Vahan Bournazian^[1]

I swear you owe yourself the opportunity of spending at least one full night on Baghramyan Ave.  Despite sleeping just a few hours on the hard pavement in front of a luxury hotel with my notebook as a pillow, I feel invigorated.  Why?

It’s called solidarity.  It is that rare feeling experienced so infrequently in life when as individuals we become more than just our single selves because we connect with others - people we do not even know - in a bond of trust and for a cause that’s fair.  Evolutionary psychology has identified the greatest evolutionary advantage of our species to be our ability to cooperate with other individuals through feelings of trust, premised on a common goal we innately know is right. 

For example, when a man fell unconscious onto the New York City subway tracks two minutes before a train was to arrive, bystanders spontaneously jumped down to lift him out, as others from above reached down to pull out the man and his rescuers.  This was not an organized or coordinated action.  Individuals did not even need to speak in order to know what to do.  When one participant was later asked why he did it, he answered because it was the right thing to do.^[2]

The ongoing manifestation of humanity on Baghramyan Ave. is this.  It is an innate knowing that something is definitely not right.  It’s a collective expression of fairness. And the fact that it is attacked by lies seeking to divide participants proves that what is happening on Baghramyan Ave. is rooted in mutual and cooperative trust.  Of course, it is not Baghramyan Ave. per se, but it is that miracle of humanity that manifests itself there and which is threatened with dissolution at any time that concerns us and draws us to it.  When it is gone, you will feel its loss.

Last night, when threats were heightened, I stayed because I couldn’t leave.

I engaged with many people whose names I will never know.  I was offered a space on recycled packaging material to lie down, and I rested there amongst a sea of so many others - all of us engaged in the most vulnerable act of sleeping on the open ground in a public space as others walked around and over us. 

Yet at the same time I knew that these strangers walking over me in my sleep would not do me harm because all of us had come together to offer up our individual vulnerability collectively — in order to state a truth about what is fair and what is not.  Solidarity must truly be the highest of human acts. 

I am not telling you to go to spend the night at Baghramyan for the sake of others. I am suggesting that you go and do it for yourself.