Good bye IRT, Hello NYC baby!

It's been quite an interesting last week to this monthlong adventure. So some of us interns came together and organized some kind of platform regarding our concerns for the program. We met with faculty, and while power struggles between them and our just emerging organizers (for the most part) played out in how we held our conversation, faculty took action to make some changes. It was like night and day, for the most part, in the restrcturing of our next 5 days of the program. Our priorities were addressed and faculty treatment towards interns took a new turn, although there seems to be some kind of mutual silence between one particular faculty member and I (we went at each other a few times during the program) where we are just avoiding each other. I just hope that our interaction has him thinking twice about his approach towards others and keeps his ego in check next time around. Our conversation aimed to make the program better for not just our next 5 days but for future interns. The program offers some great opportunities for those who might not have otherwise come across them. Apparently we are not the first group of interns with problems (there was another group who boycotted planned activities and organized against faculty), so I'm hoping they take on the work to really think seriously about some of the changes we suggested and keep the program alive and working.

On the other hand, it feels fuckin GOOD to be done, and NYC will be all the more rewarding! I know every year I go back home, there's a piece of Harlem missing, thanks to gentrification, but in contrast to that, my peoples are still around tryna keep it hood and down to earth. Washington Heights, West Harlem, Spanish Harlem, Louisa (Lower East Side), I miss you.. These places hold so many pieces of who I am. To see them getting chipped away at is like a slow death and an attack towards my identity and really all I am made of. I take great pride in the places that shaped who I am. Without these spaces I would not be who I am, and who I am continuously becoming...