and me doing that, and also, it’s a good way to break the ice.”

“I used to think I faced real hunger since there are times in my life where I've felt hungry and I had to wait a long time to eat. But now, when I think about it, it's not real.... Real hunger some people in the world face, where they go two or three days without eating, I've never gone through that”

“There was a Civil War in El Salvador and that’s why I left.””

“The US was not everything that I expected. I arrived with the thought that it was easy to earn a lot of money. People back home would tell me that you could find money in the streets in the United States”

“[My teacher] said, 'What's the matter with you stupid? Don't you understand English?' I said, 'No.' So she said, 'You don't understand English?' I said 'no.' She hugged me, you know. And she said she was sorry she didn’t know.”

“Ojalá que esto lo puedan seguir continuando y que las tradiciones de nosotros los mexicanos pues no se terminen, que continuen”

“When I first got to Harlem, my little heart smiled being a Westchester girl because I [never before had] found myself…being surrounded by all black people”

““Racism here in New York is blatant and dangerous. I saw a lot of my dreams burned to dust.””

““Cuando yo me vine [de México] para Los Estados Unidos no sabía yo leer ni escribir…..Una señora que es dominicana que trabaja conmigo me dijo ‘tu puedes aprender leer en un periódico yo te voy a enseñar’ … allí en el periódico aprendí a leer.” ”

““My father couldn’t understand my enthusiasm for civil rights, but I was shaped by my experiences.” ”