Broken windows and this nation's priorities

So….let me get this straight. We can’t deploy federal resources or the national guard to provide masks and protective equipment to doctors and nurses fighting a pandemic….

But can mobilize these forces to deploy around the country within 48 hours of the first window breaking at a protest.

We can’t put together a coordinated response to actually address COVID19 through widespread testing and contact tracing of the immediate contacts of anyone hospitalized from it – or put in place a detailed plan for reopening that was written by Harvard scientists to allow the country to be open SAFELY by early July at a cost of approximately $70 billion….

But we can give away $4 trillion to the same corporations that robbed this country’s economy blind in the 2008 crisis, allowing the NASDAQ to soar to near its pre-pandemic high at the end of May.

We can’t extend unemployment benefits for the over 30 million Americans who recently filed for unemployment, because Mitch McConnell and his pals continue to sit on the bill, which is ready to pass…

But we can demand that people return to work in unsafe conditions where they will likely get sick, in order to pad the pockets of the billionaire business owners they work for.

We can’t convict killer cops…

But we can allow a President who uses coded language (“when the looting starts, the shooting starts”) to signal to his white supremacist base that they can move forward with their plans for a race war.

And then after all this, I’m supposed to be concerned about some broken windows at high-end shops, while police attack and brutalize people exercising their first amendment rights to peaceably assemble all across this country?

Hmm. Somehow broken windows at Louis Vuitton are NOT my top priority right now.

Are they yours???

Journal from New Orleans Post-Hurricane Katrina (15th anniversary edition)

On the fifteenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, I thought it an appropriate time to share my journal from those days, 15 years ago, when I rushed to New Orleans to do what I could in the wake of the hurricane. I happened to be in Portland, Oregon when Katrina hit New Orleans (followed by the breaking of the levees and the flooding). I was helping my sister with her baby at the time, and not paying too much attention to the news....the first warning I got that things were bad, really bad, in New Orleans, was when i heard a friend's voice on the radio, the Tuesday after the storm. My ears perked up when I heard his voice, then when I heard what he was saying I found myself next to the radio, clutching it with disbelief, “I'm here in Memorial Hospital in New Orleans”, he was saying. “The water is rising...There's no electricity, the people on life support are dying and we're running out of water.” His cell phone then cut off, and the radio station wasn't able ...

The violence carried out by white men against black men & boys in the name of "protecting white women"

Emmett Till (on left), who was brutally murdered in 1955 in Mississippi by a group of white men based on false accusations by Carolyn Bryant (on right) that he whistled at her At the protest this evening for justice for George Floyd and an end to police violence against black people, so many speakers shared such raw, deep emotional stories of the trauma and the violence they have suffered at the hands of the police….black teachers talked about the racism they see exhibited by very young children – which is because they learned it at home…..and one man raised a really important point about privilege: he pointed out to all the white women in the crowd that much of the violence perpetrated by white men against black men in this country is and has been done in the name of protecting white women. That if something happens to a white woman, twenty white men from all around are gonna turn up to “protect” her. And that just struck me, as a white woman in this country, that this is one of t...

Why would you call the police?

I’ve never had an experience in which calling the police made things better. In every case where I’ve seen them show up, they roll in with bravado, hubris, anger and fear. And in every case I’ve seen and experienced, they make things worse. Been robbed? They don’t care. They’ll make a report, but it’s an annoyance to them, just the necessary paperwork for you to file an insurance claim for what was stolen, if you’re lucky enough to have insurance. Will they go after the robber? Help you deal with the trauma of how unsafe and violated you feel? Ha! Good luck. A car accident? Same thing. Better to just exchange insurance info and take care of it yourselves. If it’s worse than that, medics will arrive. The medics actually help! They calm down the people who’ve just experienced the trauma, they deal with injuries and help address the pain. Police only escalate. They only make things worse. I mean, imagine you’re a young woman who has been raped – would you call the ...

Notes from the Transition

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