Plague Journal, Day 109: Occupying City Hall

Monday: The Girlfriend and I ride bikes among scattered traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge to check out the “Occupy City Hall” protest. 

Organized by Vocal-NY, the demonstration — modeled after the 2011 Zuccotti Park “Occupy Wall Street” movement — aims to push the City Council and mayor to redirect $1 billion of the New York Police Department’s $6 billion annual budget toward education, youth and social services. A few hundred folks have been camping for a week in the southwest end of the small City Hall Park; the budget deadline is Tuesday.

We dismount, walk our bikes through a gap in metal police barricades along Centre Street, find an empty barricade where we can lock them. It’s late afternoon, muggy, thunderstorms in the offing. Perhaps 250 people — virtually all under 30, maybe two in three white, all masked — sit on the plaza pavement: chatting, scrolling through phones, drawing protest signs on cardboard. Lines of bored cops surround the park on all sides, outside the barricades.

As we lock up, a Black man strolls up to a barricade, blows a whistle repeatedly near a middle-aged, pot-bellied white man standing outside, in sunglasses, shorts, plain green T-shirt, talking on a phone. Three or four campers rise, approach the white man as the organizer continues to blow his whistle. The white guy stays on his phone, walks slowly south along Centre Street, accompanied by three, two, finally just one woman holding toward him a “Black Trans Lives Matter” sign, shadowing his walk from inside the barricade. 

“Undercover cop?” I wonder. The Girlfriend shrugs. 

As we finish locking the organizer approaches, blows his whistle a couple of times; no one responds. He looks us over; he’s probably 6’4”, broad-torsoed, soft-faced, thin line of beard outlining his large jaw. 

“First time here?” he asks.

“It is,” I say. 

He holds out his arms for a hug. I step toward him, hesitate, hear The Girlfriend say “No!” behind me.

“I can’t hug you,” I say. “I would, but the coronavirus.” 

He nods, looks disappointed.

“We’re careful about new visitors,” he says, his voice a thin rasp. “Especially people carrying backpacks.” He gestures to mine. “You could be a cop. You could be carrying weapons.” 

“I’m not a cop,” I say. “You’re welcome to look in my bag,” shaking it from one shoulder. 

“I don’t need to see,” he says. “Is that your wife?”

“Girlfriend.” 

He nods. His eyes look sleepy. “Everything in the zone is free,” he says, his voice struggling to rise above a whisper; I imagine he’s been shouting for days. “We don’t charge for anything. We have water, snacks, bathrooms, phone-charging stations. We’re a peaceful community, protesting the police state. Does that work for you?” 

“It does.” 

“You’re here to listen? To stay peaceful?” 

“We are.” 

“All right, man.” He moves on. 

We find an empty cement patch, sit on “#Black Lives Matter” graffiti scrawled in black. Graffiti covers most of the cement, the only alteration to property I can see aside from ubiquitous cardboard signs, some warning us not to film. R&B music, not too loud, plays on speakers near what looks like one of three or four organizers’ tents. The vibe: sleepy. We’ve arrived during a lull. 

The Girlfriend sees Jawanza James Williams, Vocal-NY’s director of organizing and the main force behind Occupy City Hall; she knows him from HIV-AIDS actions, walks over to meet him. He’s pacing, talking on the phone; she tries to get his attention, but he turns his back, walks away. She comes back.

“With your mask, you must have struck him like a random, crazy white lady,” I say. 

“Probably,” she says, as she types him a text message. 

At this density, there’s no way to stay physically distanced. After a couple of minutes we stand, decide to walk around. A few evidently homeless folks wander; most everyone else stays seated, waiting for we don’t know what. 

A young white woman takes over the microphone. She's from Connecticut, she says, “the state with the greatest income disparity between whites and Blacks.” She’s a theatre and dance student, humbled to address this crowd, to amplify the message of Blacks “whose pain I can’t even begin to imagine.” 

She wants to sing a song she’s written about liberal white men. “I don’t hate them,” she says. “I don’t hate anybody. I love all of you. But sometimes liberal men just don’t get it.” I think it’s a parody sung to the tune of “It’s Raining Men,” the Weather Girls’ 1979 song, but I’m not sure. The lyrics are woke, her voice strained, the crowd attention scattered.

We decide it’s time to go. 

It’s the first #BLM action I’ve been eager to depart. At every other demonstration we’ve been able to move, stay on the fringes, keep distance between us and other protesters. Those demonstrations felt like celebrations; we were glad to be together, raise voices in protest, show faith in a just cause. 

Minders of the zone are, reasonably, concerned about troublemakers, undercover cops. But I found the whistle-blowing off-putting. It gave the space a charge of distrust, a current of violence humming beneath the somnolence. Also, at no other protest have I heard white folks performing wokeness. 

As we ride north we see a white guy, casual clothes, multiply tattooed, yelling amicably across Centre Street to a line of cops. 

“Look at you now!” one cop says. 

“Look at me now,” the man responds. 

“What are you doing these days?” 

“Security for Fox News,” the man says. “Let me tell you, they need the help.” 

We ride into SoHo, where multiple stores in the first week of protests were looted. Many of the plywood boards installed to replace shattered glass have been decorated, some imaginatively, some dutifully, some desultorily. I take a few pictures, but it’s not much of a scene. We could grab a drink here — restaurants are open for outdoor seating, and, still before 5 p.m., patrons are few. Instead we decide to ride back to Brooklyn. 

We take the Manhattan Bridge. Air’s starting to cool, but rain seems far off. The bridge has sparse bike traffic, a few pedestrians, a couple of scooters, only one subway train in each direction. We come south along Ashland Place, dismount, walk up DeKalb Avenue, find a bar that has a half-dozen occupied, distanced tables, find an empty bench, order. (Negroni for the Girlfriend; mango lemonade spiked with mezcal for me.) 

It’s hot; we’re sweaty; the drinks are welcome. Though we remain wary, it’s nice to be outside among people. 

Two white teenagers, one wearing a T-shirt for a punk-rock festival, walk by with bikes. Soon there’s a kerfuffle: four Black teens are interacting with them; there’s chatter back and forth we can’t make out. They’re all young, maybe 13 or 15; it’s not especially hostile; seems like kids being kids. A bearded white man rides up on a bike, dismounts, gets in the face of one of the Black kids.

“You need to back off,” he says to the Black kids. “You two, go inside,” he says to the white kids. “Walk away.” 

I peg the man as father to at least one of the white kids. His accent sounds Eastern European, maybe Russian. “Walk away,” he repeats, but the boys don’t move; they’re looking down, vaguely embarrassed. 

The Black kids seem bemused; one addresses the man. “We’re not doing nothing. We didn’t do nothing.” 

“I’m calling the cops,” the man says.

“That’s bullshit,” the Black kid says. “We didn’t hit nobody. Nothing happened.” 

The man pulls out his phone, dials. 

A couple of the Black kids start to run.

“Don’t run,” the one kid says. "I’m not running. I didn’t do nothing.” They all start walking.

The man talks on his phone. It seems a bad moment to call the police on a group of Black boys who, from what we could tell, were at most posturing.

“None of that seemed threatening,” The Girlfriend says. “They’re children.” 

We finish our drinks, ride home, walk inside seconds before skies open up. For 15 minutes rain comes in sheets; The Girlfriend’s son later says Flatbush was pelted with hail. I think of the City Hall Park denizens, am thankful to be under a roof. 

Plague Journal, Day 108: Memories of race in the 1970s, California's Central Valley

At Tokay High School, in the California Central Valley town of Lodi, I belonged to a well-meaning club with an unfortunate acronym: the Communications Improvement Association. Advised by one of the school’s best teachers, who taught government, the CIA by the time I participated mostly conducted civics projects: political forums, college nights, canned food drives. 

In its formative years of the mid-1970s, when my older siblings participated, the club was created to do what its name suggested: support open conversation among the school’s variety of cliques, circles, and sub-groups, kids who sat at different cafeteria tables and looked on each other with distrust, distaste. The goal: create a unified student body. 

One reason for division: Tokay High was new, including not only students from Lodi but those from northern portions of Stockton, a larger, more diverse city to its south. The Lodi kids, who’d gone to Senior Elementary Middle School, felt bad they didn’t get to graduate from the old Lodi High; their resentment spilled over onto kids from Morada Middle School, in North Stockton. 

My elder sister recalls a CIA meeting in which students listed on a chalkboard names they used for groups of “others”: Jocks, or Lettermen; Nerds; Farmers, boys whose jeans had back pockets outlined with the white circles of chewing tobacco tins; Marlboro Country, users of the school’s smoking area; Stoners, the drug-using subset of smokers. Girls, my sister recalls, were subsumed in these names, so cheerleaders were also “Lettermen.” 

She doesn’t remember the CIA listing different racial types. In the Central Valley of the 1970s kids didn’t hesitate to use racial slurs; an honest list would have included them. I recall having a queasy relationship to slurs: we knew they were hurtful; my family thought less of those who used them; but we heard them routinely. That included popular media: every televised comedy roast featured slurs; for a hipper version, look up the Chevy Chase-Richard Prior “word association” sketch from the first year of Saturday Night Live. 

Lodi and North Stockton had plenty of Latinos, including lots of migrant farmworkers, whose children came to school seasonally as their families followed crops up and down the West Coast. If we’d listed names for those groups, they’d have included “bean eaters” and “spicks.” 

Morada had a sizable minority of Asian-American families, mostly Chinese; I recall them being treated more as “model minorities” than being routinely slurred. (If I could track some of my former Morada neighbors, I’d ask.) 

Later, North Stockton became home to many Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian families, refugees from the Vietnam War. In my high school years I often heard those students, most impoverished, referred to as “dog eaters,” after rumors of local dogs supposedly disappearing. 

Lodi and Morada had a vanishingly small number of Black families. My family moved to Morada from Hayward, in the San Francisco Bay Area, in a neighborhood my parents had selected in part because it was integrated — half Black, half White. My elder sister, who’d always attended integrated schools (both Catholic and public), was in fifth grade when we moved. Our elementary school of about 350 students had one Black family. 

“One day, at Davis Elementary, I saw an African-American boy walking home,” my sister says. “I did a knock-me-over-with-a-feather thing: ‘Holy smokes, there’s a Black kid here.’ I hadn’t seen one in weeks. I went home and asked Mom: ‘I don’t understand — where are all the Black kids?’ I’d sort of assumed that America was like Hayward. And Mom explained that less than 20 percent of the American population was Black, and in this neighborhood it was a lot less than that. I was stunned.”

In my elementary classrooms, which had no Black students, hearing the N-word wasn’t routine, but it wasn’t unusual. 

My sister has another memory. Our family was active in the AFS program, which created cross-cultural experiences for students. As part of a short-term program our family hosted a Black student my sister’s age, for a week or so. 

“I didn’t walk around Lodi very much — I usually caught the bus after school and went home,” she says. “But for some reason the two of us went into a grocery store in Lodi to buy candy or something — a good-sized store, not a convenience store. We stood in line to buy our things; she was ahead of me. And the cashier ran her items, told her how much she owed, put the things in a bag, folded it twice, stapled the bag across the top, then stapled the receipt to the bag. And when I went through, the cashier tossed my candy bar in the bag, threw in the receipt, and handed it to me — she didn’t fold it once. It was so obvious. I was floored. I apologized: ‘I can’t believe she did that!’ And the girl just shrugged, like it was normal. She was with us only for a week, but I heard kids say all kinds of horrible things — not the N word, but comments about her hair, her nose, her skin color.” 

All of this is to provide context for a social media post by a Black man who attended Lodi schools in the 1970s, a few years ahead of me. He is now a university professor. 

“To My Former Classmates in Lodi: 

“There’s a reason that I don’t use this particular account very often. The Trump era has brought back a lot of unpleasant memories and unresolved anguish from my years as a kid going to school in Lodi. 

“Don’t get me wrong: I had some great friends, some of whom remain in my life to this day. 

“But there was the other side: the KKK flyers at my Senior Elementary, people touching my hair in class or asking if my color washed off when I took a bath, and so on. I was there to learn, not be a furry pet or satisfy white children’s curiosity about Black people. I wonder what I may have missed in terms of instruction while dealing with all that each and every day.

“And then there’s the fact that I was actually threatened by an adult man in a pickup truck on the street in front of the old high school, while one of my classmates (who would always yell something about ‘going coon hunting’) in the hallways sat there and laughed. This was the week when ‘Roots’ first premiered on TV.

“And I didn’t tell my parents. For the most part, I didn’t really tell anyone. I internalized much of it and figured I’d have to do just that much more to prove that I was different from the stereotypical images of Black people that were being laid on my shoulders. 

“I was 12 when I was first bused to school in that town. One of four Black students.

“Today we call those daily insults, those thousands of little cuts, ‘microaggressions' (except for being threatened as a kid by an adult—nothing ‘micro’ about that). Always waiting for the other shoe to drop and someone would tell another ‘dead nigger’ joke or say ‘I’m not your nigger’ when someone asked them to do something. And ALWAYS all eyes would turn to see what my reaction would be. More times than not, these things happened in class. And even though they are little things, they add up over time and take a psychological as well as physical toll on the body. I’m exhausted.

“Remembering those days also brings back painful, shameful memories of things I did there to fit in. Middle school and high school are hard enough FOR EVERYONE, and many of us did stupid things we regret in hindsight. But in some ways I feel like I sold off some pieces of my very soul as one of a handful of Black kids just to fit in within a space where I never would. It was there I learned to ask myself ‘what’s wrong with me?’ It’s definitely where I adopted the ‘class clown’ posture as a way to cope. And that was also to my own detriment.

“Now with the experience of a man who is almost 60 years old, I have begun to forgive myself, that child who always felt outnumbered. Not good enough in sports to be respected as an athlete, an acceptable way to be a Black male; rejected by some Blacks in Stockton; because where of we lived, they’d say I must be a ‘Rich N.’

It was all very stressful.

"By the time I was a senior in high school I was severely depressed, even suicidal, although i didn’t have the words to name what was happening to me, and I didn’t think anyone would care or could help, so I stuffed it down and kept ‘clowning.’ A kid trying to cope.

“So, to conclude this very long post(!), let me say I have not written it to elicit anyone’s sympathy. And since this is MY story, it’s not open for debate or (dis-)agreement. I have not written it to portray myself as a helpless victim, still clinging to past hurts even though it does still hurt. 

“I am a grown-ass man who has done very well for himself. But along with every else, what I also learned from my Lodi years is how to struggle and achieve and to build a life and deep friendships, based on respect and recognition of each other’s humanity—regardless of race, class, gender, or whatever. 

“It was not all bad. But I refuse to remain silent any longer about those things that were painful because my children have experienced (and are still experiencing) some of the same things all these years later. So something has to change. Maybe this can help your children or grandchildren.

“I wrote this today for those who were there with me and didn’t even know what I was going through in ‘Livable, Lovable Lodi.' It wasn’t livable or lovable for everyone, and I suspect it’s still not.

“This is for anyone who really wants to better understand this current moment in our country’s history and in our local towns’ histories across America. Many of us have learned a lot over the years about how to accept and love people from different backgrounds, some of whom are now part of our own families. 

“Hopefully what I’ve shared here today will help us—those who want to engage in a CONSTRUCTIVE CONVERSATION—to have a place to begin.

Signed, Your Former Classmate”

A classmate of mine, Classmate 1, reposted, without comment.  

The first comment, a meme and accompanying screed, came from Classmate 2: “You know what it was OBAMA who divided this country and its brain dead liberals pouring gas on the fire .... you should sped more time listening to educated conservative black men instead of racebaiting idiots.”

Classmate 1 called him “a racist idiot.” 

Things descended from there, ending another constructive conversation.

Plague Journal, Day 107: A request for feedback from readers of this journal

I’ve kept this journal during an extraordinarily dense moment in U.S. history: pandemic, economic devastation, #BlackLivesMatter protests, presidential election. But much — perhaps most — of the journal has involved the personal. 

 

When I started writing, I wanted to do nothing more than track what was happening in the world, in my household, in my brain, during what I anticipated would be a moment of intense change. I still wake up most days having no idea what I’ll write. But I often return to subjects; over 100-plus posts, themes have emerged (see below). I’ve also learned that I have an audience of sorts. Aside from perhaps The Girlfriend, none of you is obliged to read any post; yet blog statistics show many of you return regularly.

 

Many of you are of course family and friends; you may read strictly to keep up with news of our family. If that’s true, please tell me. Many of you may read to hear a perspective from the epicenter of the early U.S. pandemic; if so, that would be useful information. If you read because you enjoy my voice or the quality of the writing, that would also be good to know. If you’re skimming for sexy bits and zombies, perhaps keep that to yourself. 

 

I know why I do this every day (which has changed over the months, to be sure), but I’m equally interested to know: Why do you read? What brings you back? I am asking here because I’m in the early stages of turning these months of reportage into something more coherent, complete, refined: a CoronaWorld chronicle from Brooklyn.

As I begin imagining what might make this appealing as a book, your feedback would be both useful and appreciated. For one, if you can note any subjects or themes that have struck you or that you especially enjoy, that could help me winnow 100-plus days of material. 

 

Possible themes: 

 

Family (The Kid/The Co-Parent; The Girlfriend/The Girlfriend’s family; Mom and my siblings)

 

Family history

 

Observations of life in Brooklyn

 

Oral histories of educators

 

Health 

 

Job/economy

 

Mourning

 

Uncertainty

 

National politics

 

Protest

 

Racism

 

Food

 

Music

 

Any feedback, advice, critique — even if it’s just a sentence or a couple of words — is welcome. Over the past four months I’ve appreciated connecting with so many of you. I feel like we’ve engaged not just in conversation but a project of seeking meaning during a time of fear and uncertainty. That’s been of immense value to me. 

 

You can connect with me in a few ways: through Facebook, either in response to this post or via Facebook messenger; through Twitter’s direct message system; or by writing a comment in response to this post at the blog, http://tappedoutyawning.blogspot.com/. (Blog comments don’t become public until I approve them, so let me know if you’d like your comment to remain private or be published as a response.) 

 

To all, thanks for your feedback, and thanks for reading. 

Plague Journal, Day 106: CoronaWorld trauma, in two doses

Four months into CoronaWorld, as the number of cases rises in hot spots across the country, even those whose health remains unaffected by the coronavirus are suffering. I’ve encountered two recent examples. 

Part 1, from college friends in New York’s Hudson Valley: 

College Friend 1: “For three months I've stayed home, heartbroken, terrified, and unsure. My neighbors stayed home, too, here in the first U.S. COVID-19 hotspot. Too many of us died; the rest of us hunkered down and stayed home, out of work and bored and lonely and broke. We sacrificed; we stopped the dying. Now we're coming out, just a little, carefully, in our masks.

“We here in the first hot spot were shouting from our self-imposed isolation, ‘The virus is out there! It will come to you, too! Be sensible. Be thoughtful and careful!’ And nobody listened. Didn't believe us. Didn't want to believe us. Called us alarmist. 

Meanwhile, we slowed then halted the spread of the virus.

“I want to celebrate our hard, communal sacrifice and our enormous success. I want to dance in the street in my mask!

“BUT: I have an elderly aunt and cousins with kids in Florida. I have elderly family friends who moved from Idaho to Texas to be closer to their own kids and grandkids. There's a young man I knew when he was a kid; now he's a young man who amazes me. He lives in Arizona; he's planning a move to Texas. And there are my sons, both in California, out in the world, working. 

“Tonight, here in the first U.S. hot spot, I'm as heartbroken and worried as I was in April when it was most grim. I am ripshit, spittin' beetles, hopping mad that western folks aren't taking this seriously. I try to see good in all people, but sometimes it's hard to find.” 

College Friend 2: “It took three months to douse it to the point it's at now here in New York, and it can blow up again at any time. We're at a new infection rate of 5 new cases per 100,000 population in the Mid-Hudson region, down from the peak in April of 72/100k (which was even higher than New York City’s peak). That new infection rate is the same as it was for us in late March, about 20 days before we reached the peak. The only difference is how people are behaving. If we are all sensible and do the important things (masks, 6 feet apart, outdoors when possible, avoid crowds, minimize exposure to others, don't stop and chat) we can snuff it out. If not, July could look a lot like April in Elmhurst, Queens.”

Part 2, from a high school friend and his sibling in California (two letters):

Letter Number 1: “Dear Siblings: 

“I’ve been thinking about how we might celebrate Dad’s 80th birthday, even with Covid restrictions. Here’s an idea:

“Could we have a small, socially-distant party, including the kids, grandkids, and maybe a few close friends? If we all flew in, stayed at a nearby motel, and arranged catering for a small party, we probably wouldn't create much risk. Maybe we could reserve outdoor park space. Not sure how big we'd want to make it, but that likely depends on space options as well as safety considerations. Thinking it would be wise not to plan something too large, because by fall there could be another travel lock-down. If that happened, we could have a fallback plan of meeting via Zoom.

“What do you all think?

“Love, Sibling 1”

Letter Number 2: “Dear Siblings,

“Of course I have been thinking for months about Dad’s birthday. I had all kinds of plans I was hoping to share with you before this pandemic. I am happy for whatever can be pulled off, but now, end of June, I don’t know what the fall will look like. 

“My imagination is that it won’t be very different from now: no vaccine, hot spots in various parts of the country, various and contradictory guidelines and laws in different jurisdictions, and no way to know if someone has the virus and is spreading it even without symptoms. 

“Given that I believe those will be the realities, and given that I want to keep the risk of carrying COVID-19 to Dad, my family, and my work as low as possible, I have decided not to travel this summer or fall. It is a hard decision. I am crying as I write this. 

“Just so you know, we have made a similar decision about visiting with our daughter and her family. They plan to come next month to stay with friends; we won’t see them.  That makes me cry, too. Part of my sadness is that I’m being forced to make these choices. When we were all locked down, I wasn’t torn by possibilities; the biggest decision was whether to order groceries to be delivered or to shop myself. Now loved ones are traveling and visiting and I have to be the one who won’t join in. 

“I keep thinking about possible consequences, no matter how remote. ‘Remember the summer we killed Grandpa?’ is not a family story I want to be responsible for. I really don’t relish being the spoil-sport. You are all able to and will make your own choices. I would like to join in as possible from home, via Zoom, for example. It totally isn’t the same. I have to stop—I can hardly see. 

“I love you all. 

Sibling 2”