The Magic of Showing Up

720 Weeks On 79th and Cottage Grove

Jesa Rae (2010)

I don’t want to grow callous. This idea has been a constant thought in my mind over the past few years. Moral disengagement is something I guard against. I want to be alive to the joys and the pain of the world. As such, I train my eyes, ears and spirit to what’s good in the world. I think often about Will Durant’s words:

“Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting, and doing things historians usually record—while, on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry, whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happens on the banks.”

In November 2011, my comrade Brandon made a pot of soup. He brought it to a street corner in his neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago and handed out a bowl to anyone who wanted one.

The following Friday around the same time at 9 pm, he made another meal and brought it to the corner. He offered food, and people accepted. Soon he named his weekly food sharing project “Feed the People (FTP).” A simple and direct name that described his action. Every Friday at 9 pm, through heat or freezing snow, Brandon was out on the corner with homemade food.

I first learned about Feed the People a couple of years later when Brandon wrote a post on Facebook about the anniversary of when he had first set up on 79th and Cottage Grove. I reached out to offer a monetary donation. Brandon graciously accepted my small contribution. A couple of years later, in 2014, I saw another post on Facebook:

I loved his words: “u don’t need all that confetti just keep it moving slow & steady.” Then again, three years later, he posted about the 312th consecutive week spent handing out homemade food on the corner.

In November 2021, Brandon celebrated 10 years of Feed the People.

I’m writing this essay in July 2025, and Brandon is still posted on the 9. He has been on the same corner every Friday for about 720 weeks. He has not missed a Friday, rain, sleet or snow. Sometimes volunteers join him, but most of the time he is alone on the corner with some homemade food. He has sustained his offering with no grants; he never solicits donations. When his sporadic posts about FTP appear on our social media feeds, some of us remember to contribute. There’s no fanfare in what he has been doing. It’s actually a small part of his community work. He has been mentoring and supporting young Black and brown people for as long as I’ve known him. He now co-directs Stick Talk, a project that everyone should know about and support.

Lately, Brandon has been on my mind as I regularly hear some people ask, ‘What can they do’ in our current moment. When I lived in Chicago and it was snowing, I would catch myself thinking of Brandon on 79th and Cottage Grove handing out homemade food. Without intending it, his small, consistent and care-filled acts serve as a beacon of light amidst the clouds. It’s a reminder that one person can make a difference in someone else’s life. Using his resources, he challenges the logic of scarcity; he does what he can for the people who stop by for food weekly. He talks to them, listens and affirms their humanity. He will tell you he’s not heroic and is a flawed human being. I find this to be comforting because it means that all of us can do what he does in our own way. Brandon is proof that each of us can show up for the most vulnerable in our communities. We can do so with what’s within our capacity to offer. We can be the people on the banks.

A few days ago, a good friend told me that it feels increasingly lonely to expect more of the world. I’ve been thinking about why I don’t feel the same way. I expect a lot more of the world and think that many others do too. It’s probably because I am surrounded by so many activists and organizers that I do not believe the bad press about human beings. I know that over and over again some human beings disappoint but I also know that over and over again other human beings show up to do their best. Those are stories worth embracing and uplifting alongside the horrors.

I’m not sure how many of you recognize the name Peter Warner. You may not know him, and that’s okay. He was very well-known in Australia and died at 90 in 2021.

In 1966, he and his crew rescued a group of teenage boys who had been stranded on an island for over a year.

In June 1965, the boys, all boarding school students aged 13 to 16, stole a 24-foot boat and embarked on a nautical adventure. A few hours into their journey, however, a violent wind damaged their sail and rudder, leaving them stranded on the ocean for eight days.

They finally spotted an island called 'Ata, about 100 miles south of Tongatapu, Tonga's largest island. Roughly 350 people formerly lived there, but in 1863, a British slave trader captured about 150 of them, prompting the Tongan king to relocate the others to another island for safety.

The boys subsisted initially on raw fish, coconuts, and bird eggs. A machete, tamed taro plants, and a flock of chickens descended from the ones left behind by the previous inhabitants were located among the rubble of a town they discovered after three months, which improved their fortunes. They also kindled a fire, which they maintained for the duration of their stay.

The boys constructed a temporary community that included a garden, a thatched-roof cottage, and sports facilities like a badminton court and an outdoor gym with bench presses. Every morning and night, they would sing and pray after one of the boys, Kolo, fashioned a guitar from the wreckage of the ship.

Resting, food gathering, and shipwatching were all part of their rigid duty schedule. It was customary when conflict occurred for the parties to travel to opposite sides of the island and come back, preferably with their tempers cooled. Thanks to the splint that the others made for Stephen when he broke his leg, he made a full recovery.

In a 2021 interview, one boy, who is now an old man, said this: “When I reflect on our time on the island, I realize we learnt a lot. And in comparison to what I learnt in school, I believe I learned more on the island. Because I've learned to trust myself."

This story of teenage shipwrecked boys on the island of Ata is the antithesis of the Lord of the Flies fictional story that was published over a decade earlier in 1954. And I often think about why so many of us know the story of the Lord of the Flies (which is fiction) as opposed to the story of the boys who spent one year isolated on an Island and actually built a functional, safe community for themselves.

The boys of ATA were also people on the banks. They offer a good example that human beings CAN do better. Will we always? Clearly not. But there are many instances where we do. I’ve learned a lot over the years from Dr. Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s work and example. And Ruthie has said that “What the world will become already exists in fragments and pieces, in experiments and possibilities.” The stories of Brandon and of the shipwrecked boys of Ata offer glimpses of what we can create with very few resources. When I think of such stories, my heart softens, and all cynicism dissolves. We can in fact choose to live differently.

Three questions have been in permanent rotation for me over the past 5 years. I ask them regularly to orient myself:

What are you already doing?

What else can you do?

What are you doing together with others?

The great Joanna Macy recently transitioned at 96. She taught me a lot about loving life. She loved the poet Rainer Maria Rilke who wrote: “I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.” The questions above are part of trying to live my life in widening circles. Rilke’s words have always resonated with me as a reminder that there are new discoveries to be made every day all around us. If we pay attention to what’s happening on the banks, some of those discoveries can soften our hearts. I don’t want to grow callous, do you?

---

Please consider supporting these two mutual aid efforts based in Gaza that are trying to alleviate some of the suffering engendered by Israel’s genocide [with US government support] of Palestinians: here and here.

Also, join me on August 10 at the Abolitionist Toyery. Register here.