14042-Westchester59

ST REE T S + AVENUES

I T I S NEVER TOO EARLY TO GET BACK ON YOUR FEET By NoamWaksman

THE STREETS of downtown Manhattan are pretty quiet at 5:30 am in late October. A truck or two rumble through taking advantage of the absence of traffic and a few scattered individuals braving the early morning chill hurry along, but for the most part there is not too much activity as people savor their last hour or so of sleep until the morning commute begins in earnest. On the corner of Lafayette and Franklin in Chinatown, however, just a few blocks north of City Hall, a group of 15 people are huddling up in the dark. Some of these people know each other and share a familiar and spirited greeting in spite of the time and the sleep in their eyes, and some don’t know each other so instead engage in equally spirited introductions. Some of these people have jobs in the city, and some are in the process of looking. Some of these people came from their apartments to the huddle, and some of them are homeless and came from the New York City Rescue Mission across the street.

The common bond among these people—other than the fact that they are up before 6:00 am and ready to run—is that they are all a part of Back on My Feet, a national organization operating in 12 major cities coast-to-coast with the mission to “combat homelessness through the power of running, community support and essential employment and housing resources.” The people who came from their own apartments are volunteers— the community support—and the people who came from the mission are members of the Back on My Feet program, but since they all wear running shoes and a similar combination of running clothes and sweatpants (the members are given new running shoes and gear when they join), if you didn’t already know these people you wouldn’t be able to tell who came from where—I certainly couldn’t. That blending together of volunteer and member so that the

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