The Candy Sellers
“Which one do you want to be? A talker? Or a doer?”
Imagine paying more than you can afford to live in a dirty closet infested with mice and roaches. Imagine buying candy in bulk and then carrying fifty pounds of it down the subway stairs to sell it for a dollar to annoying kids. Imagine trying to sell candy in all kinds of weather, heat, snow, rain, and more. Imagine having someone walk up to you and just take your stuff or your money and not be able to do a thing about it. Imagine being walked by every day like you're nothing, like you're invisible, like you don’t even exist. There are real people living this imagination; we are the ones walking by them every day.
More than 75% of the students and staff of Comp Sci High are people of color, Hispanic people, or of Latin descent. You would think that this kind of similarity and connection between us would unite our community right? For the most part our school is one big united community. But outside of the walls of Comp Sci High, that isn’t the case. Sure we help each other here in the building, sure we support each other, and sure we even protect each other to certain degrees. But could you imagine what that would look like if we brought that same energy outside of the school?
Some of you might ask: “Who would we help outside of the building?”
Or maybe some of you might ask: “Why would we do something like that outside of Comp Sci High?”
The answer to that first question is right on the very corners outside of our school building. The candy sellers. I know we all see them outside the building either every morning or every afternoon trying to sell us things. But have you actually ever considered why they do it? Some of you probably just ignore them and keep pushing; the other half of you probably just think they only want money and that’s it. But they are actually more like us than we think.
However, I knew I couldn’t make a bold statement like that without proving it, I had to hear it from them. So I went out on the street after school one day and I walked over that blue bridge to the 2 and the 5 train station, where I knew there would be someone selling something. Over there, under some of the most used trains in the Bronx, I met two individuals, both Hispanic, one named Juan and another named Cathy.
Juan answered my question but his eyes looked so tired and wary. He said: “Yes, it was hard to get my business started years ago, but when things started to go decently well covid hit and then after that all the prices started going up and it made it even harder for me to make a living.” Cathy answered: “Absolutely, when you are a Hispanic woman, you have to work twice as hard to make ends meet, I have to work day and night in order to break even or make a little profit. It's like the more you try the harder it gets.”
Juan took a deep breath before answering my second question as if he was trying to gather his thoughts. It was probably difficult for him because the 2 and 5 trains kept rattling past. But finally he said: “I can’t afford to live in a good place because I can’t make the good money, I live in a one bedroom apartment with my wife and two kids, it is a very bad place, it is filled with roaches, rats, there's no heat, it's a dirty building, but I can’t make enough to live somewhere better.”
Cathy had a similar answer, with a look of sadness expressed in her eyes. And yet, she she was smiling – I could tell it was just because she was trying to be polite to me. She told me: “I pay high rent to live in a closet sized apartment full of roaches and mice. The landlords don’t want to pay for exterminators to come fix the problem, and the amount of crime is outrageous. I get afraid walking to the store and getting shot or mugged, our apartment is almost ready to fall apart and the landlords could care less.”
By then a few people had passed by and some of them even bought something from Juan, and with every sale he made I could see how grateful he was for each one. Juan said to me: “When you sell outside to the people there are alot of people who ignore you, but there's some nasty people out there that try to take candy from me or money, and then the weather is always changing but I can’t give up, I have to work for my family.” Cathy, hearing Juan, got serious. I wondered if she was thinking of her family. She told me: “It is hard to make ends meet, paying all these bills and keeping food on the table for my family. The hardest part is getting up every day and wondering if this is the day I can make enough, or get evicted, or deported, or hurt.”
Most of the students in Comp Sci High come from low income families in neighborhoods considered as poverty-filled or poor. Well, so do those candy sellers. Almost the entire school population consists of hispanic and black students, just like the candy sellers. Most of the students work hard in our school and at our homes to succeed, survive, and to take care of our families just like the candy sellers do too.
All of these sellers immigrated from various countries to America due to things like gang violence, harsh living conditions, limited health care and many other heartbreaking reasons just to attempt to give their children and families a better life. The problem is however, since these people are mostly undocumented not only is it difficult to find housing but it is even harder for them to find good work to help their families live what we call ‘The American Dream”, so they take to the streets and train platforms and they sell candy in order to keep trying to live a better life. Oftentimes the sellers face racial issues, harassment from both citizens and law enforcement, make little to no money at all, and even have to take their children to work with and for them as well in order to get by. These are not only issues they face but issues we also face as young students as well outside of the school building, I know that from both personal experience and from hearing of other student’s experiences.
By now you're probably wondering why I'm saying all of this to you in this paper, and it's because I truly believe that us as students and staff can do something to make a positive impact on these people's lives. We have limited our community to only being about Comp Sci High but it isn’t our only community, the Bronx itself is OUR community and all we have to lift it up is each other. So I want to urge all of those who read this article to keep that in mind, try to be the change that you want to see, even if it is something small like just buying a piece of candy from them or stepping in to help them if you ever see them being harassed in any way. If we want to see true change, if we truly do want a better community, then we have to step in and step up and do something about it because at the end of the day, it is the doers that change the world forever and it is the talkers that leave no impact on the world.
Which one do you want to be? A talker? Or a doer?