Ryan Hickey (Interview 1)

Lewis: [00:00:01] Good afternoon. I’m Lynn Lewis with Picture the Homeless Oral History Project here with Ryan Hickey, a former staff member who we’re going to get to know. And it’s April 25th, 2019. Hi, Ryan.

Hickey: Hi.

Lewis: How are you?

Hickey: Great!

Lewis: And why are you great today?

Hickey: It’s so beautiful out and the humidity hasn’t come to New York and I just... Springtime in New York is just such a magical place. I love it.

Lewis: It’s beautiful. Everything’s blooming—and I know that’s hard for people with allergies.

Hickey: Yeah. Thank God I don’t have any.

Lewis: [00:00:45] Yeah, me too. Well, I’m very happy to see you and we are going to interview you about—who’s Ryan Hickey, right? And get to know you a little better, and then talk about your work as a housing campaign organizer at Picture the Homeless and some of which… The work that you did around the cluster site, that you and housing campaign members did, is really in the news now, and so

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: we’re going to talk about that later because

Hickey: Cool.

Lewis: that’s—sometimes when we’re doing this work we don’t see the fruits.

Hickey: Yeah. I know. Yeah

Lewis: So Ryan, where are you from? When were you born?

Hickey: [00:01:29] I was born in White Plains, which is like twenty minutes north of here. And I lived there for the first few years of my life and then my family moved to another town in Westchester called Pleasantville, which is just as small and quaint as it sounds. It’s a little bit bigger now but it was like a pretty staunchly middle-class town with a decent public education system. Primarily white, I would say, but I think it’s diversified a little bit as time went on. And yeah, I went to the schools there, I played sports, I made some lifelong friendships there. It was nice.

Lewis: And your family, tell me about your family.

Hickey: [00:02:21] So my dad is a vet. He served in Vietnam for a little bit but as kind of a medical practitioner, so he wasn’t necessarily a soldier. But he and my mom were, and are—physicians assistants. So, my parents met at Duke Medical School and my dad—he was like… After being like a ski bum for a few years, he was a miner for a few years, he was living in his van for a few years… Like, he went to school and then he got a job at Columbia Presbyterian and he kind of spearheaded the founding of the physician’s assistant program there. So, he was kind of—I didn’t even know this as a kid because you don’t really ask your parents about this stuff. But. I guess he was kind of like a legend there because he was doing cardiac surgery and he was kind of leading the physician’s assistant program there.

Hickey: [00:03:21] And I really looked up to him because he was just so smart and now that my dad is getting older, we’re like reflecting on you know, familial relationships and stuff but he was kind of hard on me and my sister when it came to academics and stuff, and I think that’s affected both me and my sister a little bit [smiles] as we got older.

Hickey: [00:03:43] So he—he retired many years ago and my mom is still a physician’s assistant. She’s been a physician’s assistant for decades, but she was—you know, very active in the women’s liberation movement. I say women’s liberation movement… I, you know—she’s like a staunch feminist. Like second into third wave feminist, where her concern for the majority of her life was like access to contraception and abortions.

Hickey: [00:04:12] So she worked in Planned Parenthood for a really long time and when I was a  kid, like you know, before I was in school and during summers and stuff, me and my sister used to go to Planned Parenthood and kind of play on these rolly chairs. And I remember this huge lobby where me and my sister just used to race in Planned Parenthood in these rolly chairs and we used to hand out contraception to people and it was like a pretty welcoming space for kids.

Hickey: [00:04:43] And I think from there, my mom—not so much my dad but my mom, was like, “I’m going to teach my kids about this, and this is going to be part of them.” So she was teaching me and my sister about like safe sex and contraception, what that means… Abortion, what that means… And so me and my sister were brought up with a pretty straight-edged liberal view of, you know—women’s rights and especially in like contraception and reproductive health. And she’s still doing that, you know? She’s been doing it for decades and she sometimes gets really frustrated but she looks at the world today and she’s like, “I’ll never stop this until I have to.” And yeah, she’s really an inspiration. She really is.

Hickey: [00:05:35] And so my sister—she lives in New York. My whole family lives in New York basically. My dad lives a little bit outside of New York and my sister lives in New York and we have gotten closer as we got older. But I would say I’m the most—me and my mom are like almost tied for being political, or as political— as each other. So…

Lewis: [00:05:58] I met your mom once, and I... It was at an event.

Hickey: I remember this. [Smiles]

Lewis: [Smiles] It was great. I said, “You know, Ryan’s really such a good person and he’s really smart.” I said something nice about you, because it was true. And she said something like, “I know he is.” Like fight me. [Laughter]

Hickey: She is so… She can become battling in her love towards her children. I mean, she’s very… She’s like a Jewish mom, right. She’s Jewish so technically I’m Jewish. She is a typical Jewish mom where she’s like, “Are you hungry? You look hungry.” Like, “I’ll send you with some food. I just made some cake. I’m going to send it home with you.” You’re like, “No Mom, no.” And if she doesn’t think… She’ll insert herself into our lives because she wants to help. Which is really sweet, but it can also be like, kind of exhausting. So we’ve had to set some boundaries. That night was one of those nights where we had to reset some boundaries. But yeah, she loves us very much and I’m very grateful for her.

Lewis: I loved it as a mom. You know, I could relate. So I thought

Hickey: Yeah, good.

Lewis: it was great. I was like, “Go ahead!” Ryan’s got some

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: mama bear ready to fight.

Hickey: Oh, my God. It’s so true.

Lewis: [00:07:08] So when you were growing up—what year were you born?

Hickey: I was born in 1988.

Lewis: So, you know, being politicized around reproductive rights and women’s rights—you know, in the nineties and early 2000s.

Hickey: Yeah, the Clinton era.

Lewis: Yeah. Being aware of those things, were there other issues that you were aware of?

Hickey: Yeah. So, I guess in middle school and high school I got really into environmental rights—environmental activism. I was trying… In my high school I was trying to take as many electives into biology and animal behavior because I was coming from the viewpoint that we—like humans, have to protect species that don’t have a voice for themselves, to fight for themselves.

Hickey: [00:08:04] And so, in high—I forget—it was in middle school or high school, whenever Kerry was running for president, me and my mom went to go canvas in New Hampshire for Kerry because I remember the Kyoto Protocol was a big deal back then and like that was to curb emissions and stuff and I thought that was really, really important because, you know—we were facing a mass extinction of a lot of species, and we still are today because we haven’t done anything about it. So I felt really passionate about that, and I was going with my mom talking to people. Her mainly focusing on women’s rights because it was him versus Bush and Bush was obviously terrible on women’s rights. So she was terrified, and I was terrified because Bush, he’s a Texas man, he was an oil man. It’s like the earth is going to go to shit if he gets elected, and it did go to shit and is going to shit.

Hickey: [00:08:58] So yeah, we were knocking on doors—and I was you know, early teens, if that, or something. And yeah, I found it kind of easy to talk to people. I liked meeting people. I liked hearing from people, but I also wanted to make them know that this was really important and like even if you don’t feel it now you’re going to feel it at some point and like we have to take care of the earth, and stuff so... So yes, that was a big moment for me.

Hickey: [00:09:29] And throughout the same time… You know, we never went to church, we never went to temple or whatever. I think both my mom and my dad just like taught us the culture of these religions, right—the cultural practices of these religions. But we—my mom and I—I forget how it happened, but my mom like asked me if I wanted to do this thing called the Midnight Run, which was and still is possibly… It’s like a caravan of people running out of this church in Pleasantville and probably all over the country—who knows… Where you just load your cars full of—like one car has clothes, one car has toiletries, one car has food, one car has like this, and we did that for—pretty consistently, from middle school to high school.

Hickey: [00:10:23] Where we’d go out on a Friday night at midnight, which is why it’s called Midnight Run, and we’d drive around the city from like twelve to four a.m. giving out like, you know—all these things to homeless folks who were sleeping on the street. And we used to go to places where we knew were just like hangouts, like “hot spots” as the police call them, where people slept, and they met up and hung out with their friends or whatever. And we—that was the first time I ever spoke to a homeless person when I was a kid and just conversing with them and stuff like that.

Hickey: [00:10:58] And I always tell this story, but I think it’s important because… I think it was when like a Batman movie came out—I forget but, I remember we were handing out clothes and we were like, you know—you station there for like thirty minutes and then people just come because they know when... There’s like a schedule, so people come. You congregate, you meet people, you talk to people and stuff. I remember talking to this guy who was in a suit, and he was coming up to get food and stuff. I was like, “People in suits shouldn’t take this food! That’s not for them, right?” And I remember talking to this person. He’s like, “No, I’m homeless. I’m sleeping on the street, but I have to wear a suit for my job and like it’s the only clothes I have sort of… But I—I’m working, and I just can’t afford an apartment.” I remember like, “What!? Like you’re working but you can’t afford an apartment? Like, that doesn’t make sense to me.”

Hickey: [00:11:55] And that was one of the first eye-opening experiences towards like extreme poverty and what capitalism… And of course I didn’t have the words or the vocabulary to like tell you, “This is what capitalism is.” But the fact that somebody was working pretty much full-time I think, and couldn’t afford a place to live—like was “contributing to the economy” but was getting like nothing back from “the economy” —I was like, “That’s not fair.”
Hickey: [00:12:23] And from there I just got a little bit more into environmental activism. I went to school for environmental science because I wanted to be like a climate scientist. I wanted to be there and like try and push the world towards a sane climate policy. So I went to SUNY ESF which is a small environmental school—a state school on the Syracuse campus. It only had two thousand students or something like that. And pretty soon I realized that I didn’t like the culture around environmental science—at least the culture on that campus was like something I didn’t relate to because a lot of the people were hyper-focused on environmental and climate science without like a larger view of social justice. And that’s where I think I tapped into my upbringing. I was like, women’s rights, poverty... I was like, “Well, all these things are kind of connected and nobody really is vocalizing that here.”

Hickey: [00:13:31] And also math was really, really hard and I suck at math, and I was just like, “I don’t know if I’m cut out for this.” [Laughs] Like, I tried so hard. I just remember just growing up I always had to try really hard at math and I always used to be so bad at it and I was like, “I don’t want to do this.” I’m just making myself feel bad. So, I left after one year, though I learned a lot.

Hickey: [00:13:53] And I transferred to Syracuse, which is basically on the same campus, and I started studying history and really focusing on movements and social justice and eras of turbulation and… Yeah, of like upheavals and stuff. I remember I took a class on revolutions, just like a lot of world revolutions. I took a class on the 1960s and I wrote my thesis on the Weather Underground and Students for a Democratic Society because my mom has like three friends who used to be in the Weather Underground and who lived underground and who were like part of the extreme left cadre/movement to overthrow capitalism and I was like, “This is amazing.” Like, “This is such rare, rare stuff.” And I did—I was like recording them, I was recording them, and I incorporated that into my thesis, and I was so entranced by what moves people to take that kind of action. I mean, they like—they bombed places. They bombed federal buildings. I think they bombed the Pentagon? They bombed a lot of federal buildings.

Hickey: [00:15:07] And I just had this internal debate like, “Is that justified? Would I ever do that?” Like going to the limits of activism… If you see things happening. Then I was also looking at “ecoterrorism” on my free time because I was just like, “If you see things that are destroying people and animals and the earth, and nobody cares about it and nobody’s doing anything and the people in power are actually going against that—why—what would you do? So I wrote my thesis on that, and I was like—by then I would say I was like pretty radicalized. But I’m jumping ahead because that was senior year.

Hickey: [00:15:49] And in junior year I was abroad my whole year, in Italy and Germany and I was studying history and art history. So history, I was like focusing on of course, like World War Two and fascism and what that meant… Authoritarianism and then post-World War Two—like the Soviet Bloc versus the western half of the world. And in Italy—this was during the financial crisis in 2010. And my mom—especially my mom, always tried to push me to like go out into the world and see what’s there and stuff. And we never had a ton of money, but comfortable enough where I can like go abroad but I remember during the financial crisis my dad was let go. He was laid off and he only got his job back because everybody around him was like, “You can’t lay this dude off. He founded this program.” So he got his job back, but slowly he was being pushed out. And I was so… I just felt so guilty being abroad—like, spending money that I didn’t earn or didn’t have. I was like, “Oh, like this is just—this is just weird.”

Hickey: [00:16:52] But during that time the financial crisis was happening and like the PIGS countries: Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, they were facing their own kind of crisis. And Italy, like when I was there, there was just tons of protests and stuff and a lot of red flags waiving around and I was like, “Oh cool, they’re like socialists, communists...” But I didn’t really know what that meant. And so, I went to the small, teeny library that was on campus, the Italian campus that I was staying at, and I took out The Communist Manifesto [smiles] and I don’t think I gave it back. I think I just kept it. So I read it and I was like, “Oh, this makes a lot of sense!” Especially now, because you’re reading it and then you look outside and people are just like, “Not my crisis.” I was like what does that mean—like, not my crisis?

Hickey: [00:17:44] So like kind of putting two and two together, reading a little bit more Marx and then when I got back—my senior year… The second I got back I’m like, “I’m going to start a chapter of Students for a Democratic Society.” And so, I was talking to my roommates. They were talking about politics all the time and I was like politicizing them. They were politicizing me even more... So, I founded a chapter of Students for a Democratic Society and we really focused on tuition hikes, which is still a thing. Like, why is college so goddamn expensive? Why!? Where is the money going? Why are you getting paid five-hundred grand? Like, why are there ten-thousand administrators in this university and I have to pay for a three-hundred dollar textbook, in addition to my tuition? Like this doesn’t make any sense and it’s not fair.

Hickey: [00:18:35] And they we were also partnering up with the Syracuse Peace Council, which is one of the oldest peace centers in the United States—who was really big on the Howie Hawkins Green Party thing, and they were staunchly anti-war. And also Rochester Red and Black, which was an anarchical communist group of like students and stuff. And so, we were working towards anti-war stuff because there was a drone operating facility in Syracuse. So we had regular protests outside the drone facility—where they were actually flying drones that were dropping bombs in like Pakistan and you know, the Middle East and stuff. And it was kind of like—it was just so gross. And so—like that was a tangible arm of the war machine

Hickey: [00:19:22] and linking up with the Rochester Red and Black people, I was really radicalized because they challenged my liberal sensibilities on what should and shouldn’t be done and what is and isn’t true. So yeah, Students for a Democratic Society—we were holding sit-ins and we were doing direct actions, marches, and stuff, and all throughout I was learning what this stuff was, what it meant. Because, you know—I didn’t—I like read about it, but I was like, “How do you actually… What are the nuts and bolts of carrying out such an action?” And we made mistakes, of course.

Hickey: [00:19:58] And then towards the end of the year—this is 2010, probably one of the worst years of the recession, Syracuse University invited Jamie Dimon to give the commencement speech. And at that time—I’ll never forget it, Jamie Dimon was positioned as—one—Obama’s favorite banker, because supposedly he didn’t need a bailout. I remember during like, one of the oversight committee hearings he’s just like, “I don’t need a bailout, but I’ll take the money to make you like, feel better.” I forget what the reasoning was. But he’s like, “We are solvent. We don’t have any solvency issues.” And of course, many years later we found out that wasn’t true because they were making incredibly risky bets and then the London Whale happened, where like this guy in Chase lost—one of the biggest losses in banking history. Just one person.

Hickey: [00:20:51] But anyway, we were—we were just like, “This is so poorly timed, so tone-deaf…” Like, a lot of people’s parents here are barely making it. Like students here who are on a scholarship. Like, you know—even though Syracuse is kind of like a rich—a rich-y school… Like the stereotype is like, “Oh, there’s a lot of college bros doing cocaine, drinking, they’re stupid, whatever…” And a lot of that is true… We’re just like why would you invite somebody who’s part of the financial crisis to come and give us advice? Like it doesn’t make any sense!

Hickey: [00:21:24] And so we—we’re just like, “We have to do something!” And so we had weeks and weeks of protest. We were meeting with people in the administration… I remember we tried to team up with NYPIRG, but NYPIRG was like, “We don’t want to do any actions because we don’t think that’s like—productive.” And I remember the student association was like pshhhhhhhhh—a centrist. They were an obstruction—they were obstructing any sort of progress. They were like, “Let’s just do what the—the administration knows what they’re doing. Like yeah, we’ll ask them about tuition fees but like let’s not go anywhere.” We’re just like, “God damn it, like how the fuck did it get this bad?” Like, people all around are losing their homes, like they’re losing all their assets... You know—do something!” So we teamed up with Rochester Red and Black. They came up for our commencement.

Hickey: [00:22:11] But beforehand, we were—I remember we held a march and Jamie Dimon called one of our members. He got the cellphone number of one of my friends, Marielle—and Marielle like—texted us. She was like, “I think I just got off the phone with Jamie Dimon.” “Like how did Jamie Dimon get your number and why did he call you?” And he was just like, “I think there’s a misunderstanding. You know, I understand like, you’re young.” Like the condescending sort of language. Of course he was going to be like that. We’re like, “This is really creepy. Like how did he get your information?”

Hickey: [00:22:47] So we had a protest and stuff and on the commencement day we held an action where once he got up to speak, we all turned our backs on him. And there was like—I don’t know, like thirty, forty, fifty people, I forget how many. Which is like—you noticed it. When people are sitting down, everybody gets up and like turned around—you notice it, and some people booed. Some people were just like, “Turn the fuck around! What are you doing?” Like, people got angry at us. And then I remember Rochester Red and Black… It was in—the commencement was in Cameron Stadium, and they were at the top row, and they were just shouting down at Jamie Dimon.

Hickey: [00:23:24] And Jamie, he said something like, “I know a lot of people are upset that I’m here but instead of reading Marx, maybe you should read Milton Friedman or Hayek.” We’re just like, “God damn it.” First of all, we have—and they suck, and this is why we’re in this crisis. And second of all, stop being so condescending. You know, it was just—ugh, like a huge eye roll. And of course, now we’re seeing like, “Oh! Actually we were right about everything. They are terrible. They do invest in private prisons. They do, you know—make incredibly risky bets, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that was hugely influential to me in radicalizing.

Hickey: [00:24:02] And then right afterwards, I applied and got into the London School of Economics to do a master’s in political theory—because I was like I want to know more about what I’m dipping myself into. And that was a year program and that was really good. And again, that was really radicalizing because in 2010 to 2011 was the first year that the UK was going to introduce tuition fees, in universities and that was austerity. Austerity was slowly happening. Gordon Brown, who was the prime minister, was stepping down. He was a Labour person, and everybody’s like, “Labour fucked everything up. This is—Labour’s policies got us into this mess...” And so they elected David Cameron, who was this, ughhhh—piece of work. He was a Tory. He was a right-wing person who came from incredibly privileged background, and they just implemented austerity across the board.

Hickey: [00:24:59] So there was a year of the biggest marches—student marches, the UK has ever seen. We—I participated in like civil disobedience, blocking people from entering their offices and that was really radicalizing because all the students there—who were coming from like the UK, Scotland…  All around the world—and everybody was kind of coming with ideas and stuff like that.

Hickey: [00:25:25] And it was also really eye-opening because in Syracuse a lot of my friends were white, because Syracuse isn’t really a diverse school but also like, that says more about me maybe than the university. But in London, I started like hanging out with a lot of people of color who were coming from working class backgrounds and I made really good friendships with them and they again—challenged my liberal sensibilities around race, especially. And I think my racial politics was like, getting a fine tuning with them and being in conversations with them.

Lewis: Do you have a story that you could tell about that time?

Hickey: [00:26:08] We occupied the—I think it was the dean’s office. We occupied some office, and we spent three, four, five nights in it—where students were just there. We were planning actions, we were hanging out, getting to know each other. And in this hall or whatever—office, I remember some of my friends, like Neive [phonetic] and Charel, who are women of color from working class backgrounds, were like getting to know me, and they were just showing me all this music because in the room there was this huge projector and this amazing sound system, where they were just like blasting Reggae and Reggaeton.

Hickey: [00:26:56] And they were kind of teaching me about like, the 1980s in London where the racial politics were really bad, the British National Party was really firing up—and how Reggaeton was like this music of resistance and Reggae was this music of resistance, especially for Black and Brown kids in London and they showed me this movie called Babylon, which is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen... And I just remember hanging out with them and feeling so welcomed, like this American white kid—and they’re just like, “Let’s hang out. Like we’re all in line here. We all know what we’re here for.” It was so great and that’s when you’re like verging into adulthood and so we used to have like, communal dinners at people’s houses and stuff like that.

Hickey: [00:27:46] But there is one story where—I think it was… It must have been one of my first months there… Where immediately when I got to the university, I sought out like radical socialist groups who I’d like—be in line with, and I wanted to learn from. And I went to this—the student assoc—government was really radical. Like, they had an education officer, they had like a—it was like four or five people and all of them were just like either anarchist or communist. And they knew exactly what they meant, and they can vocalize that really well.

Hickey: [00:28:23] So I remember we’re at a meeting and it was really well participated because everybody was being really politicized at that time. And this girl—who I think was the engagement officer or something like that, Hiro—who’s a really good friend of mine now, they were just like, “We need to target members of parliament who are going to be voting to introduce tuition hikes and we’re going to do a direct action at this person’s office, which is like a thirty-minute drive away, and we are going to bar them from entering or leaving until they commit to like, voting against this.” And they were like, “This is an arrestable action. You may get arrested. You’ll be prepped though, and we’re just wondering who can do it.” I was like, “I’ll do it.” And they’re just like, “Who are you?” I was like, “Oh, I’m Ryan.” And they were just like, “Cool. Like, you just got here—you’re willing to like do civil disobedience. Let’s go. Let’s do it.”

Hickey: [00:29:21] And so like, the next week we did it and I think this goes into what Picture the Homeless was all about—like actions really form and solidify relationships. Like you—the amount of trust that develops and is cultivated in these actions is really powerful and like  through these actions… Even that first action people were just like, “This dude is like—okay. We’ll give him a chance.” You know? And we barred them from entering. They tried to break through our like—our little sit-in in the hallway. Of course they didn’t do like, the proper recons so [smiles] there were some snags, for sure. But it was just—it’s a funny like little disruptive action.

Hickey: [00:30:05] But yeah, that was a really—that was like one of my first weeks there. I’m like, “Okay. Let’s do this.” You know? And even the weeks following, there were a lot of like different sects—obviously in the student movement, who were just like, “We’re socialists.” “No, we’re anarchists.” “No, we have to have a diversity of tactics.” “No, no diversity of tactics. Like we’re only going to be marching.”
 
Hickey: [00:30:29] And I remember one of the student marches they took over the Tory headquarters at Millbank and they smashed all the windows and like, they set fire to some stuff, and I was like, “Whoa. I don’t know if I’m okay with this.” And I just had a bunch of conversations with people who were just like, “This is our lives and they’re toying with it and they’re all fucking millionaires and they don’t give a shit and they could keep things the way they are. They could have tuition-free universities but the money’s in the wrong place and they don’t want to take that money and give it to universities. Like they’re disinvesting.” I was like, “Oh, I guess you’re right.” So, that slow radicalization.

Hickey: [00:31:07] And then after university, of this year of just like intense political activity— doing something every week, meetings constantly, like—actions—whatever, whatever… I decided I wanted like—I guess, solidify these skills into an organizer. Like, I wanted to become an organizer. Not just an activist but an organizer. I wanted to know how to like, get people into a cause and develop a shared analysis and I wanted to know how to do that. So I—my friend Hiro, who was then my best friend—she started working at London Citizens, which is like an Alinsky based model of organizing. And, I didn’t even know who that was by that—that time.

Hickey: [00:31:57] So, we were organizing supermarket cleaners in a very different way than we organized students, right? The organizing looks very different. And also supermarket cleaners are low-income immigrant women who are like fifty, sixty, seven...

Lewis: How did it look different—the organizing students and the…

Hickey: Like organizing students… It is much less structured, where like the currency of organizing is… What—how is that different? Because it feels so different. It feels like with students, you’re joking around, you like... It’s not less serious. It’s not the right word. Like, universities are just like—you get to university, you see people you know and you just like hang out… You eat a sandwich and like, “You want to come into this meeting right now?” “Like yeah, cool—let’s do it.” It’s just like, off the cuff, let’s do it… Like you feel invincible. It’s kind of that youthful, “Oh my God. I feel like I’m invincible. Let’s do anything. I can do this. I can do this.” Like, there’s not a lot at—there is a lot at stake, but in terms of your livelihood… It’s not like you’re going to get kicked out of university really. Because like, we took over the dean’s—like the director of LSE. We took over his office because we realized that Zaid Gaddafi—like Moammar Gaddafi’s son, was donating a shit-ton to LSE. We’re like, “This is disgusting. This is horrible.” Right? He’s slaughtering his people, blah, blah, blah. We took over his office and the people who took over his office—like, there were no repercussions because only if you like murder somebody, are you going to get expelled.

Hickey: [00:33:55] But with supermarket cleaners there’s a lot more risk involved and it’s much more serious, because this is like, “If I don’t have a job, I’m going to get evicted. If I don’t have a job, my kid doesn’t have food.” It’s like—stop joking around, like this is really serious and slowly connecting that organizing to like—you’re not just organizing to like get better wages. You’re trying to build a foundation of a better society and you’re trying to do like transformative, prefigurative politics and I was learning these words—prefigurative, transformative.

Hickey: [00:34:38] Because like, the point isn’t just to get a fifteen pound minimum wage or whatever it was. It’s like, you are there to build really deep relationships so they can carry on that work when they quit this job—or something like that. Even though, that group London Citizens was like, you know—centrist organizing, they were really cozy with the mayor, who wasn’t a really great person. Like, they would cozy up to anybody in power rather than change the institutions that put these people in power. But it was much more serious and disciplined, I would say.

Hickey: [00:35:10] I think the thing that comes to mind is discipline. There’s not a lot of discipline in student activism. There’s very little accountability. If you say something—if you say you’re going to do something, you could just be like, “Actually, I don’t want to do that.” And there’s not structures of accountability there. When you’re in an organization and when you’re dealing with like people’s livelihoods, it’s much more serious and you have to be more disciplined and you have to talk differently to them and you have to not be so judgmental about like, “Oh! You haven’t read Marx? You haven’t read this? You haven’t read Adorno!?”

Hickey: [00:35:00] It’s like—no, that’s not how you organize. That’s not how you build a relationship. Because like, I don’t know, not everybody has your same experiences and they’re coming from vastly different worlds. These women are like coming from Africa to London… Barely speaking any English, getting the first job they can find, and they’re being exploited, and you don’t come right off the bat, just like, “Hi, I’m here to talk to you about communism.” Like no! You can do that with students because like, that’s the thing, I guess. I don’t even know how students organize these days...

Hickey: [00:36:25] No, you really have to like, meet people where they’re at and slowly develop a trustful relationship and then like, slowly incorporate these largely political ideas, because… What I found out, when you’re working these jobs, a lot of the women were just like, “I don’t care about…” Like, “All I care about is my wage. I don’t care about who’s in office. I care about my wage, or I care about if I have benefits.” Or yada, yada, yada. Slowly connecting it like, “Actually, you kind of should care about who gets in office because who gets in office determines if you have a wage, if you have benefits.” So, slowly connecting like the personal experience with institutions and Politics—capital P politics. So yeah, it was—it was a—not a rude awakening, but it was like, “wow, this is so different.” And I was supervising interns all of a sudden because… And these interns didn’t give a shit about it. I was like, “This is annoying.” Yeah.
 
Lewis: [00:37:31] How did you build relationships with those workers?

Hickey: We stood outside of the Tescos, which is a supermarket. Stood outside of the Tesco’s, and the Sainsburys—which is another supermarket, and waited until they came out or when they went in, at like five in the morning, or like eleven at night and you know, slowly introducing ourselves, saying who you’re with. It’s like listening, asking a lot of questions. Not a lot of questions but listening because, you know—an American young white person going up to an older Black African immigrant woman… It’s like, that is very—those are very different power dynamics.

Hickey: [00:38:14] So listening a lot, and right off the bat like, not talking about the politics. Like having a little personal relationship and then developing that into like an institutional relationship. I remember Hiro talking about that. That was pretty successful. So yeah, like talking about their kids and stuff like that and slowly getting to the wages and stuff like that, seeing if we can identify common problems amongst women and people who are being exploited by these huge companies. Yeah.

Lewis: [00:38:51] Tell me about one of those workers that you built a relationship with that you—that’s memorable... Someone that you—that you remember.

Hickey: Ooh, that was so long ago. Hmm. I still have their names in my phone, I think. [Inhales] Ooooofff. I mean, I think—I’m trying to remember one specific one. What I remember generally is that—and I think this is somewhat true at Picture the Homeless, where the relationships that I built were kind of like mother/son-ish, where there’s a lot of like care and emotional—and like emotional labor in it… But like, just like emotions in it… This like…

Hickey: [00:39:49] Yeah. Because I think like at PTH—and we’ll probably get into this, there were some members who said to me flat out, “I view you as a son and I love you like a son.” And I think I didn’t intentionally build a relationship like that with some of these women, but I think like, one or two of them might have seen me as like, “I view you kind of as like a son/mother relationship, where we can slowly talk about frank—frank things and be upfront about things.” I don’t remember individual people though because I was only there for a short amount of time because I then had to get money, because I wasn’t getting paid for that. I was volunteering.

Lewis: [00:40:37] How long did you do that as a volunteer?

Hickey: I think months. Yeah. I remember we were—we were building up to some big meetings—the London Citizens meetings about like trying to pressure the mayor into instituting a living wage and ultimately we won, which is great. But I didn’t really agree with how, you know… London Citizens partnered with a lot of churches, a lot of like big groups without doing the leadership development. Like, our job wasn’t to do a lot of leadership development. Even though we did. Like me and Hiro, we’re just like, “That’s not how we’re going to do it.” We’re going to do it the way we think is better. So like, build these really good relationships. I mean, her more so than myself. She’s really, really good at that.

Hickey: [00:41:36] And then like, coming out in mass—mobilizing and then pointing and being like, “Look mayor, look how much power we have—are you going to give us what we want yet?” And because they were really cozy with the mayor they didn’t want any confrontation. I think they sacrificed some, but they also won some tangible results for people… Yeah.
 
Hickey: [00:42:02] But I remember that was one of the first times where Hiro, who I think was trained as an organizer… Had—like went through trainings when she got this job. She was training me, and I remember meeting some people and calling to set up like one-on-ones with them, before I even realized like how important a one-on-one was. And they either weren’t answering, they were stalling and at some point Hiro was just like, “Ryan, you can’t spend any more time on this. Like, you have to move on.” If they’re not meeting you where you want to meet them, like you have to move on.”

Hickey: [00:42:37] And still, it’s hard for me to like give up on that today, you know. Where it’s like, “We have a job to do and if people don’t want to meet you, you can’t spend hours and hours trying to meet with them. You have to like, go on to ‘better prospects’, you know.” Yea, that was a lesson that I learned. Yep.

Lewis: [00:43:01] And so, tell me about when you came back to the States and how you heard—first heard about Picture the Homeless.

Hickey: Yeah. So I came back to the States, and I was living at home, and I was volunteering with the Hot and Crusty Workers Union. I was canvassing on the Upper East Side because they were trying to form a union. Well actually, it was the Laundry Workers Center who was doing the organizing and I read about the Laundry Workers Center, saw it on Facebook or something like that… Met people during the campaign. The Laundry Workers Center was like pure grassroots. Right? Like people who were workers, who are workers who face exploitation, who fought it… And they were organizing other workers to be like, “Look what we did. You can do the same thing.”

Hickey: [00:43:45] But doing it in a way where like, those—like the Laundry Workers Center people weren’t the ones in front of the camera. They were like, “No, Hot and Crusty people—you need to be the face of this campaign because it’s your lives. Right? You know the issues. We don’t know the issues as well as you do. So, tell your stories, tell what you want, tell your demands.”

Hickey: [00:44:07] So we were—I was canvassing, I was tabling for them and that’s actually in The Hand That Feeds, that movie? You can see my face in one of the press conferences, which somebody pointed out to me recently. And I was doing that, and I was looking for organizing jobs and knowing full well that I haven’t been classically trained as an organizer. But I was like twenty-one, so I was like—you know, I’m young and I was looking for jobs and I didn’t really know the organizing scene in New York that well.

Hickey: [00:44:42] I mean, Occupy Wall Street I knew. I was doing a lot with Occupy Wall Street when I got back, especially with Strike Debt—this group that was like an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street that was really focused on debt and how it’s like a manipulative tool of capital. And I was reading so much like—Italian Marxists on debt and financial capitalism and stuff like that. But I helped write a book actually, called The Debt Resisters Operations Manual. It was like a collective effort but at the end of the day, me and only a couple other people who had the patience and wherewithal to do it were like, “We did it.” And it’s a really cool book. But I spent months on that.

Hickey: [00:45:22] Meanwhile I was looking for jobs and I saw Picture the Homeless… By that time I was meeting a lot of people in the union scene, so I was looking at union jobs. But at the same time people were just like, “Unions will kill you. They will kill you. They’ll run you into the ground and you’ll be in and out within like a year, a year-and-a-half.” I was like, “That doesn’t sound great. [Laughs] I don’t know if I want to do that.” And so the Hot and Crusty Workers people, the people I met there were union folks. Some people in the Occupy Wall Street scene were union folks and I was like, “Oh, I want to be an organizer, but I don’t know if I want to be a union organizer because I don’t want to kill myself. You know, I want to have some semblance or shell of a life.”

Hickey: [00:46:05] And so I was looking, and I saw Picture the Homeless’s name on, I don’t know, City Limits or something like that. I was like, “Oh, that’s kind of a cool name. Picture the Homeless. Like what does that do?” So, I saw there was a housing organizer position and immediately I started looking up Picture the Homeless on Google. I was like, “What is this organization about?”

Hickey: [00:46:24] And that was 2011-12 and that was a time where I guess, PTH was coming out of this huge debacle of squatting. Right? Like there was a lot of accusations of PTH teaching people how to squat and take over buildings and like ten Post articles, Daily News articles—like obviously hit jobs, kind of smearing. I was like, “Okay, this is crazy but also I was like, “I agree with that, though.” So they—if there are vacant buildings you have to use them and if people are sleeping on the street, they deserve a home. And I was looking on the website and stuff and reading all the articles. I was like the Post is painting this as like a bad thing, but I view this as a good thing. So I applied, and I remember you didn’t answer at first and I remember I emailed you like three times. Like, “Hi, did you get my application?” “Hi, did you get my application?” And at one point you’re like, “Thank you for your persistence, Ryan. Yes, come in for an interview.” [Smiles] I was like, “Oh, cool. It pays to be persistent.”

Hickey: [00:47:33] And so, I got up to the office and immediately I was like, “I am the most overdressed person here.” Like, I had a tucked in collared shirt because I was like, “This is what you do at job interviews.” You know? This is my first serious job that I’m applying for, and it was in this house where every stair that you touched, creaked. Like you were walking up the stairs and it was like [imitates creaking sounds]. It was kind of loud, a little bit… Yes, loud—a little bit like… I don’t know, a lot of things happening. There was a lot of energy in the air.

Hickey: [00:48:12] And I got up the stairs and I saw the computers, people sitting at computers. I saw Ryan Gibbs at the front desk, and he had—he was so organized. He had like post-its everywhere, he had like markers and highlighters, I think. I remember him sitting at the desk and I think Maria was there, too—Maria Walles. And Maria, of course, was just like, “Hi!” Like, “Welcome!” You know, was like if you need anything, let me know.” Like, “Okay. Cool.” [Smiles]

Hickey: [00:48:43] And I go to the back office, and I interview and yeah—I think it just like dawned upon me how little I knew about organizing—like the nuts and bolts, the mechanics and methodology of it. But I was—I just remember I was just like, “I really want to be an organizer.” You know—and I interviewed with—it was you, Sam, Ryan, and Shaun, I think? Shaun was in one of them.

Lewis: Shaun. Sam was not and...

Hickey: He wasn’t? No.

Lewis: I don’t remember. You might remember correctly. [Smiles] But Ryan was. Ryan Gibbs.

Hickey: Ryan, yeah. Ryan.

Lewis: And he was—we always had members

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: in the hiring committee.

Hickey: I remember that.

Lewis: So, Ryan Gibbs was a member and a board member—Kendall.

Hickey: Was she in that one?

Lewis: Was in your interview.

Hickey: Oh, okay.

Lewis: And Shaun Lin,

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: the civil rights organizer,

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: and myself.

Hickey: Yeah. And… I think it was April. It was April, because I think I started in early May. We had an interview and then I think we had a second—no, we had a second phone interview or something. There was two interviews at some—some level of like in-person or phone interviews or something.

Hickey: [00:50:00] And I remember when I got the job I was so psyched, so so psyched because when I came to the office—first of all, it was a house. I was like, this is… It’s an interesting mix between an office and like, a space. Like, office where people get work done but a house kind of like insinuates people have roots here and people can like—hang out and chill and there’s like a sofa somewhere and like comfortable chairs and people drinking coffee all the time. I was like—this is like a cool environment where, you know—it’s just, not like a stuck-up office job, it didn’t seem, which I thought was pretty cool.

Hickey: [00:50:49] And yeah, I remember Shaun asked me one question that stuck with me, but I’m forgetting it. I just remember Shaun’s interviewing process. He was like straight-faced, and I thought that was pretty intimidating. I was like, “Oh my God.” Yeah—and I guess… Yeah.

Lewis: [00:51:12] One thing I remember from the interview—and since there were two interviews Sam might have been in one of the interviews, and I wasn’t in that one.

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: But what I remember about the interview where Shaun and Kendall and Ryan were, is—we were really kind of checking you out. Like this young guy, this young white guy—from Westchester… But you shared your volunteer experiences with the Midnight Run.

Hickey: Mm-Hmmmm.

Lewis: and—and you showed a lot of empathy and kindness,

Hickey: Hmmmm.

Lewis: and that was important.

Hickey: Hmmmm.

Lewis: It was important to find people that had organizing skills but that were kind!

Hickey: [00:51:58] Yeah. Yeah, I knew I was coming into it without a lot of organizing skills, but I just felt like I had the energy to learn from people and I wanted to learn from people. Yeah. I think you could chalk up the empathy thing to just how I was raised. Because my mom is a very empathetic person. Very. Yeah... And she—yeah. I think she did a good job with that.

Lewis: [00:52:29] So, what was your workspace like? Who did you share work… Because we all shared workspace, right?

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: Who did you share space with? What was your orientation like?

Hickey: [00:52:40] I shared my workspace with Sam, in this really tiny office and Sam was so messy. He was so, so messy. He sat behind me, and I sat—so the door—if… I sat like right next to the door and Sam’s on the other side of the room. But, by the other side of the room I mean like, you turn around and he’s right there. And I—I think the first few days was Sam giving me a rundown of all of the archival documentation that we had. So, he had this “housing bible” I remember it was called... I don’t know why he called it the housing bible, considering he’s like a sort of agnostic Jewish person. But he… Yeah.. So he gave me that and he—and Kendall, were just like, “CLTs. Get oriented with CLTs—community land trusts.” And so I was reading the housing bible about a lot of the actions that we had previously.

Hickey: [00:53:49] I remember Sam—Sam did a lot of the drawings, like of the drawings of what organizing is, what it means, like what are the nuts and bolts... So, I remember like there was a chart—like, a lot of bubble charts and stuff like that and there was one where it just like—there was—it kind of looked like a bullseye. Like the center was and then there’s an outside ring and an outer ring and then… It was basically like leaders, active members, members, all other homeless people. And our job is to like retain membership, bring those active members into leadership, and then meet all the other homeless people.

Hickey: [00:54:31] So, I was looking at a lot of that stuff and I was like, “This makes sense and it’s very easy to understand.” And of course, practicing it is very different. At the same time, Kendall was like sending me articles left and right, about every housing thing known to man. Like NYCHA, Mitchell Lama, Section 8, like every single thing, and also CLTs. And oftentimes she would come by, she’s like, “Did you read what I sent you?” I was like, “Which of the twenty things are you talking about?” And if I didn’t she’s like, “Read it now. Please.” I was like, “Oh, God. Okay.”

Hickey: [00:55:10] And yeah, setting up meetings with members, slowly—to just be like introducing myself and getting to know them and stuff like that… And asking Sam probably a thousand questions. But yeah, it was just a lot of reading, talking with people, learning like, how we do outreach, how we do one-on-ones, reading the trainings… Kind of internalizing a lot of those trainings and Sam running through some stuff—like maybe some roll play, or whatever. And then, ooofff—the housing meetings, every Thursday. It was just like—right... Every—I forget who, I think it was Sam—it must have been Sam who was running the housing meetings before. He’s like, “You’re going to do this now. This is your job.”

Hickey: [00:56:00] And I remember it was a terrifying prospect, of doing that every—every Thursday, from six to eight. Just like, “Okay, I need to get people there—but how do I get people there?” And so I had to go, like figure out the database stuff, data entry… Like, all this stuff within, you know—a few weeks. And I remember the first—oh my God—the first few housing meetings were really difficult because it was like a baptism by fire. Because all the members who hadn’t met me, who came to the new housing meeting, was like, “Okay, we have a new housing organizer. I’m going to test this kid.” Like I just—I know it. And one time, I love him to death, Andres—ugh—Andres was bringing his kid to the housing meetings.

Hickey: [00:56:50] And… First I was facilitating and then Sam was like actually, “We really try and have members facilitate.” So I was like, “Okay. So, that makes sense.” So I was trying to get members to facilitate and realizing that that took a lot of prep and work and stuff like that. Like formulating the agenda and like what are the talking points—but not telling people what the talking points are... Like asking like, “What are the talking points on CLTs? What are the updates?”

Hickey: [00:57:20] But anyway, I remember one time in one of my first few weeks, Andres brought his kid and at the end of every meeting we give out metro cards. Which, again—doesn’t happen in student activism. But that was—that was a form of like… To me, I connected it with mutual aid but like very pragmatically—people can’t come to a meeting if they can’t afford it and you just have to like—if you want people to come to a meeting you have to give them the means to come to a meeting. So I was like, “Oh, that actually makes sense.” Because that only happens really in like grassroots membership-based organizations in New York City.

Hickey: [00:58:08] So we’re giving out metro cards and Andres was like… Okay, you know, every time we give out metro cards we sign for it at the end. And Andres was like—the first few meetings I was giving Andres one and his son one and at some point Kendall was like, “You know, I’ve been noticing you do this. We don’t give Andres’s son a metro card.” I was like, “Oh, I didn’t know that.” She’s like, “Yeah, Andres might be doing this to like get an extra metro card for him, because his son doesn’t need a metro card.” I was like, “Oh, that’s true, but I just—you know.” Everybody was acting like this is normal and nobody told me otherwise. And I remember one time I was like, “Andres, I can’t give you a metro card because—one, like your son doesn’t need it and this is the practice. I’ve been told that you’ve never gotten metro cards for your kids. Sam didn’t give you metro cards for your kid.”

Hickey: [00:58:56] And I remember he took me upstairs, alone. I think he like closed the door behind him and he just screamed at me. He screamed at me for like five straight minutes. Nobody else was upstairs. Everybody was downstairs—because I think he might have even locked the door and I was like, “What the fuck is happening right now?” Like, this is over—what? Back then it was like, what—two-twenty five? And I was like, “What the fuck is happening right now?” So many thoughts were going through my head. Like one—you never used to…  You didn’t do this with—you wouldn’t do this with anybody else. Two, you didn’t used to get metro cards. Three, why are you yelling at me if you know that’s the truth, you don’t get metro cards? Four, why did you lock the door? And I remember he—I was just like, “Nope, I can’t do it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Like that’s the way it is. That’s the way it is.”

Hickey: [00:59:47] And I was standing up to a member in my first few weeks and I remember that was really terrifying. I was like, “I don’t know if I have the right to do this yet. Like, I don’t know if I have the respect or trust or like—“authority” to do this.” And after that little row, Andres leaves and I remember just like—crying… And Maria or somebody—sees me, and is like, “Are you okay?” I was like, “I’ll be fine. But like this—I just need to get through it.” Because I was, you know—nobody likes being yelled at—but also, you didn’t really… I didn’t really understand why—like, “Why are you doing this?”

Hickey: [01:00:23] But it also like brought up feelings of like… Okay again—like I’m this privileged white kid coming into this space saying to a homeless person, “You can’t have a metro card.” Because I have that power. And I was like, “This is just…” You know, the power here is something I’ve never—I’ve never had that direct form of power to be like, “Nope! No metro card.” And I think he put on a show because he was like—knew he was tapping into the system a little bit. He knew his son didn’t need a metro card because like, his kid just slipped under the—the whatever, just like all kids do, because they don’t need metro cards. So, he was testing me. I think when I saw him next he’s like, “Oh, you’re still here huh. Oh. Okay.”

Lewis: [01:01:10] Let me ask you—did you reflect on the fact that it was another member who told you not to give him

Hickey: Oh, yeah.

Lewis: a metro card? So it wasn’t solely from your white privilege

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: space.

Hickey: So Kendall was—you know, from the get-go, she was—she positioned herself as a leader, like one of the top leaders of Picture the Homeless… Who knew the issues, was adept at every single thing—pretty much that you could imagine, and she comes up to me and she tells me this and that’s why I kind of like stuck to my guns. I was like, “This is not me deciding this.” I was like, “No, you’re not getting your metro card because this is how it’s done and members like—members chose.” It says in the mission statement everybody gets one—or in the meeting rules rather. Like everybody gets one metro card. That’s—members wrote that. Members can recite that from memory. And you are—like in the back of my mind, and later when I was calming down, I was like, “You are ignoring that and that’s not really democratic and that’s kind of like, not the way we do things here.” So, I felt confident in what I was doing but I was just like—in the moment I was like, “Oh my God, why is this happening?” Like, this is such a visceral reaction to like a teeny thing, what seemed to be a teeny thing. And of course, it was not a teeny thing at all—for a lot of our members, still. But yeah… And then later Kendall, I think I remember talking to Kendall. She’s like, “I know that was hard but like you have to do it. This is your job.” I was like, “Okay.” And then yeah—slowly I got tougher, but I think members could see like, “This kid is kind of like weak. He doesn’t have sharp edges. We need to beat him into shape a little bit.”

Lewis: Who were some of the other leaders that you worked closely with in the beginning?

Hickey: [01:03:19] In the beginning—Ryan Gibbs. Rogers a little bit. Kendall definitely. Maria, I remember had so much energy and I remember seeing her... I was like, “This person is just like a ball of energy.” And there was… This other white guy Frank. I think his name was Frank. He comes in and out still.

Lewis: Street homeless guy?

Hickey: He’s a street homeless dude, yeah. Frank Clark who, you know—has sage wisdom of his own [laughter] and every now and then something—something comes out where it’s just like, “Oh, that’s a good point, Frank.” And then he goes off on a tangent. Marcus for sure—like, I latched onto Marcus I think, because he’s just so personable. He’s so easy to talk to and that’s why I always wanted him to do outreach, because he’s so good at building people up. It’s like developing people’s leadership and bringing that out. He’s so good at that. So him, and… DeBoRah wasn’t there when I—well I mean, she was—but she was taking a break at that time.

Hickey: [01:04:48] Darlene… Was—I remember she came like a few months after I started and everybody was like, “Darlene!” I was like, “Who are you? You haven’t been here.” She’s like, “Sit down. I know what I’m doing. I’ve been here for a long time.” I was like, “Okay!” Because I—oftentimes it was really confusing because members sometimes took a break for months and then they came back and everybody’s—all the members are like, “Oh my God, we missed you!” And I’m like, “I don’t know you. How do I not know you? I thought I knew everybody here.” But membership was so fluid, and people had their own things to figure out in their lives and stuff. So it was constantly changing, and you always had to be on your toes… Be like, “Who are you? Who are you?” Let’s get to know each other.

Lewis: [01:05:32] So, these are folks that were part of Picture the Homeless when you started

Hickey: Mm-Hmmmm.

Lewis: and so the first... The housing campaign meetings at the time—we had completed the Banking on Vacancy report. So, this was—you started in 2000…

Hickey: Thirteen, I think. Yeah.

Lewis: And so you had… How many—more or less, members were involved in the housing campaign then?

Hickey: [01:06:05] I would say regularly the members that I saw were like—twenty, twenty-five. Yeah. And then I remember doing a ton of outreach and figuring out the kinks of how to get folks who I had just met, involved in meetings.

Lewis: Did you figure that out?

Hickey: [Laughs] Yes, I did.

Lewis: How’d you do that?

Hickey: Sam was really helpful in that. But I remember doing outreach with Andres—a bunch and Andres was like teaching me the ropes of how we do things, and I was looking at how… Like what was effective, what wasn’t effective. Sometimes Andres was like, “I love doing outreach like this...” And I was like, “I don’t know if that’s being effective but like, “Okay. We’re trying that.” And so, I think we like altered our talking points based on who we were talking to, what situation they might be in and what was effective, so yeah. And doing the one-on-ones in a lot of Dunkin Donuts and McDonalds—and like trying to buy people coffee.

Hickey: [01:07:13] And it was hard! It was really, really hard to get newer folks involved and I think the first year I had new members who came for a few months and then—you know, because the PTH membership was so tight-knit, it was hard to get in that. Like, for a lot of new members it was hard to feel welcomed because there were some really strong personalities, and they came out in housing meetings, and they pushed people away sometimes.

Lewis: Do you have a story you could share that illustrates that?

Hickey: [01:07:56] So, I don’t want to misremember things. But I can tell—like the… I don’t know. There were some people, without naming names… [Smiles] There were some people who—they really got into like, heated arguments in housing meetings. Like, an older member who was never afraid to speak her mind challenged newer members—not on like politics. It’s just like, “You don’t know what we’ve done, and you need to learn. Sit and learn and stop coming to these meetings and being like, ‘we need to do this, we need to do this’ because we don’t know you—like that.” So like, a lot of the times like, “We’ve done that! We’ve done that. We’ve met with these people and sometimes it works, sometimes it hasn’t.” And then the newer people were just like, “Well, why don’t we do this?” And then, they kind of like get—shutdown or whatever. And my God like, we had to break up some fights sometimes! Like it was—intense. So, sometimes that happened. Sometimes like, newer members came in and just like a huge clash of personalities, huge clash. Even though politically we mainly saw eye-to-eye with newer members who were like—coming up… But a lot of the times it was personalities that just did not… It was like oil and water.

Hickey: [01:09:22] And then—sometimes I had to talk to older members who I thought were just like—being a little bit disruptive. I’m like, “You got to give these people a chance. Like, try and be a little bit more welcoming and if they don’t say—if they say something you don’t like… Like, digest it and let’s talk about it outside this meeting because in these meetings things can get really heated and that’s just not productive.” And that worked for like a couple of meetings and then it reverted back to the oil and water, and then—kept having these things.

Hickey: [01:09:55] But I remember like—Stanley, like the old member Stanley… Donald—like men and women a lot of the times… And a lot of that is like masculinity, sexism—that came out. But the attacks, they weren’t directed at the women. They were just like, “Why are we doing this? Why aren’t we doing this? Like, let’s do this.” I remember Donald—who was really sweet, like he was like a gentle giant. He was like an enormous, gentle person who was like—always asked a lot of questions, but sometimes these questions really pissed people off for some reason.

Hickey: [01:10:33] And Donald and I—I remember the thing that Donald loved… I found out quickly, he loved doing outreach. So, me and Donald did a lot of outreach together and he’s really good at talking to people and he brought some new members in and then he left and then he came back, or whatever... Yeah, and then Stanley, who was a little bit more difficult—he was like—he knew how to push people’s buttons and he kind of wanted to. So, I talked to him a few times about that.

Hickey: [01:11:02] And I remember this one woman. One of the first members I met, her name was like—it wasn’t Arvernetta, but it was a name like Arvernetta, and she was a really quiet, kind of like meekish person… Like wanting to figure out what to do... She was interested in like, political things... And that was probably the first person I ever met, and I was like, “Oh my God. This is so exciting.” Like, she came to a meeting, and she came to another meeting!” And like da-da-da-da. And then she stopped coming, and I remember I called her and her number like didn’t work anymore. I was like, “Oh, Jesus. Like, how do people stay in touch with each other?” Because that happened a lot! You met somebody and then their phone is not in service—and that is—might be a unique challenge or just a rare challenge that PTH faces in that, the membership—or the potential membership is just so transient.

Lewis: [01:11:59] How did you—How did you deal with that, when you had a member you were building relationships with and then they—you couldn’t reach them? What would you do?

Hickey: Yeah... Like, I’d keep trying their phone, because sometimes that phone would come back in service or something like that. But I would talk to Sam a lot—just be like, “How—how do you deal with this?” And he’s like, “You just got to keep going. You got to keep going, you got to keep meeting new people… And I think in these one-on-ones, you have to be better at identifying who is going to stick and identifying those—I don’t know—key words… Or like, being better at bringing out people’s self-interest in these one-on-ones… Because, you know—at that time my one-on-ones were… I think I learned really quickly how one-on-ones are structured. But the minutia of one-on-ones… Like you, to be really good at one-on-ones, you know when you’re really good at one-on-ones, and...

Hickey: [01:13:01] Like, I guess you could see it where—people will like… And some of it depends on the person that you are having the one-on-one with. But like, you got to be listening—a lot and you only like interject, or ask questions when you hear like… Key words or experiences, to bring something out of them. Like if they had an experience, like “Tell me how you felt about that... Like, how did that make you feel? Why did you… Why did you then go—if you got denied by an HRA, why did you go to like—the commissioner? What made you do that? What made you like write that letter or that op-ed, that you posted on your blog?”

Hickey: [01:13:39] Because like—everybody has a little passion in them, but to like bring it out and see it bloom in a way is—kind of a skill. Rather than just staying silent and asking like your—whatever, ten questions it is... Because it’s not an interview. I remember reading that on a PTH sheet, like a workshop sheet. It’s like—a one-on-one is not an interview. You shouldn’t be talking mostly. It’s like seventy-thirty listening versus talking. But, you’re not interviewing somebody for a job, you’re like getting to know them on a personal level—really what drives them. And still I have to work on that, you know—it’s never perfect, but I found that I was really good at building personal relationships and like being able to joke with people really quickly and having like, this chemistry... I find having chemistry is really helpful, as well. Oh, yeah.

Lewis: [01:14:43] So you… And you built a relationship with Andres, even though—after this

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: yelling at you,

Hickey: Mm-Hmmm.

Lewis: y’all built...

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: a relationship

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: where you work together.

Hickey: Til the day I left. Yeah. Yeah, Andres—I mean Andres, we did a lot of outreach together and I remember doing outreach with Andres at a lot of the cluster site buildings or like, the buildings owned by cluster site operators. And I remember, like I had mountains of paperwork and data entry to do. So, I was like, “Andres, do you mind like going out doing outreach for this one time? Bring like another member.”

Hickey: [01:15:21] And he did it, and he met Charmel and Al.

Lewis: At the Washington Hotel.

Hickey: At the Washington Hotel. And they came and Andres was like so happy that they came, and they stayed, and every time people are just like, “Charmel, how did you get here?” Andres’s like, “I did that.” I was like, “Oh! He did!” Like, he did do that, and he built that connection with somebody really quickly and he fostered that relationship and—that’s amazing!

Lewis: He struck gold. They’re still there.
 
Hickey: He struck gold!

Hickey: [01:15:52] And like, I remember talking with people. It was like, “You’ll meet a hundred people, and five people will come to a meeting but… And out of those five, two will become like, leaders—but like, oh my God, those people are going to be a-ma-zing.”

Lewis: Tyletha, I interviewed her the other day and she said, “You talk to a hundred and…” I don’t want to misquote her… But that five might come, but one will stay.

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: And we’re looking—we’re always looking for that one.

Hickey: It’s so true. Yeah, and even like I’m doing—I’m still organizing tenants in Ridgewood and stuff, and we have some newer people who like want to help out, who are getting frustrated by organizing. And me and Raquel, we—like Raquel founded the—the Tenants Union and stuff, but I’m trying to help out as much as I can.

Hickey: [01:16:49] And Raquel and I are talking to these people, like, “Listen, you’re going to meet a hundred people and maybe ten will come to a meeting and you got to keep going.” Like this is—it’s not about the… Really, like—the meeting… It’s like the concrete objective that you need to reach but you are trying to change people’s whole entire consciousness and you’re trying to change the way that they think about the world, and that is not easy. And that’s going to take a lot of time but it’s important not to be like—to set these objectives that are just going to burn you out, and stuff like that. And it’s so time consuming. It is. I remember getting really frustrated about it.

Lewis: [01:17:27] So you—when you joined Picture the Homeless we had just come off completing a major research—participatory action research project, right?

Hickey: Mm-Hmmmm.

Lewis: Banking on Vacancy,

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: and the purpose was never just to count vacant buildings and lots to know how many there were but to use it as ammunition.

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: [01:17:46] So, here’s Ryan Hickey without a lot of organizing experience—some, being thrust into this transition moment in the housing campaign. And the leadership that was formed when you got there… The folks who were leaders had either been leaders through a series of sleep-outs and direct actions that we did—that were powerful, and then this other process—this research project, which in some cases required really different skill sets for leaders. So there was like a leadership shuffle around

Hickey: Mm-Hmmmm.

Lewis: and then trying to figure out, “Well, what do we do? What are the demands?”

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: [01:18:36] And Kendall, as you mentioned, and other folks were talking about CLTs. How did you as an organizer work with a group of twenty-five regular housing campaign attendees and new people coming in and out and old people coming back, to come up with, you know—a consolidated campaign?

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: Like, we’re on the same page and this is what we’re going to fight for. How—what was your role in that as an organizer?

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis How did you do it?

Hickey: [01:19:04] So, just to take a step back. I remember—speaking of actions, our first action was with the Right to the City. I didn’t really know… I knew what Right to the City was, but I didn’t know what they were doing, and I remember that was a time when we were just stepping off—or back into, the Right to the City coalition. And I remember then being like—basically telling us we’re going to be doing an action in New York City, around the Housing Trust Fund. And I didn’t really know what that was. I also didn’t know who the Right to the City people were, and it happened very quickly. And I remember we had the action and I remember you came, and you kept asking me like, “So, who are the press spokespeople?” And I was like, “I think it’s like that person.” And you’re like, “You don’t know for sure?” I was like, “Oh, I don’t know.” And then you’re like, “Who is in this role?” I was like, “We have to have a role for that?”

Hickey: And I remember after—after, it was like… It was a messy—like, Danielle Statutto did an amazing job. She did a good job there—because she was like… And she became like the,

Lewis: Named plaintiff.

Hickey: named plaintiff in that—in that lawsuit.

Hickey: [01:20:10] And I remember after the debrief—me, you and Sam sat down—and I guess I’m calling Sam out here. You were just like, “So Sam, where… Like did you—what was your oversight in this?” And Sam was like, “Oh, I didn’t really have any.” And basically, I didn’t know that like every action we have a checklist. There’s an action checklist. And I never… Nobody ever told me that and nobody ever told me that we had to have roles and stuff. And I remember being in that meeting, I was like, “What are all these roles?” And I just felt so bad, that I failed so bad.
 
Lewis: Sorry.

Hickey: [01:20:46] No! That’s, I mean, it’s not a sorry thing. It’s so true when people say that you learn more from your failures than your successes sometimes. And like, I don’t think I ever made that mistake again. Like maybe like some things slipped through the cracks or whatever but like—intentionally no. I never made that mistake again. And I remember talking to Sam and like going through a lot of the things that we hadn’t before and I was like, “Okay, a lot of this is cleared up.”

Hickey: [01:21:17] But anyway, going back to like the demands question. I remember we slowly—because I was getting a little bit, you know—I was dipping my toes into the CLT world… I remember watching some really boring ass videos on the National CLT Network website, where they were talking about like, finance recapture and like equity and stuff like that. And I was like this is really interesting. Like, intellectually this is interesting to me. But I was like, “This is so fucking boring.”

Hickey: [01:21:47] Like, “How are they going to interest anybody in this shit?” And I remember we formed a study group, a CLT study group—where like, we didn’t learn about CLTs solely, we learned about all of this really boring ass complicated language that is used to put people in their place… Like to make people feel stupid… It’s like a power... It’s a tool to oppress people and to marginalize them from other conversations. Like, you know—these complicated financial terms, “equity”, whatever... And I remember, some members knew what this stuff meant but I would say like ninety, ninety-five percent… They could talk about CLTs, but when you pressed them on it they kind of got lost in the weeds.

Hickey: [01:22:38] And so we had this study group, and it was probably Kendall, I don’t remember—but it was like we should reach out to John Krinsky, who’s an educator. They could help us with the study group. That’s when Hillary got involved and Deshonay got involved—who helped form a curricula with some leaders about like what the goals of this study group would be, why it’s necessary, what we want to come out of it and stuff… And that was like—a year or two. That was a long time. I forget how long the study group lasted.

Lewis: [01:23:10] And who was in the study group?

Hickey: So again, it was fluid—but I think the constant members were like Scott Hutchins, who just… Adrian met him once and—like I think, only once. Because, I remember I met up with Adrian once or twice, right when I got in. I was like, “Any tips? Like, can you give me the rundown on these people?” And I was like, yeah—I remember saying like, “Yeah, and this guy Scott.” And he’s like, “I don’t know Scott.” I was like, “He said you met him.” He was like, “I don’t know him.” So Scott was really involved, Marcus was really involved, Andres was really involved. Donald, a little bit because Donald was pretty active at that time. Kendall. Arvernetta. Darlene wasn’t. I think Darlene took another break… Like Frank.

Lewis: So these were members. These were homeless folks who

Hickey: Homeless folks, yeah.

Lewis: were in the study group.

Hickey: [01:24:01] Yeah. And we developed… Helped—we like developed a curricula based on like brainstorming sessions. Like, I was extracting themes that were coming out of housing meetings—where like a Kendall or an Arvernetta said a term, and I saw everybody’s face go like—blank. I was like, “Okay, we need to go more into that, but the housing meeting isn’t the place to do it, so we need a separate space to do it.” So, Deshonay and Hillary helped with the curricula, and we had weekly—I think it was weekly, it felt like more... We had these study groups where we were talking about community land trusts, really getting into the nuts and bolts, looking at case studies, having like—reports. We were reading reports. We were having reading groups and whatever and then we were also going into…

Hickey: [01:24:51] We had played a lot of games, played a lot of games. And that’s when John Krinsky came with his Lego set and everybody was obsessed with John Krinsky and his Legos because people learned so quickly from that kind of stuff. And that’s where I really like latched on to popular education. I was like, “Oh my God. This stuff is so good, and I loved doing it and it’s so powerful and I see the results.

Hickey: [01:25:23] So like, members and Hillary and Deshonay… Like, we created a curricula and we educated ourselves based on the knowledge that we already had but we also looked at other resources, as well. We tapped into those resources, and we started forming this common language around land trusts and mutual housing associations and like, home ownership and equity—and like all this really complicated terminology that was used to like—other homeless people in these conversations, in these policy questions.

Hickey: [01:25:53] And I think people just made a conscious decision. We’re just like, “No, that’s not going to happen anymore. You know, we’re going to be part of these conversations. We’re going to be leading these conversations.” And the study group morphed—that’s when NYCCLI was really taking root and that’s when the study group morphed into the Education and Outreach Workgroup, where the coalition was looking to Picture the Homeless to like ingest the material and digest it and see what comes out—in terms of like how do we talk to people about this really complicated stuff.

Hickey: [01:26:28] And members really just shined. Oh my God. People were so jazzed about everything that we were doing. Whether it be games, whether it be quizzes. I remember we were having quizzes like every other week. Like, I started out some of the study groups with a quiz and I felt like this must have been what my high school teachers felt like—Like, take out a quiz... I’m like, “Oh, there’s a pop quiz. You know, it doesn’t mean anything.” And everybody’s like, “Oh, man!” And Marcus was like, “I don’t like quizzes. I don’t do well with quizzes.” I’m like, “Marcus, but we’re going to play a game later, too… Like, we’re going to have this and this.” He was like, “Okay, fine.” And really we—we did like so much. We did—we had so many tactics in popular education where everybody’s learning ability was like—I don’t know, catered to. I don’t like that term, but it was like we met everybody where they were at, and it was so cool and fun, and… Yeah.

Hickey: [01:27:24] And so we got really involved in the coalition work and we were building the Education Outreach Workgroup and that’s when we really started solidifying around like—we need a board game. I remember Arvernetta was like, “I want a board game because I love board games.” She was talking about it, and I think people were just like, “Oh, a board game. Like yeah, maybe one day when like we have a ton of money or whatever.” Because, I think people viewed it as like, “How would we even do that?” You know? And then people were just like, “I want a comic book. I want a poster. I want this.” And we’re like, “Okay, so how do we do this?”

Hickey: [01:28:02] So part of NYCCLI—then we… Yeah, we built these relationships, and we cultivated these relationships with like students, academics, artists… And we started creating a visual language around this where—I remember we were meeting at Cooper Union because that’s where Josh [Brandt], who now works at the Toronto CLT, and Sabrina—I think her name was? Who was also a New School student. They were helping draw these characters—where members… Like, I don’t know—like I didn’t have to do anything. Members were just like, doing it… They were just like, “We want this. We want this.” And artists were trying to keep up... And they like—they sent me some mockups of some of the drawings that they were doing in meetings and one-on-ones, and it was just like, “Hey, do you like this?” And people were like, “No, no.” It was like such a back and forth. Like—ah… I think that’s really—Paolo Freire would be very happy if he saw it, I think. [Smiles]

Lewis: And you’re smiling.

Hickey: I’m smiling, yeah.

Lewis: Since this is audio not video,

Hickey: Because it was such a,

Lewis: I just want to flag that.

Hickey: it was such a good experience.

Hickey: [01:29:06] I mean, of course it was like so stressful and

Lewis: What was stressful, though?

Hickey: Some people [exhales] yeah… Some people really had problems with like—their ideas weren’t being prioritized. So, when the board game and like the poster… People collectively were just like, “This sounds good. Let’s do this.” And I think people got really possessive of those ideas, as well. And then when these ideas started taking shape, people were just like, “Well, this isn’t—this is my idea. This isn’t your idea.” I was like, “No, but collectively we created this. Like, not one person did this, right?” Like somebody might have thrown out the idea….

Hickey: [01:29:57] Like, of course—like, Arvernetta… Like, “Yeah, you were the first person I heard at least, to say we want a board game but sometimes you weren’t at meetings and some people took on that work and you—we should recognize that.” And at some point we had to have a conversation. Once the board game was slowly taking shape we had to have a conversation about who owns it or who should be attributed to it. And that was a huge point of contention for a lot of people because they were just like, “This is mine. I want one. And like, I don’t think this should be anybody else’s.” So we had a lot of conversations about like, what we—what it meant to be in the movement and like... “People need to know this, right? Like we have to share. We have to do outreach with this stuff and blah, blah, blah.” I think eventually people were just like, “Oh, that makes sense,” or people came around to it, but there was a lot of conversations about it.

Lewis: [01:30:54] So twice at least you’ve mentioned challenges around individual and collectivity, right?

Hickey: Mm-Hmmmm.

Lewis: So individuals coming and having ideas and other people in the collective group like, “No, we already did that.”

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: Or in this case, bringing ideas forward. And all during this time, you’ve got this study group that met every Thursday

Hickey: I think it was, yeah.

Lewis: and then you had the housing campaign—met on the same day.

Hickey: Like right afterwards, yeah.

Lewis: Because it was also like a metro card situation.

Hickey: Yeah, oh… [Laughs]

Lewis: And then, people ate between?

Hickey: Uh-Huh.

Lewis: [01:31:38] So… Picture the Homeless—what, got people food?

Hickey: Yeah. I think, sometimes we cooked. Yeah. I think we tried to encourage folks to like, cook their own stuff, but it was mainly like sandwiches with cheese, chips, that kind of stuff.

Lewis: Mm-Hmmmm. And where did the food come from?

Hickey: Frank. So Frank

Lewis: A member.

Hickey: A member. Frank was a member and—a long-time member who, from my first housing meeting, he brought in these bags of food. I was like, “Oh, I guess this is what we do.” Because I remember reading that one of the previous organizers—shoot, I guess his name was also Frank, wasn’t it?

Lewis: Frank Morales.

Hickey: [01:32:17] Morales, yeah. He used to cook. That’s what I read. He used to cook almost every housing meeting beforehand—and in my mind I was like how did he have time to cook, right? [Smiles] How did he do that? But, you know I could tell that that was a meaningful thing to do, because it brought people together… I mean, it’s like you form relationships—not really in meetings, but you form relationships like sharing a bowl of soup and stuff, or sharing a sandwich or whatever.

Hickey: [01:32:45] So yeah. Frank—not Morales. Frank… I don’t even know his last name.

Lewis: Clark.

Hickey: Clark. There you go. Frank Clark, he brought food nearly every—nearly every meeting and when he couldn’t he always called to say, “Ryan, I can’t bring food this Thursday.” And he—that meant so much because he’s just like I want—he just wanted to make people… He wanted to make sure people were fed and he wanted to make sure that if he wasn’t going to come, we would send out for something and we did, most of the time. Yeah, and even with his—I think he was like, you know… His limited amount of money he always got a ton of food to make sure people left with their bellies full.

Lewis: So, just

Hickey: I had so many cheese sandwiches. God. [Laughter]

Lewis: [01:33:34] So, to paint a picture... So you had this study group which met for about two hours

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: every Thursday. So, then there would be a break and then the housing campaign meeting from six to eight.

Hickey: Mm-Hmmmm.

Lewis: So, for members that participated in that—that was like five or six hours,

Hickey: Of work.

Lewis: of work.

Lewis: And then, you mentioned before we started recording that then people would stay and hang out. And so, what was—what was that like for you in terms of—you’re a staff person, it’s a group of homeless folks who are, you know—have different relationships among each other

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: and you’re trying to also kind of reinforce and nurture this sense of collectivity.

Hickey: [01:34:19] Yeah. So, after the housing meeting we ate and from like eight to nine, or sometimes even ten—we stayed and people were eating but they also went upstairs to use the computer for the last time because they knew that when they go to the shelter they don’t have a computer, they won’t be able to use one... But, it—that… It was in those times, I think where—it’s sort of like… I don’t know, one way of looking at it, I guess, is that you clock out and now you’re just like friends. You’re just hanging out with each other. You’re riffing on each other. You’re talking about things that don’t have to do with Picture the Homeless necessarily—or you’re confirming like, “Hey, by the way, we have this thing tomorrow. You said you were going to come, right?” But it was really like, you know—everything’s stripped down. It’s like, “Let’s just chat. Let’s hang out.” And sometimes even fights erupted in those times. But you know, that’s what people do when they’re really close to each other. You know each other a little bit too well sometimes.

Hickey: [01:35:22] But… That was—aside from like, one-on-ones and the relationship building that happens in one-on-ones, you just feel this like group collectivity, which is really important. And yeah, like I always go back to what Ella Baker said about like group centered leadership, rather than individual leadership. She was always critical of Martin Luther King because like, the movement wasn’t him and she was… I remember reading Barbara Ransby’s book. She was always just like, “The movement isn’t one person. The movement is a ton of people and therefore we should have like a leader-full movement.”

Hickey: [01:36:03] And that’s where you also have like personal conversations with people—and you know, how like you’re with friends and say someone’s like, “I want to apply to this job, but I don’t know if I’ll be good for it.” You’ll be like, “No, you’ll be amazing!” And then all the other friends around you will be like, “No, you’re going to be so good. You should do it.” That was kind of like what happens, you know—after these meetings… Where, if you have an action in two weeks you’re like, “Maria, I really think you should do this. You’ll be so good. Like, what you were saying today during the meeting was amazing.” Then other people would be like, “Maria, you should do it. Yeah, you should really do it.” Yeah. I mean, but also just talk about… I don’t know, dumb stuff that’s like funny and stupid. Yeah.

Lewis: Like friends do.

Hickey: Like friends do! Yeah.

Lewis: And so, it sounds like that was a big learning curve for you, right?

Hickey: Yes.

Lewis: [01:36:58] And that was in the first year or two of Picture the Homeless.

Hickey: Mm-Hmmmm.

Lewis: Where were the places that you were going to do outreach?

Hickey: I went to POTS, a lot. POTS stands for—what does POTS stand for?

Lewis: Part of the system?

Hickey: Part of the Solution. Part of the—

Lewis: Part of the Solution! Not part of the system. [Smiles] And then the other one is, it was POTS and PANS. People are

Hickey: I don’t remember POTS and PANS. The PANS?

Lewis: It was POTS and then it was POTS and PANS. People Are Not Satisfied

Hickey: Oh wow!

Lewis: is the PANS.

Hickey: Oh, wow. That’s where I met Michael Leonard and I’m still friends with Michael Leonard today. Michael Leonard is now a lawyer at the Community Development Project.

Lewis: He’s great.

Hickey: He is great, yeah! And he—I remember like, talking to him sometimes... We also went to Holy Apostles. We started going to Holy Apostles in East Harlem and going to some shelters but also like HRA centers. Mostly, we were doing a lot in the Bronx because it was there. Because going into Manhattan was like an hour, right? It was just like a huge time suck.

Hickey: [01:38:06] So we did some shelters, but I think mainly we did like these institutional places where we knew people were going to be. Because if you’re standing outside of a shelter, sometimes people like—aren’t allowed there and they… And each shelter was different because you always hear different things. So, people might not be there, or you might go from like six to eight and people just like, don’t want to talk to you. But the good thing about like places like POTS is—you get a plate of food, and you sit down with people and you’re just like, “What’s up? Like, this is who I am. What’s going on, guys?” You know? And same with Holy Apostles and we developed a relationship with that guy Mohammed, who was like the program director there, or something like that. And we just had a table reserved for us and we met some really good people there. We also met some not so great people there, but same with POTS. Yeah, I remember, I went to Susan’s Place in the Bronx, a few times. Which was like a—I think it was a domestic violence shelter? Or, no—it was a woman’s shelter.

Lewis: For women with medical

Hickey: Right.

Lewis: issues.

Hickey: [01:39:12] Yeah. So we—we had this huge outreach map that Sam and others had created over the years and just kind of like touching base with him to see what had been productive in the past and just trying places out. But yeah, I remember going to POTS a lot, going to Susan’s Place a few times, Holy Apostles, and I feel like there was just tons of places that we went to in Manhattan, like focal points of where people were. Like the HRA Centers on 16th Street we went to a bunch…. Yeah.

Hickey: [01:39:55] And then, once we started like, dipping our toe into the Cluster Site stuff, then it was the cluster sites. Like all the time.

Lewis: For someone listening to this that doesn’t know what that is, could you

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: give a brief rundown of that?

Hickey: So Cluster Sites are—they’re shelters that, from the Giuliani era—were usually rent stabilized apartments that were converted into shelters, and they quickly became like just a profiteering scheme for slumlords. Because slumlords realized they could get two, three times the amount of legal rent. So, if the rent stabilized apartment would only get like eight-hundred dollars, usually the—like the payment was three grand. That’s what the city paid for each unit.

Lewis: Because they were shelter units.

Hickey: [01:40:46] Because they were shelter units, right. And they were families with children, exclusively. And yeah, they were scattered all throughout the city and there was about three thousand families in the cluster site system at its peak, I think. And I remember Kendall—and my girlfriend at the time [smiles] gave me an article, which was like, “This seems really fucked up and something that you would be interested in.” And I read it and I remember being like, “Oh, Kendall just told me about this, like yesterday.” And it was the Andrew Rice piece on the Podolskys. And the title was like, “How a landlord made millions off of profiting off of the poor.” Or something like that. It was like—why house people when you can house the homeless for double the rent... Or something like that.

Hickey: [01:41:34] And I remember talking to people slowly, like having one-on-ones with people, and being like, “What do you think of this? Like, what’s the deal with this?” And I remember Kendall was just like, “Yeah, we’re doing it, we doing it—we have to do it.” And we were talking to people. They’re just like, “Wow, sounds pretty messed up.” And then we brought it to a campaign meeting, and we were just like, “Yeah, we should really do this.” Which was interesting because those members at the time were like single adults, in a single adult shelter system and the cluster sites were families with children. And our members weren’t necessarily families with children—a lot of the time. Sometimes they were, sometimes they weren’t.

Hickey: [01:42:08] So it was these homeless people, these homeless single adults being like, “We need to organize these people because its right and not because like we have a vested interest in this.” I mean ultimately we do. Like if—say if these buildings were rent stabilized, like, I could afford an apartment there.

Hickey: [01:42:24] But it’s like, this hits a lot of points of what we’ve been talking about. Like, the shelter system is eating into the affordable housing stock. Homeless people are being profited off of. Slumlords are making millions and they’re living in really, really shitty conditions that are going to endanger their lives. It like—it’s quintessential what’s fucked up with the system. And meanwhile, like de Blasio was just about to get elected. He’s like, “We’re losing affordable units.” We’re like, “Yeah, from the shelter system.” Like, you’re creating a problem on the one hand and then letting people profit on the other hand. You know? You’re creating a problem and then you’re trying to solve it by enriching slumlords.

Hickey: [01:43:01] So, yeah I remember that members would be like, “Yeah, we should work on this.” And when we started trying to do outreach there, it was really hard. Really, really hard because we were focusing a lot on the Bronx, because that’s where the majority of cluster site shelters were, and it wasn’t really on the map. Like cluster sites weren’t really on the map for anybody. Because Coalition for the Homeless did like a report sometime, and would be like, “Yes, we need to end this.” But there wasn’t like an advocacy push for it.

Hickey: [01:43:34] And we were—at the time, we were the only people going into these cluster sites, knocking on doors, sneaking past security... Because sometimes there was security. Security didn’t care. They were just like, “Yeah, we know, whatever.” Sometimes I got asked because like—I don’t look like I’m in that shelter. Sometimes I was asked and sometimes the security people were just like, “Okay, fine.” Sometimes they were just like, “No, don’t come here.” And then we went back. We just like—we did—we scouted out like when the security is there, when it’s not. We asked residents when the security is there and when they’re not. And we kept knocking on doors and we tried to have some meetings with cluster site residents, and it was so, so difficult because oftentimes they were single parents with multiple kids. I’ve never—I don’t think I’ve ever seen one person with just one kid. It was like multiple kids. Because it was the family shelter system, and they were young. They’re kids. They weren’t like teenagers, most of the time.

Hickey: [01:44:27] So, it was so difficult to convince them to come to a meeting! And so then, after multiple attempts—failed attempts, at trying to like having a meeting, have meetings with people, like even having one-on-ones with people, we started having building meetings. Because we’re like, “If you can’t come out, we’ll go to you.” So, we had some building meetings and we started really focusing on like a few people who we thought were leaders in these buildings.

Lewis: And where did you have the building meetings? Where were they held?

Hickey: In the lobbies, or the hallways.

Lewis: [01:45:00] How did you let people know there was going to be a building meeting?

Hickey: We knocked on doors and we put flyers under their doors and then if we got their numbers we called them. And, yeah… So, at that time…

Lewis: And who are the we? You said we would

Hickey: So, I was just thinking. Like, I think Kendall—Kendall didn’t do outreach, like that was her thing. She just didn’t do outreach. Marcus didn’t but I kind of like convinced him to because he’s so good at it. But like Maria, Andres. I mean Andres was pretty clutch, Maria was pretty clutch during those times. And sometimes it was… Well, a lot of the times it was m—because, you know, they were hard to get to. You had to climb a lot of stairs. Sometimes it was really hot. The conditions in the units, like—sometimes when you stayed in there too long, I could feel my breathing getting worse. I swear to God. Because there was so much mold and so much asthma producing things and Andres had asthma. He had really bad breathing. So, at some point I was like, “You don’t need to be there if it’s just going to inflame your—or worsen your symptoms.”  But yeah. So, I think Andres did a lot, like Maria did it some. Arvernetta did it maybe once or twice. Again, it was just like, you know, mobility was an issue because these buildings were huge. They were huge, huge buildings with like six floors, all walk-ups, multiple units on each floor and it was pretty labor intensive.

Hickey: [01:46:35] So, when we were having these building meetings, sometimes they were productive, sometimes they weren’t. So, when I realized that I was putting a lot more effort than I was seeing results for, we just started to look at individuals who were really interested in these meetings but nobody else was coming—so we’re like, “Okay, we’re going to focus on you. We’re going to plug you into our work, however we can.” So, there’s people like Robinette.

Hickey: [01:47:03] Oh so, oh my God. 941 Intervale. At 941 Intervale there was Antoinette. I think that was her name.

Lewis: Mm-Hmmmm.

Hickey: I’m quite sure that was her name. Yeah.

Lewis: And she was blind?

Hickey: She was blind, she was an undocumented immigrant and she had multiple children. And she was like the leader of the building… Where she was—everybody knew she was fearless, everybody knew she got the worst of like retaliation and stuff. But she was just like, “No, fuck these people. I’m living in a unit that I could afford—almost, like I could almost afford if it were not a shelter unit, but the ceiling is falling down, the plumbing is shitty. There’s mold everywhere. I have four kids and there’s a one-bedroom and like I’m sleeping on the floor.” And she’s like, “No. Like I have nothing else to lose, right?”

Hickey: [01:47:54] When it hits that point, you know… Yeah. It’s pretty crazy what people were doing. So anyway—941 was really like the primary building that we were doing. We had a few actions outside. And we—then we started linking up with Banana Kelly, where Anna Burnham was slowly getting involved in our work there. But, I remember Antoinette and a few other people—Cathy, like Ms. Samuels, was a leader… And they were all single mothers who were like really pulling the work, which is common I would say, in my organizing work at least.

Hickey: [01:48:38] Where they just like—they had it. And I remember we reached out to key allies. We reached out to Senator Diaz, who is a councilman—who’s just this homophobic anti-homeless person and we—he was just the worst. But we held an action out there, which I remember being really, really powerful. And then we soon realized that—like DHS, it wasn’t even DHS... No, it was DHS—but it was also the service provider, which was Aguila at that time, who was retaliating against the people who maybe like, were inclined to speak out, or whose faces were in the media and stuff.

Hickey: [01:49:19] So, Antoinette was retaliated against.

Lewis: How did they retaliate?

Hickey: Thirty-day notices—not even thirty-day notices. Like emergency shelter transfers. Because if it’s an emergency, they don’t have to give thirty-day.

Lewis: So let me—let me ask you… Because I have a memory of… We were going into a staff meeting and you getting a text from Antoinette

Hickey: Mmmmm.

Lewis: and had a picture of a twenty-four-hour notice

Hickey: Mm-Hmmmm!

Lewis: and you being just like, “Oh God! You know—what do we do?”

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: And Maria and Arvernetta were in the office, and

Hickey: Oh, yes!

Lewis: we were like, “Ryan, you have to go!”

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: This is crazy! Like there were things that would happen, that defied logic

Hickey: Mm-Hmmmm.

Lewis: or humanity.

Hickey: Yeah. So inhumane. God.

Lewis: [01:50:07] And so, you went

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: with Arvernetta and Maria and organized. That’s when you all organized... You were talking about doing a blockade...

Hickey: Arvernetta and Maria were so powerful in those conversations.

Lewis: Could you talk about that whole, like when…

Hickey: So, everybody was like… Not everybody—most of the people were out of their apartments, in the hallway, shouting down like, “What’s happening?” People were packing up their shit in trash bags because DHS did not give them any—anything. They didn’t give them suitcases or whatever. They gave them twenty-four fucking hours! So, they had their life possessions in trash bags.
 
Hickey: [01:50:42] Some people were just like, “I’m going. I’m tired of fighting.” Or, “I don’t want to fight.” Whatever. But the people who were fighting we quickly identified. Some people we didn’t even know yet. We quickly identified and Arvernetta was just—I think it was Arvernetta, she was like, “Yeah, we’ll do a blockade. We’re going to like—nobody’s leaving here.” And everybody’s like, “Cool! Alright. Fine. Good.” Because at that… Beforehand, when people—when we were organizing in these cluster sites, they were like—they knew… They had been retaliated against time and time again, before then. Even before we showed up. And so they were like, “I don’t know. Like this is risky…” Or whatever, and we had to be—we were like, “We have your back. Like, if something happens we’re going to be there for you and like I’m going to answer my phone…” Whatever, whatever—and we did. And this was like proof that we were ready to fight with these people, to make them stay in a shitty shelter… But I guess it’s pragmatic but also the principle. Like, no, you don’t have power over these people’s lives like you should—or you think you do.

Hickey: [01:51:42] So, I remember Arvernetta, and Maria were in this building, and they were just like talking to the cluster site residents, blah, blah, blah. And I was just like, “Okay, sounds like a plan has formed, like you guys formed a plan. Does that sound good to everybody?” And I remember calling Sam and you, and we’re just like, “People want to do a blockade. Would you be down with that?” And you’re like, “Yep, let’s do it tomorrow. Cool.” We did it at like—what, six a.m., seven a.m., because it was twenty-four hours, and we didn’t actually know when the timeframe—if it was strict or whatever. But I remember Andres was there, Stanley was there. We had a bunch of people there.

Lewis: Six a.m.
 
Hickey: Six a.m., really fucking early in the Bronx, where a lot of people didn’t live, including myself. And I remember we got lawyers there; we got press there—Banana Kelly came. I think Banana Kelly came.

Lewis: And DHS came. DeBlasio was mayor, right?

Hickey: [01:52:36] Yeah. DeBlasio was mayor. DHS came... But yeah, we made sure nobody left and nobody did leave that day. But, Antoinette talked to the press. A couple of other people talked to the press. But, you know it was… Everything happened so quickly, and we had to mobilize our people so quickly and they came through. And some people moved out voluntarily. They had like, vans for them—and some people didn’t. And Antoinette stayed for longer than that and I think she accepted a transfer like a few weeks, or if not—a few months after that. And then she got transferred to a place deep in Brooklyn, and then I think she got Section 8.

Lewis: [01:53:22] One thing I remember about that was—because you all spent the day up there… And there’s a video of some of this.

Hickey: Oh, yeah! Z was there. He made a video of that.

Lewis: Z videoed—and Maria’s calling DHS, like...

Hickey: Yes.

Lewis: Pretending to be one of the—or Arvernetta, one of the...

Hickey: In Senator Diaz’s office. We went to his office, and we called DHS there. Yeah.

Lewis: [01:53:48] And like, “What do you mean I have to move?” And they were like, “Well, you don’t have any rights.” And so, we did a flyer that DHS was evicting people and DeBlasio’s communication person—Camille called,

Hickey: Camille.

Lewis: and was fighting—saying that they weren’t being evicted because they were shelter residents

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: not tenants.

Hickey: Yeah. And that’s when we started formulating the narrative like, “No, these are tenants.” And that’s when we started reaching out to legal people, being like, “We think these people are tenants, right? More than thirty days, rent stabilized… Which might have illegally been transferred into the cluster site system.” But like, “We’re going to call them tenants because we believe they’re tenants.” And that’s when that narrative started forming—because nobody else was calling them tenants. Not Coalition for the Homeless. Nobody. Right? Yeah. And I remember Z made that video and Camille—oh Camille—she now is like the head of the RWDSU [Retail Workers Union] and she was very anti-homeless then. She’s like the political director of Retail Workers Union.

Hickey: [01:54:54] And, I’ll never forgive her for that, for thinking that homeless people are disposable like that. I’ll never forgive or forget that. And I remember Sam talking to her and Sam coming out of those phone calls being like, “Oh, she is mad.” Or like, “I just got my ass handed to me.” Like something like that. I was like,

Lewis: Yeah.

Hickey: “Who the fuck are these people?”

Lewis: She demanded that we take the word tenant

Hickey: Yeah!

Lewis: out and we refused and

Hickey: Or evict or something like that. Yeah.

Lewis: And she—and we refused, and she was screaming at us on the phone and saying, “You know, I come from organizing

Hickey: Yeah!

Lewis: and you’re making the mayor look bad.” And we were like, “He’s making himself look bad.”

Hickey: I think that’s when people still had faith in this progressive mayor.

Lewis: Mmmmm.

Hickey: [01:55:38] But even… Like this was still when we were at the Fordham place,

Lewis: Yeah.

Hickey: the Fordham office. And I remember, that was around the time where he was just like, “We’re going to go with Bill Bratton.” And people were just like, “What the fuck!?”

Lewis: That was his first appointment.

Hickey: That was his first appointment! Yeah—and I remember everybody’s like, “Wait a minute. You’re supposed to be progressive, and you want to go back to the person who like, was one of the masterminds of like, over policing Black, and Brown communities?”

Lewis: Broken Windows—Mr. Broken Windows.

Hickey: Yeah, Broken Windows. Like, what the hell? And that’s why—that’s—quickly everybody was like, “No, this dude isn’t for real. This dude is just the same old bullshit.”

Hickey: [01:56:19] But yeah, 941 Intervale was oh—so difficult… And then, some people I remember—because we were fighting with the senator, we were fighting with DHS. Some people did get permanent housing out of that. Antoinette was one of them and we made—through that fight we got permanent tenancy for a bunch of people who didn’t have it! And I think it was like eighteen people in that apartment building, and I think eight or nine got permanent tenancy—because of us—because of them.

Lewis: Because they fought back.

Hickey: Like they fought. Exactly. Yeah.

Lewis: [01:56:57] What’s the difference then? If somebody fights back as an individual they get retaliation.

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: But somebody fights back as part of a group—and they get housing!?

Hickey: Yeah. It’s that power. You know, it’s all about—organizing is all about building power, not being afraid of your own power. And, I think Antoinette knew that pretty early on. And I think once the system came down on them, in that way—they were just like, “I have no other choice but to build with these people.” And they knew that like, if they stood alone they were just going to get stomped on. They’re going to get crushed, and this wasn’t going to end, and they could be taken advantage of over and over and over again. But when you fight with people and you have this resistance—with people, you have a fighting chance and that’s worth fighting for really. It was like a—it could be a slow process for some people, but I think for a few folks there it was just like, “Oh my God. Like suddenly things clicked.”

Lewis: [01:58:03] So, that was one of the first major actions around the cluster sites.

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: What were some of the other actions?

Hickey: So, that was one of them. We had a march to Aguila’s headquarters, which was also in the Bronx—where we got shelter residents who lived in Aguila buildings... We had these—we blew up photos of dead rats and stuff like that... Because these—I mean, like I’m organizing in tenant buildings now that are falling apart. Honestly, that’s nothing compared to the cluster site stuff. It’s, you know… The cluster site apartments were the worst I have ever seen in my life and Aguila the contractor—like, Aguila was contracted by the city. The landlords had nothing to do with the city. It was the “service providers” who had the contracts, and they had a responsibility to maintain habitability throughout these buildings and they were failing—because they were under contract. That’s their job.

Hickey: [01:59:07] So, we went after them because that’s where the accountability was—legally. And so, we went after Aguila, and we had a march—I think from shelter to shelter. Yeah. You had to march from like—start at a shelter, midpoint was a shelter, and then we ended at Aguila and then we took over their office. We forced our way inside and I remember the security guard was so [laughter] freaked out and pissed—and he was shouting. He was shouting—in whose face? My face? Your face.

Lewis: You and Maria and I—and there was another person, a man.

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: And we were stuck in the—between the exterior door and the entry door.

Hickey: Yeah, the foyer or whatever.

Hickey: [01:59:46] And we took over their office because we were just like, “Fix up your buildings! Like you are getting millions every month. Millions every month and you’re putting it into your salaries, or you’re putting it to something else besides maintaining these apartments. You’re not even giving people these—metro cards. You’re not providing any services.” They’re not even onsite, because sometimes there was supposed to be onsite services...

Hickey: [02:00:09] And yeah… We marched to Aguila’s headquarters, and we like stormed it and we had a little sit-in in their little foyer, which was really cool and really fun. And, I think after that—that’s when Aguila, like at 941, they started having onsite services in the commercial space right next to there. Because when I kept going back—I remember at some point the Aguila employees came out, and they made a circle around me and they were just like, “You got to stop coming here.” They threatened me. They were just like, “Don’t come back here.” I was like, “You… People have a right to organize in shelters and in housing and you’re breaking the law right now.” Like, “Just don’t come back here. Blah, blah, blah.” I’m just like, “Oh my God, whatever. This is so fucking weird.” And if they do that to me, imagine what they were doing to tenants, right?

Hickey: [02:01:02] So yeah, we had that action and then we were like shifting course a little bit but also looking at the landlords, specifically the Podolskys. Because all the buildings we were organizing in were Podolsky buildings and we had some really good media hits. We were like—at the same time we were doing actions, we were trying to drum up media support for ending the cluster site program.

Hickey: [02:01:29] So Robinette, I remember—who was in a building on Grand Concourse, she had her interview and then that’s when we met Lisa as well, around that time—Lisa Milhouse. She was at 941, too… Was she? I mean, they get transferred so often sometimes it’s hard. I think she was in 941. And her cabinet fell. Her whole cabinet with dishes, everything—fell off the wall because of water damage. And she’s like, “I could have just died.” And I remember, I still have the pictures on my phone somewhere.

Lewis: She has a little girl.

Hickey: She had a little girl! Yeah, who was like six at the time. Imagine if she was under there. She would have been crushed to death. And so we’re getting media hits on there. And then we started shifting course to look at the landlords, because—so the Podolskys. So, there were—there was only that one piece on the Podolskys, really. They Andrew Rice piece.

Hickey: [02:02:26] But we started doing a little bit more research. I remember I was doing scouting missions on where they were working, where their offices were, where their houses were. And we had it on good authority that… I don’t even know how we did this. We just found out where one of the brothers lived and then we had that sleep out, which was so fun and so crazy. [Smiles]

Lewis: [Smiles] Where was it? Where did they live?

Hickey: [02:02:49] That was on 59th Street in Midtown. He lived in this high-rise luxury tower, and he had—and he—him, and he put his whole family, in that building. Because like that… Landlords are parasites, for the record. They are parasites. But this guy, he doesn’t do anything for a living. What he does is profit off of homeless people—and he was living in a luxury tower with a pool, sauna, all this shit… And he could afford to buy his family all these other condos in that same building. And he is the worst of the worst. Like in Dante’s Seven Layers of Hell—he’s going to the one that hurts people the most. Or eight layers or whatever it is.

Hickey: [02:03:32] So, we start like, organizing for the sleep-out and we have the sleep-out. We get some tenants who lived in his buildings. I remember this woman—this other new member who we were developing her leadership... Her name wasn’t Flowers… Flora! Her name was Flora. She was really cool, and we were slowly pushing her into leadership roles where she did some public speaking that day and she was amazing. She was so good. And, I think one or two other tenants came.

Hickey: [02:04:04] But we had the sleep-out... We had like music going and we were doing flyering outside to tell his neighbors who he is. And some people were just like, “Wow, I had no idea. I know this dude. I see him a lot. I know this dude. I didn’t know he made his money this way.” And then, at some point we learned that he packed up his stuff the day before and he left, or like early in the day—because he knew we were coming. Like, one of his neighbors said like, “Yeah, I just saw him leaving and he told me he was leaving for the day, because something was happening here.” We’re like, “Oh—okay.”

Hickey: [02:04:36] And then at some point during the night—it was early in the night… At some point one of the neighbors comes down with food for us. She brought us like treats, and we started developing this relationship and she’s like, “Why don’t I take you upstairs?” And we’re just like, “What!?” Everybody looks at each other like, “What? What do you mean?” It was like, “Yes, why don’t you just come up and like—you can knock on his door, see if he’s there.” And I’m, “Oh my God.” And everybody looks to me and is like, “Ryan, you’re going up.” I was like, “I don’t know... Like, I’m wearing like a Picture the Homeless thing—they’re going to notice me.” And me and… [Starts knocking on the table]

Lewis: Was it Shadow? That you switched shirts?

Hickey: Shadow. Me and Shadow, we switched shirts on the sidewalk and his shirt was enormous on me.

Hickey: [02:05:20] And we switched shirts, and she brings me up to… First

Lewis: Past security because they had security.

Hickey: Past security and that building was nice. That building was really nice. So, we go past security. We go to her apartment. She sits down and she writes a letter, and I have a photo on my phone. I should probably send that to you.

Lewis: All these photos, send them.

Hickey: She writes a letter to Jay Podolsky. It was like, “Sir, I had no idea who you were but the way that you’re doing this is like really horrible.” Because we had these photos of his shelters that were—we blew them up and there were, you know—rats, roaches, mold... Tons of black mold, which is, you know—so detrimental to people’s health, especially children.

Hickey: [02:06:03] So, we blew up these photos and we’re talking to this woman, and she was talking to people who lived in his buildings and stuff… And she goes up, she writes this letter, and we go to his door, and I knock on his door. No answer. I knock on his door again. No answer. I slip a flyer under his door, so he knows we were there, and she tapes the letter that she wrote—basically saying how terrible of a person he is, and he needs to get out of this business, blah, blah, blah… She tapes it to his door. We take a selfie in front of the door with the letter and then we leave.

Hickey: [02:06:33] And I come down and everyone’s like, “Oh my God! What happened!? Like that was… Like what does the apartment look like?” And we’re like, “Oh man, it’s so…” What an interesting turn of events in an action. But that’s what—that’s why actions are so fun—because you never know what’s going to happen.

Lewis: And you say sleep-out. So what does that look like for somebody that wasn’t there?

Hickey: [02:06:52] So, a sleep-out is like you’re taking up public space to really send a message about like, an issue. So, we slept outside of his huge luxury condo on both sides of the entrance—but then I think we all migrated to like one side of the entrance—where we had slabs of cardboard, we were sitting down, and we hunkered down for the night and we were flyering, we had music. We were like making this public scene of like, solidarity with each other in juxtaposition with antagonism towards him.

Hickey: [02:07:31] And yeah, we just—we had pizza, we had Dunkin Donuts… I mean, so much planning went into that. And I remember—I don’t know why I remember this—making a map of all the twenty-four-hour bathrooms within like a five-block radius.

Lewis: You don’t know why we did it? [Smiles]

Hickey: No, I know why we did it, [laughter] but I was like… I don’t know why I remember it so clearly.

Lewis: It’s important.

Hickey: Because those tiny details make an action seamless. And I think that action was pretty seamless. Like no snags... Like we had a police liaison... Jean was doing an amazing job. Like your musician friend came and everybody knew where to go if they had to go to the bathroom, if they had free food. We had free food donated to us, so we were very well-fed. And of course, it poured like the whole night, [laughter] like almost every sleep-out.

Lewis: We got soaking wet.

Hickey: Soaking wet even though we had tarps and stuff.

Lewis: [02:08:20] There was a skit.

Hickey: Yeah!

Lewis: Wasn’t Scott Mr. Podolsky?

Hickey: Oh my God! Yes! We had a skit and Scott was Mr. Podolsky. He dressed up in like this suit kind of thing... Yeah, we had like a little Theater of the Oppressed thing going on, which was really fun. Yeah! Oh man, I would have loved to see the agenda for that day.

Lewis: Other groups. What other groups came and spoke?

Hickey: [02:08:45] Legal Aid was there. I think UHAB was there. I actually just saw a photo of this recently... Like Carrie White was there from UHAB, I think she was. Legal Aid was there. Banana Kelly was there…

Lewis: Crown Heights Tenants Union.

Hickey: Crown Heights Tenants Union. Esteban—I saw him the other week and we’re still friends. Crown Heights Tenants Union was there. [Exhales] This is where my memory fails me.

Lewis: That’s okay.

Hickey: I think that was the majority of the groups. But like Coalition for the Homeless wasn’t there and just goes to show like—the organizing that was happening was from Picture the Homeless and no other group… And we were the only ones calling for these demands, in very explicit terms.

Lewis: [02:09:31] So, one of the things you mentioned earlier was about how powerfully actions help to build relationships with people.

Hickey: Mm-Hmmmm.

Lewis: And that action was the first time that I met Al and Charmel.

Hickey: Mmmmm.

Lewis: And they had, you know, probably been coming around for a while,

Hickey: Mm-Hmmmm.

Lewis: but I had never really talked to them. And Al and I went to Duane Reade to buy water and I think some snacks and he was saying, “Well, this is what you guys do?” [Laughter] You know, but kind of like being—you know, funny… But also I could tell he was digging it. Like, “Really?” [Laughs]

Hickey: Yeah. Yeah.

Lewis: [02:10:24] And they—they were talking about how the Washington Hotel was—they were in a room with no windows.

Hickey: No windows, yeah.

Lewis: And Tyletha years earlier, had organized residents in the Washington Hotel because they—you know, conditions were horrible, and their mattresses were really messed up. So they got new mattresses. They got stuff. And Al and Charmel were like… Because it was in the summer, it was hot as hell and

Hickey: They didn’t sleep for days.

Lewis: No. And they were like, “It’s cooler. This is better than the Washington Hotel.”

Hickey: Yeah. They took me in their unit. They kind of snuck me in. Sweltering... Dark—sweltering. No person… It’s like a—you know, people could die in there, for real.

Lewis: [02:11:13] So, what were you learning through all this, as an organizer? What were you learning?

Hickey: [Long pause] I was learning the motions of how to do these things, like actions. Like—doing prep sessions with people, whether that be like talking to the media or… Like I remember we used to collectively draft talking points, so it wasn’t me doing it, it was like us doing it and then the people who were talking to the media—like our homeless members, they were conveying those issues that members had collectively decided on. I was being intentional about these things, like—don’t forget because this is really important. This is what Picture the Homeless is all about, like… Yeah, and the minutia of organizing an action, what it takes to do that… I mean so much phone banking. Like phone banking, more phone banking, getting commitments and leaning on members to do a bunch of that work. Yeah, even though sometimes people hated doing that work—which you know, happens.

Hickey: [02:12:35] And I think like through that… How—like our members knew how to do this stuff and they were teaching me how to do this stuff. And whenever we were just like… I remember Maria was always just like, “Let’s have a sleep-out!” Whenever we were just like, “Okay, so this is an issue.” She’s like, “Let’s have a sleep-out.” I’m like, “Okay, well… Let’s do some escalation first. Let’s go through the process because, you know—we’ve learned that’s probably the best way do to things.”

Hickey: [02:13:04] But they just knew… I remember like going through a lot of those checklists in those housing meetings. Members are like, “Okay, so do we have this? Do we have this? Do we have this? Do we have this?” Like, holy shit—like I barely need to be here. I’m facilitating the discussion, but you guys know what to do… Yeah. And so—I don’t know, I wasn’t learning that our homeless members were like the experts in this, but I just—I was reminded of it every single day. And yeah, there’s just so much expertise in that room and so much leadership in that room, where—these people… If and when they do leave Picture the Homeless, they’re just going to do amazing things wherever they are because we collectively have built each other up in that way… So yeah.

Lewis: [02:13:57] What do you—what do you feel like is important about Picture the Homeless?

Hickey: Hmm. I think there’s a lot of things. I think Picture the Homeless isn’t scared… Isn’t scared. I think like there’s a lot of fearless organizing in there. I think traditionally and even—contemporary cases, where we’re just like not afraid to demand things that nobody else wants to… Because they are—for whatever reason, you know.

Hickey: [02:14:30] So for example, like when we were writing Gaining Ground. I remember there was a discussion with—like we had Val in the room. We had Ken in the room, and we had Harry in the room, and we were just talking about… Like what ways could we get cluster sites out of this program—because they didn’t know anything about it. We were like—our members were teaching them about it, and we were having these discussions—multiple discussions and then we were just like, “Okay, we’re going to use eminent domain.” And I remember all three of them were like, “Good luck. It’s not something that really people organize for, or ask for.” But all the members were just like, “No, we have to. Take these buildings away from these assholes. We have to. Like there’s no other way.”

Hickey: [02:15:14] After ten, fifteen years of doing this—like, do we think that they’re just going to give it up? No, of course not, because there’s no end in sight to the shelter system. It’s growing every year… Like, eminent domain is the only way. And I remember having some meetings with other organizations, or emailing them and being like, “Yeah, eminent domain, is it like…” They explicitly said, “We cannot sign on to Gaining Ground because it has eminent domain in it.” I’m talking about the big more established housing organizations who had like a lot of funding... But because they had a lot of funding, their organizing wasn’t based in like leadership development or like grassroots… And they didn’t sign on because it said eminent domain. And we were just like, “No, fuck you then. This is the right thing to do and we’re going to do it.”

Hickey: [02:15:57] And same thing about like, a lot of our members were squatting and homesteading, and we supported them through that! You know? Because we knew private property isn’t king. Like it doesn’t trump human rights. It doesn’t trump your right to sleep in a warm place. We just weren’t afraid to break laws when they needed to be broken and to kind of support our members in breaking laws when they needed to be broken! Like if you need to break a law to live, break a law… Or something like that, you know? And that was really important to me, and I still believe that today.

Hickey: [02:16:34] And I think Picture the Homeless also means to me like—just homeless people taking charge and building power in real tangible ways and winning things, real tangible things due to their efforts, like years and years of organizing. I mean, I remember Shaun really early when I was there. Shaun was like, “Yeah, I view my job as like I’m trying to organize myself out of a job because I shouldn’t be needed at one point.” I was like, “Oh—that’s a good way of phrasing it and stuff.”

Hickey: [02:17:11] And I believe that in a lot of ways and I think Picture the Homeless does do that. Where, like organizers have their role—sure, but we take leadership from homeless folks because they know the issues better than we do and will always know it and their experience is really, really important and valued in that work and I think we’ve accomplished a lot. Like, we don’t—sometimes we don’t need those organizers to do some things because members just know how to do it and they can do it and they should do it. They should be seen doing it and homeless people should be—should see other homeless people leading the charge for revolutionary change. I think Picture the Homeless knows that and embodies that and even other homeless organizations don’t have that kind of like anti-capitalist, bottom-up analysis. Like in theories of change, where homeless people have to be leading it. They have to be leading it. They have to be the face of it. Yeah, and I think throughout my time there we were really intentional. I mean sometimes we probably slipped up but like—we really, really tried to be intentional about that. So…

Lewis: [02:18:25] Going through the archive, I found a whole bunch of articles where different members were called the executive director. [Smiles]

Hickey: Members were called the executive? [Smiles] That’s funny. Yeah.

Lewis: One time Brandon was in an article.

Hickey: That’s so funny.

Lewis: And Rob was one time—because they were—they were in the front. They were visible.

Hickey: Yeah. And also like—at the end of the day who cares.

Lewis: I thought it was great.

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: I thought it was like a good sign.

Hickey: [02:18:55] Yeah. Because sometimes I met people wondering how to reach… They’re like, “Oh, I’ve heard of you. I read a thing about the cluster site stuff.” And we were like—when the news articles were coming out really quickly, our name was always attached to it. Which was great, but we also made sure of that because oftentimes that wouldn’t be the case. I remember some people were just like, “Oh, I saw your name in that article.” I was like, “Oh.” Not my name but like Picture the Homeless’s name. I was like, “Oh, that’s great because they’re always talking to like—the Lisa’s or the Robinette’s or the Antoinette’s.” Because Antoinette, a member of Picture the Homeless, living in 941 Intervale—yeah, that’s really important. I think I talked to the press maybe like once, on background information and I still do that. When people—like in my current work— whenever the press are around I’m just like, “Talk to this tenant. They know. Just talk to them.” Yeah. It’s so important.

Lewis: [02:19:46] What were some of your… Or maybe—did you have challenges with members—going back to that leadership circle that you referenced, where the leaders are in the center and the job is to help move people towards the center knowing that there’s fluidity, like you said, and people come in and out?

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: As an organizer were—do you have any memories of being challenged by, excuse me… Not somebody who you really thought could move towards the center but who… Like, you didn’t know what to do? Because there’s a lot of power in what you described

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: but that’s amidst many challenges. So, what were some of the challenges for you working at Picture the Homeless?

Hickey: Oh man. I had a bunch. Hmm. [Long pause] So membership retainment was, you know—it’s a constant challenge, I think in any organization but especially with PTH, just because of the nature of homelessness and what that means for people.

Hickey: [02:21:08] And when you do have like a potential member, becoming a member and becoming a leader… Sometimes people could have—I mean, this rarely happened but they’re saying it. Like, sometimes leaders were protective of the roles that they served and there wasn’t enough mobility within the leadership realm… Where people were like, “No, that’s my job. I want to do that.”

Hickey: [02:21:36] And so we countered that by having political education trainings and HOA was a really huge part of that, where… We—sometimes we’d just be like, “Listen, if you want to talk to press you have to come to an HOA thing on press, or whatever.” And I made—if I thought a member would be really good at that, I made sure that member was there. Even if it was just that one person, because sometimes that happened. And then, if that happened—then making a direct connection to the next housing meeting. Being like, “Listen, I want to give it up bigtime for this person who came to this HOA training, did an amazing job and I want this person to be the next press spokesperson” Everybody’s like, “Oh! Like—cool.” Marcus always was just like, “Yeah! Like that’s amazing!” He always tried to build people up and making it like a big thing—because it is a big thing for somebody to be like, “We all think you’re ready to do this. Do it.”

Hickey: [02:22:32] So making an intentional line between training based on curricula that membership has like perfected over the years and being like, “Yo, big ups to this person who took a risk, is going outside of their comfort zone, and we’re going to help you shine in this moment.” And making sure that a lot of members were forming a support network and being like, “We all need to support this person. Let’s do it.” I think that—I didn’t really put that together in the beginning but as I got going in the organizing world, you realize the importance of that and then it becomes just your everyday thing.

Hickey: [02:23:18] Other challenges… You know, sometimes people said some really fucked up shit to me, about me. Like, some people were like really anti-Semitic, or some people were really sexist or homophobic and… We—I think we actually like did a decent job of not ignoring those differences during housing campaign meetings. Because sometimes housing campaign meetings were just like, “We’re going to talk about the campaigns.” But sometimes they morphed into like, “We need to take some time to do like political education because in the meantime, for the next HOA class, there’s not enough time to like address this.” And so we—really like, if somebody said something homophobic or, you know—whatever—took some space in that meeting to be like, “Okay. Let’s examine this. Right? So, why—why are we like this? Like what does this do to us as a collective group that’s trying to like form solidarity around this one issue? Like, who is that serving?” Who is this division serving, sort of thing?”

Hickey: [02:24:20] And we kind of like—we didn’t analyze the person’s personal history but we’re just like, “Listen...” For lack of a better word, it was just like, “We’re in this together. Like if we have divisions, we’re going to fail. We’re just going to fail and that’s what the Podolsky’s of the world want us to do. They want to like say—all these undocumented people… Like they’re taking our jobs. or whatever…” Like blah, blah, blah.

Hickey: [02:24:42] And we… We—I don’t remember a single time where that like—didn’t come out with some positive results. Because people, you know—they challenge. Like, you have… Stanley, I remember, challenged me—challenged other members in these meetings, because he said some really messed up shit. We’re just like, “Listen, like—we’re calling you in right now. We’re not going to be confrontational.” Sometimes it heated up a little bit but… It’s a learning process for a lot of people, including myself. None of us are perfect. We’re all bringing our super fucked up lives into these spaces and sometimes they come out, and it’s about like dealing with that in a really constructive way.

Hickey: [02:25:24] But that was definitely a challenge, regularly. But like, I remember a couple of members were just saying hugely anti-Semitic stuff to my face. I’m like, “Oh this again.” Because like [unclear] a lot of landlords are Jewish and some people are just like, “These fucking Jews are just like—making me poor.” I was like, “Well, what they have is common is they’re landlords. They’re not all Jewish. They’re all landlords though.”

Hickey: [02:25:47] So like… You know—the analysis is a little bit… We have to build that analysis collectively because then we looked at our allies. Like JFREJ—we’re like, “Well, are they your enemy?” Or we had to look at FIERCE, or whoever it is like, “Are they your enemy? Like you’re being anti-Semitic now—but JFREJ, they came out to this action in solidarity with us. They’re like with us in CPR. Like, what’s the deal with that?” They’re like, “Oh well yeah—I guess.” Not those—not those Jewish people. And it’s like, “Okay well, until we have like a thousand exceptions, when are you going to come to the realization like—oh actually, it’s not Jewish people who are like—doing this?”

Hickey: [02:26:27] So, I think allies were really important in that because we built really diverse strong allies and we went to their actions, we did political work together with CPR and stuff—like in our housing stuff. It’s just it was really, really good for kind of breaking down a lot of stereotypes that people had. But also on their end, too. I mean, I’m sure a lot of the people had stereotypes about homeless people and then working with homeless people they’re just like, actually, this is kind of like fucked up and they reanalyze what they were thinking.

Lewis: [02:27:00] Jean came up with an expression a long time ago. “If you want to have an ally, you have to be an ally.”

Hickey: Hmmmm!

Lewis: That was after many conversations

Hickey: Jean.

Lewis: about homophobic and misogynist

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: language in the office and Jean came up with that as a way to try to bust open and create space for that kind of conversation.

Hickey: That’s a great way of saying it.

Lewis: [02:27:32] Yeah. And Joo-Hyun actually talks about how she felt—that Picture the Homeless members, when it was brought to their attention that maybe they were saying things that weren’t cool in coalition spaces… That people were very—not apologetic, exactly… But took time to reflect and that when other groups maybe were looking down on homeless people weren’t as reflective . And she gave Picture the Homeless a lot of credit for having an organizational practice of that kind of reflection.

Hickey: I saw Nikita do that kind of stuff a lot. Yeah. And Nikita was never afraid to have those conversations.

Lewis: [02:28:20] Nikita mentioned something, too—in terms of just inter-homeless… Like people who are in shelter looking down on street homeless people.

Hickey: For sure! Oh my God—so much.

Lewis: You want to share some of that?

Hickey: Yeah. Especially when we moved to Harlem, we had a lot more street homeless folks just walking through our door because we were right on 126th Street and a lot of our members beforehand, a lot of our leaders beforehand, were shelter homeless. And then, very quickly it became apparent like—there is a division even between homeless people. Like, they don’t see solidarity. They don’t see like a class relation to each other or whatever. They see, “You’re different than I am, and I don’t really like that difference.” And Nikita did so much work around that. Oh my God. And like, the civil rights campaign morphed a little bit into shelter homeless folks doing a lot of the work, to a lot of street homeless folks doing the work. I mean, I know that it’s like—historically that’s not necessarily true, but a lot more street homeless people from the 125th crowd came and started doing the work. Like Floyd, or whatever—started doing the work and the work… It didn’t change, but the people doing the work changed.

Lewis: It was like that.

Hickey: [02:29:32] Yeah. I think through that though—sorry. Through people like Floyd and even Jesus—like working on their stuff, coming to meetings, being in solidarity with people, slowly those—those rifts started to close.

Lewis: [02:29:49] We lost that when we moved to the Bronx because Picture the Homeless at first was almost all street homeless.

Hickey: Exactly, yeah.

Lewis: And ten in East Harlem, when we first came to East Harlem, there was street homeless civil rights

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: and the shelter

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: campaign, and we lost a lot of street homeless people when we went to the Bronx.

Hickey: Mm-Hmmmm.

Lewis: And

Hickey: I remember when we were up in the Bronx, calling some people, like when I first got there, calling some people to be like, “Hey I’m Ryan. I’m the new housing organizer.” A lot of people were just like, “It’s too far for me, man. It’s way too far.” Yeah.

Lewis: [02:30:25] What did it do in terms of your—what did you learn as an organizer at Picture the Homeless when we moved back to Harlem and a lot of street homeless folks started participating? How did that change things? Did you learn… What did you learn from that?

Hickey: [Long pause] Yeah. So, I developed some pretty strong relationships with a few of those folks. I think just the challenges were a little bit different that those people were facing than like shelter folks were facing. Like a lot of it was just police violence and it was just like—you had to take some time out of your day to listen to these folks and to talk to them. Even if it’s not about like, a strict one-on-one. Some people literally just came in to be like, “I need somebody to talk to.” And you had to take time and you had to like, balance your schedule—your work schedule around that… And I mean wow. It’s just so… Everything that Jesus was saying that he was facing, in trying to get a job and trying to work on his own issues...

Hickey: [02:31:42] Some of the challenges was like… I don’t know, sometimes being less of an organizer and being more of like, “How can I help you?” Like, your immediate need is right now. You’re asking me for this one thing and like… Yeah. It was a challenge to have—to sometimes put the organizer side on the backend, and be like, “I know you need me in this capacity, and I’m going to be there for you in this capacity right now.”

Hickey: [02:32:14] But also the challenge was connecting that to like—for example, the CLT stuff. Like, it was really hard. Really, really hard. Like for Floyd, or for Jesus—or people like Country, like… They don’t want to hear that shit. They really don’t. They don’t want to hear that shit—CLTs… And then sometimes when they did come to those meetings they were super disruptive! Or if like members were—advanced members were just like, “Oh, we don’t have time to explain the 101s to these people...” It was like, “Okay so, I’m going to have to do a one-on-one with this person to talk about CLTs and they don’t come to meetings anymore because they realize that they don’t really care about this stuff.”

Hickey: [02:32:55] Like, connecting their street homeless issues with the issues that we were doing in the housing campaign was really, really hard. And I remember like, Floyd and I made some headway around that but—you know, they just kind of like opted out—a bunch of those people. Or like Sarge. Like Sarge was—he like busted down the doors. He’s like, “I need this now!” He’s like, “You! You’re here. You work here. Like—help me get my Section 8 back!” And I helped him get his Section 8 back and then he kept needing to get it renewed and me trying to talk to him about our housing campaign. He’s like, “No, no, no, no. I don’t want to hear that.” It’s like, “Oh Jesus. Okay.”

Hickey: [02:33:49] And… Or people like—people like Angel. Like Angel… Really sweet. So sweet, so nice, pleasure to be around. A thousand percent energy all the time. Had ten-thousand things that needed addressing.

Lewis: And she’s also blind.

Hickey: She’s also blind. She walked with a stick. I don’t know what the proper term is for that. And she was in an abusive relationship sometimes and she had a lot of health problems, mental health problems and physical health problems. And, you know—when Jenny was—when Jenny got there it’s like… It was either me or Jenny, but mostly Jenny. Mostly Jenny spending hours and hours and hours with some people who just walked right in and demanded an audience. And it was a challenge to say, “No, I can’t do that.” It took months—if not years, to be like, “Nope, sorry. I don’t have time for that.” Because you see somebody like Angel walk in, who is blind, who—oh, God… Trying to find housing or you know—has an issue with the police, issue with her boyfriend who’s following her everywhere, including in the office—having private conversations with her apart from her boyfriend.

Hickey: [02:35:07] It’s like, “Well, am I an organizer—in this moment now?” Like yes, but—Goddamn, nobody else is helping you. Like nobody. And so, connecting you with resources who can help you but they’re not doing it fast enough, so I have to do something… And, oh man, Jenny spent so long with Angel. So, that was a challenge! That was a real challenge that happened every single day, where the interpersonal conflicts that happened between some of the crew from outside, coming inside. Like, I remember breaking up a fight and Sarge hit me in the face with his fucking crutch. And… I remember it was just like, “Oh my God.”

Hickey: [02:35:54] I jumped off a—I jumped off a call… Like, I remember I was on NYCCLI calls for the board, and for East Harlem—or Education and Outreach… And multiple times I had to be like, “Guys, I can’t talk right now. Bye.” And I remember them calling or sending me an email, or calling me back—being like, “Is everything okay because it sounded like people were killing each other.” I was like, “Yeah, just don’t worry about it.”

Hickey: [02:36:18] It was like hugely disruptive sometimes! And Nikita tried, I tried a little bit less than Nikita... But like, Nikita really felt like it was on him to get these people more involved in the political vision of Picture the Homeless.

Lewis: It was on him.

Hickey: Yeah! And so, like…

Lewis: Primarily.

Hickey: And they did not want to hear it. Some of these people did not want to hear it. Or…  Viola? One of the fights was about her. She was a single woman. I remember, she was like mentally ill, severely mentally ill. There was a fight with her where—oh God, yeah. Anyways, when we moved to East Harlem that was a day-to-day struggle, for sure. But often, I was out of the office at meetings or doing outreach and stuff, so sometimes I didn’t have to deal with that. But Nikita, being my officemate—we talked about it a lot. As messy as he is, he was a great office mate to talk to and like, yeah. Man oh man... But…

Lewis: So, well, we’re going to wrap-up soon. And do you have any parting thoughts?

Hickey: [02:37:38] I feel like there’s so much more to say on the CLT stuff.

Lewis: I do, too. And I feel like there’s a lot of Gaining Ground stuff.

Hickey: Yes.

Lewis: So, would you be willing to have a part two?

Hickey: Yeah, for sure.

Lewis: I think that the housing policy work

Hickey: yeah.

Lewis: that came out of the CLT study group, that came out of Gaining Ground

Hickey: Uh-Huh.

Lewis: I think is really crucial.

Hickey: Yeah. Especially now.

Lewis: [02:38:04] And I’m interviewing Jenny tomorrow,

Hickey: Cool!

Lewis: but I think this kind of arc that you went through where—you know, you came in right after Banking on Vacancy and y’all’s decision to start the study group so that people who were homeless could really fight for long-term change.

Hickey: Mm-Hmmmm.

Lewis: You know, a lot of the folks, you know—that you mentioned, like Sarge was like, kind of like, “Fuck that. I just want an apartment.”
 
Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: [02:38:35] But the folks you had in your study group were not that.

Hickey: No.

Lewis: They were like, “We are a homeless think tank

Hickey: So true.

Lewis: and we’re going to solve this.”

Hickey: Yeah. And they did... They fucking put us on a really concrete roadmap that just like—it’s transforming currently New York City housing and everybody’s talking about CLTs now and it would not be the case if homeless people did not do that.

Lewis: That’s right.

Hickey: And outside of the market. Like non-capitalist ways of housing people when everything else is capitalist. Everything is about making money or like—building some equity. Like no, we’re not going to do that. We need something different. Yeah.

Lewis: [02:39:14] Arvernetta called me on the phone on Friday and she had gotten an email from NYCCLI, and she was beside herself

Hickey: Oh no.

Lewis: that Picture the Homeless wasn’t mentioned.

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: And I said, “You know, you’re right! Picture the Homeless started this.” And she says, “And New Economy.” I said, “Well, they’ve done a ton of work and they had the capacity to hire the person to staff NYCCLI.” They did have that capacity. We can’t take that away from them.

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: But she says, “But we can never forget that this started at Picture the Homeless.” And I said, “Yeah well, you need to go to those meetings then.”

Lewis: [02:39:56] And so the… I think that one of the many things I think, to your credit—was balancing the, you know—organizing like around the cluster sites and connecting it to a policy solution

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: and then being a bridge between people who are like, in the throes of how this affects people to being the ones really spearheading.

Hickey: yeah.

Lewis: I think that’s a lot of different skills that you came with and that you built.

Hickey: Thanks.

Lewis: Yeah.

Hickey: [02:40:34] Yeah, the cluster site stuff was really hard. I remember at one point, like Sam sat me down and he’s like, “You’re spending so much time on cluster sites but like people aren’t coming to meetings. Your meetings aren’t well attended in these buildings and like—I think it might be time to like restrategize or redirect your attention.” I was like, “Oh. It’s so hard to hear.” And that goes back to like, one of the first points I mentioned like—realizing when it’s time to like move on, you know.

Lewis: Well, the cluster sites are in the news again

Hickey: yeah.

Lewis: and Podolsky’s going to get one-hundred-seventy-eight million dollars, instead of prison.

Hickey: Yeah, should go to prison.

Lewis: And Scott Stringer issued a subpoena

Hickey: Yeah.

Lewis: and I know that some—some of us are going to be involved in following up on that.

Hickey: Mm-Hmmm.

Lewis: So, we will schedule part two.

Hickey: Great!

Lewis: And thank you.

Hickey: Thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]