Over the 15 months or so of the pandemic, I’ve been collecting Instagram posts, essays, and poetry in a diary of sorts that I’ve come to call Book of Plagues. The manuscript initially was to capture only contemporaneous pieces, but reviewing it has caused me to realize there is a better approach, one that is more impressionistic. I’ve started writing what I view as retrospective entries, written in the voice of an earlier moment but with present knowledge embedded. They are designed to serve as bridges connecting the seemingly distinct events — the pandemic, the impact on low-wage workers, immigration, the Black Lives Matter protests following the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, the politics of the moment, the right wing violence and messianic nature of the Trump supporter.
I wrote this piece last week and run it today in anticipation of the sentencing of Derek Chauvin. Floyd is not shown in this cropped version of the photo, because he deserves the respect of not having his body trotted out endlessly.
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USA Today on June 6: “Why George Floyd's death, COVID-19 inequality sparked protests: ‘We're witnessing history’” // More than just the killing of Black Americans by police. Killings that seem almost banal in their repetition. The bodies pile up. Inure us to the reality. So that the inevitable response of power is to target the protests. To crackdown on the people whose anger has boiled over. // This is about more than a single death. Or two or three. About the flood of guns in Black communities. The lack of health care. A history of wealth distribution that has excluded African Americans. It is about COVID and job loss and the dangers of the jobs available to most Black and Latino Americans. Jobs most Whites have no interest in doing. // So, as USA Today reports (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/06/06/george-floyd-death-covid-19-racial-inequality-sparked-protests/3156595001/?fbclid=IwAR3RR9D8pVnBIeMPbbB_PM_mRdLe3KZcqWKS3WGoXMeucHLdPUDAvpbACcY), “it has all come together to expose the scope of generational suffering caused by systemic racism and discrimination.” // In mostly Black Camden, N.J., activists have battled to lower the crime rate and address the city’s crippling poverty. The police were disbanded a decade ago. Outsourced to the county government. But little’s been done to fix the poverty that drives crime, Keith Eric Benson, the president of the Camden teachers union, tells me. Little to address the needs of residents. // Camden is not an outlier. Poor cities and poor neighborhoods around the country suffer from a lack of community building and social services. They are overpoliced and underserved. They scream for new approaches, but no one listens. // “They are protesting against police brutality and excessive force, no question,” Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, director of the Equity Research and Innovation Center at Yale School of Medicine, told USA Today. “But they’re also protesting for the ability to live their lives fully and completely, and to not have their lives cut short, either by force or preventable diseases.” //