Gratitude

For those who help heal what's broken, especially.

On Thanksgiving, I think a lot about Ady Barkan. For several years before he died, I visited him the weekend before (often with our friend Sarah Johnson). Ady had long ceased being able to feast – but not to find gratitude.

Ady died of ALS two years ago this month, after the most courageous 7-year battle with the disease that steals your ability to walk, talk, breathe, or hug your kids.

At his memorial, Ady’s wife Rachael King told a story about how their young son Carl had been upset because they weren’t able to do a family activity that was inaccessible given Ady’s wheelchair. “ALS is stupid,” Carl said. “Its always taking things from us.”

Using his excruciatingly slow eye-typing, Ady asked Carl if he could think of anything good that ALS had brought into their lives. “Nothing!” Carl declared. Rachael asked, “What about Rosalba and Izzy?” and Ady’s other caregivers, who had become dear family to all of them. Carl reluctantly agreed that there were things to be grateful for, even from the cruel death sentence that stole his dad.

In so many recent years, my Thanksgiving message has been roughly the same: “Lots of things sucked this year. Insert Superstorm Sandy, Trump, Covid-19, October 7th and the destruction of Gaza, Ady’s death, Trump again. So we really have to dig down really deep to find things to be grateful for.”

A mistake I’ve been making, I think, has been looking for the things to be grateful for underneath, separate, protected from, unencumbered by all that heartbreak.

And of course, it is worth being grateful for the blessings in our lives that present themselves without our having to struggle for them: our favorite park (you know mine), the food we love, sunlight, the air we breathe. Gratitude functions to make sure we don’t take those things for granted.

But as Ady and Rachael taught Carl, and me, there’s an even deeper gratitude for the people who help us heal broken things. That’s true in our personal lives, in more ways that we can count. For caregivers & organ donors, for therapists & loved ones, for finding our way back together after something has pulled us apart.

This year had more ups and downs than I expected (and not only while eating a hot dog on the Cyclone). I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I emerge for the people who showed up along the way. To everyone who worked and volunteered on my campaign, helped me navigate the hard decisions, showed up at Foley Square the day I was arrested by ICE, or just asked how I was doing along the way: I’m thankful for you.

And to my family, especially, who I’ll be blessed to spend the holiday with in Brooklyn. My folks, Carole and David, who celebrated their 60th anniversary this summer, are here from St. Louis, joining Meg, Marek, and Rosa and me for the holiday. We’ll serve Thanksgiving meals, as they’ve been taking me to do for as long as I can remember, and then have one of our own. I am blessed beyond measure to come through this campaign year with even more love and admiration and support and understanding from them, when it would be so easy to get fed up with the headaches (and worse) that I bring.

In the wider world, this year has been one of so much fear and heartbreak. For me, the worst parts have been the family separations and abductions that we’ve seen almost every week, at 26 Federal Plaza, and now increasingly out in our neighborhoods as well.

Photo: Graham Macindoe

Edgardo, who I was separated from when I was arrested in June, was deported back to a place where he fears for his safety, and is still trying to get out.

The next week, Meg and I were walking out with a young Latino couple, who had arrived here together. She was 8 months pregnant, and fell sobbing into Meg’s arms when they ripped her husband from hers.

In July, I was with Carlos Lopez’ sister Lilliana when they abducted Carlos in front of our eyes.

And just a couple weeks ago, I was with Joel Ramos, a 16-year-old living here without his parents, who was hoping to make it back to high school in time for his history class when he was detained.

Through all that heartbreak, what I’m grateful for this Thanksgiving is the solidarity, compassion, and hard work of everyone who has been showing up to try to help these families and young people put their lives back together. Seeing so many people show up at 26 Federal Plaza to courtwatch, in legal service clinics, doing outreach and know-your-rights work, in rapid response on the streets (like so many New Yorkers did spontaneously on Canal Street, and many more are preparing for), at the Hands Off marches (where I marched with Carlos’ sister Lillian and Dylan Contrera’s mom Raiza).

Make the Road New York brought the habeas proceedings that freed Carlos, and reunited that father with his wife and new child. Ben Remy and Alison Cutler, lawyers from NYLAG, have been in court more than anyone I’ve seen, along with folks from Immigrant ARC, courtwatchers from JFREJ and New Sanctuary Coalition. Adama Bah, Power Malu, Candice Braun, Ruth Messinger. New York Immigration Coalition. The gratitude list is long.

Over the past few months, the visits that stand out the most are the ones with young people who are here without their families. Like Joel, Yasir, Ibrahima, and Abdur-Rahman. While so many people and organizations are helping them, I really need to mention two.

Charlotte Soehner is only in her mid-20s herself, but she’s already made a profound difference. She works tirelessly with Resources, Opportunities, Connections & Community (ROCC NYC) to support young people like those four, and many more, seeking Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS). ROCC NYC was founded by Power Malu in the wake of Hurricane Maria (originally as Artists Athletes Activists), and then was then built by Power and Candice Braun into a powerful force to welcome immigrants as they started to arrive in larger numbers to NYC three years ago. With ROCC NYC’s support, young people like Joel, Yasir, Ibrahima, and Abdur-Rahman are finding mentors, filing their SIJS applications, getting settled in their schools … and becoming New Yorkers.

Beth Baltimore is the Legal Services Center Deputy Director at The Door, which provides comprehensive support for young people, many of whom are on their own. Their legal clinic is helping hundreds of young people find their way in a system that would stymie any of us. Beth is representing many of these kids, and she was with Joel when he was detained, and moved immediately (along with NYCLU and other legal partners) to file the habeas motion that got him released from detention after three weeks. The judge called his detention “either Orwellian or Kafkaesque” – it’s rotten to live in times when the judicial system can’t decide which fictional horror comparison is more apt. But thanks to Beth and their team, Joel could finally get back to his high school.

I’ll leave you with this: Back in July, I accompanied Yasir, a 21-year-old who fled Sudan after he was kidnapped and tortured by the RSF (he’s Zaghawa, a group that is systematically targeted there) for an ICE check-in.

We got to talking about national traditions, and national foods. I told him about hot dogs for July 4th, and turkey for Thanksgiving. He told me about jollof rice. Growing up, he had thought of it as the national dish of Sudan. But here in New York City, he had tasted jollof rice of people from Guinea – and he thought theirs was better. And he even likes hot dogs. I told him: “Yasir, you’re becoming a New Yorker!”

Thanksgiving has its origins, of course, in something terribly broken. Rafael Lemkin, the Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor who coined the term genocide, viewed the colonization and destruction of Native Americans as a genocide (I believe he would have viewed both Hamas’ attacks on October 7th, and Israel’s destruction of Gaza as genocidal; a topic I’m sure we’ll discuss around our Thanksgiving table. Not everyone will agree, and that’s ok, too). So I was glad that the Prospect Park Track Club has made the annual Turkey Trot we ran this morning into a “run for reconciliation” benefiting the American Indian Community House.

Everyone who is showing up to protect neighbors from Trump’s authoritarian regime is not only helping to heal something broken for those individuals and families. You are participating in the work of trying to heal what’s broken in our democracy.

I think you can see a path forward in the stories of these young people. Yasir, Joel, Ibrahima, and Abdur-Rahman have seen more tragedy and heartbreak than anyone should have to endure. But, like Ady and Rachael and Carl, and like you and me, too, they are finding ways to heal what’s broken, with the help and care and solidarity of so many extraordinary people (who are, of course, also busy trying to heal what’s broken in their own lives).

In Yasir’s smile, in the new communities and families that are forming, in the country we’re working to build together, in meals with jollof rice from Sudan and Guinea, in hot dogs on roller coasters, and in the turkey and stuffing (or whatever you’ll have at your table tonight), we can start to taste just how beautiful that could be.

This Thanksgiving, there are a lot of broken things to heal. And a lot to be grateful for.

Brad

(12/3/25) This post was edited to correct some details about ROCC NYC.