Last week I spent a few days in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens, New York.

I’ve been frustrated with the angry rhetoric about immigration and immigrants in the political cycle. There is no doubt that we have a broken system in our country. I’ve seen first-hand the humanitarian crisis at our southern border and there are people smarter than me who have not yet figured out how to implement the solutions to this complicated issue.

But I do know this…the answer to the issue is not going to be found in vilifying people. The answer is not in scapegoating. And the answer is not in fear-mongering.

I had tried to imagine how A Peace of My Mind could respond to the contentious discourse. I’m not interested in yelling back at the noise, and of course if that was an effective strategy, we’d all be doing great by now. But then I was reminded of this crucible of the American experiment that roughly follows the path of the E train through Queens called Jackson Heights.

Jackson Heights is known as the world’s most diverse neighborhood. (Not the most diverse in America, mind you…the most diverse in the world. Bring your appetite, there’s good food on every corner, from every corner.) There is a mural on the side of a building that says, “The whole world in one neighborhood.” It’s home to almost 200,000 people, 60 percent of them born outside of the United States. It is estimated there are about 160 languages spoken in Jackson Heights.

So I decided there would be a little poetry in going to that incredibly diverse neighborhood, setting up a portable studio on the street and asking, “What’s your American story?”

We all have one.

The logistics were challenging. Moving around the city with gear, navigating the language barriers, trying to set up lighting in the middle of a busy sidewalk. I’ll talk more about the nuts and bolts in a different post. 

The truth is, I’d love to know more about each and every one of these stories. There were students and laborers and street vendors who stopped and shared a little time at our studio. There are people who have been citizens for decades and very, very new arrivals in the mix. One woman (you’ll see in her quote) had waited 27 years for her residency and if her meeting went according to plan, received it just yesterday.

It was a brief trip to a busy intersection. An opportunity to stand in the middle of a flowing sea of humanity and connect with a few souls I hadn’t met before. To put a human face on the dehumanizing language of our day. To share a few moments of energy and to see one another anew.

In the words of Bayo Akomolafe, “The times are urgent; let us slow down.”