Pandemic & Protest

For this blog entry, I wanted to start with this quote from Harper Mag. June 2020, pg.35 THE COMPLICATING GERMS, by David Rutstein

"Influenza, a disease of the respiratory tract is spread from person to person through direct contact by direct contact through breathing, sneezing, coughing, and speaking.  It is so highly infections that many thousands of persons in a city may be attacked at the same time and it spreads rapidly along lines of communication from one population center to another.  This disease varies in severity from being almost asymptomatic to one that may cause death in a few days."

I think it is easy to forget these facts in the heat of passion.  Having watched on television as Officer Chauvin knelt on the neck of a dying man who was crying out for help, "I can't breathe!" was enough to inflame anyone.  Those who are paid by us and sworn to protect us become our murders?  For what?  For the suspicion of perhaps passing a bad check or a bad twenty?  A life for that?

So believe me, because I am old and cannot stand or walk longer than half an hour anymore, if I had been young and hale, I may have been drawn by my conscience to join those who protested this ongoing crime against citizen of our country.  Because someone MUST stand up at some time and say "No more," whether it is sexual abuse or racial assault, it must be challenged and the people have got to stand up in a large mass and protest. 

 I learned this as I saw my age mates taken, more or less against their will to fight in Vietnam.  They didn't want to go.  They didn't believe in the hocus locus of the war propaganda, and they didn't want to kill Vietnamese people or be maimed or killed themselves.
The rest of us had to stand up and say, "No, you can't take any more young men and destroy any more villages so that the fat cats in the war game can enrich themselves by selling armaments." And I did march and walk on the boulevards around the White House, always wondering if one of the infiltrators would choose me to assault to spark a confrontation.  Also wondering if I would be one of the unfortunates singled out for arrest and imprisonment.  There would be No One to bail me out if that happened.

However, this time is different.  It is different because gathering in large crowds while the Coronavirus is among us is more dangerous than any time before.  Even with masks, the ones they brought, and the ones that were handed out to marchers by concerned and generous supporters, no one in those crowds was safe from the virus which can easily penetrate two layers of cloth, or a bandanna.
And no one at home when the protesters returned to their homes, was safe from whatever they carried with them.  None of us will know the damage from this for 2 or 3 weeks.  

Maybe we will be lucky and the virus will have run its course.  No one knows.  Maybe the immune systems of the youth of the protesters will protect them.  We won't know for three weeks, until we see the numbers of new cases in Philadelphia and surrounding suburbs.  My 25 year old nephew/godson was one of the protesters.  He used to do work for me every week or two but now I won't be able to see him till the end of June because I am old and my body is compromised by a number factors owing to natural aging and some bad habits.  

I didn't text or talk to my daughter until the day or two after the massive protests because I was afraid she had gone too, in the Brooklyn, New York City marches.  "Thank God, " I replied when I texted her yesterday and said that because of the pandemic, she and her partner had decided not to join the crowd.  

Just as no African American mother wants to see her son murdered by police in an error driven act of aggression, I don't want to see my daughter felled by a burst of passion that results in sickness and death from a virus that has no cure.  I could only hope that her common sense and serious and admirable respect for and understanding of the consequences of hurricanes, pandemics, would prevail in her decision making.  My nephew is young and still in that age range that feels itself invulnerable and immortal.  My daughter has passed into her mid thirties and has seen enough to know anyone can be struck down at any time by disaster or disease.  She has had friends die.

Tumultuous times, like no one ever expected to see again.  It is all familiar from the 1970's but I certainly never thought I would see these days again.  I had gotten used to the peace and stability in which I had been lucky enough to raise my daughter.  Though I must say that it was never far from my mind, after a childhood in the wake of World War II, and a young adulthood in the midst of war and riots in the 70's, that if it could happen there and to THEM, it could happen here, and to US, and to ME.

Watching the fall of Venezuela was prophetic.  

I haven't watched the news yet today though I watched all day yesterday, as thousands swarmed the center of the city of my birth, and the city of my daughter's birth, Philadelphia, the center of the revolutionary war in the 1770's, the city that was occupied by foreign invading troops for nine months during the revolution, and the city that was crushed by the Spanish flu in 1918 - 16,000 deaths and half a million cases in the city.  Troops returning from Europe brought the disease to the navy yard, and then the war bond parade spread it around.  It was known as the Spanish flu because Spain suffered the highest casualty counts, 147,000 official county, 250,00 estimated actual count.  The 75% died in the SECOND WAVE in 1919 that followed the initial epidemic in 1918.  

We don't know what the next month will bring in terms of rising numbers after the protests across the country in every major metropolitan zone as well as in every large town.  People in good will wish to show solidarity with those with a righteous grievance.  It was like a trap.

Well, we will see what transpires over the upcoming uncharted weeks of summer and hope for the best!

"Happy trails to you, until we meet again"
By the way, I have been thinking a lot lately about attribution, so it is time to remind anyone reading this that the little quote I use to end my posts is from a song sung by Dale and Roy Evans, Happy Trails to You, until we meet again.  Happy trails to you, keep smiling until then!"

Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com