Plague Journal, Day 79: “You Ain’t Shit When It Comes To Policing”

Saturday: The Girlfriend and I take a post-dinner walk south, toward Prospect Park. Dusk of another lovely spring evening approaches. Thousands of protestors gathered this afternoon at the corner of Prospect and Ocean, at the park’s southeast corner; that’s where the police helicopters have been hovering for hours. Unlike last night, it looks like my neighborhood will be quiet tonight. 

The helicopter might be a good sign, I say. Friday night at Barclays Center, police said they responded to water bottles being thrown; they then moved with batons, pepper spray to clear the plaza, sparking hours of clashes. Protestors say the police charge was unprovoked. Mayor de Blasio said, “We don’t want ever want to see another night like this.” 

“Maybe tonight they’re just watching,” I say. “The helicopter’s the eye-in-the-sky. Maybe cops won’t move unless people start breaking into buildings or lighting fires.” 

On Vanderbilt a few groups of white folks, 20- and 30-something, dressed in black, walk north, away from the park. One trio tells The Girlfriend that marchers are heading northwest on Flatbush Avenue. I’m inclined to head in that direction; The Girlfriend is more cautious. But as we approach Grand Army Plaza we see four police cars, sirens blaring, speed toward Flatbush Avenue; she agrees to check it out. 

As with our walk last night, it seems like we’re trailing a group of marchers, now further north on Flatbush. Police presence is heavy, in cars, SUVs, on foot. Garbage, garbage cans, a yellow newspaper box litter the street. We walk north, toward onlookers viewing an apparent commotion. Four African-American teens pass us; one of them, smiling, sings, “It’s the end of world.” (Not the R.E.M. song; he couldn’t be quoting the Skeeter Davis love song from 1962, could he?) His friend says, “Not the world — just New York City. Nowhere’s as bad as here.” 

Between Prospect Place and St. Marks a group of cops mid-avenue forms a circle around something; I think they’re moving garbage, maybe a barricade. Then I see the circle surrounds a teenaged white boy, backing toward the opposite sidewalk; a cop shoves him to the ground. Up ahead a woman yells, “Leave him alone! Hey!” — The Girlfriend, it turns out. (How’d she get up there so fast?) “He’s just a kid!” 

The kid stands, backs closer to the sidewalk; the cop swings an elbow to his temple, knocks him down again. “Leave that boy alone!” The Girlfriend yells, walking onto the street. Will I have to restrain her? 

The cops yell at the kid to stay on the sidewalk, march north. Immediately a middle-aged Latina woman starts berating the teenager: “You think you’re smart?” she screams. “You don’t have a fucking clue!” She’s carrying a sign: “My Students Matter.” 

A trio of young black pedestrians passes us; one says, “They’re going to try to take the precinct.” 

If protestors haven’t thought of it, the cops sure have — they’ve put up metal barricades backed by lines of officers on Flatbush, Bergen, Dean, Sixth Avenue to protect the 78th Precinct building. A middle-aged South Asian man pleads to be let through to the Bergen Street subway station, just beyond the barricade; after a minute, a cop relents. Nobody else approaches. 

The marchers seem to have moved on. We walk through an almost-empty Barclays Center plaza, head toward Fort Greene Park. At Lafayette The Girlfriend sees a friend she knows from her HIV/AIDS activism circles; we stop to chat. 

He and his partner are healthy, doing OK. He’s lost his job; his partner remains employed. They have a new dog. We commiserate about CoronaWorld. Everything feels surreal, he says.

And now the protests, The Girlfriend says. Were they out last night? 

“We weren’t. You know, I’ve been in a lot of marches, a lot of protests,” he says. He’s measuring his words. “This feels different. More dangerous. We were driving home last night from upstate, got caught in the Barclays traffic. And — I know it was just one person; I know there were thousands of protestors. But this guy walked past our car and said, ‘We’re coming for you faggots next.’ That didn’t make me feel like we’re all in it together, fighting for the same cause.”

We say good-bye, walk to the park; in the twilight a half-dozen groups sit on picnic blankets with food, bottles of wine. You wouldn’t know 18 hours ago a police van was burned 50 yards away, or right now marchers are clashing with cops three miles south. 

We get home after dark; soon the sound of helicopters, police sirens becomes continuous. 

I stay up late, doom scrolling social media feeds. Protests have spread to 75 cities; more than two dozen mayors (not de Blasio) have set curfews; governors have called in the National Guard in Minneapolis, Atlanta, Los Angeles. Columbus, Little Rock, Miami, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Indianapolis — all see violent clashes Saturday night between cops and protestors. 

Protests hit all five New York City boroughs. By Sunday morning, NYPD says, 345 are arrested, 33 police injured, 47 police vehicles damaged or destroyed. 

They provide no tally of the number of injured protestors. Apparently cable news feeds aren’t reporting it, but I scroll through clip after clip of police violence — some provoked, often not. (More here and here, including evidence of officers taping over names and badge numbers to avoid detection.) Minneapolis officers shot a paint canister at a group sitting on their own porch. In Brooklyn cops apparently targeted medics. Slate is the first media outlet I see to frame the story as one of police violence, not violence against police. 

In city after city, cops target reporters, too, or at best ignore their press status. (Receipts here and here and here. The Washington Post has a roundup, Vice a first-person account.) With the president waging a non-stop campaign against news he doesn’t like as “fake” and “corrupt,” describing media members as “enemies of the people,” this turn feels inevitable. 

Police don’t have to respond this way. Indeed, in many cities they’re doing just the opposite. In New Jersey, Flint, Ferguson, Mo., police have banded with community members to march in solidarity; Forbes sums up. 

One cop tweets, “Please stop framing this as a political or partisan issue. Police misconduct & the militarization of local police is a bi-partisan & very much all-American disgrace. … We must not be warriors cuz we are not at war with our neighbors.”

A Brooklyn College sociologist, Alex Vitale, notes that the Minneapolis police force (where the killing of George Floyd and inept handling of protests started this week’s conflagration) has received plenty of recent trainings and other “reform” measures. 

“Over the last 40 years we have seen a massive expansion of the scope and intensity of policing. Every social problem in poor and non-white communities has been turned over to the police to manage,” Vitale writes. “Police have also become more militarized. The Federal 1033 program, the Department of Justice’s ‘Cops Office,’ and homeland security grants have channeled billions of dollars in military hardware into American police departments to advance their ‘war on crime’ mentality. A whole generation of police officers have been given ‘warrior’ training.”  

All of this reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from “The Wire” (2002-08), the great HBO drama about, among other things, Baltimore cops and criminals. A major, “Bunny” Colvin, tells one of his sergeants — a man he thinks has potential — “You ain’t shit when it comes to policing.” He then describes his view of what’s gone wrong with policing in the drug war era:  

“I mean, you call something a war, and pretty soon everybody going to be running around acting like warriors. They going to be running around on a damn crusade, storming corners, slapping on cuffs, racking up body counts. And when you’re at war, you need a fucking enemy. And pretty soon, damn near everybody on every corner’s your fucking enemy. And soon the neighborhood you’re supposed to be policing — that’s just occupied territory. … Soldiering and policing, they ain’t the same thing.” 

Sunday morning, I ride my bike south of Prospect Park, to parts of the borough that saw most of last night's conflict. Broken glass, piles of trash line Church Avenue for blocks, from New York Avenue to Flatbush. Few people are out. I hear plenty of sirens, no helicopters. In front of separate bodegas I see two African-American workers on the street stuffing trash into Hefty bags, brooms and dust pans lying on the sidewalk unused, tools too meager to tackle the task.  

Plague Journal, Day 78: "Stay safe"

Friday. 5:30 p.m. I walk 15 minutes to Barclays Center. The warm spring air feels charged. 

Brooklyn groups have called for a 6 p.m. action to mark the death of George Floyd, a black man who died Monday when a white Minneapolis cop, Derek Chauvin, kept his knee pressed into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, during the final three of which Floyd was non-responsive. A bystander recorded the act.

Protests began Tuesday in Minneapolis. Thursday night, after local prosecutors declined to charge Chauvin, participants burned the city’s Third Precinct police station and local businesses in turmoil that lasted through the night. Around 5 a.m., while doing a live shot on the street, a CNN reporter and crew were arrested; tape shows all three cooperating with all police requests. (They were released in an hour, after CNN’s chief called the Minnesota governor.) Protests spread to New York, Denver, Phoenix, Columbus, and Louisville, where in March police shot and killed a woman named Breonna Taylor in her home, which police mistakenly invaded though they had their suspect in custody. 

On Friday afternoon Chauvin is arrested. Minneapolis prosecutors charge him with third-degree murder, which requires no intent or decision to kill, as well as second-degree manslaughter. Floyd’s relatives express disappointment that no first-degree murder charge will be brought. The Minneapolis mayor institutes an 8 p.m. curfew; few expect it to stop protests. 

A bit after 5 p.m. The Girlfriend’s child, in Manhattan to see a friend, texts to say they’ve seen black-clad marchers heading from Foley Square over the Brooklyn Bridge. I mask up, head out. 

Maybe I’m jumpy, but I’m more than a half-mile from Barclays and the atmosphere feels pregnant. Some of it’s the weather: 80 degrees, with a late-spring coolness likely to linger for only another few nights; it’s brought out couples, old folks, bicyclists, drivers with windows down, music booming: not quite a normal May Friday night but far more neighborhood traffic than I’ve seen in 11 weeks of quarantine. 

As I walk west on Fulton, then Hanson, I start to see protestors, almost all clad in black jeans, black or white T-shirts, boots, black masks. More than half are white; almost all are in their 20s and 30s, striding in twos and threes and fours. The Foley Square marchers have apparently arrived; chants are audible from five blocks away.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has barred groups of more than 10 during quarantine; cops have broken up funerals, among other gatherings. But as I turn south on Fort Greene Place I see about 1,000 people on the plaza in front of the arena. Virtually everyone is masked, but there’s no way to maintain physical distancing. 

I’ve participated in at least eight marches and protests since November 2016. The largest was the January 2017 women’s march, when two hours saw me move about four midtown Manhattan blocks; the massive throng felt familial, hopeful, almost joyous: OK, a dangerous man won the White House, but look at all of us! Last fall’s climate strike, which saw Greta Thunberg speak at Battery Park, was buoyed by tens of thousands of children; again, hope prevailed. Others have been smaller, ranging from a few thousand to a few dozen, filled with seniors and the middle-aged, laden with a growing sense of discouragement: My god, what is happening to this country. 

Friday night feels different. The median age is perhaps 28; no doubt fear of Covid-19 is keeping away families, children, seniors. I walk through the plaza, take a few pictures. Hundreds of New York Police Department officers have lined two-thirds of the right triangle formed by Atlantic, Flatbush, and Sixth avenues. (The arena cuts off the final third.) White Correctional Department buses are parked along Atlantic and Flatbush, ready to transport arrestees. To the extent one can tell through the masks, everyone — protestor and cop alike — looks stern, tense. 

At the protest’s center are more people of color, many, I assume, Black Lives Matter activists. Chants and claps roll one to the next, echoing across the plaza, which continues to fill: “What do we want?” “Justice!” “When do we want it?” “Now!” “Black lives matter! Black lives matter!” “Say his name: George Floyd!” “No justice, no peace, no more racist-ass police!”

I roam the perimeter. A young black woman, stomping to the beat of each chant, holds above her head a mirror before a line of police, its lipstick spelling out “Look at yourselves!” Onlookers across each avenue point cameras; more and more young people stream toward the plaza, many holding signs: "End white supremacy." "Stop killing black people." "Jail killer cops now." "Justice for Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade." (The last is a black transgender man shot by the Tallahassee, Fla., Police Department.)

I don’t tarry. Despite the masks, I’m not comfortable amid so many people shouting in the midst of a pandemic. I don’t sense imminent mayhem, but it does feel like a space of intense pressure. People are here to express outrage. It feels connected to the pandemic, which in this city has been mishandled from the mayor’s office to the governor’s mansion to the White House. It’s directly about police misdeeds: How many more must die? And it’s directly about white supremacy, a movement now led by a president who expresses sympathy for white nationalists in Charlottesville, white quarantine protestors in Lansing, calls Minneapolis protestors “THUGS!” It might take only a few matches to set this night alight. 

Plus I have an errand: I’m picking up Champagne for me and The Girlfriend, the sale of whose Southern California house closed this afternoon. As I walk southeast on Atlantic, dozens of more young people stride past me, some with signs, almost all in black. 

I buy booze, walk home. The Girlfriend and I cook chicken Vesuvio, make a salad, drink Champagne. The Girlfriend reviews what would likely have happened Before CoronaWorld, which parallels exactly what transpired: list her house; bids arrive over the asking price; brief negotiation; a few hassles; sale concludes. But every element felt fraught with risk. And now that it’s over, she says, she doesn't exactly feel positive: “It’s hard to feel good about anything in CoronaWorld.”

Around 9:30 p.m. we walk the neighborhood. Again, the air feels tense, expectant. We see piles of trash in the street. What’s with the garbage? The Girlfriend asks; you never see that in this neighborhood. We walk north to Willoughby, turn east, away from Fort Greene Park. 

Let’s not go into Bed-Stuy, The Girlfriend says; this doesn’t feel like a good night for that. We turn south on Hall Street; at Lafayette we encounter dozens of cops, in several different types of uniforms, many with batons in hand. They look different from the stoic faces of 6 p.m. — tenser, readier for action. We hear chants, follow a small group of marchers walking south on Washington; they’re walking fast, can’t be more than 100 or so. When they turn east on Fulton, we turn west toward home, watch a half-dozen police cars stream south. “They’re flanking the marchers,” I say. 

From our apartment we hear sirens non-stop for more than an hour — the stentorian police version, not the plaintive ambulance wail. The Girlfriend asks me to check the news; I see a tweet from Mayor De Blasio: “We have a long night ahead of us in Brooklyn. Our sole focus is deescalating this situation and getting people home safe. There will be a full review of what happened tonight. We don’t ever want to see another night like this.”

From experience, I know we’ll get a better picture of what happened in the morning than the first-draft misinformation that will fill my social media feeds tonight. We go to bed. 

Garbage trucks wake me at 6, just like a normal Saturday. I read the news. Their version: someone at Barclays around 8 p.m. threw water bottles at cops, who responded with pepper spray, baton charges, announcements to disburse. People threw more stuff; police grew more aggressive. My assembly member and state senator were pepper sprayed. Protestors burned an empty police van at Fort Greene Park, damaged more police vehicles at the 88th Precinct headquarters. Protests raged long into the night. 

I go for a walk. On a construction fence across the street new graffiti greets me: “Fuck The Police.” I walk toward Fort Greene Park along Dekalb: a trail of broken eggs, trash, fallen signs. At the park, market vendors are setting up tents, just like a regular Saturday. But graffiti are everywhere: "Fuck 12." "FTP." "Fuck The Police." On a small American flag planted in grass, written in black: "Black Lives Matter." On the sidewalk at the park entrance near DeKalb and South Portland, where the police van was burned, someone has gathered piles of ash to create a message, framed by fire-charred helmets, traffic cone, tree branch. 

I walk east to Classon, to the 88th Precinct building. Someone falsely reported last night that it had been overrun; in the daylight its handsome bricks look untouched. But parked on Dekalb a police car and van are destroyed: windshields and windows smashed, mirrors snapped, graffiti sprayed.  

An African-American man, 40s, bald, bandana, snaps pictures from a camera strapped around his neck. We chat. 

“I live a block from here; I heard it all night,” he says. “I knew it was coming. I heard around 3 o’clock they closed the Target near Barclays, and I knew it was going to be bad. 

“Something about this feels different,” he says. “Not that this shit is different. [Gestures to broken police car] This shit’s the same — been going on since ’65, maybe earlier. What feels different is what's coming next. This feels like a tipping point.” 

Why? 

“It’s everything. It’s the years of built-up pressure. It’s the pandemic. It’s the nakedly authoritarian government in Washington, D.C. Shit feels out of control. I honestly don’t know what’s coming next. But I think it's going to be big. And I know people are going to be back out tonight.” 

We tell each other to stay safe. I turn on Classon, take a picture of another graffiti-sprayed police van. 

A uniformed African-American officer, late 20s, shaved head, unmasked, coffee cup in hand, asks, “Enjoying the art work?” 

“Crazy,” I say. “You seen anything like this in your time on the force?” 

“Oh, I’m brand new,” he says. “Just started this year. Great timing. Covid. Now this.”

“Were you working last night?” 

“Until 3 a.m." He pauses. "You know, that Minneapolis cop was wrong. Maybe criminal. I'm glad he got fired. But last night I got all kinds of shit thrown at me: rocks, eggs, garbage. Garbage cans.” He gestures across the street, to a brick 15-floor Lafayette Houses public housing building. “Some of it was coming from up there. Hey, you know, you can say anything you want to me. Whatever. That’s your right. That’s what it means to be American. And I know: It’s not personal.  You’re just talking to the uniform; you don’t know me. But when you’re doing stuff like this … [Gestures to the van] … Now we’ve got one less RMP on the road.” 

“RMP?” 

“Radio motor patrol — it just means a cop car. But if we’re down an RMP, and we get a call — let’s say it’s an active shooter. And this precinct is down four RMPs. That’s a dozen, 14 fewer cops who can respond right away. That slows us down. And sometimes speed makes all the difference.” 

Stay safe, we tell each other. I walk home in the bright morning of another gorgeous spring day.  

Plague Journal, Day 77: Oral history, college senior

In my continuing series of CoronaWorld oral histories, I interview The Girlfriend’s eldest child, who this week graduated from a private New York City university with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts. I edited our 30-minute conversation for clarity.

Me: Describe the transition in your semester once CoronaWorld arrived. 

Student: It was pretty weird. Everything felt surreal, especially because my mom got sick early on, and all of a sudden I was cooped up in the apartment with my brother instead of my mom. [The Girlfriend stayed isolated from her family for a month.] So she was strangely absent, and I had to manage that and be a grown-up and make sure everyone did their house chores while I was still doing school stuff.  

The normal semester ended for me right after I had my senior art show [on March 3], which had been pretty intense. Then I took a rest for a week, and then we had Spring Break [starting March 14], and then everything got shut down. I had a bunch of ideas for projects I was going to do for the rest of the semester, and I was excited and hopeful and meeting with professors about what I would be making after my show. We still had close to three months to make stuff. And it all melted away and turned into nothing. 

Me: Did your work habits change?

Student: It was less that I had to change than that everything changed around me, and it was hard to catch up.

One of the reasons I chose this school was because it’s different from a standard education. I still had to learn to adjust to its system, but it’s much friendlier to my learning experience, which is complicated because I have a learning disability. And I was able to figure that out over four years, and I saw my grades get better every semester. I learned where the best places are for me to work; if I’m going to tackle a project I should do it this way so I don’t get overburdened, or end up worrying about motivation, or indecision, or technological problems. I figured out how to tailor methods to my way of learning. And then it all fell apart. 

I have a lot of trouble getting work done at home, and one of my four-year strategies was to work long hours at school, both on my art and on things like essay writing. I stay focused there. Everyone there is focused on schoolwork; it’s a generative place to be; there are interesting projects all around. So it was very strange to be stuck at home. 

Spring Break started, but it was not fun. It was more like, “There’s nothing to do.” All my friends on the internet were saying, “There’s nothing to do.” Then dealing with school obligations was really weird. I had to write a 12-page paper for one class; I had to make art for several classes. Making art at home was super hard, when I was scrounging for materials. And the stress levels were really strange, because normally I’d get stressed about finals and school and that would get me motivated to get out of the house, to go to school and bust my butt and get to work. But this was a strange level of stress. I felt incapacitated, like I couldn’t do anything. I felt sluggishly unable to make decisions. I slept all day. It was the opposite of fun; it was very upsetting. 

Maybe it’s just that I’m not good at developing new systems for learning on the fly. But a month in I became very uncomfortable and anxious. Like: I can’t do anything, this sucks, I’m graduating, this is a really important moment in my life, and time is washing away and I can’t do anything to make it good. And then I’d read about people under quarantine who were being massively creative and 500 times more productive than normal: “I produced an album!” “Look at my new book!” These stories were supposed to be inspirational, and they just made me feel bad. And I know a lot of it was bullshit. But it was hard to stay motivated, and it was hard to be creative when we had no clear direction. The professors didn’t know what materials we had at home, so they’d say, “Do whatever you want!” 

So for a while, it all started to fall apart. But at least I was able to not fail my senior year. In the end, that’s all that mattered.

Me: What was one project that you’d wanted to finish in the last months of school? 

Student: At the beginning of quarantine I planned to make a zine: a book where I’d make all the paper myself and print art on all the pages. It was about a fantasy world I’ve been coming up with, gods I’m researching. And it kind of fell apart and didn’t happen like I’d planned. In the last week I was frantically printing pages, and it felt sucky because I had two months and I’d been talking about it every single day, and in the end I could barely get 16 pages done. And I got angry at myself for not being productive. 

Me: What were your classes like? Were you doing videoconferencing? 

Student: Some of my classes did. Those were hard, because all we were doing was talking about ideas on Zoom. For me, Zoom is the worst. It just splits my attention. 

Some professors had Instagram accounts where we could post art before class, so others could look at it. But almost no one was able to create anything properly. Some students had spaces and resources, but I had neither. I couldn’t work in my room — there’s no place to work. Once my mom was sick, I could work on the dining room table, but that wasn’t enough. A few people had garages where they were casting plaster and pouring concrete; they do that, and I’m showing my little pencil drawing, and it feels like I’m being lazy because I’m not posting anything impressive on the professor’s private Instagram page.

And classes that had been in studio became critique only, which was annoying, because people are only talking about ideas. You look at a few pictures and spend 30 minutes talking about them but not really learning anything. People can say, “Yeah, the picture looks really cool,” but they couldn’t give advice because they didn’t know what resources you have. It felt a bit like a scam, honestly. 

Me: What do you mean by that?  

Student: A lot of students are trying to petition the school for refunds. If we’re not there, with the professors and with each other, the institution’s not real anymore. Should we be paying thousands of dollars for Zoom calls? We could get on Zoom with each other and talk about our work and accomplish the same thing. We aren’t paying for resources, because there are none. We’re paying for video access to a professor who may or may not care about your work. You just can’t get the same level of interaction online. 

For me, a large part of the reason I was succeeding at school was because I was engaged with the material and technique of print making. That was my whole thing; I took all the print making courses and learned lots of techniques; that’s what was valuable to me. Some people cared about conceptual ideas about artwork, and if you did, you could still get that feedback. But I’m at school to learn to use the materials and learn techniques. Critique is not that big a deal to me, except for a few professors who were master printers, who had skills I wanted to learn. The others, who said it looks like a specific period of Marcel Duchamp, of if you’re thinking about X then you should read Y — that’s not relevant to me. I can Google that. So the studio classes lost value. 

We had one lecture class with visiting speakers, and that was interesting. But it was still hard to stay engaged just listening to someone talk on a Zoom call for two hours at 8 p.m. I wish I’d had more lecture-based content, but even then I ended up feeling like I couldn’t pay attention to what people were saying because I was drained from being on Zoom calls all the time. 

I would tell any prospective student at any institution not to go to school next semester if it’s going to be online-only. It won’t be worth it. The institutions don’t have the ability to reconfigure their education model by September. And it’s impossible to learn from Zoom like that. A large part of my education was communicating with the other students as well as the teachers. And in my online classes there was almost no interaction. The students were all muted until the teacher was done talking; you couldn’t ask students or the professor to show you something or teach you a technique. There was no chance to develop communication or camaraderie. The whole thing needs to be changed. 

Me: Was anything better about online learning? 

Student: Nothing. Well, I might have been late to fewer classes because I didn’t have to do my hour commute to campus. But I didn’t like having the stupid fake communication. I didn’t want to do all the performative stuff when I’m sitting in bed in my underwear. The tone of the space I’m in and the tone of the conversations I’m having are completely different. If I’m in my bedroom I’m not interested in listening to people talk about art for five hours. 

Me: You had an online graduation this week. How was that? 

Student: The campus did it through a YouTube premiere, and then my department had a Zoom call. It was OK, not great. I wasn’t that hyped up about graduation to begin with, and because I had no expectations I didn’t feel like got robbed.

I was happy that my mom put together a mini-Zoom call with family and friends afterward. It was really nice to see and hear from everyone I hadn’t talked to in three months. Quarantine has been really isolating. Communicating online is not my best skill, and it was nice to connect with family and friends. But I didn’t get to show my family and the people I love the campus where I spent four years, and that would have been more fulfilling than any ceremony. 

Me: Has CoronaWorld changed your post-graduation plans? 

Student: Plan A was to get a regular job at an art institution or a studio, but no institutions or studios are open. Plan B was to get a master’s in education in the accelerated New York Teaching Fellows program, which would have guaranteed I had a job in the fall. But they cancelled the program. So all of my employment plans got blown to dust.

So instead I’m moving to San Francisco, where I’ll live with my partner and their family. The virus hasn’t hit as badly in the Bay Area. And I don’t think I’ll be able to get a job in New York City. Having to fight through everyone to get the five retail jobs available in New York right now — California just seems like it might be easier. 

And I don’t want to be cooped up in this apartment, which has been really sucky and annoying. I don’t feel comfortable going outside here, and we don’t have any other space. My partner’s family has a large house and a backyard and they live near a national park. It’s not like Prospect Park, which is always packed full of people. A change seems really nice right now.

Plague Journal, Day 76: 100 Days of FDR, 100 Days of Biden

The notion of a president’s “100 Day” agenda comes from the beginning of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first term. The Depression was well into its fourth year; one in four Americans was unemployed; around the world, fascists and communists were making political gains as the most powerful nations struggled to regain economic footing.

Day One fell on March 4, 1933, when Roosevelt told Americans that all they had to fear was fear itself — “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

"I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require,” he said.

The next day, he called Congress into a special 90-day session. 

First he ended the run on banks. Congress (boosted by big Senate and House Democratic Party majorities) passed in a day legislation allowing banks to reopen under Treasury Department licenses that guaranteed their soundness; if a bank lacked funds, the Federal Reserve Board would lend cash against the bank’s assets.

“I can assure you that it is safer to keep your money in a reopened bank than under the mattress,” FDR told Americans by radio in his first “fireside chat.” When banks reopened, deposits exceeded withdrawals by $10 million in a single day.

His second bill cut federal government salaries by 15 percent, cut veterans benefits. This won over some fiscal conservatives, including Republicans: “I’m for giving the president whatever he wants,” said Sen. Arthur Capper of Kansas.

He soon submitted the Glass-Steagall Act, which prevented banks from trading stocks and securities; gave the Federal Reserve Board authority to set interest rates; and created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to guarantee individual bank deposits, assuring citizens their money would be protected.  

He aimed to rein in Wall Street excess by submitting the Truth in Securities Act, requiring public companies to provide investors with financial and other corporate information while prohibiting misrepresentations and fraud. 

“If the country is to flourish,” said Roosevelt, “capital must be invested in enterprise. But those who seek to draw upon other people’s money must be wholly candid regarding the facts on which the investor’s judgment is asked.”

He stabilized the urban housing market by establishing the Home Owners Loan Corporation, which bought distressed home mortgages; loaned money for taxes and repairs; and set repayment schedules over 30-year terms at 5 percent interest. The corporation soon assumed one in six U.S. home mortgages.

Within eight days he submitted legislation farmers had sought for decades. Under the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, food processors, distributors, and speculators would be taxed; proceeds would pay farmers to take acreage out of circulation, reversing the incentives that had led to massive food surpluses, rock-bottom prices. Farmers were given incentives to modernize equipment, use innovative methods.

Along with the bill he sent a five-paragraph message to Congress, telling legislators action to support farmers was as important as saving banks. The goal: “to re-establish prices to farmers at a level … equivalent to the purchasing power … in the pre-war period.” Would it work? FDR didn’t know: “I tell you frankly that it is a new and untrod path,” but “an unprecedented condition calls for the trial of new means.” If it didn’t work, he promised to try again. 

Progressives convinced him within three weeks to do more. He sent a bill to refinance farm mortgages at 4.5 percent and to extend the term to repay, a plan backed by $2 billion (sums undreamt of by FDR’s predecessor, Herbert Hoover). Why would banks do it? They could swap unpaid mortgages (of little short-term value) for Federal Land Bank bonds paying guaranteed interest of 4 percent. 

Progressives also convinced FDR to take the U.S. off the gold standard, helping farmers sell products at lower prices overseas. Creditors no longer had the right to demand payment in gold. He ordered owners of gold coins, bullion, and certificates to turn them over to the Federal Reserve for a set price (about $21 per ounce), giving the Fed $770 million. This allowed the bank to inflate the nation’s money supply — a key to the Keynesian economic theory that the best way to fight economic downturns, when business investment dries up, is to boost government spending. 

The bill passed on Day 69. 

Overall, FDR in his first three months won passage of 15 major bills, including the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, to give states, counties, and cities aid for the jobless; the Works Progress Administration, replacing the short-term FERA with longer-term federal projects; the Civil Works Administration, to create manual-labor jobs during the winter of 1933-34; the Public Works Administration, to build infrastructure like water projects, power plants, and hospitals; the Civilian Conservation Corps, to give jobs to youth; the Tennessee Valley Authority, an economic development agency to boost development in an especially hard-hit region; and the National Industrial Recovery Act, authorizing the government to regulate some industries to create fair wages and prices, thus directing economic gains to the middle class and poor; guaranteeing labor’s right to bargain collectively; stipulating that industry codes should set minimum wages and maximum hours; and boosting the economy with $3.3 billion for public works.

California Sen. Hiram Johnson, a Republican, said, “We have exchanged for a frown in the White House a smile. Where there were hesitation and vacillation, weighing always the personal political consequences, feebleness, timidity, and duplicity, there are now courage and boldness and real action.”

"Never before had a president converted so many promises into so much legislation so quickly," wrote historian James McGregor Burns.

Should Joe Biden win election, even under ideal conditions for Democrats, little legislation of this impact will be possible in 2021. In an era of continual electioneering; after three decades of political pollution by right-wing media; and following four years of Trump, gone is the era when political scientist Richard Neustadt could write, “Most Americans wish their new president well and want him to succeed, with partisanship relatively low, interest in him relatively high, and interest fueled by curiosity about him in his new, never-before-seen capacity, not as one party's candidate but as the country's magistrate.”

Biden ran about seventh on my list of primary candidates. Count me among progressives skeptical of both his political acumen and his instinct for political sail trimming, learned over decades in the Senate. His career has demonstrated more interest in legal and foreign policy matters than the domestic economy. He excited few primary voters who pined for Bernie Sanders- or Elizabeth Warren-style populist dynamism. 

That said, Sanders (especially) gets credit (or blame, depending on your outlook) for pulling the Democratic Party further to the left than it’s been since — well, probably 1933. If political winds favoring the party continue, notably in Senate races in Colorado, Arizona, Montana, North Carolina, and Maine, Biden could be leading Democratic majorities in both House and Senate, giving progressives legislative hope for the first time since 2009. It’s worth contemplating, then, the man’s agenda.

Among Biden’s priorities: 

— Raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour. Biden has long supported this issue, which polls well; states and localities that have raised wages have not seen the economic pitfalls promised by corporatists. 

— More federal money for community colleges, cutting or eliminating tuitions while boosting grants for infrastructure. He also wants to double the maximum size of federal Pell Grants for poor students, which could cut student debt. 

— Triple annual federal spending on low-income school districts, from $16 billion to $48 billion. This would be vital in an era when states and local governments are likely to implement huge cuts in school funding. 

— Rebuild the Affordable Care Act, including by adding a public insurance option, which would lower costs on insurance exchange markets for those not insured through their jobs — a demographic that now includes tens of millions of additional Americans. 

— His opioid policy is the most ambitious of any Democrat who ran for president, taxing pharmaceutical profits to raise $125 billion over a decade to boost addiction treatment and recovery programs. (That’s $25 billion more than Warren proposed.) 

— Two major federal housing plans: 1). Three in four low-income families who could qualify for Section 8 housing benefits don’t receive them. Biden would make the program an entitlement, like Medicaid or SNAP (food stamps), meaning all eligible families would get help. 2). Send more federal transportation funding to states that commit to land use programs that cut regulations which restrict housing construction.

— Biden’s stances on climate change will excite few on the left, with the exception of organized labor leaders. As with immigration, he could enact few substantial changes without bipartisan legislation. But his support for at least three items gain him labor support while hurting him with environmentalists: federal funds for research into carbon capture; support for nuclear power; and no short-term ban on fracking.

Biden’s no FDR; but his agenda is more left-wing than most left-wingers might believe.