Life Has Changed in Brooklyn

Life has changed in Brooklyn.

We were among the boroughs most affected by the pandemic, along with the rest of New York. This means a lot of empty stores, restaurants, and people without jobs. Chinese restaurants were the first to shut down in my neighborhood- not because of the lockdown, but because customers thought they could get COVID from eating chinese food. Back when COVID was first discovered, it was common to see videos of Asian people being hurt and being told to ‘go back to their country.’ The good thing is that people in Brooklyn protested immediately and put up fliers and signs telling the attackers they didn’t belong in Brooklyn. 

Brooklyn has changed, but we haven’t changed the fact that we help others.  

Students in Brooklyn now have to choose between ‘in-person’ and ‘remote’ learning, the latter being the safer option. This is a huge difference from how school used to be. Remote learning gives students the opportunity to work from home or from a far away place, but it has its problems. Many students don’t have computers or reliable internet, and now everything depends on Zoom. At the same time, remote learning gives students a more flexible schedule and the ability to take care of any family members at home.

Brooklyn will never go back to the way it was before the pandemic. This doesn’t mean, however, that it’ll have permanently changed for the worse. If we continue to try to solve these problems, Brooklyn could end up better than it was before.  

Change can be good in Brooklyn but only if we make it.