Radio, Photos, Writing

Morning People Part 2

I’ve been lucky enough to escape early mornings. My first year in New York City was haunted by them, by the nausea and confusion of putting on my clothes in the dark of 4 am, the emptiness of train platforms and the various symptoms of what was probably an oncoming small breakdown. The aloneness of sunrise was comforting and cold. I appreciated seeing the same people on the trains--the man readings self-help books in spanish (a new one every week), the women applying their makeup with steady hands, the construction workers sipping cart coffee, slowly, because it was also what kept your hands warm after you left the station.

With all that being said I am still, and probably always will be, a morning person but I can’t say I was sad to leave the early mornings--and the particularly spirit-breaking work they entailed--behind me. In the past months I have begun to explore the particular type of early morning that those with the luxury of 9 to 5, weekday jobs, are already very familiar. The restless after-hours.

Above are some selections from the other side of the early morning.

In 2014--and consistently over the last several decades--runaways have represented the majority of missing childrens cases in New York State. In 2014, they made up 96% of those cases according to an annual report released by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice. Statistically speaking this is not surprising. Data suggests that 1 and 7 young people run away from home at some point during their lives. It also suggests that more often than not they identify as LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, or Questioning) and running away is not a choice but the only option.

About half of the top ten counties for runaways over the last three decades in New York State are located near New York City. That includes Westchester, Suffolk, Rockland and Orange.

Erie county--about as far away you can get from NYC--has held a position in the top 10 since 1995. This small county of nearly one million people sits on the far western border of the New York State.

Across New York State runaway cases have decreased over the last three decades, from 23,081 in 1990 to 19,026 in 2013, but in Erie the case is quite the opposite. Between 1990 and 2013, the number of runaways jumped from 415 to 938 cases--an almost 50% increase. But that rise may not be as telling at it seems says Carole Murphy. She’s the Director of Harvest House, a ministry in South Buffalo, New York that works with homeless and runaways youth as well as providing educational and resource services to the community.

“I would bet you money,” Murphy says, “I would bet you that the [number of runaway youth] begun to rise because police started actually filing reports about them. Schools, too. They’re filing reports against kids who never had reports filed in the past.”

Murphy theorizes that the rate of homeless youth in the area has not grown significantly over the last decade as the data suggests. In fact, it probably was never very low to begin with.

Murphy lives in Buffalo, New York which is located in Erie County. It’s a town that holds the distinction of being the third poorest city in the United States. The rate of poverty in 2014 among residents was 29.9% and 46% of Buffalo’s children live in poverty. That makes it all the more likely, says Murphy, that children will either run away or be forced to leave home in their teen years. She also says that she has seen many more LGBTQ-identified runaways as well as young women running away from human trafficking. In Erie the issue that forces young people into the streets may be something much more general and tough to tackle.

“For so many families, it’s poverty, family poverty. Young people get older, 15, 16 and their parents aren’t getting money. They can’t feed them and so they push them out.”

That’s why Murphy helped open some of the first transitional housing for runaway youth in the county. Transitional housing can keep young people for up to a month, provide them with case management and mental health service. The hope is that by the end of the month the young person will be reunified with their families but that’s not often the case--either because their families won’t take them or because the runaways simply doesn’t feel safe returning. Murphy says that runaways often return back to the streets after the 30-day period.

Getting services to runaway youth in the area can be a challenge. Local police departments, the department of education, and homeless youth services all have different counts for the number of runaways in their area. The numbers for this article came from data collected by New York State’s Department of Justice. The cases reported only represent young people who comes in contact with services, and often times it comes too late.

“We know that within 3 days of running away runaways will almost always break the law in some way: steal food, break into an abandoned house for shelter, turn to prostitution. When that happens, they get arrested, put in detention and since there’s nobody there to get them, they sit there,” says Murphy, sometimes for months. By her estimates of the 1,000 or so runaway homeless youth in her county only half of them actually take advantage of the services that are available.

Morning People (Photo Series)  I have always been a morning person. And because of this I’ve often held opening shifts in cafes and restaurants, starting at the age of 18. I’ve experienced the sunrise on both coasts of the United States. But the twilight hours in New York City are inhabited by a sort of mystical and at times eerie atmosphere that are uniquely its own.  The city which always seems large, alive and moving, seems to, at least for a few hours, become intimate and restful.

My aim in taking these photos is to exhibit the sights and scenes of the city as it simultaneously rises and falls asleep. These are parts of the city that those who rise after 6 in the morning will never see. The hours between 3 and 6 are the hours of both the working class and the bar-hoppers. They are the hours of transition, as deliveries are made and long commutes are begun. They are the hours of quiet communion between subway passengers as they struggle to stay awake.  

Morning People is an exploration of the world of New York City before the alarm clock goes off.