The Mass Ave. Project, Inc. and a Badass Boddhisatva
by Joanne Arnold
It’s a cold, drizzly day in Boston. The COVID pandemic has just begun and Justin Downey and his sister sit in his car in the industrial wasteland known as Mass Ave.
He is remembering when she was a baby and they found themselves alone in the middle of the night. He’d climb into her crib at six years old trying to console her one year old cries. Awkwardly changing her diaper. Covering her with a blanket and sleeping next to her to soothe her.
He recalls how they were eventually taken to live in different households. How they maintained a connection despite that separation. How his drug addiction took off. How it led to jail and prison. And then how her own addiction took off.
‘We were both fighting epic battles for our lives.”
Now Justin finds himself on more stable ground. But today his sister is dope sick and needs money.
‘If I can give her $50.00 and help save a shred of her dignity, I will. I know she’ll buy heroin. I don’t judge.’
She sees his copy of The Bhagavad Gita on the dashboard and picks it up. This epic scripture from Vedic Literature, a dialogue between the warrior Arjuna and Lord Krishna has deep meaning for Justin, having discovered it several years before as he struggled in his own difficult recovery.
‘I never experienced a work of literature that spoke so clearly of love, service and kindness.’
Flipping through the pages she asked Justin to read a passage out loud.
She sat silently. As he reads he notices a tear roll down her face.
Then she says ‘I gotta’ go.’
Exiting his car she walks directly into the open air drug market of Mass Ave., a.k.a.Methadone Mile.
It’s a chaotic scene. People are selling drugs. Stopping at a red light you are likely to see someone shooting heroin. Smoking meth. You’ll see women selling their bodies. There are people in full blown psychosis. Fentanyl, a synthetic drug 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine and short acting, has people screaming at things no one else can see.
‘What you’re seeing on Mass Ave is a culmination of the sex trade, the prison industrial complex and big pharma. The Unholy Trinity. It can’t be any clearer. It’s all happening in front of a jail, in front of a methadone clinic, in front of a hospital. What does that say to people? This is what the Buddhists refer to as The Realm of Hungry Ghosts. You are surrounded by brokenness, psychosis, sadness and trauma.”
“It’s a cycle” Justin continues.”People are homeless. They commit petty crime. They overdose. They are rushed to the ER and revived only to walk straight back into the drug market with no resources to change. You no longer call a dealer and there’s no more of that shadowy behavior meeting them. Nope. It’s right out in the open. And regular working class people trying to get to the hospital are passing through this along with gang members, prostitutes and drug addicts.”
As resources dried up throughout the state the homeless poured into Boston. Shelters were limiting capacity. Detox’s were shutting down. Now there are tent cities on the sidewalk. Cars traveling at high speeds entering the ramps to the interstate were colliding with these inhabitants. They were getting hit and killed. So the area is now surrounded by fences covered with tarps further isolating it. Inside the fence is a tent staffed by a nurse assisting in overdose prevention.
“There’s people dying on the street. Girls are being pimped out and smashed up by gangs. There’s human trafficking. Men are being murdered. This is a dark street. This isn’t just people shootin’ drugs. It’s a whole community where flesh and crime are currency.”
A lot of the people here are the remains to be seen of Justin’s generation and former neighborhood.
“This is the end of the road. The culmination of poverty, crime and drugs. When you’ve been a drug addict for years on the street and been able to keep yourself high from various scams and in and out of jail and detox and it all runs out? And you’re not dead? You’re on Mass Ave.”
As a kid Justin could walk down a single street in his South Boston neighborhood and see 15-20 people he knew well. Today walking from one end of Southie to another he won’t encounter a single person he recognizes. Gentrification has pushed out those residents and replaced them with people who have no tie to the community.
As Justin describes it, “We are exiled from our own neighborhood.”
“ Now my old neighbors have no community. How do people behave when they have no community? Isolated. Depressed. Sad. What do people turn to when they feel this way? They turn to drugs and alcohol. What does turning to drugs and alcohol do? Nullifies pain. It leads to more drugs and alcohol. Which leads to bigger problems. It leads to prison. Incarceration. It leads to selling your body on the street corner.”
Justin volunteers by distributing donations from Mass Ave. Project, Inc., a non-profit organization created by Justin, Jimmy Bradley, Missey Kane, Ali Fitzpatrick, Carlo Sacoccio and Danny Mack with a mission to supply essential items and support to people living, and dying, on Mass Ave.
“I don’t always understand love.” Justin states. “But I understand devotional service to people. I understand how to show up for people even if my own life is crazy. This act of showing up to the homeless population down here has become an intimate spiritual experience.”
“You’d be amazed at the conversations you’ll have with the homeless population down here. I’m amazed at watching how kind they are to one another. I can hand somebody a pile of blankets and they’ll hand them out to everybody else and not keep a blanket for themselves. This person has f**king nothing. Would YOU give away the last blanket when you don’t have one?
I often ask their name. They look at me dumbfounded and start crying. Because nobody ever asks. That’s a spiritual experience. A spiritual practice. I don’t know how that doesn’t awake something inside us.
I show up for my sister, of course. But I show up for other peoples’ sisters, brothers and families. Everybody there was a child at one time. They were somebody’s child not knowing what they were coming into the world to face. They’ve been ground up, dropped down, spit out and are basically a puddle on the street. And there’s nobody there to pick them up.”
“The Boston I grew up in was very racially segregated. Black communities. White communities. Spanish communities. Nobody liked each other. Everybody seemed to hate each other equally. But today everyones neighborhood has been affected. South Boston was a white Irish Catholic neighborhood. South End is traditionally a black neighborhood. Both areas have been gentrified. So the remnants of both these neighborhoods wind up on Mass Ave.”
What may have surprised Justin years ago but he celebrates today, is the working relationship Mass Ave. Project, Inc. has developed with South End Roxbury Community Partnership with Leon Rivera, Dominigos DaRosa, Yahaira Lopez and William Cordero, a group demanding action from the City of Boston related to the escalating concerns of Methadone Mile.
“Tent cities? People dying on city sidewalks? Gutters that you can shovel needles into garbage bags from? How is this NOT a public health crisis?
But Justin, the badass boddhisatva, returns to his own personal mission.
“I want to flood this area with loving kindness. I’m not crying out to politicians to come change Mass. Ave. I’m calling upon the hearts and minds of people to think differently. I’m in love with this street and I’m not walking away from it. If I can do anything for one person to get out of there, it makes it all worth it to me.”
“I honor myself in the darkness. I honor myself in the light. When you do that you become a living channel. I feel god within me. If I feel god within me I cannot deny its existence in other people.”
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Justin Downey is a Union Pipefitter currently completing a Yoga Teacher Training Course and volunteering for The Mass Ave. Project, Inc.
He can be contacted on Facebook, Justin Downey or venmo Justin Downey @jtd617
If you’d like to learn more, or become involved see The Mass. Ave. Project, Inc. on Facebook.
Donation centers include CHAKRA POWER YOGA, owned by Nicole Burrill and WITHOUT LIMITS RECOVERY owned by Maggie Bradley and Jimmy Bradley. Note: Justin’s sister is presently in a residential rehab program.
