It's OK to be afraid of change

It will be harder for some people than others

When Stewart closes his eyes and thinks of me, this is what he sees.

We can learn so much from the smallest interactions with strangers.

I have a neighbor. We’ll call him Stewart because that’s what I think another neighbor called him. I’ve never actually met him, but we have spent some time together. Like that one time he sprayed me down with a hose as I stood on the sidewalk in front of his house. I was trying to find out why his girlfriend yelled at my friends, threatening to burn down their Sprinter vans. When she saw me, she told me that it didn’t matter what I said because I was a renter. I didn’t own my house in this fancy neighborhood. I just lived in the alley, which is quite different from Stewart and his girlfriend from New York (who’s quite keen on day drinking), who both live in his mother’s basement.

Today this same stranger—I call him a stranger because we’ve never actually met, he just yells at me—became quite frustrated with me again when I parked my Sprinter van across the street from his house (white people problems). Monday is trash day, so I can’t park in the alley next to the home I rent, which is his preference because then I don’t exist to him. Out of sight, out of mind. I also couldn’t park on the street where I normally do as the other neighbor who doesn’t harass me but is quite aggressive about parking (again, white people problems) had cleared the leaves. I was being considerate by not ruining his hard work, which meant that I had to find another place to park. This upset Stewart who clearly can’t see past his own driveway.

When I asked him what would resolve the situation, he suggested I move. Not my vehicle, but my entire self—leave the neighborhood.

He then yelled across the street that I probably did “shady things” in my van. I had just come from the farmer’s market selling baskets to raise money for Zawadisha. I told him that I was a local business owner who had won awards and had been featured in magazines, so he didn’t have to worry about what I did in my van. If he knew all the things that I did in it (it is a converted Sprinter van and I am Jen Gurecki), he’d get ideas and then the harassment might shift into something… different. All women have been there before and we go to great lengths to avoid it. So better to keep it all business.

Then he said I was probably a Democrat. I didn’t know we were getting political Stewart. But noted you are not voting for Biden. Either are most Dems, so you have more in common with them than you probably can stomach. But I’ll save that for our next street interaction because my hand is getting tired of holding my phone, recording this interaction in case I need to file another police report because you actually follow through on your threats.

That’s what women have to do. Prepare for actual violence because there’s nothing to protect us when it’s just a threat. They have to hurt you first. Leave marks. I was told that many lifetimes ago by a judge when I attempted to file a restraining order against an abusive partner but didn’t get it even though the bailiff had to escort me to my car with his gun drawn because he was afraid of what was going to happen to me after my few minutes in court next to that man.

Stewart, like that man whose name we don’t say anymore, is one of those men who justifies his behavior by demonizing the “other.” They’re not the only ones. I wonder if they know who Benjamin Netanyahu is…

If I don’t own a home, I have no worth. That makes me financially inferior to him his mother. In a society that values ownership and excess accumulation of things, I am a failure. I didn’t do what I was supposed to do in life. Stewart will remind me.

If I’m a Democrat, then the narrative about who I am and what I believe in has already been written. It is impossible that we might have common ground, something as neighbors to break bread over. Stewart has no option but to yell at me. I would never listen to someone like him anyway, the story goes…

If I don’t make an honest living, then I’m a criminal. Of course, you don’t want a criminal parked across the street from your mother’s home or living in the alley behind her. That’s why I must go. I wonder if I owned my home if white-collar crime would be OK or does Stewart only not like the things that poor people get put in jail for.

I have lived one house down and around a sharp turn left into the alley from Stewart for more than two years. He’s seen me come and go, oftentimes rushing to or from work, computer and boxes and water bottle and lunch and keys that Yeti cooler I use as a purse in hand. He’s seen me ride my bike out that alley and up the hill. He’s seen me chatting with my nice neighbor and his wife and kids.

Yet I’m still a stranger. Easily demonized. Easily made out to be the problem. My sheer existence justifies Stewart’s behavior.

And we wonder why we don’t have a ceasefire in Gaza. Why guns are the leading cause of death for children in the US. Why police brutality continues to ravage this country. Why it’s so easy to shame and attack people on social media. Why we don’t have conversations. Why we don’t seek resolution. Why we simultaneously run from conflict as we lean into all-out attacks.

We always find a way to rationalize the awful things that we do to people because we make sure they will always be strangers.

Stewart, I’ll give you this: You do have a reason to be afraid. It’s not because of the naughty things that I do in my van or that I write a rent check monthly to a landlord. It’s that me, and people like me, aren’t intimated by you anymore. We’ll park our vans, record conversations, file police reports, tell our neighbors, write about you in our newsletters. We will live like we have worth. Things are going to be different. You will have to see my face (and my van) every day. I’m not going to hide from you or make myself small even though that’s what you want. And that will likey be a lot harder for you than it will be for me.