Colombo’s Coffee Shop Liberals & The New York Radical
By Hafeel Farisz –March 27, 2016
Hafeel Farisz
Although born and bred in the Island of Serendib, ‘Serendipity’ is a word I picked up from the New York ‘left’. It was on an afternoon in Cooper Square, in the famed and fabled East Village in lower Manhattan that I met Ryan.
New York is a funny place. You could bump into a stranger and, more often than not, find something in common. He was having lunch, and so was I, at the small ‘garden’ on the bend of 8th Street, right opposite the Astor Place subway station. The area is called Cooper Square, owing to some building with a similar name. Union Square is a few hundred meters from where we were. Ryan tells me that he is an adjunct Professor, a poet, and social activist.
Curiosity got the better of me. I had to know what the term ‘social activist’ meant to a 29-year-old New Yorker. I prodded him on.
“You see New York is filled with people who love life. They love people too. But they don’t know what to do with all this love,” he said. I didn’t quite understand what he meant by ‘love’. It’s a word that can connote many emotions, and is often subjective. “ People are very passionate about what they do. They want to help. They see an issue with the system,” he explained, seeing my reaction.
This was a narrowing down I could deal with. But I wanted to know more.
“So how do they express this love?” I asked. “That’s a bit of a tricky question. Some rant and rave online, some try and make donations to whatever cause they want to, others drop in a dollar or two when they see the homeless, and a some others gather at Union Square and protest every once in awhile,” he said matter-of-factly.
