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Pandem-ic/onium

7/31/2020

Many years ago, our first-born, then three years old, accidentally knocked over a full glass of milk as the dinner hour began. Fortunately for him, the milk flowed across the table, whereupon we—the grown-ups in the room and those most affected by the spillage—jumped up and did what grown-ups do. Finishing the clean-up, we noticed Kevin had continued to eat through it all, only mildly interested in the commotion and certainly feeling no responsibility for what had happened.

I thought of this incident while watching footage of Trump golfing recently as the pandemic roared, federal agents wreaked havoc on the streets of Portland, millions worried about eviction, hunger, and health, and children faced an uncertain school year and even more uncertain prospects for a productive future.

Meanwhile, there was a grinning Trump in “thumbs up” pose as a photographer took a shot to memorialize the golfers’ happy day.

Yes, what I’m saying is that Trump has the maturity of a three-year-old. More than 150,000 deaths in this country alone, health care workers hammered, businesses collapsed, no coherent plans for educating kids, and an obsession with creating doubts about the validity of an election which hasn’t even occurred yet: All that, and oblivious to the suffering of millions, the most powerful man in the country, the one who could—if he would—do more to address our multiple catastrophes than anyone else in the country … golfs.

This is leadership? A struggling reader (witness the halting, expressionless rendition of his “prepared” remarks and speeches), Trump has only a distant relationship with the U.S. Constitution. His knowledge of history is limited, and a constricted vocabulary leaves him without the tools needed to think critically and analyze complex situations.

Cocooned by a feckless party that embraces the most ignorant and irresponsible person ever to occupy the White House, Trump flails his way from crisis to crisis.

Legend has it that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Trump golfs.

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Words Matter: Don’t Defund the Police

7/23/2020

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Whoever came up with the call to “defund the police” made a grievous error. They used the wrong word: Defund. You don’t need a dictionary to tell you that, to the English speaking brain, that means “take all the money away,” clearly a preposterous proposal. Understandably, there’s resistance to that, and folks who support “defunding” are constantly required to explain what that term means to them.

What it means is something like restructuring, reorganizing, even reconstructing. Clearly, deep change is needed. Any time an individual believes he can, with impunity, murder another while cell phone cameras record an agonizing strangulation, it’s clear that person and the organization he represents are out of control. That’s what happened on May 25th of this year when Derek Chauvin, a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police held his knee on the neck of a prone George Floyd until he died lying in the grit of a city street. Bystanders repeatedly beseeched Chauvin to stop. Chauvin, hand-in-pocket, looked directly at them. Unmoved he continued his murderous pursuit until George Floyd died a cruel and senseless death.

Now, we’ve seen. Now, we know. And now, after weeks of protests spanning the country and, indeed, the globe in the midst of the chaos already brought by an unprecedented pandemic, we’re called upon to act. Turning “police departments” into broad-based “departments of public safety,” staffed not only by law enforcement but also medical, mental health, and social work personnel makes sense.

Less than a month after Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, Rayshard Brooks fell asleep in his car in the drive-through lane of a Wendy’s. After an initial encounter during which both Brooks and the officers sent to check on him spoke calmly, they attempted to handcuff him and, when he ran away, shot him dead. Had unarmed medical or mental health personnel, not police, been sent to the scene, Brooks would likely be alive today. We need a broader view of what constitutes public safety.

This will become even more important as we struggle through the pandemic and its aftermath.. The medical and mental health effects of prolonged isolation, job loss, economic devastation, and as yet unknown health issues to be experienced by coronavirus survivors will demand a multi-faceted response to public health and safety far beyond what a traditional police response can provide. Leadership for this will have to come from local governments. Perhaps this will be the proverbial silver lining.

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So Much Lost, So Much to Gain

7/6/2020

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“What do you have to lose?”

Trump threw out this empty, flippant line most famously when urging black listeners to vote for him in 2016. … And “What do you have to lose?” he later asked as he cajoled coronavirus patients to try an unproven medication.

Well, now we all know what we—all of us, blacks, whites and everyone in between—risked in that unlikely election: the lives of loved ones, our own health, economic security, peace of mind, the ability to engage in the simple pleasures of daily life without once evaluating risk before stepping out the door or bringing visitors in.

While Trump isn’t responsible for the existence of the virus, he is responsible for the sloppy lack of leadership that allowed it to spread like pollen in a Midwest springtime while he spewed assurances it would miraculously disappear.

“I take no responsibility,” he said in answer to a reporter’s question about his role in leading the battle against the pandemic. Harry Truman he isn’t. Tasked with the presidency upon the death of FDR, one of the giants of that office, Truman posted a sign on his desk in the oval office: “The buck stops here.” Until now, that was considered a truism, the essence of presidency.

But I digress. On the civic level, we’ve lost, among other things:

Political leadership that respects and supports the civil service in its job of sustaining the day-to-day operations of government
A Congress composed of adults in both parties who have principles (and the backbone to go with them) and who exercise reason, listen to their conscience, and act in the interest of their constituents and their country
Our self-respect as a country
The respect of the global community
The faith that democracy will survive

But all is not lost. Look at what we’ve gained. With the country in virtual coronavirus lockdown, a 17-year-old captured on her cell phone the slow, brutal murder of George Floyd by uniformed police in the streets of Minneapolis. It was a cruel loss for Floyd’s family and friends, but the video awakened a proverbial sleeping giant. Millions of people, of all colors and persuasions, saw that video and recognized, as many of us never had before, the reality of lives fraught with risk simply because one’s skin is brown or black, and to the reality of the oft-hidden inhumanity under blue uniforms and silver badges.

Had George Floyd not been murdered exactly when and how he was, the story of the pandemic would have been simply a story of the pandemic. But now it’s much more. Demonstrations spread from Minneapolis to New York, Washington, Seattle, Los Angeles … to places like tiny Pine Ridge, South Dakota, and Victor, Idaho … and around the globe—Capetown in South Africa, Melbourne in Australia, Copenhagen in Denmark, Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

With many people out of work, the availability of time, energy, and commitment coalesced to power the demonstrations that already are prodding local governments to restructure police departments, develop more demanding training for officers, prosecute killings by police more diligently, and create more robust social services on the local level.

Minneapolis, for one, has already drafted an amendment of their charter with provisions for replacing the police department with a Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention.” Thus amended, the charter will mandate a holistic, public-health oriented approach to ensuring public safety. Others likely will follow.

The perfect storm has met the fierce urgency of now.

We must keep up the momentum. It’s long past time and too late for too many.

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Pandem-ic/onium

Words Matter: Don’t Defund the Police

So Much Lost, So Much to Gain

Thoughts for Our Time

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