Joseph E. Tavera

I strive to be a person of the purpose and of the people, to be a man of action, of service, of thought, of difference, of principle:

Whether it's scurrying along the Big Apple bloodstream, knuckle-shuffling on residents' doors asking for their political opinion upon the quality and extent of their civil representation admist a major election;

sitting with a 10-year-old boy and his group leader late at night in a special-needs camp, being the big brother I never thought I could be by showing the boy there was more to life than the mold stains in the shower area and guiding him to bed, finally;

exchanging hands and heads with in-need, homeless, impoverished locals, uncovering community and charitable comrades in the most unlikely/ unthought of places, redefining FDR's Forgotten Man and how we may all better remember Him;

spending months developing a counterargument for an overdue final on Socrates' notion of proper moral education within "the just city" in Plato's Republic;

creating my first visual autoethnography for one of the most unorthodox (yet oddly insightful) courses taken at NYU;

mentoring and watching a 5-year-old Kindergartener progress slowly but steadily, academically and metaphysically, only to humbly witness him graphically illustrate a "big-boy" idea like Freedom with a few ruffed-up crayons and demonstrate it later during gym;

embarking on the Staten Island Ferry and attending a post-Sandy rally held at a community relief hub on Midland Avenue started by a man on a mission and his frontyard offering food, shelter, safety, and counsel, where I rummaged camp supplies for the block BBQ, tended to the children's play area with legos, imagination and parents on stand-by, and met unsung stories at play, like a political consultant from Brooklyn who used his influence to bring Christmas to kids across the city or a quixotic technology enthusiast who returned to Rockaway from California to campaign relentessly for his peninsula family;

eating pancakes past midnight for dinner with a Dutch university graduate student visiting NYC to complete her social-anthropology dissertation on ethics surrounding Hurricane Sandy; or

visiting a townhouse and a table of homely activist-turned-senior-citizens passionately discussing next steps for their environmentalist Coalition;

I find The Purpose and The People waiting to be found. So, I keep looking...