Some cities and towns have a venue where activists organizing for peace and justice can, on short notice, and at little or no expense, hold an event with one or more speakers or performers. Some have nothing of the sort, but many have a church basement or an old warehouse. Some of these spaces have microphones and sound systems. Very few have food.
Washington D.C. is, for obvious reasons, one of the most important places in the United States and world in which to build activist movements, and yet it has many disadvantages. Unlike many national governments, the U.S. government is safely thousands of miles away from many of the people it misrepresents. Washington DC is a relatively small but sprawled out, and racially segregated, metropolitan area, with relatively awful corporate media outlets, no voting representatives in the U.S. government, and more police forces than anyone can count.
But Washington DC has one stand-out superlative advantage over anyplace else I’ve seen or heard of. Its name is Busboys And Poets. A big part of why the U.S. public is able to pressure the U.S. establishment to the extent that it can, is thanks to Busboys And Poets.
The original was opened at 14th and V streets NW in 2005. There are now eight locations. These are venues with event rooms, stages, microphones, sound systems, tech support crews, and waiters serving incredibly good but inexpensive food — plus larger restaurants and bars and coffeeshops and bookstores and free WIFI. If you live outside of DC but have to go there for events, you can avoid rush-hour traffic and arrive whenever you like. Your event will most likely be at Busboys, and if you arrive an hour or 10 hours early, you’ll have internet, food, and caffeine waiting, plus new books, plus people you know stopping in.
Not only that, but the owner of Busboys And Poets, Andy Shallal, has always made sure that events were well-done, and has often served as host, MC, and/or a speaker at events himself, knowing and caring as much about various activist movements as most activists who don’t also own numerous restaurants. Andy was also the artist behind the amazing murals on the walls. He is also of Iraqi origin and dedicated to ending wars. I feel like this has always been the way things were. I hadn’t stopped recently to remember that the first Busboys was opened at the height of opposition to the war on Iraq, the same year that I myself moved much farther away from DC — though for years I would travel there much more frequently than I have lately.
Still, I can recall few moments when I wasn’t planning an event at Busboys And Poets, as I’m planning one now for May 19.
But where did that first Busboys come from? That is the question answered by Andy Shallal’s new book, A Seat At The Table: The Making of Busboys And Poets. Here we learn that Anas (Andy was not his name) came from Iraq to the United States with his family in 1966 at the age of 11. Anas was faced with a language barrier, a cultural barrier, the size and physical development issues that come with skipping ahead grades in school, a stutter, a family out of place, the need to work in the family restaurant even as a kid, and the racism and xenophobia of U.S. society.
Anas seems to have made something above and beyond the best of every difficulty he faced. Restaurant experience was like air to him. He sought out and inhaled as much of it as he could. He worked every sort of restaurant job, and turned racist career ceilings into opportunities for something better. It’s fascinating to read how his restaurant and political and activist knowledge and friendships developed, knowing the magic that would eventually be the finished product of Busboys And Poets. There were pre-BBP restaurants and events — and successes in the right direction and failures that taught lessons that would be needed. When I worked at ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) I attended gatherings of NGO staffers brought together by Ralph Nader at an Andy Shallal restaurant called Mimi’s.
As Andy’s book closes in on the creation of the original Busboys, I’m reminded of how musicians talked about watching Paul McCartney in recently published video footage creating familiar, beloved Beatles songs. There was a lot of chance involved. What if this or what real estate deal had not fallen through? What if the space eventually purchased for the venue had not had a big bump up in the floor to accommodate a parking garage below? What if the architect had not suggested making that into an event stage? Where would all the DC events of the past two decades have happened?
Busboys And Poets has been a sort of headquarters for those pushing, educationally, and nonviolently, and usually non-electorally for serious change worth hoping for. So the opening of the book with an account of the euphoria of electing Barack Obama president — with only the barest hint in the form of a warning from Howard Zinn at what some of us feared at the time would be the disillusionment to come — seems a little out of place. The fact is, however, that events like the one we’re now planning for May 19 — and many, many others over the years — would never have been endorsed by an Obama campaign, and have never been anything but enthusiastically supported by Busboys And Poets.
The other bit that’s a little odd is that this wonderful and rich book ends at the beginning, at the opening of the first Busboys. It does conclude, however, with good words for any life or activist endeavor: “To be continued . . . .”