John,
Let me first introduce you to Yarys Lopez. With Thanksgiving approaching in these grim-feeling times, her story really helped me reflect on gratitude—and the obligations that gratitude compels. I hope it will do the same for you.Yarys was just 11 years old when a neighbor tried to burn down her family’s home in Honduras in 2014. She is Garifuna, from an indigenous Afro-Caribbean population in Honduras that faces grim racism.
So her mom scooped up Yarys and her sister, and never let go of them. They walked across the continent, through Mexico, waded across the frigid Rio Grande, and presented themselves at the border to seek asylum here in the United States. For a while, they slept in one of the icebox warehouses, “la hieleras,” with only tin foil blankets.
At first, things got even worse when they made it to New York City. Their family was homeless, sleeping in parks and shelters. They moved in with her mom’s boyfriend—but he got violent, and one day Yarys found her mom unconscious.
But that’s when things started to change. At the Bronx Family Justice Center, their family met Allison Cutler, an attorney with New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG). Allison helped them escape domestic violence, find new housing, and secure immigration status. She may well have saved their lives.
But that's not all she did. Yarys was so inspired watching Allison confidently argue her family's case before a judge, that she transferred to the Bronx High School of Law and Community Service. There, Yarys got involved in mock trial, started volunteering at NYLAG—and graduated as valedictorian.
Already such a New Yorker, Yarys enrolled at CUNY’s Lehman College. With Allison’s help, she became a volunteer with NYLAG’s Pro Se Plus Project this past summer. They were both working at the City’s new asylum seeker application center on the day I first visited back in June.
It’s no surprise that Yarys won her first asylum case. “As an immigrant, you’re always fighting the stereotype that you’re a burden. But that day,” she said, “I felt like a good-luck charm.”
This spring, Yarys will graduate from Lehman College. “Make no mistake, I will become an immigration lawyer. I will also ensure that all of this has been worth it—not just for me, but for the thousands of immigrants fleeing discrimination and violence that come after me," she says.
If you love our immigrant city even a fraction as much as Yarys does, I can pretty much guarantee you’ll cry if you listen to Yarys tell her own story. That's what happened at the Robin Hood Foundation’s Heroes Breakfast last week, where they honored NYLAG and other nonprofits that make stories like Yarys's possible.
I think Yarys's story will make you feel so deeply grateful for this beautiful, messy, extraordinary immigrant city we all share, with that copper-plated statue in the harbor reminding us of who we are. Reminding us why we must support efforts to make our city home for many more.
***
Each Thanksgiving, I try to put some effort into reflecting on gratitude—on trying to appreciate the blessings in my life more than I do in my usual day-to-day. Over the past decade, I’ve hit many barriers in this effort—Hurricane Sandy, the election of Donald Trump, the pandemic, my friend Ady Barkan’s diagnosis with ALS, and now his death a few weeks ago.
This year, the barriers to finding gratitude feel larger still: The war, with its horrors and misery in Israel and Palestine, and its reverberations all around us.
Yesterday, I shared a Thanksgiving prayer for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, and for the return of hostages. Like many of you, I was deeply grateful to learn last night that 50 Israeli (and American and other) hostages, women and children, kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, will return to their homes, that Palestinian women and children imprisoned in Israel will return to theirs, and that there will be a pause in the fighting over this weekend. I pray that this is the first step to a more durable ceasefire, and eventually—though it feels so elusive now—toward real coexistence and peace.
In yesterday’s prayer, I lifted up many voices, both Israeli and Palestinian, who are finding gratitude even amidst so much despair, who are bringing me hope this Thanksgiving—concluding with Sally Abed and Alon Lee Green of Standing Together, a remarkable group of Jews and Palestinians organizing together. I hope you’ll check out their story.
***
Over the past five years, I often went to visit Ady Barkan the weekend before Thanksgiving, so I’m really missing him a lot right now.
In going through emails from him, I found the most amazing story that he wrote to some of us last winter—and I was grateful for the chance to share it in The Nation, in the eulogy that my friend Sarah Johnson and I wrote for Ady.
Ady described playing a video for his kids (on a screen he could direct with his eyes, since ALS had stolen his hands and voice) of a younger version of himself singing “This Land Is Your Land,” recorded before his illness. Ady described the scene: Himself in his wheelchair, his 6 year old son Carl leaning on his arm, his 3 year old daughter Willow holding his hand, and both kids singing along.
And so there we were, singing in unison, my two children and me.
When the song was over, Carl said ‘Willow, that’s Abba singing.’ Willow laughed, pointed at me, and said, ‘No, this is Abba!’ Carl explained that I sang the song when I could still walk, many years ago. Before he was born.
Then I got to tell him that, actually, I recorded that song and the others in the set when he was a baby, so he would know what I sounded like, and know that I love him. I didn’t dare imagine, back in 2017, that I would someday get to listen to him sing along with me, let alone that his sister would make us a trio.
I told them that I love them. Carl said he loved me. Willow gave me a big kiss. And they went to bed happy. I’m so grateful for them.
It is a simple thing, a father reading stories and singing songs with his children. And of course, I wish that I could use my own silly voice to read the stories, and play the guitar as they sing.
But, I have learned, and I relearn every day, that the antidote to being sad about everything I don’t have, is to be grateful for all that I do have.
And, of course, having reduced us to tears with his email, Ady then pivoted to remind us that this was only possible because of his caregivers, and could we please contribute to Be A Hero for its campaign to push the Biden administration to expand Medicare’s home care program to cover many more people.
Yesterday, not even a month after she lost Ady, I got a Thanksgiving email from Ady’s wife Rachael King. She expressed her gratitude for Ady’s caregivers and sought support for Be a Hero, the health care organization Ady founded that fights to expand home care and ensure that care workers earn a living wage. If you're able to, please consider contributing to Be A Hero here.
So look: Times feel pretty dark. There’s war, and surging antisemitism and Islamophobia and hate, and there’s domestic violence, and neighbors sleeping on the street, and there’s ALS. (And that’s not even to mention the threat of Trump, and authoritarianism, and the climate crisis).
But there’s also Yarys, Sally, Alon-Lee, Ady, and Rachael.
This Thanksgiving, gratitude is not really that hard find.
With my very deepest wishes for a beautiful holiday,
Brad
