My name is Tyler Diaz.
I'm the patron services coordinator at Abrons Arts Center.
I was mainly in charge of renting out our
rehearsal rooms for dance, theater, and music practices.
In addition to managing a front desk team.
I also am a composer, and I compose jazz and classical music.
I play guitar, and I also play a little bit of piano as well.
Through that position, I was actually also
able to obtain a job as a teaching artist at Abrons Arts Center, teaching guitar.
Since the pandemic, we shifted to virtual lessons.
So basically video lessons through Zoom.
So everything's changed.
Just to be very straightforward.
The arts center involves gatherings of tens, hundreds of people to come together,
sit next to each other, and watch a performance of some kind of art.
Right now, there is no Abrons Arts Center as we knew it, which is crazy.
First, it was just a crazy time because
everything was changing, basically hour by hour.
New York was kind of shifting, like, we're probably going to shut down.
I was also thinking about work.
I'm like, I work a front desk, and if
they're going to shut down the arts center, then I don't really have a job.
I was so worried about all the effects
around me, I didn't think about what could happen if me or my family caught the
virus, which we actually did kind of right as New York City went on pause.
Everybody in my household, actually, all
three of us, my aunt, my grandmother and me.
And that was really stressful because at
that time, we had such little knowledge about what the virus does.
I remember kind of feeling a cough one night.
I was like, that's weird. That cough feels strange.
I should be okay. I didn't think anything of it.
And the next few days, I started feeling worse and worse.
And then my aunt was feeling just as bad.
But my grandma was fine for some reason.
And my grandmother caught the same feelings a few days later.
And so my grandmother is also a diabetic, so she was at high risk, which was
obviously we were super concerned with that.
And I recovered first.
My aunt recovered next, and then my grandmother, she recovered last, but she
took a really, really long time to recover.
It was scary truthfully.
But since then, gaining my health back,
I've really been focused on teaching my students.
And in case you haven't already noticed, I
have a huge passion and a huge love for teaching.
So Henry Street was there, and Henry Street was doing exactly what we're doing
now, adjusting and adapting to the needs that are coming from the community.
Our founder, Lillian Wald, she has a great quote that I just think about all the time
"In times of need, act." I'm Black and Latino, so I have a half
immigrant family, and then I have a family that's descended from slaves and part of
the Black side of my family is also Native American so I come from three very
differently oppressed American histories. You know, w
atching everything that's going on regarding to this police brutality crisis.
It's been really tough emotionally
because I don't understand what's so hard to see about what needs to be changed.
It was a conversation I had with Henry Street's CEO David Garza.
He was at the food pantry last week and he
said these crises, it's all linked through systemic oppression and racial oppression.
It all comes from the same place.
The people who are able to get out of New
York majority of them are not Black and brown people.
The people who are able to isolate
themselves where they can be a little bit more protected from obtaining the virus.
It's not been majority Black and brown people and the people who are suffering
the most from police brutality is primarily Black and brown people.
So it's really frustrating to see these two pandemics overlap.
Henry Street is very well aware of how
injustices are being played out on both fronts.
All of us at Abrons Arts Center are of like minds when it comes to this and I
think that's something I'm really happy to be a part of in terms of an organization.
Whether there is life after coronavirus or
just life with coronavirus we always need to be able to adjust at any moment.
Yeah, we're a bunch of artists but we can
really kind of come together and make a change.