Forgotten Frontline Workers

Re’gan Weal

Re’gan Weal is a bus operator and a member of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union.³

Driving a bus during COVID-19

There was no traffic. We weren’t picking up people. I’ve never seen Times Square empty. I mean, when I say empty, there were no parked cars at all.

We still had to stay on schedule. A lot of us had to park our buses and wait before we could go to the next time point. We still couldn’t be ahead of schedule.

We didn’t really have a lot of passengers. But when we did sometimes it was a challenge to get them to keep their mask on. You would have some people coughing and sneezing and that worried us. Most cooperated but some didn’t. If someone didn’t cooperate, we would call it in, because we didn’t feel safe. They would send a supervisor to us or sometimes we could put the bus out of service because it just wasn’t safe for anyone if someone refuses to wear a mask.

I had a man who came through the back door, sat in the back, and he was just hacking. He refused to put on a mask. The passengers asked him, I asked him, so I had to call it in; a supervisor came, put them off the bus.

The Port Authority bus terminal was a difficult stop.

We would pick up the homeless when Port Authority kicked the homeless out. They had nowhere to go and at that time it was still a little chilly. So they would come on the bus, which was kind of unsafe for us because now you have the mentally challenged on the bus as well, you have people who you don’t know, and you can’t predict what they’re going to do.

I had one guy who made me nervous because he would just stand there and stare at me in the mirror. And he made me nervous to the point where I called it in. I didn’t know what he was capable of. I didn’t know what he was going to do. And I wasn’t risking it. So I called it in. What you have to remember is that there wasn’t really a lot of people on the bus at that time. It was just him and I. And I wasn’t taking the chance. So I asked for assistance.

Conditions eased toward the end of the summer of 2020.

At that point everyone was required to wear a mask. Some people were going back to work at the time, but the buses and the streets weren’t as crowded as they used to be.

The traffic was great at that time because we had nothing in our way. The streets were mainly empty. So we really didn’t have a lot of challenges with traffic. COVID-19 was horrible, but the driving was great.

Honestly, I didn’t have to beep my horn at anyone. No one was in my way. I didn’t have to worry about anything driving wise.

The mood of transit workers

We had a lot of people die from COVID-19, which was very sad. We were the city agency with the most deaths.

I knew a few people who died and it was shocking. It was disturbing the way it just came in and wiped out over 125 workers throughout the system.

A lot of us were angry. We were frontline workers. We were essential. But people really didn’t consider us essential. We didn’t matter.

Fire department, nurses, the police department, any city official, they would be mentioned. We were never mentioned. We didn’t get to work from home. Nothing changed for us. And we weren’t acknowledged in any kind of way. No one cared when it came to us. We didn’t receive the respect we deserved.

Bus operators took it upon themselves to stay home because they had families.

A lot of operators slept in separate rooms or they slept in another part of the house.

But other people didn’t see their spouses, their children, because they didn’t want to infect them. They didn’t want to take that chance. So they did what they had to do.

I have one friend of mine who said he had to stay in the basement, basically live down there. His wife would not allow him to come to the rest of the house.

Why people forget transit workers

For the life of me, I don’t understand. It is very annoying to us. Because if it wasn’t for us the nurses, the doctors, the pharmacists, the essential workers, whoever was needed, they were not getting to work. We were here, we got you back and forth to your destination, safely. And for the life of me, every time there was an interview we didn’t receive any acknowledgement from the city, we were never a part of it.

We Have to Help Each Other

Ralph Rolle

Ralph Rolle is an international drummer, producer, and vocalist. A Black businessman, in 2020 he was the co-owner and proprietor of the Soul Snacks Cookie Company and the Soul Snacks Café in the Bronx. He was on tour with Nile Rodgers and Chic when COVID-19 struck; he immediately returned to New York City.⁴

When we were getting reports during the early days of the coronavirus, some of the information was not given to us for political reasons. One of those political reasons was that Trump was more concerned about himself than the American people, and he didn’t want people in the United States to panic by saying the virus was airborne. As the president, you find a way to get the message out without causing panic or hysteria. That’s what leaders are supposed to do.

I decided at that moment that this wasn’t good. We might want to close our businesses until we get the right information. I didn’t want to jeopardize my staff, my family, and myself. So, we shut down and stayed home. I’m glad I did because the COVID-19 numbers started going up pretty fast, especially in the Bronx.

Fauci was giving us his best rendition of the truth. You can see Fauci trying to play political pool because he had a foot on his neck. And I say it that way because I know there were people higher up trying to benefit themselves more than the country, and that’s why we are where we are now. To me, it was a great thing to hear Cuomo try to get people on the same accord. He was on TV every day, caring and doing his job.

I started to prepare to keep my family home for an extended period of time. I bought canned foods and supplies so we could be at home for an extended period of time. I got some fun foods because I have a seventeen-year-old daughter, and I didn’t want her to get cabin fever. We put a milk crate on the kitchen table and filled it with all of the fun stuff we could think of.

Items in my restaurant that can easily perish had to be given away or thrown in the garbage. We probably threw away about $2,500 worth of product. The things that we could keep we kept frozen. The food items that only stayed fresh for certain periods of time we either ate or gave away.

Rolle shut down the Soul Snacks Café from March to May 2020. He and his wife both contracted COVID-19.

If you care about your neighbors and you care about your family, then you’ll make the sacrifices. That’s why we closed the restaurant and the cookie company. But what a big sacrifice. I put a friendly note on the front door of the restaurant telling people why we closed. I got some responses saying it was very caring of us to say those things. But that was just how I felt.

I thought COVID-19 was worse than they were saying, and that’s why I shut down. The restaurant was just beginning to grow. We were very excited about the numbers that we were getting. And then it all came to a crashing halt.

For me, it was very important to think of safety first. It just didn’t feel like keeping the doors open was going to benefit us personally. But closing was very tough. It was tough for my employees; it was hard for us. I kept thinking about them not having any income, so we looked at other stores to see how they were dealing with being opened, like the delis in our neighborhood.

June 2020: The hard work of reopening

The delis started putting up plastic partitions. I thought, “Oh, that’s a good idea. We can reopen if we do that.” And that’s what we did.

I didn’t want to put people in jeopardy. You know, this was very concerning to me not to infect people unknowingly.

Americans are not really known for wearing masks. That’s something I see when I travel to Japan and all the time. If someone in America has a mask on, people immediately think, and before the pandemic, that there was something wrong with them. And now, if you see someone without a mask, you look at them like they’re an alien. Assimilation is an amazing thing.

To reopen, we bought $2,500 worth of food. We had to get everything in place again like we did when we originally opened. We cleaned extensively from front to back. Three days it took us. Each day was about an eight-hour workday of cleaning, sanitizing, and prep for the reopening. We put partitions at the front counter. We bought extra gloves. It was seriously hard to find gloves.

The moral responsibility of masks

We made it mandatory before the city made it mandatory that everyone in the restaurant had to wear masks and gloves, which was difficult because when you’re working in a kitchen, and it’s hot, it’s very difficult to breathe through those masks. I had to remind my staff all the time that you have to keep your mask on your faces. Very quickly, people started to get the point.

So, the process of opening and closing was about the same, but the anxiety of making sure that your staff is safe, you’re safe, was tough. And the people that come in to visit, you want to make sure that they’re safe as well.

I had one situation where a young man came into the restaurant and didn’t have a mask. I said, “Brother, I’m really sorry, but you have to have a mask on.”

He said, “I don’t have my mask.”

I said, “Do me a favor step outside for a second I’ll go get you one.” I went to the deli a few doors down, bought the young man a mask, and gave it to him. All of the masks in the restaurant, I had custom made for each staff member. I never had an incident when someone said, “I’m not wearing a mask, and I don’t care what you say.”

There is a moral responsibility that all of us need to take heed that this is not all about our personal rights. We all should be responsible for wearing masks.

Foot traffic in the first two weeks of reopening was extremely, extremely slow. Most of our orders came through our apps—Uber Eats, Grubhub, DoorDash. Slowly but surely, people started coming in. We would get a line out front every now and then. But it was tough going. We needed more people to come in.

What I see is that people are following rules when they come into restaurants, and people are wearing masks outside. But sometimes, when I go past the parkway near Fordham, Mosholu Parkway, there are many people out on the parkways, barbecuing and having parties with no masks. They’re not social distancing at all. And I’m always astounded. I’m always amazed to see people out on lawn chairs sitting right next to each other, just chatting away like nothing’s wrong. That’s scary to me.

But that had a lot to do with the fact that we’re not getting solid, cohesive messaging from the top. And just to make a comparison: if this were Obama, it’d be nothing like this. Nothing! He would be responsible for every single person, dead or alive. I think he would’ve been better for us as a country at that time.

Looking to the future

I’m anticipating a second wave. If we do not get a vaccine, many will die during the second wave. It will probably be worse than the first. At least our first responders will be more prepared, but they will be exhausted. They’re exhausted now. And it has all to do with the fact that we need to wear masks. We need to really try our best to cut down as much as possible on spreading this virus to other people.

I do travel a lot. Because I live here, I see this sense of separatism amongst people based on attitudes. When I go to other countries, I see people paying attention to the rules. I think that we have an arrogance that is going to end up killing us all.

I’m a glass-half-full person. I’ll do what I have to do. I’ll volunteer my services. I don’t really get anxiety about myself. When I look at my staff, I get anxious because they need a check. That’s disturbing to me. I have one young lady here who’s expecting a child. I have people here who were planning on moving and getting their own places. Another young man whose girl is about to have a baby any moment. So, I do feel responsible for them.

But I’ve got to keep a cool head. I really do. Whether I like it or not, I’ve got to keep cool. I don’t have much of a choice. I can’t just lie down and cry about it. I’ve got to make it happen. So, every morning, me and my wife/partner, we get up and come here.

I’ve never been a “what if” person. Never. What if can actually back you into a corner and stifle your own forward motion. I’m like, “We got to do this. This has to be done. Now.”

When we have good days in the restaurant, I make it known. My entire staff is on a WhatsApp feed. If we have a good sale day, I’ll put out a blast of how much we made that day and thank them for their work and their dedication to their positions and let them know that you are recognized for what you’re doing, and that my partner and I really appreciate them.

COVID-19, and how we react to health issues, will be the new normal. So, from a natural standpoint we’re doing what we’re supposed to do. We’re adapting.

Despite their efforts, Rolle and his staff could not generate enough business to sustain his restaurant. The Soul Snacks Café closed on December 24, 2021. The Soul Snacks Cookie Company survived. Rolle continues to tour as a drummer and vocalist.

More than a Cashier

Elizabeth Petrillo

When COVID-19 struck New York City, Elizabeth Petrillo was a cashier at the Key Food supermarket on Forest Avenue in West Brighton, Staten Island, and a full-time student at St. John’s University. It soon became clear that her job entailed much more than operating a cash register.⁵

I started working at Key Food in January 2020, precisely. It was right when COVID-19 came into the United States but no one really cared about it.

Since the pandemic it has changed. We put markers on the floor to social distance. We put up partitions to protect everyone.

For the most part, people listen, but you do have those people who feel it’s all a hoax and they don’t want to listen. So you have to get rough and you have to keep your composure. You have your good days and bad days.

At Key Food I am known as a cashier, but the job entails so much more than that. At the end of the day, you have to deal with the customers. You’re basically like a therapist when it comes to meeting with the customers. I had people giving me their life stories in the matter of a five-minute transaction when they have a huge order.

Sometimes it’s exhausting. You just nod your head and say yes, yes.

It takes a toll. It’s all exhausting because people don’t realize when you work in a grocery store, especially during the pandemic, it’s a hard job. You’re basically a therapist, a cleaner, a stock person.

Sometimes you’re the bookkeeper with how you have to handle money. Someone is giving you a roll of coins. That’s fine. You have to take it out of the rolls and count it to make it’s accurate. Exactly.

You also have to make sure your workplace is clean at all times because some people are so ignorant. They won’t put anything down unless you wipe your station beforehand. No matter if you wiped it five minutes ago and you haven’t had a customer, they want to see you wipe it down.

And some people are so impatient. You could be cleaning, putting stuff back where you got the cleaning supplies, and you could have no one on a register. And there’ll be a person there when you come back two minutes later and they’re annoyed that you weren’t on your register.

I didn’t get COVID-19, but I’m a person who always worried. My dad has a heart condition. So I’ve always worried about his health with the pandemic.

When I got a cold (this was like the beginning of March, right before the shutdown happened) the mask thing was optional. So I came into work, and I was the only one who had a mask on.

You’re a grocery store worker, you’re in the frontlines—like a police officer or firefighter, like a doctor—and people don’t see it that way. So I was the only person wearing a mask for maybe about a week.

I wore gloves for a long period of time. When you’re wearing gloves for a long period of time, your hands clam up, they get sweaty. And it’s not easy bagging with gloves on. They didn’t have the right size gloves for anyone, so it was either too small or too big.

I just started bringing in sanitizer, and you just hoped every day you wouldn’t get infected.

It was hard to adjust, but I was also relieved because it wasn’t only me who was experiencing this. Even the people who were there longer than me didn’t understand what was going on. It was a learning process.

A lot of the people I work with actually have families, or mothers and fathers, and husbands and wives. And it was hard to hear the struggles they’re dealing with—their kids not going to school and people are asking for extra hours and not getting it. I was perfect with the hours I have, but there were people who needed the hours to have more money because they were broke and they never got it. And then the people who were favored in my job got the hours.

It’s hard to work in a place where we cannot tell people they have to wear their masks because we know some people will take advantage of it. And we’re just hoping that no one takes this for granted. I hate the masks, but I wear it for a health precaution.

At Home in the Bronx, At Work in Midtown Manhattan

Patricia Hernandez

Patricia Hernandez, a sales clerk and student from the East Tremont section of the Bronx, juggled classes at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and work at a T-Mobile store in the Kips Bay section of Manhattan.⁶

I had to take the train and pay to get to work every single day.

It’s pretty crazy. You feel like you are surrounded by COVID-19. At any moment if you touch a pole, or if you lean on a wall or even sit down on the seats, you don’t know who was sitting down in that seat before you, or if they have the virus. You’re pretty much in fear the whole time on the train. Many times I would rather stand up on the train ride, which is about forty-five minutes, even though there are seats available. I don’t want to sit close to anyone for the fear of getting it even with the protection of the gloves and a mask. You’re living in fear.

At work, she coped with the fear of catching COVID-19 from one of her customers.

They’ve placed mats on the floor signifying six feet of distance between customers. And not allowed more than two customers in the store at once.

Many times we’ve had to pay out of our pockets to buy gloves. The company hasn’t provided us with masks. I’ve been personally just using my own.

It’s been an anxiety working because I am a germaphobe. Every single thing I’m just wiping down.

We have a little table where we have a sanitation section. If they need us to touch their phones they have to take a Lysol wipe and wipe down the phone and then pass it to us.

I’ve had a customer who really took offense because he didn’t feel it was necessary to wipe down his phone and I didn’t feel comfortable touching his phone. So he left the store.

I work in a residential area where it’s mostly White people. I feel like what they come into the store for is not really essential. It’s more like, “I need a screen protector” or “I need a case,” “I need to figure out an app in my phone.”

You deal with a lot. There’s been times where our system will shut down and we can’t provide an upgrade for a customer. And he’s threatened to call customer service and report all of us. Now I’m explaining to him what’s happening: I can’t do anything. And he’s like, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Just walked out.

The community that I work in, they’re just super entitled. You would expect or hope that they would have more sympathy. And they just don’t. It’s just more upsetting now.

Virtual classes were a challenge for both Patricia and her professors.

I like to learn hands on, like to see the things that I’m learning in front of me. And having to take every single class online, it’s been super tough.

Coming home after working eight-hour shifts to do homework or join a Zoom meeting for my professors is super tough. I’m a full-time employee and a full-time student. So it’s been super tough balancing for me.

A lot of professors don’t have any background teaching online. I have a professor who’s never taught online class before. Pretty much took her a month to get everything aligned.

Next semester is probably going to be online as well. I’ve really debated if I even want to deal with another semester online. Maybe next semester I’ll be better at it, but I just don’t know at this time.

The Bronx was hit hard.

This has put our community through the wringer. We’re really struggling every single day to provide for our families and provide for ourselves and continue to live in this community. I think it’s been tough for people.

My sister was working for a big company, and she was getting compensated, but they didn’t know if they were going to open again. So they told her that her best option was to file for unemployment. And then unemployment itself: there’s thousands of people waiting to hear back and get paid. She herself has gone a few weeks without receiving any payment and that has a lot of stress on her.

We each provide something here in the household on bills. So she’s been in a tough situation where she’s scared that she’s going to miss her part in paying the bills. And I had to go to work and possibly bring the virus in the house where my mother herself doesn’t have the best immune system.

So you have health issues, a pretty high risk to getting the virus because I have to continue to pay my bills, I have to continue to help out in the house. I can’t not work. I cannot not have income. I’ve been working since I was sixteen. That’s what I have to do for my family.

I know people who have dipped into their savings because they have to continue to pay their bills. Families are struggling and figuring out if they’re going to be able to pay rent next month, and if they’re going to get evicted. It’s got a lot of us in a tough position.

This virus has really affected poor communities, which are mostly filled with Black and Latino people. Our rates of death are way higher than White people, which is crazy to me. It feels like it was very targeted for us and the government is not doing very much to help us and there should be a lot more done for our communities.

In a crowded working-class neighborhoods like East Tremont, it was difficult to practice social distancing.

In the supermarket or the pharmacy, the lines are insane. They’re super long. Thankfully the supermarket by my house has done a great job, and has moved very efficiently. But even the pharmacy, my sister was on the line to get her medication that she needs to have every single day and the wait was almost an hour.

It’s been very tough getting used to not being able to get everything you need right then and there. The anxiety of being around people and people not respecting the mask rule. It’s also been tough seeing a lot of people outside.

A lot of people in my neighborhood are essential workers. You see a lot of people going to work, getting on the train. The trains are packed all the time. People are walking in the streets, not respecting quarantine. It’s been tough.

I want to thank all of the essential workers in my community. It’s really eye opening that Black and Brown communities have the highest death rates, but we’re also where you see most of the essential workers going to work because they have to provide for their families.

In the neighborhood that I work in, which is predominantly White, you don’t see that many people outside because they work for bigger corporations or they make a higher income so they’re getting provided full pay at home. And they’re staying home.

If it’s not necessary for you to go outside, don’t do it. Try to keep at home, if one person could go out and do the essential grocery shopping or anything like that.

Keep it at a minimum, keep the rate lower in our communities of people affected by COVID-19.

I know that the weather’s getting better and it’s May and we want to be outside and we want to try to live normal lives but we should stay home right now. Let this time be a time to spend time with your families. Fix your homes or work on yourself. Let this be a time of relaxation. And let this be a time for us to just continue to fight COVID-19 with quarantine.

I think that it is very important for everyone to understand that there are people struggling and people who try and push through dealing with these hard times. We were very unprepared for what came to us and hopefully it does not happen again. Hopefully we can fight this and get through and stay strong.

Frontline Workers in a Restaurant

Maribel Gonzalez Christianson

Maribel Gonzalez Christianson took over The South of France restaurant at 1800 Westchester Avenue in the Bronx after a career in Spanish and English language radio and television. Since 2004 the restaurant, named by a previous owner who vacationed happily in southern France, has served Puerto Rican and Spanish food.⁷

I am owner and operator of a small business, a restaurant called The South of France on Westchester Avenue in the Bronx. We have been there now almost twenty-four years and I do everything from A to Z. Though I have staff, or I should say had staff, I greet, I host, I cook, I bartend, I clean the bathrooms. I do whatever is necessary. Presently I’m even doing deliveries.

We were known as the Cheers of the Bronx because everyone did know your name. It was a very loving atmosphere. It was a gathering place. My place is not just a restaurant bar, but it was very much a community place, a venue where people had their meetings and planning for charitable events. Everyone had their favorite times to go, whether it was for poetry nights or karaoke or for their favorite dishes. It was a place of community gathering. And that’s one of the things that we missed the most, I guess.

It’s very hard when you can’t continue to operate in the same manner, only doing takeout and curbside pickup and some deliveries. The place is empty. And there’s a certain sadness to that, that you can’t find the same camaraderie. Though the spirit is there, that dedication is there. We still keep our same philosophies. Our motto is, “We do it all for you.” And that’s always going to be what we do, and we still bring forth that spirit. We deal with people coming in to pick up food, we answer our calls, or make our deliveries. We tell people, “Don’t forget us, we’re still here, we’re still doing it all for you authentically fresh, and we’re still loving and waiting for everyone to come back.”

It’s heartbreaking because not only am I and the one or two persons that I’m still able to employ, trying to do the job of many, it’s heartbreaking because I don’t have the funds and I can’t bring back and support the staff that myself and my patrons have counted on. It’s debilitating. It’s exhausting.

You can’t be everywhere in every moment. The lack of sleep, trying to still stay vibrant, and go purchase and cook and pack and deliver and maintain and sanitize the place. Make sure that everyone who comes to pick up food knows that the place is clean and safe. All those things are extremely time consuming. And so days have become even longer because you’re covering all bases with no help.

Strength in faith

Thank goodness that I’m a person of faith, and I come back to find strength in my faith. And we now have these delivery services in addition, you know, with DoorDash, Uber Eats, which we didn’t have before. But it’s still a struggle, because you don’t know if you’re going to be around the next day, so it’s mental anguish. At the same time, it’s maintaining positivity, bringing forth the best quality product that you can, and trying to fight the system, waiting for help that you’re not getting. So, there’s a lot of doubt. It affects you emotionally, mentally, physically. But as an entrepreneur, we face that all the time.

And you have to be positive, you have to know that you can never give up, that it will get better. You have to believe you have to have faith and everything that you’ve poured into the community, the work that you’ve done, that you’ve been recognized for, and that other people will come back, that the business will come back. The Bronx will come back and you stay positive no matter what. Never giving up.

I’ll give you a perfect example. When some people that we haven’t seen in a while are being very kind and supportive to the restaurant and are coming in to order food, these are patrons that have been with us for years. When they come in I’ve sometimes gotten emotional and I cry at the sight of them, because I can’t hug them. I can’t shake the hand. I just have to say, thank you for supporting me. You know, we love you still. And, we’re grateful for them. We’re grateful for their support and not forgetting us. It’s heart wrenching in so many ways because you want to stay strong, but you’re human, and you miss people. You miss the camaraderie.

And often when I deliver to people, I see so much sadness, I see devastation, I see food insecurity. I see a hunger, which we’re also trying to address as a restaurant. And I am giving pep talks like, “Thank you for supporting and ordering. You know, it’s going to get better.” I’m giving them encouragement. I’m the mother, I’m their sister, I’m their friend. I’m often the only person that they’ve seen in a long time because they’ve been in the house. And there are people who are alone, and they don’t have conversation. I’m often giving them encouragement, and telling them that it’s okay, that the world is out here. We will overcome this. It’s a matter of giving encouragement, all the time, whomever you run into.

Hot meals for health care workers

I’ve teamed up with another lady named Minerva Aponte who’s had a GoFundMe page for hot meals for health care workers. And her mission has been to feed the frontliners, doctors and nurses in various different hospitals throughout the Bronx. And she has hired me, and I’ve been very lenient in my cost and in my effort to bring forth the best product.

Together we have now fed hundreds and hundreds of meals to various hospitals: St. Barnabas, BronxCare, upcoming now North Central and Montefiore. We’re trying to address that, that they feel recognized and appreciated. I’m also giving food to the community. Whoever comes to my restaurant, I cook a surplus, and they will get it and that’s at no charge.

I believe that you can’t live and work in the community without giving back to the community. We always did that when we were open on the normal hours. For the past sixteen years, we provided a free buffet every Wednesday for three hours where we replenished it constantly. Never missed a Wednesday, thank goodness knock on wood, and we often also did it in the summertime on Sundays. On a regular basis with eighty, ninety, one hundred people every Wednesday.

You have to do with what you can and you have to do more on a lot less. Losing 85 to 90 percent of your regular income is gut wrenching. But nonetheless, you borrow from Peter to pay Paul. I come from the mindset when one eats two can eat, where two can eat five can eat, where five can eat ten can eat.

We are Bronx strong.

That’s what Bronx people are known for. We are warriors. We are Bronx strong. And so it takes a lot more time to find specials. When you once could buy everything in one location now you have to go to four locations because they have another item at a lesser cost. Takes a lot more effort, which is where the exhaustion comes in. But you do it because you know that they are feeding people. It’s very heartwarming, very satisfying.

I am trying to sleep more. You can’t operate under the normal hours, then I have to close earlier, so I am sleeping more. But in all of this devastation, there are also a lot of blessings, because you find that you’re more resilient, that you’re stronger than you may have thought.

When you need to lug that fifty-pound bag, because you have to make whatever money you can—because maybe some of that can go to feed families that can’t afford it—you find the strength, you get the stamina, you find the chutzpah, to lift that bag because there’s so many dependent on it. I take a little better care of myself, and I’ve developed a couple of muscles in the interim.

Frontline workers are not only in hospitals, but they are people like myself and my staff, who are risking themselves to stay open to make a meal, deliver a meal. We are risking our contracting the virus, and we’re doing it because we’re providing a service because we have compassion, because we have the need. And, you know, we can’t take things for granted anymore. We realize that essential workers, people that were blind to us before—grocery stores, truck drivers, delivery people—now we depend on them greatly. People have to have a better awareness that we are more alike than we are different. And gratitude is extremely important. And I think that people have to be more cognizant of knowing that every little bit helps, and we’re all in this together.

It varies. People go about their business and they just get their food and to them, it’s just another day. Other people are extremely aware and appreciative and are grateful that they did not have to step out of their home. They say thank you, they say stay safe. And they tip better. Tipping is important, people do depend on that.

Working for the Apps

Gustavo Ajche

Gustavo Ajche, a bike courier, is a thirty-nine-year-old K’iche indigenous man from Guatemala who migrated to New York City in 2004. Soon afterward he joined the Workers Justice Project, a Brooklyn community organization and worker center for migrants, and worked in restaurants and construction sites. He became a bike courier in 2018 bringing food orders to customers across the city for the delivery companies DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Relay. His primary form of contact with these companies is through their apps on his cell phone, so he often refers to himself as “working for the apps.” When the pandemic struck, he was one of an estimated 65,000 delivery app workers in New York City, a workforce made up mostly of low-wage immigrants from Latin America, South Asia, China, and West Africa.⁸

We’re essential workers when it’s convenient for the apps, and even for the city at large. We haven’t stopped working, not since the lockdowns started last March. We were helping the people who couldn’t go out to get their food, or their groceries.

It wasn’t easy working through the pandemic, it was dangerous. We were considered essential in the sense of sacrificing our own safety for others, but when it came to paying us well, to saying “thank you,” to tipping us, or even just acknowledging us as human beings, not just robots bringing food, that’s when suddenly we weren’t essential for anyone.

Apps grew a lot during the pandemic because more people were ordering in than ever. They started exploiting us to make deliveries more effective. They made delivery better for customers maybe, but it was at our expense. We kept restaurants afloat when no one could come in, and you heard everyone saying, “Support restaurants, order take out, order delivery.” But then, who supports us, the people making that possible? So, our answer was to support each other through Deliveristas Unidos.

Apps have basically rid themselves of any responsibilities to us. We’re “independent contractors,” not employees. When it comes to our obligations to them as workers, we’re expected to act like loyal and happy employees—work long hours, drive longer distances, carry heavier orders, and even grocery packages. But if you act like an independent contractor and reject a few orders because they’re too far away or too heavy or are in dangerous neighborhoods where the possibility of getting your bike stolen is higher, then I’ll punish you and stop giving you work.

Everything they “ask” of us, they do through threats, sometimes veiled, sometimes not so much, and they go from bad ratings to the possibility of blocking us. It’s all about incentives, but the incentives are manipulations, there’s no other way of putting it. Don’t let the name fool you, we’re not independent, but dependent contractors. They remind us that with the hit of a button, we can be erased, and it’ll be like we never even worked for them because apps own the technology. They control the whole game for us.

Restaurants didn’t allow workers to use their bathrooms or warm up inside on cold days.

We were banned from using restaurant restrooms, let alone take shelter in a restaurant while waiting for an order. That may sound like something that may not be the apps’ responsibility, but it is!

There’s a type of cold that is just horrible, the kind of cold you need actual breaks from. It doesn’t really matter how many layers of clothing you wear; the air gets through you. It’s tough, your skin reddens, your lips crack from the friction of riding a bike against the cold, and after a while you just want five minutes inside somewhere warm.

Before the pandemic, there were public spaces where we could just take a break, take shelter. But now, that just doesn’t exist for us, the pandemic shut everything down. Most apps don’t let you pause for more than twenty or thirty minutes, so something as small as trying to find a restroom to use can cost you a bad rating or even getting fired. It was also just so humiliating not being able to do something as simple as just going to the restroom when you’re working.

We were using face masks, and we were only asking for a few minutes inside somewhere warm or cool depending on the weather, and we were just continually told “no, no, no,” and in rude ways too. We want to stop being discriminated against, because a lot of the times it feels like it’s just racism, the way restaurant managers scream at us, “Don’t park near the restaurant, don’t touch anything, don’t stand here, go there, you’re blocking the entrance, don’t wait inside, stand farther away.” It’s just constant screaming. It makes you feel like they want you to keep connecting them to customers, but you should be almost invisible, not take up any space, don’t be a person.

The pay was unpredictable, and the apps often stole the tips customers gave the workers.

Apps don’t pay per hour; they pay per delivery. I bike around fifty hours a week, and I rarely break over $600. You stay on the streets for hours, just waiting for the apps to need you, and they set all the rules to make more money while you as an individual worker face more challenges, more dangers, and ultimately, make less money for yourself but more for the company. They give you what they want, when they want, and it’s never enough. Tips and wages were also stolen from us. So many orders I’ve delivered, I would look at the restaurant receipt stapled to the food bag that I was bringing to a client, and I’d see a certain tip amount, say $10 or $8. But then, I’d look at the app, and the tip would be different. Sometimes half of what the receipt said, or even less. The app would mark a $5 or even just a $2 tip, and I’m just staring at the restaurant receipt and seeing something completely different. And I wish I could say it doesn’t happen often, but it happens all the time, and not just to me, but to so many of my colleagues and friends.

Many workers avoided hospitals because they didn’t have health insurance and were afraid of huge bills they couldn’t afford.

Back in April, I got sick, and many of my friends and colleagues did too. Many of us didn’t even know if it was COVID-19 at first, because testing was very scarce and too expensive. I don’t have health insurance. As undocumented people, we’re scared of hospitals because hospitals mean huge bills we can’t afford, debt we know we simply can’t pay back.

So it was mostly my wife taking care of me, a lot of home remedies and teas that to be honest—tasted kind of bad. [laughs] The bug was especially bad at night, my wife and I called it the nightly monster. I couldn’t breathe. In the end, I just braved it out as best I could at home, but in all honesty, it was scary.

I was scared. You’d watch the news and so many people were getting so sick, dropping dead before they could even get to a doctor, lying on hospital beds with tubes down their throats, their families crying and grieving on TV. It wasn’t just coughing and being sick, it was all the weight, the psychological aspect of it, the fear and the emotion that came with knowing I had this virus that was hurting and killing so many people in New York, in the world.

I remember praying and asking God to let me get through it, because I started hearing about so many colleagues and friends that were just getting very sick, some ending up in the emergency room without insurance, some even dying because it turned out that they had high blood pressure or diabetes and didn’t even know.

People you just never thought would die, just like that, gone. I absolutely couldn’t believe it. They were all young, but you know, most of us just don’t have money for checkups. When I think about them, I get very sad, because I know they’re like me, the kind of people that could have lived if they had the chance to receive medical care, to be able to afford going to a hospital. I was lucky because I got sick, but I didn’t die, even though some nights, it sure felt like I might not make it.

Bicycles were frequently stolen and drivers were injured in crashes with cars and trucks.

You’d think that with emptier streets, we would’ve been safer, but since our bikes are worth something, around $1,000, $2,500, and sometimes even $3,000 if you count the batteries, we have been targeted more and more. They know we have to go up and down buildings, and we leave our bikes unattended for several minutes. They use bolt cutters, or they rob us at gunpoint or knock us out, and they just take them.

For us, it’s just not safe to ride back home at night on the bridges and tunnels that take us from Manhattan, where most of us work, to Brooklyn or Queens or the Bronx. We either travel in groups or we just take our bikes on the subway, or even pay for a garage back in Manhattan sometimes. Besides the bike theft, so many cars and trucks park in bike lanes, causing so many accidents that have killed our friends and colleagues.

Most hit-and-runs that have killed deliveristas are just unsolved crimes, and one of our biggest fears as workers is just not coming home after work. So many deaths are the direct responsibility of these apps, because you’re suddenly forced to ride your bike at a higher speed to meet their artificially small delivery windows, forced to use tunnels and bridges to complete orders across boroughs, forced to prioritize your ratings over your own basic safety. Lately, so many of us have died, and it’s tragic.

I was doing a delivery during a very big storm, and I slid off the road. I tried to keep working after that, but I just couldn’t move my leg. I cut my knee pretty deep, and it just kept bleeding. I had no choice but to lay off work for a week. DoorDash asked me if the food was okay [laughs]. The pizza was not okay sadly [laughs]. Apps “remind” you that you’re not an employee, that you’re an independent contractor and should be responsible for your own bike, that you should buy your own insurance.

In 2020, app couriers accounted for nearly 50 percent of New York City’s cycling fatalities, and at least thirteen delivery workers died on the job in 2021. During the summer of 2020, Ajche and other indigenous Guatemalan and Mexican couriers, with help from the Workers Justice Project, founded Los Deliveristas Unidos, a grassroots collective protesting poor working conditions across delivery companies. On October 15, 2020, they demonstrated for their rights by riding down Broadway from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to City Hall.

It was a great day, because so many of us came together. We were all biking down the street, and you’d just look around and so many deliveristas were there, and many were telling their friends to join in. We never really expected to have such a big turnout, it was hundreds of us, almost a thousand deliveristas biking together and showing up to protest. It was also somewhat improvised, spontaneous. We got the word out that we were marching a few days before because we’d had it, we were exhausted and frustrated with the whole situation of how apps treat us and how they get away with pretty much anything as employers.

I look back at that protest video, and I just get so overwhelmed and emotional, almost nostalgic. We were able to do it together because the core of the protest was having us speak for ourselves instead of letting apps do all the talking. That protest was the very first time we stood up for ourselves and we fought for ourselves. It was incredible. Drivers talked about how we got our tips stolen, how there was no transparency at all with how much we got paid and how it was calculated, how we were being forced to drive longer distances and carry heavier packages without any additional compensation, but mostly without the choice to say no without slashing our ratings or hurting our future access to work.

There’s a lot to fix in this food delivery industry, a lot to shake up so workers like me have a chance to make a decent living without facing so many abuses for a salary that’s not even minimum wage. Most people don’t know how the apps work, and there’s many information gaps regarding their basic functioning, how they make money and how they manage us as workers. Right now, we want more representatives and organizations to know about us.

We need legislators because if you think about us against the apps, it’ll never be a fair fight. It’s like David and Goliath. We’re nothing compared to these billion-dollar companies. We know these apps will fight back, they’ll try to intimidate us, get their own council members and state legislators to make sure no regulation comes their way. This fight will absolutely be a long and tough one. We need allies, and I think we need faith in each other so other people believe in us too.

I believe in Deliveristas Unidos. We have a strong sense of community, and we take care of each other. The guys I ride with, we’re all from the same village in Guatemala, we all know each other, we know each other’s families, they’re my family too. I think together we can beat the apps because we’re only asking for what’s right.

I have two kids back home, a boy and a girl, they’re going to college in Guatemala right now. Working here allows me to pay for their education and send money back home to my mom too. In the end, everything I’ve done with Deliveristas Unidos, everything I’m trying to do, it’s also for them, for my kids, because I want them to know that in life, if you don’t fight for yourself, no one else will.

After more than a year of driver-led protests, rallies, and meetings with local legislators, the New York City Council passed landmark legislation in September 2021, regulating the delivery app industry by codifying Deliveristas Unidos’ demands for better labor standards. The six-bill package included compulsory tip and wage disclosures from apps, a new minimum payment per delivery, free insulated bags for couriers, and the rights to set distance limits and use restaurant bathrooms.⁹

Lessons, Survival, and a Public School Teacher

Damien LaRock

Damien LaRock works as a special education teacher at P.S. 148 in East Elmhurst, Queens.¹⁰

By the first week in March 2020, school conversations about COVID-19 were increasingly common.

I started to notice that some parents were keeping their kids home. So our attendance numbers started to drop. And then there were more letters that came out from the Department of Education, talking about disinfection procedures being implemented, and the need for schools to establish a quarantine room.

Friday, March 13, was the last day that teachers and students were all together in the school building. My coteacher and I said, “Okay, all right, kids, it’s Friday afternoon, we’ve got the weekend ahead of us. Things are changing so quickly day to day. Take your math book home, take your writing folder home.”

The teachers were not sure that students would return to the school on Monday, and they wanted them to have classwork materials with them just in case.

And then it was on Sunday, March 15, that Mayor de Blasio announced that indeed schools would be closed. So the kids did not return on Monday, March 16. But teachers were asked to come back for three days that week to prepare, to get all of the technology in the building set up for distribution.

Nobody really knew what was going on. We just knew, like, immediately we needed to make this transition to remote learning. There was a lot of panic amongst the school staff about how we were gonna do this.

Monday the 16th we were all working from home, communicating with our families, letting them know that we were transitioning to remote learning. Teachers were calling families, making lists of which kids had computers at home, which kids had laptops, which kids had iPads, which kids had at the very least access to a smartphone.

We teachers came back to the building on Tuesday, March 17. We started to gather together packets of work and all of the books that hadn’t been sent home. We bundled everything that we could, by child. We put a pile on each child’s desk and had everything ready to go for parents to come pick up later that week.

On Wednesday, March 18, we spent the day in socially distant groups going down to the school auditorium. We got a really quick crash course on Google Classroom and how to start doing remote learning, using Google Classroom.

And then Thursday, March 19, we had the parents come to the school, again in shifts from the morning until the afternoon. Each class had a table on the sidewalk in front of the school. Each teacher stood at a table representing their class. They brought down all of their bundles of work for the kids and the laptops that were going to be assigned to anyone who said that they needed one. And we gave out all of the materials. Some parents came alone. Some parents came with their kids. So in some cases we were able to see our students for one last time and, you know, wish them good luck and at least have a little bit of a sense of closure.

A chaotic beginning

Monday, March 23, is definitely seared in my memory because that was our first day of remote learning and it was a very memorable day.

That first Monday was extremely chaotic. My coteacher and I were able to put some prerecorded messages onto Google Classroom and set up some assignments for the kids. But we still weren’t comfortable about how to do live lessons. And we also didn’t know how to get the kids to figure out how to log into live lessons, because we had no opportunity to train them on the technology that we were now asking them to use from home. So live lessons were not a thing that first week.

I just remember my coteacher and I were on our cell phones all day long contacting parents and pretty much working as IT specialists. We were doing a lot of work, just talking to parents about how to log into the laptop we had given them.

By Wednesday my coteacher and I had successfully logged in all of our third grade students, which was like such a feeling of accomplishment!

As much as we tried a variety of different methods of reaching out—using the ClassDojo app; calling on the telephone; we got other people in the building, the school aides, to help try to contact them—one particular student was just nowhere to be found. It turns out, through the grapevine, I guess the family moved to Texas.

But the child ended up never successfully logging in. So, I don’t know if this child registered for a new school in the community where they moved to in Texas, but it was a sad experience to just lose contact with one of our students and not even get a chance to say goodbye and then be really worried about what access to learning they would have for the rest of the school year.

I’m thankful to say that that was the rare exception for most of our kids. We did see that they were able to successfully log in and participate in remote learning.

Conflicts over computers

Once we started to incorporate live lessons into our teaching, we saw lots of conflicts arise: kids who couldn’t use the computer at certain times because their parents were trying to work remotely from home. In some cases families have multiple children, so maybe one kid could get on the laptop, but the other child didn’t have a laptop to go on to their class.

We would host live lessons, but we wouldn’t necessarily have all of our kids attending. We needed live lessons because we wanted to make sure that we could actually interact with the kids to some degree, but we also needed prerecorded lessons that we made ahead of time, so that if a kid couldn’t come to a live lesson, they had access to watch something that was prerecorded. But I am happy to say that I think our school rose to the occasion and was able to relatively successfully implement remote learning.

We were happy that we had a lot of days of 100 percent attendance, but there were also many of those days where the kids were technically there—because they might have commented on something, or maybe turned in an assignment—but they weren’t present for our live lessons.

When we did live lessons with the kids, it was clear a lot of kids were in very noisy homes. There was a lot going on in the background. So we just hoped that they were able to attend to the prerecorded lessons that we presented. They may or may not have shown up to our live lessons. We were certainly very happy when they did, because we could then have some kind of an understanding that they were at least getting the content that we were presenting live.

There were some kids who really struggled in the classroom who all of a sudden were doing very well with remote learning. I know of one student in particular whose grandmother just sat with him, and all day long, she was his personal one-on-one, and she made sure he did his assignments and she made sure that he participated when we had our live lessons. And he ended up doing really well, and I think he ended the year pretty successfully.

We had kids who transitioned really well to remote learning. We had other kids who were struggling in the classroom who seemed to be doing better because they got support from their families. And then we had other kids who were doing pretty well in the classroom who seemed to trail off with remote learning. So it was definitely a mixed bag.

Epicenter of the pandemic

I think most of our mental energy was really focused on trying to make sure that kids were getting some semblance of a regular education once we transitioned to online learning. But one of the things that was really quite difficult was realizing that our school was near to what became the epicenter of the pandemic in New York. PS 148 is located in East Elmhurst, Queens. And the epicenter was really centered around the Corona/Elmhurst area, our neighboring neighborhoods. So being so close to that epicenter, we started hearing more and more about families who were specifically affected by the virus.

My good friend and the science teacher in our school, David Shwide, fell ill. He went to get tested at the Jones Beach testing center that was set up there. He found out that he was positive and he shared that information very openly with the staff and with his students. He wanted people to know, like, “Okay, if you had contact with me, you need to know I’m positive.”

I also sadly heard from my coteacher Julie Spreckels from our fifth grade class that one of our students had lost his mom. His mom had fallen ill with COVID-19 and, I don’t know the details of her experience, but it seemed like pretty rapidly she suffered some difficult effects of the virus and unfortunately passed away. So that was a big shock, and I remember thinking, “Okay, we’re putting all of this energy into trying to create these lessons and figure out scheduling, and what is it all for when kids are losing parents?”

As a school, we started to have more and more conversations about social and emotional health of our students and what we could be doing to support our families, who in many cases probably weren’t all that worried quite honestly about math lessons and writing lessons. They were worried about the effects of the virus and the ancillary effects of unemployment due to everything shutting down because of the virus.

We heard about more and more people who were testing positive in our school community. Family members, students, fellow teachers. One of our staff members shared with us that she had lost her son. That was a devastating blow because it’s one thing to hear that somebody had tested positive, but then it’s another thing to hear that someone has lost a family member. So our focus at that point really shifted to making sure that our kids were supported in a variety of ways.

One thing that became clear during this period was that there were kids who either were not coming onto our lessons because they were just dealing with a lot at home, or in some cases their parents were trying to do whatever they could to stay employed or find other employment and were just preoccupied with that and couldn’t focus on making sure their kids were logged in to Google Classroom.

Sickness and hunger

And then it also became very clear that in addition to families struggling with employment issues, families were starting to express food security issues. I had kids at certain points who would just announce very innocently in the middle of a lesson or when they initially logged into a lesson, how hungry they were, or that they were sick or that they had family members who were sick.

So as a school community, we started to think about what we can do to support our families above and beyond just creating and posting lessons. Our parent coordinator was really key in terms of sharing information about food resources. We tried to do as much as we could as a staff to share anything that we found out about any resource, anywhere in western Queens that was providing food assistance. We shared that with her so that she could share that with families. ClassDojo became a really important app for us. A lot of teachers had been using that to share announcements prior to remote learning, but it became our main mode of communication with our school community.

We would share lots of posts about any organizations that were giving assistance, whether it be financial or food assistance. And then, thankfully, PS 148, as a school, stayed open to provide meals. So we tried to really spread the word that if families were in need of food, go to the school, they were giving out breakfast and lunch. Our jobs shifted very much from being academically focused to being just as much, if not more, focused around helping our kids with issues around food security and just emotional and social wellness.

And we would post for the parents. And we would always get responses from this particular father, like, “I’m trying, yes, I’m trying to help my son. But can you please let me know if he got on? I’m not sure because I can’t check on him because I’m in the other room with COVID-19.”

Unfortunately, his son caught it too. And he had great spirits throughout the whole process. You know, certainly his attendance was spotty while he himself was fighting the virus, but he got over it and he came back onto class, and he was happy. And we were all really thankful that he and his father got through it successfully.

I was so impressed and so amazed that despite fighting COVID-19, this particular parent was communicating with us on ClassDojo, checking in to see if his son was getting onto his lessons and doing his work.

Supporting parents

A lot of teachers became really good at supporting parents with setting up their technology, so that became a new role—and then also finder and communicator of community resources. Because it became clear that we had many families who were out of work, and now starting to struggle with food issues. So how could you even think about teaching when you know your students are hungry?

Before the pandemic, we had strong relationships with a core group of families that picked up their kids at the end of the day. That was a feature that went away with the pandemic. We had a small group of parents—maybe around six of them—who were really active in terms of chaperoning field trips. So we got to know them really closely.

And then when remote learning came, all of those live interactions vanished. Our parent communication, in a very natural, organic way, decreased. But the frequency with which we were sharing information, sharing posts, texting, using the message feature on ClassDojo, that increased.

There were several parents who became really, really involved in making sure that their children were focused online and would sit with their children through a lot of our lessons. And so those family members, I think they got a better sense of what we were doing in terms of the content of our lessons.

Students learned to create meeting places online.

Kids became very savvy at hijacking our links. We would post a link for a live lesson, we’d present our lesson and then we’d say goodbye. But then we started to learn that if the teachers didn’t either watch all of the children individually leave the meeting, or kick them out by clicking the button that removes the participant from the meeting, any kids left over would stay in that meeting and hang out with each other as long as they could.

It wasn’t a bad thing at all, but we started hearing from parents that their kids were having these social groups on our lesson links. And we had to be careful about making sure that they weren’t just open, unsupervised links. Once we figured out how to manage that, the kids started group chats on Google Hangouts. And they were free to do that.

It’s not all a bad thing because they figured out how to get their social time in there. But I can’t imagine that it’s as good quality as, you know, hanging out with your friends in person, whether it be in school, or at the park, or in the real world. The virtual world is okay for some things, but it doesn’t replace others.

We would hear more and more from parents that they thought their kids were online during a lesson, but what they actually were doing was playing Roblox with each other when they should have been watching our lessons or should have been turning in their work. So we had to compete with online video games quite a bit for our students’ attention.

The death of a student’s mother

Every day you would hear on the news about the number of new positive cases, but even worse, the number of deaths. And those numbers very quickly became staggering.

Hearing about one of my own students having lost his mother was particularly difficult because it was the first person that I knew directly who had died from COVID-19. It was tough because it was not just a statistic.

His father had requested that he only wanted to communicate with one point person at the school regarding the whole situation, our parent coordinator. That was the hardest part, just knowing he had suffered this trauma, but not really knowing how he was doing through it all.

He did not return to online learning for quite a long time. It was about six weeks before he finally got back. And the day that he came back on, everybody was so happy. And the whole class was cheering, and so happy to see him back. Everybody just started smiling and cheering. That was a really good moment.

After April 2020, there were fewer reports of COVID-19 within the school community of PS 148. But the school year ended in June without students and teachers seeing each other in person.

It definitely didn’t have the celebratory feeling that the last day of school would have in person. We tried to have a big, fun, live meeting at the end and say our goodbyes.

By the end of the school year, we had all of our systems set up pretty well and things were running pretty smoothly. A handful of our kids had the opportunity to enroll in virtual summer school. So we knew that we would have some kids who would continue to get some academic support.

Our Google Classrooms didn’t shut down. They’re still there. We’ve been posting other little videos here and there throughout the summer. We don’t have a whole class showing up, but we’ve got basically six kids. And so it’s good. I think for those kids, this is a silver lining that’s come out of it, a continued relationship that we wouldn’t have had if we didn’t have this virtual platform for it.

In the Cloud: New York, December 2020

Rachel Hadas

At Rutgers University–Newark, where Rachel Hadas taught English, classes shifted from in-person to virtual in March 2020. From her refuge at her country house in Vermont, she continued to teach by Zoom. This poem first appeared in The New Yorker.¹¹

Inside and Outside

Beth Evans

Beth Evans is an associate professor and librarian at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. During the spring semester of 2020 she went into quarantine at her home in the Marine Park section of Brooklyn with a small group of family, friends, and students. In the weeks and months that followed she tallied the challenges of working during a pandemic and the relationship between her own intimate circle and the world beyond.¹²

The CUNY Distance Learning Archive writing prompt encourages students to consider, “Do you have sufficient access to technology, software, devices to complete the rest of your semester?” and faculty to think about “how have you made accommodations for students’ different degrees of technological access to avoid exacerbating these inequities? How will this experiment impact the accessibility needs of students with disabilities?”

The prompts suggest that faculty are well situated with appropriate and up-to-date hardware and at the very worst need gentle reminders that their teaching should be mindful of their less well-situated students.

As a reference librarian at CUNY I have been grateful that we already have in place a cooperative chat reference service. Chat reference is staffed round the clock, every day of the week, by librarians from universities and public libraries internationally. During this time of online learning, the chat reference desk became the only reference desk available to our library users.

A corporate buyout meant that in the midst of the pandemic at many CUNY campuses chat reference librarians needed to retrain on a new system. The transition had gone reasonably well, but as with all things technological, there were some challenges. A colleague at another CUNY college got logged off from chat when helping a patron because of the limitations of the librarian’s home internet connection. I picked up the student’s question when she came back on again, but the student asked if I could reconnect her with the first librarian who had helped her.

As I learned later my librarian colleague at the other CUNY college is still using a DSL connection because she cannot get FIOS in her neighborhood. She eventually figured out that she could switch to cell data and to use her own mobile phone as a hotspot when helping students on chat reference. It was not an economical choice, but it was the only one she felt she could make.

Without too much financial burden, I have upgraded my computer speakers and added an alright-ish twenty dollar webcam to my computer monitor. I can now say with confidence that the image you will see of me in Zoom sessions is distorted by poor camera resolution and not a reflection of my aging face.

But nobody appears to be dressed up for these events. How many of my colleagues have confessed to others present at a meeting their own lack of showering and hair combing before one of too many online meetings?

We all laugh together at the joke circulating about the best time of day to exchange one’s daytime pajamas for one’s nighttime pajamas and wonder if it is really true that men are seated at their computers not wearing pants. (A professor integrated a pants requirement into his fall syllabus.)

My webcam picks up the wall behind me. You will not see an impressive library of hardcover books, accumulated over decades of an academic life. I am a librarian, after all, and rely on libraries for most of my books. Nor will you see an anonymous white wall with possibly one framed print. My background does not include large windows looking out on trees budding early in back of my Adirondacks weekend home. I have also not chosen to protect my privacy with a simulation of a Caribbean Island. I, instead, have an eight foot by twelve foot map of the world.

The experience of seeing myself against this backdrop for the third or fourth time in one day reminds me that I am working at home, and not in my office at the Brooklyn College Library, where several years ago I dragged a diminutive pink settee into my eight foot by five foot cubicle, along with a Japanese screen, to make the office appear more homey.

As she worked to serve students at Brooklyn College and hold together her extended family, Evans noticed the toll of COVID-19 at CUNY.

Before the spring lockdown had even ended, three faculty and two staff at Brooklyn College died of coronavirus. All were loved by someone or other. I am sure those who loved them were ordinary people for the most part.

I knew the two office staff who died, one briefly because of work I did on a search committee at the college, and the other because our lives intersected at many points.

Jay was a man who delighted in meeting people, remembered everyone he ever met, checked in with everyone regularly and died too young at thirty-one. He overlapped with one of my daughters during their high school years, walked into the Brooklyn College Library as an undergraduate interested in exploring the possibility of a career as a librarian, and showed up frequently in an office in Boylan Hall when I accepted a part-time position across campus as a Dean’s Faculty Fellow.

Jay sent me one of his typical, thoughtful and engagingly written periodic emails near the start of the pandemic, about a week after the campus had moved to online instruction and two days after the governor called for a statewide pause in all business operations. By this point in our lives, Jay had gotten comfortable enough to call me by my first name, though I still have a cache of his emails that address me as “Professor Evans.” He was concerned that I had “stocked up on the essentials” during these “crazy times,” and I wrote back to him that I looked forward to seeing him “on the other end of this.”

No, Jay, regrettably I will not see you on the other end of this. Neither is any one of us sure if or when we will come to an “end of this.”

Jay seems to have had a very long list of folks with whom he took the time to check in on regularly.

A colleague commented to me that learning more about Jay after his death has left her with the surprised feeling one would have who suddenly discovered her loving husband had dozens of other wives. She was stunned at first, even hurt. “I thought I was his special one,” she said.

She quickly came to realize, of course, that someone as thoughtful as Jay could only be the same someone who showed thoughtfulness for everyone he met.

The rising toll of COVID-19 at CUNY through the spring of 2020

The lists of those who have passed away from COVID-19 are growing. The publication website Inside Higher Education notes on June 23, 2020, three months and three days from the date Governor Andrew Cuomo declared New York to be on pause, that “CUNY now has the sad distinction of having more coronavirus-related deaths than any other higher education system in the country.”

A Horror Story with a Happy Ending

Robert Kelley

As vice president of the Stations Department of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, Robert Kelley represents six thousand union members: cleaners, station agents, collection agents who gather fare money, and the workers who handle supplies and parts. He lives in the Bronx.¹³

As a man of color, discrimination is not new to me. I got into union work to protect people who can’t protect themselves.

Around March I was doing eighteen-, twenty-hour days, I had a lot of territory to cover.

I was going around checking on my people. And we didn’t know what this thing was at the time.

The MTA didn’t know what it was, and they certainly wasn’t providing us with the proper PPE.

In fact, we were advised not to use masks at some point because if the COVID-19 is on your hands and you touch your face when you pull the mask down, you’re more inclined to get it. It was a bunch of hoopla.

I did express to them my displeasure about the way of handling of things. And I also gave my suggestions: please stop misguiding my members and telling them that it’s better if they don’t wear masks.

I fought with them about my people. We tried to be creative, but it was challenging to say the least.

I remember my breathing changed, so I said to my wife, “I’m gonna go get checked out.” And I remember going to a couple of spots that was doing testing and they refused to test me.

The breathing just got so bad that I said, “I’m not leaving. The only way you’re gonna get me out of here is if you call the police.” And they wind up testing me and I tested positive.

I went home that day, they told me to drink fluids. And that evening, I felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest.

So I call the ambulance. And the ambulance came. They didn’t want to come in anyone’s house, they just stuck the oxygen thing through the door and put it on my finger. My oxygen level was like around 92, 93.

And they said look, if people go to the hospital they’re dying. You’re better off staying home.

So I struggled through that night but that next morning, it was just overwhelming. And my wife took me to the emergency room. When they took the X-rays I had COVID-19 pneumonia that would continue to spread. And they admitted me.

His first stop in the hospital was what he remembers as “the nightmare room.”

They just put you on a gurney with no blankets, no nothing. And you’re basically laying there and everyone has severe COVID-19. And as the people deceased, they would put the covers over them. So you had dead bodies around you. It was a horror story.

And I remember saying, Can I just get some water? Can I just get some water? And periodically, they’d honor that. But that’s it. The nurses were scared. They came in, they ran out, they didn’t want to be in the mix. Because everyone that was in that room was pretty bad off. It was a nightmare.

Finally, I graduated because they came to say “Mr. Kelley, you made it upstairs.” So that’s when they put me upstairs into the room.

The doctors were coming in and I was asking them questions and they were brutally honest: “People in your condition typically are not making it through.”

I refused to take the ventilator. But I was on oxygen the whole time. And being relentless as I am I just fought.

I was sweating profusely. At some point I told them just leave my bedding. I was changing my linens three times at night because I was waking up soaking. But that kept me alive, I truly believe me doing that kept me moving and whatnot. I think that helped my cause.

I remember the struggles. Clearly it was a lot of struggling.

I lost a couple of loved ones who was very strong at the end. And ironically, the crazy part about it was I was good. I looked at the way that I’ve lived, I looked at my business affairs, I thought of my loved ones and good deeds that I’ve done in my life, I honestly felt okay. I said, Well, hell, if there’s a heaven I got a good shot at this stage.

I spoke to some loved ones once again and expressed to them what I wanted and stuff like that. And it was a very challenging time.

Just before he was admitted to the hospital, Kelley was part of a Cornell University class in labor law; one of his classmates was the president of a nurses’ union. As word of his hospitalization spread, nurses took a special interest in him.

Next thing I know, I had everybody coming from all over the hospital. I got so much special care. It was phenomenal. Prior to that all I had was three doctors coming in with masks on looking at me and shaking their heads. They gave me a different breathing apparatus and all that stuff. And we worked through it.

On the grace of God, I’m here today to be able to perform my duties and to be with my family. So it’s a horror story that turned into a pretty happy ending.

Kelley’s cell phones kept him in contact with his union.

I continued to service the membership. And my partner at the time, Vice President Linwood Wichard, got wind of that. At the end of the day, he took my phone he said no, you’re not working. But then I had my personal phone, so I was still working. It was probably kept me going, moving instead of laying there dying.

The cell phone also brought news of deaths.

I had close people that worked with me side by side who died. In fact, our first loss was in management. I’ve had managers and supervisors that passed away that I knew that were really decent people. And it was very disheartening.

I lost some good friends. I lost a plumber, a really dear friend of mine, sweetheart of a guy. I lost Caridad Santiago, she was a sweetheart of a cleaner. We lost several station agents.

Kelley was released, ran himself ragged working and went back to the hospital and was released again. Altogether, he was hospitalized for a week.

I got to the point where I was able to go home because they had given the room to people that was worse off than I was at the time. And I was willing to go home at that time, I felt confident enough that I would be able to do what I needed to do to keep progressing.

When I came out, the first thing I did was set up a team meeting on a Sunday. Everybody’s Kumbayaing and I said, “Okay, here’s the deal. Tomorrow, everybody’s back to work.

“Let’s be careful, let’s put our mask on, let’s put on a proper PPE, your rubber gloves, whatever you need to make you comfortable, social distance and things of that nature. But we owe it to the membership to provide the protections for them. That’s what we all signed up for.”

I was always a hands-on guy. The fact that I did see what was probably the other side and the possibilities that I might not be here, I took it as a blessing from God that God says, “You’re here for a reason.” And he’s using me as the vessel for me to be able to continue to be able to protect others.

At the end of the day, I can stand here strong and say that through this pandemic, if I’ve gotten anything from it, I believe that it made me a better man today.

New Yorkers need to understand the value and moral fiber of what New York is built on. We’re a twenty-four-hour bright light city. We’re not made for fancy trains and fancy train stations; we have built on New York City strong.

I think that New Yorkers are resilient. I think that we have a way of bouncing back. I think that New Yorkers know that we overcome adversity every day.

I think that the big message was life is short and let’s cherish each and every moment that we have on this earth because you’ll never know. You’ll never know.