Day 88…
This morning, I woke up and fed the cat. Usually, Michael’s done that long before I come to. Last night, though, Michael was working on the endless stretch and fold part of making some sour dough bread when I went to sleep, so he’s sleeping in this morning.
I put water on to boil and took my vitamins. I am starting to run out of one. Shades up. It’s a stunning late spring day outside. I washed my face mask out last night and hung it on the window latch in the living room to dry, which it did. I moved it back over to its usual spot in the hall, which is hanging on a porcelain protest figure that I got several years ago at a street market in Hong Kong. Water poured into the press. Coffee brewing. News on.
Day 88.
I haven’t heard the phrase “new normal” to describe our lives in many weeks. Not only are we twelve weeks away from the beginning of the shut-down but we are now two weeks away from the beginning of the protests. We are now living in a new, new normal, that has grown out of the old new normal which, by now, just seems normal.
It is remarkable that the demonstrations have not only continued since Memorial Day when George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer, but they’ve grown. The Bushwick Daily, a local Brooklyn paper, publishes a list of the day’s protests every morning. There are 11 separate marches and rallies planned for today in Manhattan alone. There are 16 others scheduled to happen in the surrounding boroughs.
Michael and I participated in a march yesterday that was called The March for Stolen Lives and Looted Dreams. It was the first march I have seen that was truly organized. I first heard about it on Wednesday, a few days ago. In the interim, there was time for the organizers to print banners and t-shirts and really plan it out.
The march started at the north end of Central Park and wove its way downtown where it terminated in a well-produced rally in Washington Square Park. During the rally, several people sang, and several others spoke, eloquently, about specific plans for reform to start to combat the institutional racism that sparked these protests.
Thousands of people marched yesterday.
As we made our way down 6th Avenue, our crowd filled up about ten city blocks - about ½ a mile. When we got to the Village, we met up with other marches coming from other directions. Our crowd grew and grew, and, throughout it all, remained peaceful.
All around the country yesterday, countless cities hosted their own marches and rallies. HUNDREDS of small towns all across the country did the same. Some of those marches happened in tiny rural towns that have been the setting for Ku Klux Klan marches in the past.
In London, thousands of people peacefully marched on Parliament Square. Thousands gathered in Manchester and in Cardiff. 15,000 people rallied peacefully in Berlin’s Alexander Square. Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne. Several thousand people in Paris, defied a ban on assembly to protest peacefully within sight of the US embassy. Sydney and Brisbane, Australia. Seoul, South Korea.
Yesterday, saw marches and rallies the world over.
The anger and fear of the early days is starting to be replaced by determination and resolve. These marches are not about looting and mayhem. They are about change.
The President tweeted last night that fewer people than anticipated showed up for the demonstrations yesterday and that we shouldn’t believe what we are seeing.
The President, also yesterday, signed a proclamation that will allow commercial fishing to resume in The North Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument off the coast of New England. The monument had been created in 2016 to allow marine life there to recover from decades of over-fishing.
On Thursday, the President signed an executive order that allows companies to ignore long-standing environmental laws to speed up federal approval for new mines, new highways and new pipelines. Earlier in the week, the EPA finalized a rule that will make it much harder for States, Tribal groups and individuals to block pipelines that could potentially pollute and destroy their lands and waterways.
While the attention of the country is elsewhere, the government is quietly and efficiently dismantling all of the environmental protections that have taken us decades to put into place.
New York City is scheduled to enter into Phase 1 of our reopening tomorrow. Nothing will change for most of us, Phase 1 is largely about construction and wholesale commerce, but it will start the process that will begin to restore the rest of the economy.
What is that going to entail?
What will our new, new “New Normal” look like?
10 days of rioting and looting followed the assassination of Martin Luther King in April of 1968. Did anything change as a result? Given that we find ourselves marching and demonstrating fifty some odd years later for exactly the same thing, I would guess, no. Nothing really changed. I am actually hopeful, that this time it will.
In the first few days, while there was rioting and looting, the government could justify the use of force against the public and ignore the message. Now, however, these massive demonstrations over the last few days have remained peaceful.
I think that there is an awareness that has taken root among all of us, that the violence was not only taking away from the message, it was also confirming the prejudices already lodged in many people’s minds. Once demonstrators started to realize that the violence was often being instigated by outside agitators - sometimes even the police themselves - we seem to have definitely moved away from it.
The government now has to deal with the issues - they don’t have the distraction of the violence as an excuse anymore.
The White House seems to have really overplayed its hand when they attacked a stationary group of people in Lafayette Park with tear gas and rubber bullets to make way for the President’s bible photo-op. The President is now claiming that there was no tear gas, despite thousands of witnesses and incontrovertible proof that there was.
Each passing day, as these protests continue to grow, it becomes harder and harder to ignore what is being said. As rational thought replaces knee-jerk reaction, thoughtful conversations are starting.
The fight or flight reaction to the movement has passed in a way that I am not sure that it seems to have done after the death of Dr. King. Or after the brutal beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles. Or after the immediate reaction to the many other people who have needlessly lost their lives simply for being black.
Many of us have nothing else to do because we are not working and stuck at home. So, we have time to let it really sink in.
People, across the boards, are starting to tell their stories. Whatever happens, these stories won’t ever be untold.
We have been struggling for weeks trying to figure out how to adjust our lifestyles around the coronavirus. As we head towards reopening, it is not at all clear how we are going to get there. How will we keep each other safe?
As a result of the response to the death of George Floyd, I think that that conversation is going to expand. How we keep each other safe is now becoming a larger issue. How do we, the people, as a white-dominated society, make it possible for our black friends, neighbors and families to have the same ability to live with the same protections. Now is the time for discussion.
We cannot go back to our lives the way they were. The coronavirus and the subsequent closing down of our economy have taken care of that. We have to rebuild and rebuild properly. We need to correct the structural mistakes we made the first time.
We can make a new normal that is stronger, fairer and better than it was before.
The first step towards that is to look at what is being said to all of us.
The first step is simply to listen.
for all the beauty you are sharing inspired me 💕
in reading your brilliant insights
on this day
I thought
how exciting to witness
what is now an
ocean wave of courage
washing on every shore
across the universe
the bold beginning of
Awareness
to really see
and really
listen
I thought to myself this morning
COVID opened my eyes to myself, my world
George Floyd
opened me up to a world I never really saw or heard
not
really
it took
George Floyd
not
being
able
to
breath
to force us
all
to
listen
be safe
❤️