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Reading and Film Presentations and Discussion

ERA “Dark Days”

The film Dark Days follows the lives of an array of homeless citizens of New York who are living in the subway tunnels below the city. Some of these people are runaways, drug addicts, or simply caught in a bad situation that forced them into homelessness. Regardless of how they arrived to be homeless they all end up finding ways to survive and thrive in the tunnels below the city. Most of the residents live in “shacks” that they build out of materials that they have found typically from garbage in the city. Often times they have common things in these makeshift houses like tv’s and stoves that they have found tossed out in garbage throughout the city. The people in these tunnels have access to electricity that costs them nothing. Essentially these people are living in the tunnels without having to pay any bills which is how many of them explain how they got trapped in this situation. During the day many of the residents resurface to search through garbage for anything to sell. By doing this daily some claim to make $60 on a good day. Without having bills to pay this allows them to buy food and maintain their lifestyles in the tunnels. Unfortunately, amtrak decided that they were going to use the tunnels that the homeless people were living in and were going to remove all of the inhabitants of these tunnels in a short period of time. Luckily for the residents of the tunnels a group that helps homeless people in New York talked with Amtrak about extending the time they had to get all of the homeless people out and even found a government program that helps homeless people in New York attain temporary housing. Thus, at the end of the movie we see many of the people who were living in the tunnels below the city now living in actual apartments that are provided to them by the government. Clearly this documentary shows us how being a part of a community in any situation is beneficial in that even in the tunnels a community was created that looked out for one-another. The ideas on community and an American bond are relevant in that at the end of the film we see these people rejoining the larger community and living a better life than before.