***I wrote the first part of this in early May 2020, and the second part after George Floyd’s murder and the protests a couple week later. I didn’t post it then as I was hesitant to be blasting out my thoughts during that time. I’m posting now as an interesting time capsule, and a reminder of the promises I — and perhaps you — made, and whether we are fulfilling them a year later.***
Early May, 2020, Oakland, California
At the grocery store yesterday, while I waited for the butcher to appear, something in the produce section caught my eye. I had to turn and look to confirm. Yes, the mousy, middle-aged woman with conservative pyramid shaped hair, wearing an ankle-length denim skirt and running shoes, picking out vegetables and tossing them into baggies, was bouncing smoothly and slightly to Britney Spears’ “Oops I Did It Again.” She was feelin’ it. Was this her favorite jam? As if to answer my unspoken question, she paused, and broccoli in hand, threw a hip out and mouthed, “I’m not that innocent” along with Britney. Glorious.
My usual options for viewing public theater are limited. On a mid-week beach hit, where there was plenty of space, a large Hispanic woman walked through the lip of the waves holding a phone piping out religious praise music. As she kicked through the waves she called out, “Oh Jesus! God bless you Jesus! We love you God! Thank you Jesus.” Beautiful.
I’ve never believed in conspiracy theories. Not that interested in idle speculation based on scant evidence. Don’t put much stock in biblical style Godly retribution either. But it’s hard to not have the sneaky suspicion that we had this one coming. We didn’t do anything about climate change so the planet hatched a virus. The wages of our reckless consumption. A lifestyle grown too seamless. Hyper convenience so commonplace it becomes expected. A world of ever more leisure hours for the middle-class and yet most people overwhelmed and over-booked. Many of my friends with top-notch University educations tell me they don’t read books anymore (not just on paper, in any form).
And now we have the Great Pause. Yes, for those of us with kids, things are busier than ever. With no childcare, there’s only a couple hours in the evening when one or both of us isn’t engaged with Winston in some way. But the stripping away of obligations and routines has allowed us to ask: what do we want our lives to be like?
Some answers are frightening. I don’t miss the late nights after performing. The strenuous post-show routine — eat, stretch, take adrenal response herb-pills, check sports scores, stream a half hour of TV, read, drink milk, brush teeth, get in bed, sometimes with podcast, pray for sleep — needed to crash out before 1am.
I don’t miss the constant need for self-promotion, and the ways in which I subvert and don’t subvert that need through social media posts. Nobody misses traffic. Nobody misses the haze above the Oakland skyline. The sparkling clarity over the East Bay is marvelous.
I do miss my bar. I didn’t get to go often, but every time I did I’d come back gushing with new stories and perspectives, new windows into the lived experienced and history of Oaklanders. From those who ‘caught their ship” out of Oakland or Alameda’s naval base, served overseas for four years, and then settled down in Oakland. Whose great Uncles were Pullman porters and came out West and established new outposts of black prosperity in South Berkeley before World War II, buying up apartment buildings and functioning as a de-facto bank for the growing African-American community. Or the local bookie, who sips sparkling waters and takes bets all afternoon.
I worry the best parts of Oakland, like my bar, won’t come back. That the tectonic economic changes that have been remaking the Bay Area for the last twenty years, and on overdrive the last eight or nine, will only increase. It’s hard to be grateful that the Bay Area economy has boomed so much in my life. When you don’t have a job in or tied to tech, the main reaction is resentment that your hometown became the world’s tech hub. Nobody asked us if we wanted it to, and most of us aren’t getting a tech salary.
I miss having interactions with folks. I got out last weekend and rode my bike to downtown Oakland. As opposed to early in the shelter-in-place, there were lots of folks out and about, artists displaying their quarantine creations, bikers almost running into each other while they cruised by and admired them. I chopped it up with a local artist. He asked if I was doing handshakes. Not yet, I said. He smiled and immediately produced a pint of rubbing alcohol he offered to me. I told him I was good. I left pondering what does the offer of a handshake signify these days? Is it a statement of belief that this whole thing is a hoax, or an attempt to slowly reintegrate those basic acts of solidarity?
New routines have set in, old consumption habits are disrupted. With fewer obligations, or options, we have been able to narrow our focus to what we want to do.
And then, in the middle of this pausing and exhaling, we learned that a Black man was chased and shot down by a white father and son. We can speculate about the toxic mix of deep racism and hatred, delusional video-game style vigilantism, citizen-arrest entitlement, fear and ignorance, mental and emotional underdevelopment that made them do that. But to think of all the things my son and I bond over — basketball, playing music, swimming in open bodies of water, telling stories, building imaginary worlds, the ways in which our values inform and get built while doing those activities— to think that this father and son took part together in the stalking and murder of a Black man, as an activity together, it’s haunting.
And then a white police officer knelt on the neck of George Floyd for nine minutes and killed him. The last 2 minutes 45 seconds of which Mr. Floyd was unconscious and not responsive. People were calmly coming up to the cops and telling him, “he’s not responsive, bro.” It did not matter. He was casually murdered in broad daylight in a progressive Northern city.
And the Great Pause was over. A nation with over 40 million people newly unemployed, with a pandemic already cutting through Black and brown communities with stunning viciousness, and now two of the starkest and most horrific versions of an ongoing national emergency of Black people being targeted and killed by white people in uniform or with levels of entitlement as though they were in uniform. Or just the everyday unacknowledged uniform that is being white in America.
(There was a period of time when I didn’t think much about how I dressed. Until I realized to underdress, to say clothes don’t matter, was really just me exercising a privilege that I will be taken seriously no matter how I dress, because I’m white. I’m not gonna win any fashion awards, but I pay attention. Because everyone else has to, whether they choose to or not. Also, fashion is the most universal and quotidian form of artistic expression.)
Two more names to add to the list we’ve all been tallying in our heads, from Trayvon Martin to Tamir Rice, to Eric Garner to Michael Brown to Freddie Gray to Philando Castille to Alton Sterling to Stephen Clark to Walter Scott to Sandra Bland. I know there are many, many more. Those are just the ones that come to me now off the top of my head, the ones that have been lodged in my brain and yet somehow I’ve been able to move on. And now Ahmad Arbery and George Floyd.
And they happened while there were no sports to distract us. No promotion to chase at work. No concerts or restaurants to go to. (I won’t pretend theater is ever popular enough to be a widespread distraction.) Just the video evidence. The long list of names. The memories of where we were in our lives when we read or heard about or witnessed on video the deaths of those previous names. How long it captured our attention. What level of engagement we did.
This time feels different. I get most of my news from a physical newspaper. And on Saturday morning I got to catch up on the last couple day’s news of the George Floyd murder. I was incensed. I have been shown so much love by black communities and people my whole life. Black music, fashion, street culture, slang, wisdom, joy, comedy etc etc etc have had a huge influence on me. In my interactions I have always tried to show love and respect back. But I can’t pretend like I’m truly showing love unless I’m engaged as an activist putting time towards people, strategies, and causes that are trying to bring greater justice and equality in our country.
I have differences of opinion with some activists about how best to achieve greater understanding and empathy and how to move closer to equality. I believe in the power of shared experience and spending time in marginalized communities as an observer and participant, listening and learning, helping how one best can and when appropriate. That’s essentially what I’ve dedicated my life to professionally. But if you hang out with me, you know that is an extension of who I am as a person.
There are so many weird aspects of the news ecosystem now. I watch a great speech by the Atlanta rapper Killer Mike, making links to his grandparents who organized with SNCC in the 1960s, and encouraging protesters to channel their rage into beating up bogus prosecuters at the ballot box, voting in better police chiefs and deputy polices chiefs, pushing for new District Attorney’s and State’s Attorney’s. He combines raw pain and anger with a brilliant call to action. And then you read the comments, so many of them dismissive and disdainful, and recall the number of bots and provocateurs Russia hired to pose as Black voices during the 2016 election. Are the comments I’m reading even real? Are they from actual people?
Then there is the battle over the role of white people during this crisis. It is clear we need everyone involved in an active way. Let’s worry less about signaling that we are thinking the most woke version of a response and more about how are we going to show up and commit long-term. It’s better to engage and it be messy than not to engage at all.
Personally I feel that the best way is through concrete legislative solutions. Brian Schatz is introducing an amendment to make it harder for police forces to acquire old military weaponry and gear. Great. Julian Sanchez tweeted we need a national registry of bad cops, so one can’t get fired for doing bad shit in one county and then moving and getting a job in another county. Great. We need to require that cops live in the cities they police. This is an affordable housing issue as well, but it will pay huge dividends. It also overlaps with one of my favorite pet causes, which is forcing people to have repeated and share experiences with each other in their home environments. This is how we humanize each other, and once we do that it’s a lot harder to hate each other and a lot easier to understand and enjoy each other.
I don’t believe in white guilt. I don’t think it’s a productive emotion long-term. Too often I see it come up in people who haven’t actually witnessed bloodshed and tragedy first-hand. They have read about it, but they don’t have the on the ground evidence, the actual exposure, to see the messy details. It’s the bleeding heart liberal who hasn’t actually seen any bloodshed.
But none of that matters now. What matters is getting involved. This is a May Day call, in the middle of a pandemic. The Great Pause is over. And we need all hands on deck.
***Written May/June 2020, posted June 2021
