Post 93 - June 12, 2020

Day 93…

“What fresh hell can this be?” is apparently what Dorothy Parker would say every time there was a knock on her door.

Every morning, before I turn on the TV, I find myself taking a deep breath to brace for what I am about to see. This morning, however, everything seems relatively calm.

19 states, many of which started re-opening long before any of the indicators health care officials recommended were evident, are seeing their COVID-19 case numbers rise. Case numbers in the US now top two million - trending up.

The Louisville, Kentucky city council yesterday voted unanimously to ban no-knock warrants. They are naming the measure after Breonna Taylor, who was killed by the police in her own home after just such an entry.

Cities all over the country are in the process of passing or have already passed similar police reforms. Bans on chokeholds. Disciplinary transparency. Bias training.

I finished a novel last night called Agency by William Gibson. Gibson is credited for creating the genre of writing called cyber-punk. I don’t know that I would have had the attention or patience with a book like this in usual times, but without the distractions to my concentration, I got into it and very much enjoyed it.

In the book, which takes place a century ahead of us in a dystopian future, gamers have managed to create actual alternate timelines to our history called stubs. The people within the stubs are completely unaware that they aren’t in the “real” timeline of history. It takes very little interference from the gamers to alter the flow of history in these stubs. People, beyond the gamers, in the main flow start looking to the stubs as a way to understand and solve the problems of their own complicated present.

Without giving anything away, the story is largely concerned with a stub that began before the 2016 election.  In this stub, Hillary Clinton wins the election, and Brexit doesn’t happen. Even with that, things don’t go much better there than they are going here. The people in the future enlist a person in that stub to try and avert crisis.

It’s tempting to think that everything would have turned out differently had the 2016 election gone the other way.  Even had Clinton won, the virus would still have emerged from Wuhan. The response to it would probably have been very different. Rather than completely ignoring all of the pandemic response recommendations already in place, Clinton would have likely been far more willing to act upon them. And likely react sooner. If that had happened, how different would our current situation now be?

What probably would have been different under her leadership is the current racial discussion.

Our President’s apparent strategy for winning the 2020 elections in November, and this according to his advisors who are nervously discussing it, is to continue to stoke racial tensions to excite and galvanize his base.

In both the real timeline or in our theoretical alternative one where Hillary Clinton wins, George Floyd would likely have been killed by the police in Minneapolis. Under Clinton, though, it is possible that after a momentary outrage to his killing, that we would just have reverted back to business as usual.

There is no more and no less racism in the US now than there was under President Obama.  Under President Obama, however, racism was considered a shameful, nasty condition that was suppressed. It was undercover. It was still everywhere, just as it is now, it was just out of sight. As the election neared, Secretary Clinton referred to the racists across the country as “deplorables” not really realizing just how many of them were out there. That comment haunted her for the rest of the campaign and became a rallying cry for the opposition.

Conversely, this President and his core supporters embrace racism and support it. They have emboldened those who were hiding it to proudly come forth and proclaim it themselves.

During the campaigning, the actor Susan Sarandon very vocally advocated for Senator Bernie Sanders, for which she was roundly criticized. Rather than dropping out of the race, Saunders stayed in and, in the opinion of many on the left, cost the Democrats the election. Had he not been in the race, it is commonly thought, his followers would have been far more likely to vote to the left than they would to the right. In her own defense, she said, “Some people feel that Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately, if he gets in. Then things will really, you know, explode.”

She was, possibly, not as far off-base as many of us, at the time, thought.

Because lots of us are without jobs and staying at home to avoid spreading the coronavirus, we have had nothing to divert our attention from the killing of George Floyd. The subsequent upswell of support for the Black Lives Matter movement around the world has given direction to an otherwise directionless time.

The President relentlessly pushing his racist agenda combined with Mr. Floyd’s murder - just the latest in a long line - has, because of the lack of any other distraction, brought the infection to the surface - like a zit that needs to be lanced. Not dissimilar to the way Susan Sarandon predicted it would.

A group of young African American theatre artists have formed a group called the Broadway Advocacy Coalition. Last night was the second of three nights of a virtual forum designed to address the racism in the theatrical community. The first night was reserved for Black industry members to discuss the issue among themselves. Last night, White members of the community were allowed to listen in to the discussion. Tonight, is billed as a Day of Accountability.

Listening to these Black artists - some young, some quite experienced - discuss the issue, themselves, without any White intervention, was very moving.  There was an awareness, I think, particularly from the more established people on the panel, that the entire industry was watching. And many of us were. Nearly 5,000 people tuned in.

In physics, there is a thing called the observer effect. The mere observation of a phenomena changes the nature of the phenomena. Think checking the air in a tire. By checking the pressure, you, by necessity, release some of that pressure. Everybody in the forum last night knew that colleagues and potential future employers were listening in so I am sure they were being more circumspect than they might have been if the rest of us weren’t there. Even so, they bravely spoke up about their experiences. And the rest of us, for a change, listened.

We have many months ahead of us before our theatres reopen and performances start again.  These long overdue discussions are just starting. The further away we get from the riots and looting and the more thoughtful and constructive the dialogue becomes the more people will listen.

Three months after Breonna Taylor died, her police report was finally released by the Louisville police. The report is largely blank. Under injuries, what is written is the word “none”. Breonna Taylor was shot at least eight times by the police and died in her hallway in a pool of her own blood.

We need to address excessive force by the police department and eradicate it. That is clear. We also need to address the fact, however, that Black people living in the United States are subject to far less obvious injustices and more insidious obstacles during every waking moment of their lives.

By doggedly pushing his racial agenda, the President is pushing the country further and further apart. As we move towards the election, it seems less and less likely that there is going to be any way that the left and the right are going to be able to find any common ground at all.

We have five more months before we have to choose.

Five. Long. Months.

There are going to be a lot of knocks on the door before that and a lot of fresh hell out there doing the knocking.

As the President digs in and goes deeper and deeper he actually gets somewhat easier to bury. He may be consolidating his base, but he is also potentially driving away his more moderate supporters. He denies the virus is an issue, but he is going to make everyone who attends his rally sign a waiver indemnifying him from blame if they get sick from it. He’s getting lost in his own contradictions.

Not being able to speak during the forum last night was such a relief. We just had to listen to the truths of others.

There is positive change happening. Whatever knee jerk negative reactions theatrical employers may have to what Black artists are saying now, will dissipate as the discussion continues. And the discussions will and MUST continue.

When we get to a place where we can start to reopen our performing arts venues, a LOT of discussion is going to have happened.

What will our industry look like?

In storytelling, this is what we call a “cliff hanger”.

Stay tuned.