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Ask anyone who rides the number 7 subway line through Queens, and they will tell you (probably at great length) about its challenges.
It’s overcrowded and slow, lumbering across the borough like a sardine can on rails. White and blue collars jam into long-awaited trains alongside backpacks and strollers, hand trucks and bicycles. The hilariously misnamed “rush” hours can mean journeys to the very brink of madness.
The 7 is also glorious—an elevated ride through the wondrous polyglot that is Queens, with its 50-something different languages and every imaginable variation on human skin color. Throw in a few musicians, bottle collectors, and evangelists, and you’ve got yourself an American microcosm.
In other words, the 7 is everything that’s both right and wrong with us today. Like it or not, we are a diverse bunch of passengers and we are frequently—sometimes simultaneously—pulled between being a part of that community and advancing our stubbornly individual needs.
I think of this internal struggle every time I have to decide whether to insert myself into an already packed subway car or back off to wait for the next one. In the morning I’m inclined to wait—what’s another five minutes until the next train, or even 10 on a slow day? Work will still be there.
Going home is another story. My destination is a commuter railroad, so giving one crowded subway a pass can mean missing my connection and waiting half an hour or more for the next train. If I’m headed for one kid’s softball game or need to pick the other up from the movies, I want to get on that 7. I need to get on it.
Subway riders know the routine—passengers in the middle of the car stand an arm’s length apart, while those at or near the doors wriggle and push and shoulder their way into whatever cranny they can find or create. Those on the outside plead with the lucky ones to move in, one more step, come on, please, I need to get home. The comfy folks deep in the car pretend not to notice, while those whose feet have barely cleared the doorway shout back that there’s no more room, stop pushing, get off, wait your turn.
There’s that microcosm—why is it so hard for the lucky ones to have a little empathy for those outside? Where is the generosity of spirit that says hey, I’m so lucky I got in, let me help the next guy in as well? Why do so many Americans look away when others want to claim safety and opportunity in the refuge that welcomed their own parents and grandparents? Why can’t we squish in a little, make some room, let them in? Are these United States really as full up as a 7 train after work?
And what about the feelings of those struggling to get aboard? I know how much harder I push, how determined I feel, when I might be late for the eighth-grade band concert. How driven would I be if my kids were hungry, threatened with violence, growing up with no future? I guarantee you I’d be shouldering aside anyone who got in my way—I’d get on that train. The people inside might call me rude, tell me to wait my turn, try to shove me aside. But for my kids? I’d be getting on that train.
That’s how I know that fences and walls and the threat of deportation or detention won’t keep out those who want to get in. Who need to get in. Whose kids’ lives depend on it. We can pretend not to notice, tell them to wait their turn, try to shove them back across the doorway. But they are coming, and they will get in. And I should know—I ride the 7.
