A few weeks ago, we had the privilege of meeting Drew, a deaf man, on the first day of his release from prison, after spending many years behind bars. Drew’s shorter sentence was extended while in prison because of altercations, including with prison guards. As part of Drew’s punishment, he was placed in solitary confinement for over ten years, with periodic intervals among the general prison population. While in solitary confinement, Drew faced an even deeper frustration and isolation than others, because Drew is deaf. When hearing prisoners are placed in isolation, there is an ability to apprehend sound outside of a solitary confinement cell. Drew was unable to hear conversations or sounds outside of his cell—a connection, however tenuous, to the outside world—because of Drew’s profound deafness. In an effort to better manage in isolation, Drew repeatedly requested a slightly larger window. Eventually, Drew was released from solitary confinement because of mental health challenges.

On the day that Drew left prison, there did not appear to be much support. Drew just walked out the doors, like in the movie, “The Shawshank Redemption.” Fortunately, Drew’s loving family members were present to greet him.

When Drew entered prison years ago, he had not yet purchased a cell phone (and certainly not a Smartphone), as there were far fewer cell phones as exist today. One of Drew’s first challenges, during reentry, has been to learn how to text, even though English is a second language for Drew, as American Sign Language is his primary language. Several weeks have passed, but, still, instead of sending a text, which is Drew’s intention, he calls us directly, although Drew cannot communicate by phone without a third-party interpreter on the line.

This season, Drew is living in a New York City homeless shelter and getting accustom to his life outside of prison. The law center assists Drew by providing answers in response to a range of questions; and we are also seeking to secure American Sign Language interpreters in places of public accommodation, where the law requires language access.

Tomorrow, Drew will be leaving the homeless shelter, where he resides, to join his family for a Thanksgiving meal—his first Thanksgiving meal outside of prison in a long time.

We wish you an enjoyable Thanksgiving and we are grateful for your abiding support for the law center over the years.

The Law Center’s annual event takes place Tuesday evening, December 4^th, beginning at 6:30 p.m., at the New York Athletic Club. We invite you to join us this evening where we will introduce you to several of our clients and celebrate the work of the law center.

This is a very short story, before Thanksgiving, about Patricio’s pants. Patricio lives in a part of the city that is recognized as having a high crime rate. Despite crime in his neighborhood, Patricio is fortunate to have secured an apartment, years ago, in a public housing complex. Due to serious injuries and disabilities, including deafness, neither Patricio nor his wife, are able to work at this time. Patricio is creative in stretching modest savings and public benefits, in a range of ways, to cover weekly expenses for family, including his young child.

Yesterday, in speaking with Patricio before Thanksgiving, when asked, Patricio said that he did not have funds to buy groceries to make a special meal for Thanksgiving. Patricio explained his budget: dollars are allocated to weekly food; medication; rent; utilities; internet service; supplies for his daughter for school; and other activities. Nearly all the time, there are limited funds left in the budget for any discretionary purchases by Patricio and his wife.

Patricio shared with me a ritual: he goes to the store to buy a pair of new pants at the beginning of the month, which he needs; he puts the pants in his closet for nearly four weeks, keeping the tag on, hoping that he might be able to wear them; he then returns the pants to the store later in the month, redeeming his payment of $18.00 dollars, using it for additional food, before receiving public benefits the next month when the cycle begins anew. This choreography of clothing has been performed for the past few years.

There is a quote attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt that says: “it takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.” In Patricio’s case, it takes much energy to wish as well as to plan, and in time Patricio is confident that both his wishes and his plans will be realized. Today, Patricio states, he is grateful for his life, for his loving wife, and for his beautiful child.

At the law center, Patricio has taught us the quality of gratitude.

Our Annual Benefit takes place on Tuesday, December 5th, at the New York Athletic Club. Please support the law center, as you have in past years.

Consider taking a table or purchasing tickets and attending with friends.

We are grateful for your continuing generosity.

Best, Bruce

Six months ago, one of our deaf clients-Shamim-became very ill and passed away. He was humble and kind. Shamim had immigrated to the United States over twenty years ago. He lived in a shelter; and spoke limited American Sign Language (“ASL”). We were never able to arrange appointments for Shamim in advance, as he did not have a phone. Shamim worked, earning a few dollars to supplement the meals that he had received through the support of the Department of Homeless Services. Somehow, he managed, without mastering ASL and without the ability to hear or speak English.

When we last saw him at a hospital, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, just days before he died, Shamim smiled and, through ASL, thanked us for visiting him. He boarded a plane two days before his death to reunite with his family, who he had not seen for many years. Upon arrival, he embraced his parents and siblings; slept in his own bed in his childhood home for one evening, and then he was taken to the local hospital on the last day of his life. A relative shared with us that after his death, over one thousand villagers attended Shamim’s funeral.

At the law center, Shamim has taught us about inner strength.

Our Annual Benefit takes place on Tuesday, December 5th, at the New York Athletic Club. Please support the law center, as you have in past years.

Consider taking a table or purchasing tickets and attending with friends.

We are grateful for your continuing generosity. Best, Bruce

The Whitestone Expressway arcs toward the left after passing Citi Field and a few miles away, not far from the gray pastel exhaust of jet engines that rise from LaGuardia Airport, there is an undistinguished looking nursing home for individuals in need of continuous care. You enter the nursing home and there is pale blue light that leads you up drab corridors that house some of our most vulnerable New Yorkers. Once inside, you pass tightly drawn rooms shared by pairs of aging roommates; lounges where individuals can congregate with other nursing home neighbors; and many pockets of meeting places where residents sit side by side and speak in metal and green vinyl wheelchairs.

If you continue to walk toward the back of the nursing home, you will reach a corridor where, off to the right, Anna lives. Anna has been in this nursing home for over three years. Once animated and active, Anna sits still in a chair next to her bed now, having suffered a devastating stroke that effected the right side of her body. Anna is deaf; she still understands American Sign Language, as her mind is active; but she mostly signs these days with her left hand, which is challenging as ASL often requires the choreography of two hands in lyrical motion.

Anna is alone in her nursing home. Although her husband faithfully visits, when he leaves, Anna is locked out of conversation. There, no one communicates using ASL-neither residents nor staff-and the nursing home refuses to provide Anna with accommodations that will open wide her access to language: ASL interpreters. For Anna, her deep disconnection from her nursing home hearing neighbors evokes sadness because it is nearly impossible for Anna to engage friends and cultivate company. Shortly, we will begin the process of seeking to insure that Anna receives access to interpreters for her medical care and daily discourse. We hope to bring Anna home, not to the place where her husband lives, but to a place in her heart where she can be fully engaged as a member of her community.

It appeared to be like any other Monday for Luis, last August. It was sunny; and there was a blue sky and light winds as Luis — a deaf New Yorker — emerged from a Brooklyn subway station to walk to the social service agency where he receives support. While walking to the social service agency, Luis felt faint and fell. By the time he reached the agency, he appeared ill and a volunteer called an ambulance and Luis was taken to a local hospital. Once there, Luis strived to communicate with staff, while requesting an American Sign Language interpreter. His toe was painful. He felt very sick. Luis stayed at the hospital all day, but no interpreter arrived. By evening, he was discharged home.

In the absence of an interpreter, the hospital did not understand Luis’ risk factors: one week later, Luis (who is diabetic) was admitted to another hospital and underwent emergency surgery requiring the amputation of his toe. Luis had a raging infection and there was no other alternative to treat the infection, but amputation.

Luis’ story is not unusual. All too often, deaf individuals enter places of public accommodation and are not provided with interpreters. At the law center, we work to advance the civil rights of the deaf community, while creating transformational change in the manner in which public and private entities interact with deaf New Yorkers. We enforce the civil rights of deaf New Yorkers, one client at a time, in an effort to achieve important language access in hospitals, police settings, homeless shelters, in other government agencies and among employers.

When Lila’s mother was pregnant, she escaped Nazi Germany and settled in Brooklyn. Lila was born a few months later.

Some years after, while at home, when Lila was 12 years old, Lila’s father collapsed in front of her from cardiac arrest.

Years past, and Lila’s mother passed away, never recovering from the trauma of the Holocaust and premature death of her husband.

Mourning, Lila began to paint many mauve-colored paintings on costly, richly textured Belgium canvasses, based upon black and white photos snapped in Brooklyn in the 1940s. The photos preserved images of her relatives who had fled Europe before the war; and those relatives who had survived Nazi death camps.

Five years after Lila had lost her mother, Lila stopped painting in mauve; she jettisoned the black and white photos; and she began painting in color, mostly of beaches where she walked on Fire Island.

Now, the world was filled with color for Lila, but the mauve sometimes would return. This month, the law center obtained (through another foundation) a hearing aid for Lila, who is latent deaf, having lost most of her hearing as an adult. Before the hearing aid, Lila hardly could hear when others spoke; she felt inadequate; isolated; and diminished. Today, Lila hears; and she feels renewed.

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, prior to the establishment of the State of Israel, writes in his book, Lights of Holiness, of the imperative to bring light into our lives.

“[Man] rises toward the heights until he feels crushed and desperate, but his spirit is at once renewed, and again becomes luminous. It ‘is a forward and backward movement, like the appearance of a flash of lightening.’”

Kook’s words capture the meaning of this season: we are reminded to see light to reaffirm our direction, reinvigorate our spirit, and reinforce our sense of purpose.

For our lovely client, Jenny, illuminating an inner light is practically all that is possible, as Jenny is both deaf and suffers from narrowing and dimness of vision, due to usher syndrome, a progressive deterioration of the retina. Every morning, Jenny would wake at 4:30 a.m.; dress; navigate the elevator in her Bronx apartment, and the dawn dusted sidewalks and the fluorescently filtered subway staircases and trains, to alight to work in Brooklyn.  Jenny worked tirelessly for five years, before being hit by a car on her way home last March, causing her to remain out of work.

Jenny uses “tactile sign language” as she no longer discerns the movement of hands in motion. Instead, Jenny feels others’ hand signs with her own hands. After the car accident, Jenny‘s employer used a visual system with an interpreter to inform Jenny of her rights-like a version of Skype or FaceTime-but Jenny could not make out the screen. Jenny asked for an interpreter whose hands she could touch, but she was not provided with a tactile interpreter. Shortly after, Jenny was fired.

The law center has committed to representing Jenny in the new year. How could we do anything less, especially when the collective lights of all of our traditions demand restoration and renewal right now, and really for all times.

And to our cherished community, we thank you for your generous support this past year which has permitted us to represent Jenny and other indigent deaf New Yorkers in need.  We wish you a healthy, happy and radiant year ahead.

Best, Bruce

“Brazilian Romance” was the last album recorded by the incomparable Sarah Vaughan. There, Ms. Vaughan soars as she sings “So Many Stars.”

“The dark is filled with dreams

So many dreams which one is mine

One must be right for me

Which dream of all the dreams

When there’s a dream for every star.”

I imagine this is the song that our deaf client, Latif, sang in his bedroom in Ramallah as a child as he dreamed about his bright future. Latif was born into a Palestinian family with so many brothers and sisters. As Latif grew into adolescence, he realized that he was attracted to boys, and not girls. He formed romantic relationships with school friends, until Latif’s father discovered Latif’s sexual orientation. Whether out of anger, or in an effort to exorcise Latif’s nature, Latif’s father beat him over and over again, as Latif would grow into late adolescence. By young adulthood, Latif’s father had arranged for his marriage to a woman and Latif capitulated, under threat of an ultimate violence.

Latif married and moved to Tel Aviv (his wife had Israeli citizenship, although she was born outside of Israel) and they had children. Soon, Latif’s wife discovered that he was gay and she informed her brothers. One day, when Latif returned home, he found that his brothers-in-law were in wait for him in the living room and they beat him badly. Latif stayed with a friend after the beating, and fearing survival, he escaped to America where he became a client of our law center and seeks asylum.

There are no numbers to attach to the tears that trickle down Latif’s cheeks as he recounts, in countless meetings at our office, the terror of his life in Ramallah and Tel Aviv. As we write about Latif this week we learn, so sadly, of Tuesday’s terror in Har Nof where innocent civilians, and a Druse police officer, Zidan Saif, are murdered.

Are there really such differences between Latif’s tears, Mrs. Saif’s tears and the tears of the families of those who prayed in Jerusalem, Tuesday morning?

“The dark is filled with dreams / So many dreams which one is mine.”

This week at the law center, we wonder whether darkness can be filled with dreams, as we look upward toward the stars for some answers.

All the best,

Bruce

Sapphire walks into our office yesterday seeking asylum. Through an interpreter, Sapphire shares with us that she is deaf and she is a lesbian and is fleeing persecution from her home country, Jamaica. Sapphire has been targeted because of her disability and sexual orientation. Over the past few years, Sapphire has been raped and battered; and her partner was murdered on a public street, as Sapphire desperately ran to safety.

Regarding the sparkling, tropical blue island of Jamaica, Human Rights Watch published an 86-page study last month in which it reported that: “LGBT Jamaicans are vulnerable to both physical and sexual violence and many live in constant fear …They are taunted, threatened, fired from their jobs, thrown out of their homes, or worse: beaten, stoned, raped, or killed.”

Sapphire is one of the many faces of an asylum seeker-of someone who turns to America-our beloved country- for safety.

We have just met Sapphire; and there will be more meetings. We will gather affidavits to support her claim; prepare a country conditions report; and medical professionals will examine Sapphire. We will file an asylum application, as we are Sapphire’s way toward a safer world.

If you are reflecting upon charitable giving before the end of this calendar year, kindly consider a gift to the New York Center for Law and Justice. Or join us next month when we celebrate the precious human rights that we enjoy here in America. The celebration takes place at Danese/Corey Gallery, in Chelsea, just beneath the High Line, on Tuesday, December 2nd. See you then.

All the best,

Bruce

Henry was evicted from his upper Manhattan apartment within a few months after receiving an eviction notice.  He had been living in the apartment for over 12 years and because of an administrative error not due to Henry, his bank bounced his checks.  Then, Henry’s landlord reacted in summary fashion, issuing the notice of eviction and failing to inquire why, after a dozen years, Henry was behind on his rent. When the eviction notice was placed on Henry’s door, Henry discarded it. I know that you ask: “how do you discard an eviction notice?” Henry does not understand very much English; he never graduated high school; and he appears to have a cognitive disability, in addition to being nearly fully deaf, so that the legal notice, like the bounced checks reflected in his unopened monthly bank statements, held no meaning for Henry.

Henry’s landlord won an order of eviction and placed his personal belongings in a warehouse in the Bronx and changed the locks that Henry held keys to for the last dozen years. As I write this short piece, I glance at the list of Henry’s inventory carted off to the warehouse. Soap. Shampoo. Glass jars. Pots.  Plates. Duffle bag. Glass lion. Cups.  Four Pillows. Four hearing aids. Vase. Shoes. Broom. Glass coffee maker. Blankets. Cookie sheets. Birth certificate. Lease. This is the inventory of a life lived on the margins-a life touched by near deafness and cognitive disability. A life where education is limited; work non-existent; and home and a glass lion and a few other personal belongings means everything to this deaf man who celebrated turning fifty years old a few weeks after his ignoble eviction.

We were fortunate to advance legal arguments that led to Henry’s return to home and the recovery of his modest belongings.  Not all tenants are so lucky.  I walk into housing courtrooms every month and there are hundreds of tenants, many with young children who wait, without legal representation, for a moment with a judge; and a moment to beg for more time to cobble together a few more dollars to remain at home and avoid a homeless shelter. “Another thirty days please, Your Honor, and we will find the money to pay our arrears.

Now in our seventh year as a public interest law center, we report that we are proud of the work that we do on a daily basis. We are a bridge between instability and a safer world.  If you are reflecting upon charitable giving before the end of this calendar year, kindly consider a gift to the New York Center for Law and Justice.

Or consider joining us for an informative, inspirational and elegant evening next month when we celebrate our accomplishments and reflect upon the meaning of disability at our annual event at Danese/Corey Gallery, in Chelsea, just beneath the High Line.

We attach a copy of our invitation.

All the best, Bruce

We placed a small flyer on the door of a social service agency in the Bronx with our name — New York Center for Law and Justice — offering a workshop that we were sponsoring on the subject of legal rights of the disabled.  Over twenty deaf individuals from across the Bronx walked through the doors of the agency one cold and sunny early December morning. As we were preparing to leave, two hours later, a middle-aged man and his aging mother walked through the door. “Can you help my son, who is deaf,” the woman asked. “What is the legal problem?” “There is no legal problem,” the woman responded.  “Then why are you here,” we asked a bit puzzled. The woman responded: “I saw the word ‘Justice’ on the flyer so I am here.”

For the next half hour, we spoke with Nancy, a retired kindergarten teacher, born on the island of St. John, and now a forty-year proud resident of the Bronx. Nancy had contracted German measles when she was pregnant with her son, David, and although Nancy was not certain, she thought that David could have been born deaf. After several months, David did not appear to respond to oral cues, so Nancy brought David to the local hospital in St. John and hospital personnel injected David with medication. As it turns out, in a possible tragic twist of fate, like destinies that change so suddenly with late summer storms in the Caribbean, Nancy learned later that it may have been the injections that caused David’s deafness.

Most days, David stays home with his mom, although he fiercely wishes to be independent. David worked for a fast food chain years ago, “cleaning around the counters, putting knives and forks in receptacles,” according to Nancy, but he was let go. Nancy has tried to secure vocational training for David, but there have been obstacles. Meantime, David smiles at us and through sign language tells us that he wants to work. Nancy wants David to work too; he needs a job, Nancy explains, both for his sense of dignity and because Nancy is worried that at home David may be regressing. David is so dedicated to working, in fact, that he often leaves home and volunteers to hand out flyers for businesses on the streets of the Bronx, “just to do something.”

As an organization, the law center did not intend, initially, to provide social services to the deaf community. But eager individuals like David continue to pass through our doors seeking justice, and searching for access to full and complete participation in our world. And Nancy has made a New Year’s resolution: she resolves to find David a job in this New Year. We will strive to help.

We are nearly upon January, and the symbol of the Roman god— Janus — who is associated with doors and gateways and new beginnings, presses upon our collective consciousness at the law center. Indeed, there are appointed times in the year when we are reminded of the chance to begin again, a hope embraced by Nancy, who brought David to a modest office in the Bronx just because of a sign that she read on a door that included the word, “Justice.” From all of us at the New York Center for Law and Justice, we thank you for your great generosity and support over this past year and we wish you a healthy and happy new year — a year filled with the abundance of promise that arrives with all new beginnings.

We should have been home for Christmas,” Henry tells me as we speak one week before Christmas at the law center. “When you don’t have housing, you don’t have nothing,” he adds. This is a short story about Henry and his deaf brother.  The two men grew up in Harlem, near the Apollo Theater, over fifty years ago.  They attended respected public schools; their mom was a nurse at a fine Manhattan hospital; and their dad had a coveted job, as a supervisor, for the New York City Transit Authority. Their parents died when Henry was in his early twenties; and Henry cared for his deaf teenage brother. Over the years, the landlord of their rent stabilized home induced them to leave; the brothers were unable to find affordable housing; and then Henry became ill and could no longer work and support both himself and his brother, who struggles to find full employment due to his disability.

The two brothers were compelled to move to a homeless shelter over a year ago. There, they shared a small room with a bunk bed. Henry tells us that the room lacked a dresser or a desk to write. After living at the shelter for nearly 8 months, the shelter personnel “logged out” the brothers because they were late in returning to the shelter, having just attended a computer-training program at a prominent university, late at night, leading to college admission. It is not a good thing to be logged out of a shelter: it means that you lose your privilege to live there. Accordingly, the two brothers have been “couch diving” at friends for the past six months.

It is the Christmas season and Henry is determined to affirm the spirit of Christmas. Henry teaches us: “Christmas is not about gifts, luxuries-right now people are going through a crisis; people don’t have a place to stay.” How does Henry advance the spirit of Christmas? Henry explains: “For me, the thing about Christmas is to give to needy people who don’t have nothing.” So Henry is involved in a toy drive for children at a New York hospital who suffer from Down Syndrome; he sings Christmas carols to comfort this community of children (Henry states that it “could have been me”); he brings books to senior citizens at nursing homes and reads those nursing home residents stories and gives out Girl Scout cookies; and he hands out Selective Service brochures for youth looking for a future.

When we ask Henry how we can help him, he tells us: “Please, that’s all I ask for, a place to stay. Every human being deserves to have a key to turn a lock.” And so today, Henry has been accepted as a client of the law center.  We will find Henry and his brother a home, as it should be. This is not a traditional Christmas story, and in truth, Henry is not coming home for Christmas this season.  But Henry has taught us something perhaps more deeply important: it is possible to come home to Christmas, if not for Christmas, in spite of narrow circumstances. Through giving, like Henry, we return to a place that can be called home — a place in time, if not space, that offers the potential for a redemptive world. We wish you a happy holiday season from all of us at the New York Center for Law and Justice.

Richard closes his eyes tightly in the middle of his sentence and I know that he is searching for the word that will not come to his mind.  In a five-minute conversation, the “pause” will occur many more times.  Richard attributes his inability to consistently access words to his latent deafness.  Born with hearing loss in his right ear, Richard lost his hearing in his left ear years later. With complete hearing loss, Richard lost also his job in the customer service department of a bank where previously he had been awarded a plaque for ten years of service.  And with the loss of the customer service job, Richard lost his home.

We were introduced to Richard when he was a resident of a homeless shelter. Over an eighteen-month period, Richard had been relocated to four different homeless shelters, for reasons that remain elusive to him. In this fourth and final iteration, Richard lived with his son, Arthur, who attends a local community college and who aims to become a New York City police officer. Richard’s other child—Leah, a daughter—resides in the long-term care unit of a New York City hospital. A City agency had separated Richard from his twelve-year old daughter two years ago because the staff felt that the homeless shelter posed health risks to Leah, who continues to recover from major surgery involving her kidney.

With the assistance of the law center, Richard has secured permanent housing in Harlem where he moved several weeks ago. When I ask Richard about the new apartment, he states that it is “beautiful”; and that it has “brown wood floors, two bedrooms, a living room and a small kitchen.” Tomorrow, Richard will be cooking Thanksgiving dinner for his son—their first Thanksgiving in their own home in nearly two years. They will visit Leah at the hospital and bring her “candied yams,” her favorite Thanksgiving dish, that Richard will make in the new kitchen.

Despite the enormous challenges that confront Richard—in addition to being unemployed, he is learning to read lips—Richard is grateful. And, for Richard, the Thanksgiving holiday is the culmination of the overwhelming feeling of gratitude that swells up within him, now daily, as he eases into his new home, supports Arthur’s aspirations to finish school and become a police officer, and plans to bring Leah home from the hospital, after living there, apart from Richard and Arthur, for nearly two years.

Richard’s approach to living resonates in a world of hearing with the musical structure of the “blues.” The composition of the blues incorporates blues notes, flattened notes that are lower in pitch to the major scale. The composition of the blues echoes, furthermore, the dynamic in life where, certainly with respect to many of the law center’s clients, there are moments that are flattened, while at the same time there are major moments of expansiveness.

Like the blues, our clients live with a sense of life’s duality, yet our clients appear to apprehend the potential for a polychromatic life filled with possibility. This sense of purpose, clients state, arises often from gratitude. Somehow, gratitude is the melodic answer to the dissonance that can accompany a disability.  Thus, our clients have come to teach that in life the aural landscape is not always even–there are high as well as low notes—but the aim is to feel gratitude in the midst of composition. From the New York Center for Law and Justice, we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving holiday and hope that you will consider joining us at our annual celebration benefit next Tuesday, December 3rd at Loi Restaurant.

Each day, our deaf clients enter our office and require an American Sign Language interpreter to render our voices into meaning. Our clients cannot hear the spoken word and surely strain to apprehend the resonance of musical notes felt through vibrations. Although their stories so often are lyrical, we know that the men and women who enter through our doors may never hear timbre-the actual quality of sound produced by an instrument or voice. Beautiful timbre that carries a perfect pitch causes us to hear a stretch of sound whose frequency is clear and stable enough to be heard as not noise, according to The Harvard Concise History of Music And Musicians. Thus, we are taught that thoughtful words can create sounds of beauty in our world.

Is a house a home? For Dan and Sheila, their modest condominium in Bayside, Queens is both a house and home.  The condominium serves as a physical structure against the natural elements, like rain and snow and the heat from the unforgiving summer sun. The history of their lives within the condominium, moreover, composes a home-the sum total of their physical, emotional and spiritual experience as a married couple, filled with dreams of a hopeful future for their disabled son-a future brighter than their own present.

Thus, when the national bank with which Dan and Sheila held a mortgage–at an interest rate of 12%–sought to foreclose on their house–their home–because Dan had missed a few payments, the sense of a better tomorrow morphed into a sense of a catastrophic today.

Dan is deaf; Sheila can hear.  Dan is confined to a wheelchair. He receives social security disability, but manages to work part-time. Dan’s and Sheila’s son was born with a congenital defect; he has had multiple, difficult surgeries and he is just past twenty years old. Despite physical challenges, their son has enrolled in a four-year college.

No legal service organization was willing to take Dan’s and Sheila’s case. This is because there was no conventional legal response to the bank’s foreclosure action. The couple owed the money; the bank was unwilling to refinance, even though the property was not “underwater” and there would be equity in the property, even after refinancing to repay arrears. Refinancing in the amount of approximately $15,000.00 would have satisfied the arrears, still safeguarded a hefty, equitable value in the home for the bank, and at the new mortgage’s interest rate the monthly debt service could be cut in half.

The New York Center for Law and Justice took the case.  We strive to accept every client who walks into the center if we feel that the sense of equity demands justice. We are a legal services organization of last resort.  In the case of Dan and Sheila, we contacted the bank over and over and over again and the bank finally agreed to a trial period–reduced payments and a lower interest rate.  Foreclosure has been postponed-hopefully forever.

This is not a case that involves extraordinary legal jurisprudence. It is not a case for the legal history books or the subject of a law review article.  What is extraordinary about this case is the ordinary:  we were unable to place this matter with a legal services organization that was skilled in foreclosure actions or with a private pro bono law firm; rather, the case was like a sad, abandoned pup that could not find a new home, instead waiting nervously in the corner of an emotionally tight cage at the pound for many, many months.

We learn from Dan and Sheila that when your home is at stake, anything is possible.  It is right there–at home–where we begin to believe that the world follows an arc from worse to better; from despair to hope–just like the place in Bayside, Queens where Dan and Sheila and their son live today.

Things looked pretty bleak for one of our profoundly deaf clients, Donna, just about a year ago. The city and state program-Advantage-was ending and so was the funding provided to her that subsidized Donna’s modest housing in Brooklyn. The fallout from the termination of Advantage meant that most of the tenants in Donna’s building would soon be evicted. For Donna, though, who has a minor child who receives a small public assistance check each month, providence is not delayed. This is because Donna potentially qualifies for an alternative program as a single mother, since her daughter receives a small government subsidy. With the help of the New York Center for Law and Justice, Donna signed a new lease last week (in anticipation of receiving the alternative funding).

Donna’s lease signing took place in a celebratory atmosphere: the managing agent traveled to our offices from Brooklyn and he and Donna penned their signatures to the new lease. Following the signing, we had thought that Donna and the managing agent, who headed out the door together, were traveling back to Brooklyn. A few minutes later, though, Donna returns with a shopping bag from Fairway. In the bag was a large bowl of mixed fruit that Donna had purchased as a gift for us. Many of us may not contemplate that an eight-dollar bowl of fruit is extravagant; for Donna and the budget she manages, the fruit is one of the purest offerings that we have seen so far this season.

Donna’s hopefulness and gratitude embody the sentiment expressed by Abraham Isaac Kook, a religious figure who lived in Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel. In his mystical writing, Lights of Holiness, Kook teaches us that: “The perception that dawns on a person to see the world not as finished, but as in the process of continued becoming, ascending, developing-this changes him from being ‘under the sun’ to being ‘above the sun,’ from the place where there is nothing new to the place where there is nothing old, where everything takes on new form.” And Donna’s world-her daughter, lease renewal and new life-reflects this process of becoming, not of concluding. Donna’s sensibility is a mark of our approaching holiday season. This month, we are asked particularly to embrace hope and resist despair-to cradle positivism and reject cynicism. Indeed, the winter solstice-a moment in time when the sun stands ever so still before reversing course and moving higher in the sky-provides us with just the right temporal moment to pause and absorb the light of renewal-a process that, like our sun, causes us to arc toward the heights, just when our position is measured to be nadir. At this very moment in time, our arc ascends; and the truth implicit in this particular celestial movement may be, for so many of us, one of the greatest teachings of the season.

The 50th Biennial Conference of the National Association of the Deaf, Philadelphia, PA

July 9th, 2011

The first thing that I notice yesterday when I enter Franklin Meeting Room Four on the third floor of the Marriott Hotel in Philadelphia, at the 50th Biennial Conference for the National Association of the Deaf, is the deaf, blind woman with white hair and sunglasses sitting in the corner. She is about sixty-five years old and wears a khaki-colored aviator-style jacket with a black, cotton shirt beneath it. She is facing the door, although the speaker on stage, who is discussing making drive-thru services accessible to the deaf community, is behind her.

The person who is actually facing the speaker on stage is, instead, the interpreter for the deaf, blind woman. The interpreter is listening to the speaker and using her hands and the hands of the deaf, blind woman to communicate.  There is an intricate choreography of movement between the hands of the interpreter and the hands of the woman. The four hands are locked in an elegant dance of words as their fingers glide effortlessly over each other.  This is the world of tactile signing. The receiver’s hands appear to be placed ever so lightly on the back of the hands of the other person who interprets.

The beautiful action of yesterday’s hands in motion reminds me of the intensely personal movement of Yo-Yo Ma’s hands when playing cello. Ma’s music is not only about, however, his virtuosity, but also his orientation to others.  In an interview that Ma gave after he released his album, Songs of Joy & Peace, Ma comments on the track, Vassourinhos where he plays with Brazilian guitarists Sergio and Odair Assad.

In order to form a bond with the Brazilian musicians, Ma focuses on the “precision and intimacy of their sound” and Ma adjusts the “physical nature of playing in order to blend with their sounds.” Ma’s desire to achieve harmony with his fellow musicians echoes the precision and intimacy that the interpreter appears to reach for in communicating with the deaf, blind woman. For the interpreter, who smiles often while interpreting, her time at the biennial convention must be a labor of love. Similarly, for Sergio Assad who collaborates with Ma, there is a pleasure of being with Ma and this gives Assad joy because “you share good moments” and “this is what life is about.”

What animates Ma’s and Assad’s work and what inspires all good work? When asked how Assad approaches the arrangement or transcription of a piece, he states: “I think the first thing is that I have to be in love with the piece.” Like Assad, the tactile sign language interpreter is in love with her vocation-she is helping the deaf, blind woman in the aviator jacket to understand the details contained within the ideas that are expressed in our complex world.

I attended many workshops at yesterday’s convention: accessibility of drive-thru windows; how to explain to certain deaf Americans the procedure for filing taxes on April 15th; and the sense of marginalization that the deaf community feels due to a dominant, American culture. The central lesson that I drew from the conference, however, is that, like Sergio Assad’s musical arrangements, you have to be in love with the piece to bring beautiful hues of harmony and melody to the world.  In interpreting Assad’s assertion so that it can be understood in the world of deaf, legal services, I was reminded yesterday that you have to be in love with the great privilege that we have as Americans to promote access to, and equality under, the law; then, justice and beauty will follow.

All the best,

Bruce

Bruce J. Gitlin

Founder and Executive Director

New York Center for Law and Justice

2095 Broadway

Suite 411 New York, NY 10023

I keep returning to the words of Robert F. Kennedy, standing before metal microphones, at a press conference held in 1965, when he states that he has visited the state institutions for the “mentally retarded” and “I think particularly at Willowbrook we have a situation that borders on a snake pit.” RFK continues: “The children live in filth; [and] many of our fellow citizens are suffering tremendously.”

The combination of RFK’s enormous empathy and his evocation of a nation that ought to care about its fellow citizens is both disturbing and stunning. Disturbing because nearly fifty years later many of our country’s disabled continue to suffer; and stunning as this elected official had conviction and courage to condemn publicly a deeply dysfunctional, yet powerful institution.

Over time, I thought that I had packed away my memories of Willowbrook, the defunct state institution whose name is synonymous with deplorable residential conditions for the disabled. But then Daryl walks through the door of our law center—a deaf man with a nearly incredible story to share.

Born in 1959 and residing in Staten Island, at age three Daryl has the unfortunate luck to fall from a swing. He lands on his head; and suffers a traumatic injury that includes loss of hearing. Daryl’s mom, overwhelmed, sends Daryl off to Willowbrook. At Willowbrook, there are no deaf children; no one teaches Daryl American Sign Language; and Daryl spends his days on a ward with so many other sad and distressed children.

Over the years there, Daryl intermittently attends school; does not understand his teachers (his few friends teach him the “ABC’s”); spends his days in a long, crowded room and often simply does nothing. Daryl has no visitors, but rather passes the hours by peering out at the barbed wire fence.

On days when he is the target of physical attacks by other children or staff, he seeks refuge in a cardboard box to avoid beatings. Doctors and nurses administer medication to sedate him when he is agitated; and he cries often and is terrified by the entire enterprise. Daryl wonders where his mother is and whether he has brothers or sisters.

When I hear Daryl’s story, I think that it must be an exaggeration. Then, I view a promotion for an old documentary on Willowbrook broadcast on YouTube and I hear a doctor who works there explain that the children are not going to school; instead, they are “sitting on the ward all day” and “are not being talked to by anyone.” Many of the children are “contracting the same diseases” as they are “sharing the same toilet” as there are perhaps one or two or three supervisors for 70 children. Daryl is right. His memory does not fail him.

Meantime, years pass; Willowbrook closes; and Daryl ages.

Looking back, Daryl tells us that he has worked at two fast food chains over the past twenty years. He cooks fried chicken, carefully pouring oil into a frying machine. Daryl sweeps floors; and cleans windows and bathrooms and tables. He is a loyal employee; beloved by management and faithful to customers. Over the past twenty years of steady and dependable employment, Daryl earns a place in the world of work, a noble distinction not often enjoyed by many of our other clients. And Daryl is compensated for his efforts: after twenty years, he earns slightly more than minimum wage in New York. Daryl earns $7.65 an hour.

With assistance from our law center, Daryl is requesting a modest wage increase. Management informs us that his application looks promising. Daryl is optimistic.

Additionally, we represent Daryl in Housing Court, successfully resisting his landlord’s attempts to evict him because he has fallen behind in his payment of rent. To this end, we are assisted by the generosity of The Good People Fund, a steady ally of the indigent deaf community, which is helping Daryl satisfy his rental arrears. Redemption approaches in the most incremental of ways; but our dear client, Daryl, teaches us that the thing is to believe, always, that our future shall be better than yet even our past.

We have the privilege of representing a young man who was raised in Jamaica, West Indies. Our earliest memories of Jamaica were formed, actually, through black and white photos, with jagged edges, taken by my parents, while on their honeymoon, in June, 1950, five years after my father returned from serving as a Navy pilot in the Pacific during World War II. The photos reflect a beautiful and pristine island, with native Jamaicans laughing and beaches filled with ripe, plump coconuts and so many bamboo bars beside clean shorelines. My parents’ memory of their time there was informed by the warm, breezy receptions that they were accorded by a most welcoming Jamaican community. For many years, Jamaica represented for me a place of sun, leisure, relaxation, serenity and brotherhood.

Not so very long ago, however, our deaf Jamaican client approaches us at the law center and asks for assistance in seeking refuge here in America.   He is not quite thirty years old; educated; gentle and kind; and he has been tested as positive for HIV. He has spent the better part of the last decade advocating, moreover, for the rights of gay, deaf Jamaicans, at a terrible risk to his own security. Indeed, as our client walks the streets of quaint Jamaican villages several years ago, educating young gay men about AIDS prevention, his supervisor is murdered at home for the profound human rights work advanced by the association that our client serves for many years.

Frightened and desperate, our client flees to the United States and enters port legally, a gay, deaf man in a foreign, American city. This polite and reserved fellow somehow finds his way to our law center where we file an asylum application in his behalf. We seek asylum for fear that our client has a well-founded fear of persecution if he is compelled to return to the magnificent beaches where my parents began their life together, nearly sixty years ago.

Our most recent asylum client is not alone in seeking legal assistance. Each week, we receive calls or greet individuals who unexpectedly walk through the doors of our modest office in desperate search of emergency assistance. One of our interns recently referred to the New York Center for Law and Justice as the “legal emergency room”-an apt moniker worthy of sharing. Indeed, we strive to support our deaf community of New Yorkers who often are neither seen nor heard, but who request, with great humility, tolerance and respect and assistance from the larger hearing population.

We write this season to ask for your support: we are a small office with a large mission. We seek to stretch the safety net beneath our deaf neighbors, who often find themselves on the receiving end of an eviction notice, a consumer debt demand letter or a missive dismissing so many men and women from employment-an ignoble discharge from jobs that pay for rent and food and clothing, often cutting off wages that support a young son or daughter.

It is a privilege for all of us at the law center to be engaged, for sure, in such sacred advocacy for this mostly hidden population; yet funds are scarce often this season, for reasons that all of us understand.

We thank each of you for your continuing support. We wish you a season of hope and joy. We are learning that hope and promise are core compass points that direct all of us toward a redemptive future, however challenging and problematic is our present. We look forward to remaining connected to each of you in the seasons ahead.

Last month, our law center had the privilege of representing one of our most treasured clients: Grace.  Mother of three children, immigrant from the horn of Africa, middle-aged, profoundly deaf and without assets, Grace has lived in a single’s shelter for the past three seasons. Grace has been hoping that in living in the single’s shelter she would be awarded a voucher called “Advantage.” The Advantage voucher would permit Grace to reside in an apartment with her children for at least one year as she trains for, and seeks, full time employment.

Homeless shelters are surely difficult spaces to navigate for anyone who rests there for even one evening.  We are certain that the shelter system is more unforgiving if you are deaf and living there for months.  Throughout most of the past half year, Grace has had to shuffle among different shelters, in various boroughs- once even in the middle of the night-most often without the benefit of having an American Sign Language interpreter serve as a translator between Grace and City employees. Although required to provide interpreters, we believe that the City has fallen far short of fulfilling all of its obligations.

Several weeks ago, in what we believe is a turn of good luck, Grace receives an assignment to a Brooklyn family shelter.  Grace is relieved, as she has lived apart from her children since August. Meantime, even better luck appears to strike: the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) represents to us that Grace will shortly receive an Advantage voucher. With the Advantage voucher, Grace will transition from a shelter to an apartment, as she receives vocational training and cobbles together skill sets that will make her a more competitive candidate for employment in our challenged economy.

Unfortunately, all does not go accordingly to plan. In a bitter twist of fate, DHS cancels the Advantage program this past Monday, on the eve of Grace about to receive her long awaited voucher.  As I write, Grace and her children remain indefinitely in a homeless shelter-no funding available to provide her with the head start that she earnestly seeks.

The situation is equally dire for those New Yorkers who presently have an apartment under the Advantage program. The Associate Press reports that DHS is notifying 15,000 formerly homeless individuals and families that the Advantage program will apparently be cancelled as it relates to them. DHS expects that perhaps as many as 4,400 families will return to the shelter system. DHS claims, moreover, that it is cancelling the program due to anticipated state budget cuts, while a spokesman for Governor Cuomo asserts that the City can afford to pay for the program if it desires.

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The Department of Homeless Services for the City of New York reports that there are presently 37,800 individuals who are served within the citywide shelter system. This statistic apparently does not include 3,111 unsheltered individuals who live on the streets. The 3, 111 people who reside on the streets of our city-our dear neighbors-represent an increase of 783 more unsheltered individuals than last year.