Mo was next in line to speak. “For every good committee we have here, we’ve spent a night hiding in our apartments hoping the gunshots don’t come through the window. For every person who cares about us in the building, there are five more roaming around out there who would see us dead. For every meal we share with each other, there is a time when we have to post guards at the door. For every nice piece of clothing we take from the closet, we agree that we will not shower for one more day. I am tired. I love it here, I love that we have built what we have. But isn’t it time to go back to life? Won’t we get that? Won’t we be able to start again somewhere where we have a chance at that?”

Jesse raised their finger to denote that they had a point of clarification on what Mo was saying. “We go to the shelters if we leave here. Some of us know what that’s like. They’ll do everything they can to clean us up and throw us back into the streets. They will make us feel unwanted, and convince us that we are worth less than what they’re paying to keep us there. There will be prison food and you will have to watch your children like a goddamn motherfucking hawk because of the people there who would do them harm. That’s where you’ll start again.”

“Yeah, start over for what?” someone yelled from the crowd. José tried to remind him of stack, but he didn’t care and kept jawing. “For the same shit all over again? For poverty, and being pushed out? I’m tired of scrambling to eat, but I’m more tired of it when there are rentbosses breathing down my throat, and never enough smash for anything. Stay and fight, I don’t care if we die, it’s better than living the way we’ve been living!”

“You want to stay here and rot?” someone else yelled. “That’s what we’re doing! Rotting! I can smell our bodies rotting away!”

José tried to get the discussion back under control, but it had gone completely beyond his abilities. Heated voices yelled at each other across the apartment. My granny was standing near me, looking like she was about to faint. I pulled her aside, down a hallway where nobody was standing.

“Do you want to go to New Jersey?” I asked. “To the shelter?”

“Hell no,” she said, forcefully.

“Granny, I’m worried you can’t take the heat here come summertime, even if we make it through this next part. It’s pretty bad in New York without air-conditioning these days.”

“You think I ever turned on air-conditioning in my life? Do you know how that stuff skyrockets the energy bill? What am I, a Rockefeller?”