Day 99

Internet's down - a big thunderstorm came rumbling through around 4:30 p.m. and although it surprisingly didn't take out the power (the lights did flicker, though), both the internet and cable are down.  Comcast/Xfinity are aware of the problem and connectivity should be returned by . . . sometime.  Posting now with a cell-phone hot-spot hook-up.

Fortunately, even though the coronavirus is continuing to rise in Georgia, I had a bunch of pictures queued up to post anyway of that ass-clown couple pointing guns at protesters in front of their home in St. Louis.  The protesters were marching toward the mayor's home to rally against the mayor, who had posted the names and addresses of the people who called for defunding of the police, and the couple stated that they thought the crowd was coming or them (raising the question of what they'd done to arouse that fear), although surely they were aware that the mayor lived just a few homes down the street.

I have zip sympathy for these two.  If they were nearly as scared as they claimed to be, they would have been inside their home, either peeking out the windows or heading toward their panic room. Instead, they ran outside barefoot, pointing their weapons at the protesters and claiming their stand-your-ground rights.  If your safety is assured by an assault rifle, the phallic substitute for white males of a certain age, why then were they so scared?  Another theory posits that they were just assholes.  

Our so-called "president," never missing a chance to make a bad situation worse, re-tweeted a video of these two in a blatant dog-whistle signal to his followers that it's okay to use violence against protesters who aren't part of his maggot cult.

 

Genealogy, Part III (Reparations)

When the EPA finds out that a corporation saved costs by illegally disposing of its wastes, the Agency calculates the cost of what they should have spent, adds a stipulated penalty and the cost of any environmental restoration the violations might have caused, and then forces the company to pay what they owe.

When the IRS discovers that a taxpayer tried to save money by underpaying his taxes, they calculate what should have been paid, adds fines and penalties, and makes the person or corporation pay up, garnishing wages if necessary.

When the Department of Labor is told that someone increased their personal profit by criminally underpaying their workers, the cheapskates are forced to pay the back salaries owed, and if the workers can't be identified, sometimes the payments are made to a trust fund or NGO that benefits the underpaid. 

But when it's pointed out that slave owners made their substantial fortunes by not paying the involuntarily enslaved while also subjecting those enslaved persons to horrifying deprivations and cruelty, the nation's reaction is generally, "Well, what can you do?"

To illustrate my point that something is owed, imagine for a minute that you're Isaiah D. Hart.  It's 1850, the Civil War hasn't yet started (for the record, you're against secession, recognizing that it's bad for business), and you own a 2,000-acre plantation west of Jacksonville, Florida named "Paradise."   On that plantation, you own 57 slaves.

Your  slaves aren't paid any salary.  You incur some cost associated with housing and feeding them, as well as policing them and recovering fugitives, but compared to the rest of the costs of maintaining a 2,000-acre plantation, that cost is effectively zero.  Plus, you can breed the slaves and sell the young and the women to help offset costs.  It might even be its own profit center.

This free pool of labor harvests your cotton, irrigates your fields, plants your seed, and constructs your buildings.  You soon amass a small fortune and become one of the wealthiest men in Florida, due in part to your business acumen (I'll grant you that) but also because you were able to keep your labor costs down to an effective zero.

How much should have been paid for that labor?  What is it that Isaiah should have paid?  According to a January 1942 article in W.E.B. DuBois' magazine The Crisis (the official magazine of the NAACP) titled Negro Labor in Jacksonville by Samuel Harper, "Back in 1886 Negro bricklayers labored hard and worked 10 hours a day at the rate of twenty-five cents per hour."  The 1886 wage for bricklayers may not be exactly correlative to the value of labor in the cotton fields in 1850, but it's a starting point.  If you have a better value, please let me know.

Interestingly, 25¢ an hour in 1850, adjusting for inflation, is equivalent in purchasing power to $8.22 in 2020.  Today, the minimum wage is $7.25, although it's widely recognized that the rate should be closer to a living wage of $15/hour.  My point is that $8.22/hour is a not an unreasonable rate for important but unskilled labor,  and I'll use it for a first-order approximation of  what Isaiah should have paid.

A slave worked long hours each day.  According to the University of Houston, a slave on a typical plantation worked ten or more hours a day, six days a week.  At planting or harvest time, planters required slaves to stay in the fields 15 or 16 hours a day.  But for our first-order approximation, let's conservatively assume 10 hours a day, six days a week, or 60 hours per week (3,120 hours per year).

Isaiah purchased his so-called Paradise in the mid-1830s and operated it until his death in 1861.  Let's assume that's 25 years of slave labor, 3,120 hours per year, at $8.22 per hour.  That means that he should have paid $641,160 per slave.  Since he is reported to have had 57 slaves, that totals $36,546,120.

I think a lot of businesses today would be interested in learning how they could reduce their expenses by $36.5 million dollars (although today, most - but not all - businesses would draw the line at slavery).

Isaiah Hart became one of the richest men in Florida because he got $36.5M worth of free labor.  If he had to pay that, his business acumen may still have made him a rich  man, but he didn't pay what he should have and his fortune was made due to workers who suffered slavery in his fields.

Also, before all you smug Yankees think it was only a Southern plantation owner who profited, northern textile mills in New England bought Isaiah's cotton at a reduced cost due to the free labor, and realized a greater profit than they should have otherwise.  I'll leave it to others to calculate what the textile mills owe, and to whom they owe it.  I can also take it a step further, and point out that Yankee consumers bought their seersucker suits and gingham dresses at a reduced cost, since the textile mills were buying their cotton at a reduced rate.  Everyone "wins," except for the unpaid labor in the field and their descendants, who were "rewarded" with 170 years of racial bias, Jim Crow discrimination, redlining, and the not infrequent lynching.

So, reparations.  Fifty-seven men and women performed hard labor to amass Isaiah Hart's fortune and went unrewarded. Isaiah Hart realized his fortune largely because he didn't have to pay for labor. But who, this 170 years later, should pay the cost?  And who, this 170 years later, should get the payment?  

And what about the textile mills and the consumers?  

Dreaming of the Masters

Oh Lord, don't let them shoot us!

Oh Lord, don't let them stab us!

Oh Lord, don't let them tar and feather us!

Oh Lord, no more swastikas!

Oh Lord, no more Ku Klux Klan!

Name me someone ridiculous, Dannie!

[Dannie:] Governor Faubus!

Why is he so sick and ridiculous?

[Dannie:] He won't permit integrated schools!

[Mingus:] Then he's a fool!

Boo! Nazi fascist supremacists!

Boo! Ku Klux Klan!

Name me a handful that's ridiculous! Dannie Richmond?

[Dannie:] Bilbo! Faubus![Unintelligible] Rockefeller! [Unintelligible] Eisenhower!

Why are they so sick and ridiculous?

[Dannie:] Two, four, six, eight, 

[All:] They brainwash and teach you hate!

 - Original Faubus Fables by Charles Mingus, 1960

Fables of Faubus is a composition written by jazz bassist and composer Charles Mingus. One of Mingus's most explicitly political works, the song was written as a direct protest against Arkansas governor Orval Faubus, who in 1957 sent out the National Guard to prevent the racial integration of Little Rock Central High School by nine African American teenagers, in what became known as the Little Rock Crisis.

The song was first recorded for Mingus' 1959 album, Mingus Ah Um. However, Columbia Records refused to allow the lyrics to the song to be included, and so the song was recorded as an instrumental on the album. It was not until October 20, 1960 that the song was recorded with lyrics, for the album Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus, which was released on the more independent Candid label. Due to contractual issues with Columbia, the song could not be released as Fables of Faubus, and so the Candid version was titled Original Faubus Fables.

The personnel for the Candid recording were Charles Mingus (bass, vocals), Dannie Richmond (drums, vocals), Eric Dolphy (alto saxophone), and Ted Curson (trumpet). The call-and-response vocals are between Mingus and Richmond. 

Day 96

If there was any question as to whether or not the number of new coronavirus cases were increasing in Georgia,  any ambiguity is now gone.  Three of the last four days saw the highest number of new infections since the peak of the pandemic back in April.

Actually, I misspoke.  With over 6,000 new cases in the last four days, the peak of the pandemic wasn't back in April, it's right now.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

“The pandemic rages on. Instead of vanishing under warmer temperatures, as the president once predicted, the coronavirus has only bitten down harder. 

Spiking cases have Georgia’s rural hospitals bracing for surges all over again. Infections have increased among people in their teens and 20s, who health experts say may be less likely to heed guidance to wear masks and socially distance. But the governor, who has championed a swift reopening of the economy, says he has no plans to impose new restrictions or mandate face masks.”

Yesterday, while I was out on one of my daily walks, I saw several of my neighbors setting up an outdoor table out on the street.  They called out to me and it would have rude to  ignore them, so I went over to see what they were up to.  As it turns out, several houses on my block were recently sold and we have several new neighbors, and they were throwing an impromptu outdoor cocktail party for those new neighbors.

No one was wearing a mask, although it appeared that some effort was going into an attempt to keep distant from each other and there was no shaking of hands.  I was just going to wish them well and be on my way, until I realized that at least one of the new neighbors were a family of color (actually, Nigerian immigrants, I believe) and I both wanted to get to better know them in particular, as well as let them know they had an ally here in the neighborhood.   So I wound up joining the party (also, the party had Bell's IPA).

It was my first and only major breach of quarantine protocol, my first non-essential contact since March.  It was important to me socially to meet both my new and my existing neighbors and to enhance the sense of community, so I don't regret it.  I wasn't masked (no one was), but we were outdoors and we were standing relatively far apart, and there are no known infections yet on my block.  I should be okay, but I also see how easily it is for peer pressure to cause one to abandon the discipline of quarantine.

Genealogy, Part II (Isaiah)

Following the so-called "Patriot's Rebellion" of 1812, the son of treacherous William Hart, Isaiah David Hart, married Nancy Nelson in 1818 and settled with her at King's Ferry in East Florida, near where the old King's Road crossed the St. Marys River. 

After the United States finally succeeded in annexing Florida, Isaiah saw an increase in traffic on the road as settlers came south from Georgia and the Carolinas into the new Florida Territory. He realized that the location offered economic opportunities and on May 18, 1821, Isaiah bought 18 acres of land for $72 worth of cattle. He built a store-cum-tavern that served as his residence, as well as a riverfront dock called Hart's Landing. Over the years, Isaiah became prosperous enough to establish himself as a man of means.

When Duval County was incorporated in 1822, Isaiah saw more opportunities for development and persuaded his neighbors to found  a new town, naming it Jacksonville after Gen. Andrew Jackson, the provisional governor of the Florida Territory.  By this time, Isaiah had become prominent enough that, he was appointed Deputy U.S. Marshal of East Florida, and in 1826 as the Clerk of the County Court, an office he held until 1845.  He successively held public office as postmaster, commissioner of pilotage (whatever that is), and judge of elections in Duval County.

By 1830, Isaiah owned four slaves and managed his own farming and ranching operations, as well as a timber business. He continued to buy more real estate and by the mid-1830s had acquired 2,000 acres of land ten miles west of Jacksonville, where he established a plantation called "Paradise." His various enterprises prospered and as his fortune increased, he invested in railroads and banks, and bought more slaves, eventually owning 57 human beings. I doubt the plantation felt like "Paradise" to his 57 slaves.

During the Second Seminole War, he served as a major in the local militia, and in 1839 was elected to the Florida Territorial Senate. Although a slave owner himself, he vocally supported the Union and opposed secession, consequently becoming one of the founders of the Florida Whig Party.

By the time Isaiah died in 1861, he was was one of the richest men in Florida.  He owned extensive real estate in north Florida, and had substantial stockholdings in the Florida, Atlantic & Gulf Central Railroad, the Jacksonville Natural Gas Company, the Bank of St. Johns County, and a steamship line, as well as owning numerous slaves. 

Isaiah Hart is remembered as the founder of Jacksonville, Florida, but it should also be remembered that he also owned slaves on a plantation and killed indigenous Americans during the Seminole Wars.

Isaiah's son, Ossian B. Hart, was active in the Republican Party (back when the Republicans were the progressive party of Lincoln), and became the tenth governor of Florida in 1873.

Day 94

On Tuesday, June 23rd, Georgia saw the highest number of new coronavirus cases, 1,872,  since the pandemic began, beating the old record set back on April 7 by nearly 300 cases.  Yesterday was not quite as bad, but still the second-highest number of new cases on record.

Welcome to the re-opening. I hope you survive.

Meanwhile, the number of Americans who have been infected with the coronavirus is most likely about 10 times higher than the 2.3 million cases that have been reported, according to the director of the CDC.   “We probably recognized about 10 percent of the outbreak,” Dr. Robert Redfield said on a call with reporters.    He added that between 5 percent and 8 percent of all Americans have been infected to date.

I'd say this is serious as a heart attack, but I believe heart disease still has coronavirus beat and I don't want to exaggerate. 

Genealogy, Part I (William)

Pandemic project No. 108: working out my family genealogy.  Discovering my roots.  Here's what I've learned so far.

William Hart was a white 18th Century saddler from somewhere in Pennsylvania who moved south to Virginia and then later settled in Burke County, Georgia in the 1790s.  He had two sons, Daniel and Isaiah. Prior to William, I can find no more. 

William was unrelated to the infamous Nancy Hart and her family, who lived in the Broad River valley of East Georgia in the 1770s.  Nancy was a rebel heroine of the Revolutionary War credited with many fanciful exploits against British Loyalists in the Georgia backcountry.  Picture a colonial Annie Oakley combined with Wonder Women combined with Little House on the Prairie, all directed by Quentin Tarantino in full Hateful Eight mode.  However, she moved to coastal Brunswick, Georgia in the late 1780s and then to Kentucky by 1803, and it is unlikely that Nancy or William ever met.

For the record, I was really hoping that I would have been able to trace my genealogy back to Nancy, as she has such a colorful lore, but it seems that it's not to be, and it's William, not Nancy, who first carried my DNA down to Georgia.

In 1801, William moved his family (and my DNA) further south to East Florida while the area was still a part of the Spanish Empire.  William became a citizen of Spanish Florida, served in the Spanish militia, and received a 640-acre land grant from the Spanish governor. It is not clear if William was an English Loyalist who left the newly-formed United States out of discontent (if so, all the better for him that he never met Nancy), or if he was just opportunistic and saw a chance to make his fortune in Spanish Florida.

A brief review of the political situation at this time is in order.  Way back in 1693, Spain had enacted an edict granting refuge to any runaway slaves, and many fugitive slaves from Georgia and South Carolina had managed to escape into Spanish Florida.  But Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State, forced Spain to give up its edict, and the 1790 Treaty of New York with the Creek tribe, the first treaty in U.S. history, turned the Lower Creeks into slave-raiding allies for the United States. Ironically, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, the two Founding Fathers who laid the foundations for the “free world,” destroyed the only beacon of freedom that existed for African slaves in the South. 

However, in an act of provocation, the Seminole tribe allowed escaped slaves to take refuge in their villages. The African slaves often lived in their own separate dwellings from the Seminoles, but there was much intermarriage between the Seminole and the Africans and soon there were mixed Seminole-African villages, which enraged Southern slave owners who saw this as a lure to their own slaves seeking freedom.  They claimed that over five million dollars worth of their slave “property” had fled to Seminole territory in Spanish Florida over the years. 

Georgia’s settlers feared the possibility of a slave insurrection perpetrated by free black militias under orders of the Spanish Crown. Armed free blacks in such close vicinity to plantations on the St. John’s and St. Mary’s rivers exacerbated their fears that armed and organized blacks could influence slaves to revolt by their mere example alone.  This was the real background to the operation known today as the “Patriot Rebellion” of 1812.

William and his sons, Daniel and Isaiah, who had left the colonies to become citizens of Spanish Florida, sided with the Anglo "Patriots" during the rebellion.  Most of the Patriots were really just disaffected farmers and woodsmen from Georgia led by rich plantation owners, covertly encouraged by Washington so that the United States would have an excuse to seize Florida. William and his sons organized bands of marauders and raided Spanish plantations for slaves and cattle, and then drove them both north back into Georgia, where they were then sold as livestock at auction.

So William, and not the revolutionary Nancy, is my legacy, the furthest back I can trace my ancestry. William, who left colonies after they achieved independence to become subject to the Spanish  Crown. William, who then turned against the very Crown that had granted him 640 acres of land.  William, who stole slaves and cattle, and sold them both like they were identical livestock properties. William, who subjected escaped and liberated slaves to captivity again, continuing the cycle of torture and misery that constituted their short but miserable lives.  William.

This is just the beginning of the genealogy I've discovered.  It's a long story, and fortunately it gets better.  But after describing all this, I need a break.  And a bath.  I need to get the stench of treasonous, treacherous William off of me.  

I'll continue this story in a later post.  I'm relieved to report I think you'll like where this story ultimately goes.  I promise.

TIL

There's  a recurring theme on the internet message board Reddit called TIL, for "Today I Learned."

Well, TIL that my grandfather was a graduate of historically black Atlanta University and a friend of Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, that my great-grandfather was a bricklayer who against all odds rose during the Jim Crow Era to become the first black banker in Jacksonville, Florida, and that a distant uncle (pictured above, left) graduated from both Julliard and Howard University and had performed for Eleanor Roosevelt.

Tuns out this white boy isn't as white as he had been led to believe and for the record, he's proud of the ancestors he just discovered today. 

I initially didn't want to post this until I had some more time to process this new discovery, but these are the times and this is the record of the times, and it would have been dishonest to write about anything else today.

Day 91

Three months ago, back in March 2020, my Facebook feed was full of posts about learning how to bake bread and if anyone wanted to share some sourdough starter.

Now it's all about "Let's end systemic racism."

Isn't baking wonderful?

The best news I heard today was rooted in some of the worst news of the day: a noose was found in the Talladega pit for the NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace, the only African-American in the premier series and the principal protagonist for having NASCAR ban the confederate flag from its events. That, obviously, is the bad news.  The good news is that at today's Talladega event, the other drivers marched together with Wallace and pushed his car to the start of the race in a display of solidarity.

It hit 100⁰ F in the Arctic Circle today, the first time in recorded history that's ever happened.  So while we're all worried about coronavirus and systemic racism, and rightfully so, climate change is still happening somewhere out there in the background.

But you probably know all this already.  You have your news feeds and sources, and I'm not telling you anything you didn't already know.  

You probably also know the best news from last weekend - the turnout at Trump's Tulsa rally was far less than anticipated.  While his campaign was talking about a potential one million people, only 6,200 showed up.  Our so-called "president," who only knows quantity and not quality, was visibly shaken by the vast sea of empty blue seats across the stadium.  Photographs of him returning that night to Washington show a man dejected and depressed.

Coronavirus obviously was a major part of people's decision not to attend the rally, but it's also a sign that the so-called "president" is out of touch with the current moment, and people, even among his base, are getting tired of his vitriol.  Despite all the flavor-of-the-month Facebook posts denouncing racism, this country still has a long way to go.  But the paltry turnout in Tulsa is one, if small, indication that we're heading in the right direction.

Day 90

Sometimes it feels like the whole world is coming apart at the seams.  

Nurses in Athens, Georgia reveal that they were instructed to fake covid-19 tests so that there would be fewer positive results, with the thought that it would somehow make the town's efforts to contain the virus look better.

A driver in Atlanta, apparently angered that he had to stop his car while a street protest passed by, took an assault rifle out of his trunk and put it in the front seat, and then drove his car into some nearby pedestrians.  Someone fired some shots at him as he sped away.  The local newspaper covered the story with the headline that protesters fired shots at a motorist, and it wasn't until the sixth paragraph that the rifle and driving into protesters were revealed.  Had the situation been reversed (black protesters brandished an assault rifle before driving a car into white pedestrians, but someone ran him off with a pistol), we'd be hearing all those "good guy with a gun" maxims.

New video shows NYC cops applying a choke hold, a procedure now banned by law, to a black man until he passed out.  Fortunately, he survived, but will the cops be arrested for breaking the law with an illegal choke hold?

The so-called "president" fired the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who just so happened to be investigating several of the "president's" allies and cronies.  The firing occurred late on a Friday afternoon, on Juneteenth, the day before the Tulsa rally, when it was hoped that not many people would notice.

The Tulsa rally.

The country, it seems, is sliding into lawlessness and corruption, with those in power, most noticeably that so-called "president" and the police, putting themselves above the law and acting without recourse or recrimination.  And the people are regressing into combative tribalism, my side versus my enemies, facilitating the kleptocracy.

Sad.

Dreaming of the Masters

BLM edition.

Juneteenth

I don't like the police.

There, I said it.  And I'm not pulling my punches with a "most of them are good" qualifier.  Virtually to a man, they are thuggish, hot-tempered, power-hungry, and obsessed with their own authority.  As we all learned from crossing guards back in elementary school, a little bit of authority brings out the worst in a person.  A lot of authority, including the right to bear arms, arrest people and perform extrajudicial executions, would have a corrosive effect on anybody.

However, cops are a necessary evil, with the emphasis on both "necessary" and "evil."  They are the lesser of two evils, with the worser evil being lawlessness and rule by mob.  But as Geralt would say in The Witcher, the lesser of two evils is still evil. 

This week, a "higher than usual" number of Atlanta cops failed to show up for work in an apparent protest of criminal charges against the two white cops who shot Rayshard Brooks, a black man, in the back.  Apparently, if you can't continue to brutalize persons of color, there's no point in being a cop.  

In my opinion, every single office who failed to show up should be terminated on the spot.  Every single one, no questions asked. Go full Ronald-Reagan-versus-air-traffic-controllers on them and let them know their services are no longer needed.  They chose to express solidarity for two cops who committed a cowardly and callous crime by shooting dead a fleeing suspect rather than protect and serve the citizens they swore an oath to safeguard.

Those aren't peace officers, those are an armed street gang of thugs, identifying by their colors (blue), flashing their signs, and more interested in standing up for each other than the community that pays them for protection.

Fire them all,  each and every one.  Now.

Actually, this post really has nothing to do with the Juneteenth celebration, but it seemed a better title for today's post than "Day 88."

Day 87

"Multiple Florida Hospitals Run Out of ICU Beds as Coronavirus Cases Spike" - Headline today at Newsweek.com

So much for flattening the curve.  We couldn't even make it past the bare minimum standard of the first wave of the pandemic.  We're fucked, folks.

These are the times and this is my record of the times.  This blog has been many things to me over the years, a social media tool, a forum to work out my studies of Zen Buddhism, a concert calendar and show review site, and a place for random rants on random issues. 

This year, 2020, it's documenting an unprecedented confluence of historical events - the last gasps of an American democratic republic under the Trump administration, the coronavirus pandemic, an apparent if belated awakening to America's deep-rooted problem with institutional racism, and the continuation of global climate change.  All happening at the same time.

Years from now, people will be asking what you did, what you said, back at this critical time.  Did you speak out against fascism?  Did you object to and protest racism?  Did you help spread the virus, or did you help keep it contained?  I want to document my actions and my thoughts on these matters now, in real time, for my own future posterity and possibly for the benefit of others.

Day 86

I thought that everybody understood this but apparently not, so I'm going to say it again and I going to say it slowly so that everyone can understand.

The novel coronavirus is called "novel" not because it's a book or something but because it's new and there's not been a virus quite like it before.  It's highly contagious, and there is currently no human immunity to it and no vaccine.  Just today, a new treatment drug has been announced, but all it does is reduce the number of deaths for the worst-hit victims by about a third - those who contract the disease still suffer and suffer mightily from it. It's not a cure, its just that you're now slightly less likely to die from it than before.  

Because it's novel and so particularly deadly, doctors, scientists and the rest of the medical community were initially concerned that the sheer number of patients affected would overrun the number of hospital beds available and in particular the ventilators needed to keep some patients alive.  Therefore, they encouraged all Americans to stay at home and "shelter in place" and avoid all social contact to keep the transmission of the virus down.  If everyone in America stayed home - even the police, the food distribution network, doctors, nurses, etc., everyone - so that there was no (zero) social contact, the virus wouldn't be able to transmit and would have died out pretty quickly.  But that would have been impossible and people would have starved, so as a compromise it was urged that all "non-essential" workers stay in quarantine.  That way, few enough people would be impacted such that hospitals wouldn't be overwhelmed and have to turn dying people away.  There'd still be infections, just fewer.  

This was "flattening the curve," keeping the number of new cases per day down to a minimum so that the care of the sick was manageable.  A lot of people who should have sheltered didn't, but still, all in all, it was a success.  A lot of people stayed home and most states had strict prohibitions against public gatherings, and the number of people in hospitals generally was below the thresholds, although there were still a few scary moments.  At one point, the city of Montgomery, Alabama had no more ICU beds left and had to send patients to Birmingham for treatment.  It also helped that the manufacturing sector stepped up and began producing additional ventilators to help meet the demand.  This was abetted by a presidential order requiring additional ventilator production, but that benefit was probably offset by a feckless lack of leadership that left each state bidding against the others for the available ventilators instead of a federally run distribution system.

As the curve flattened and the rate of new infections each day stopped rising, it was time to begin a controlled reopening of the economy.  Since the virus was still very much present and active, it was essential that caution be maintained.  People are urged to wear face masks when out in public, not to protect themselves from the virus, but to protect others from any virus they may be carrying.  If everyone wore a mask in public, the amount of transmission would be greatly reduced.  People were also encouraged to maintain at least a six-feet distance from one another and to avoid large gatherings, particularly indoors.  And wash your hands regularly.

But it seems some people are mistaking the success of flattening the curve with eradication of the virus, or at least the end of the first wave of infection.  These people  are objecting to wearing masks in public, are willfully, even defiantly meeting in public, and I'm told (although this might be just an internet hoax it sounds so unreal), the so-called "president" is thinking about holding a large indoor rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, one of the current covid hot spots.  People cheering, chanting, and yelling out loud are more likely to spread the virus,  even more than equally-spaced individuals sitting quietly, so this seems like a perfect opportunity for the virus to spread.  It's hard not to feel they deserve whatever they get.

We are still in the middle of a massive, uncontrolled and deadly pandemic.  It hasn't gone away and it's no safer now than it was before.  If we're not cautious and continue to maintain "social distancing," we might be right back where we were in March and have to start another round of involuntary shelter in place orders.

But Americans, it seems, are willfully ignorant, and are instead opting to allow roughly, oh let's say 1,000, of their fellow countrymen die each day until a vaccine is finally available about a year from now.

You're doing a helluva job, Brownies.

Day 85

And just when it seemed that the news cycle had turned permanently sour and we'd never hear any good news ever again, it's suddenly announced that the U.S. Supreme Court has finally ruled that the protections in the Constitution apply to all Americans, regardless of gender, regardless of sexual orientation, regardless of trans- or cis- status.

Justice Neal Gorsuch, who was appointed by Trump himself, wrote the majority opinion.

As of today, nowhere in the United States is it legal to fire someone for being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. 

Trump had other ideas when it came to employment, health care and civil rights protections for LGBTQ individuals, and he  has been especially focused on rolling back policies that have benefited transgender people. In doing so, he is clearly at odds with much of the  rest of the country.  Society appears to have changed on the issue far more than Trump seems to have.

“I find this to be a very sad day,” said Franklin Graham, who leads a large evangelical relief group and can reliably be counted on to spout the completely wrong, un-Christian view on matters.  “I don’t know how this is going to protect us.”

Well, news flash, you bigoted piece of the pious patriarchy - it's not about you.  Not everything out of the Supreme Court is designed to protect you and your rights, even though you are a white, hetero (I presume) male.  Some rulings are passed down to protect others from you, and this one was past due.

We still have covid-19, systematic racism, police brutality, climate change, and an economic depression to deal with, not to mention six more months of the Trump presidency.  But at least, for one bright shining moment, the rights of our LGBTQ sisters and brothers were affirmed.

Day 84

Day 83

Precisely what America doesn't need right now - another police execution of a black man, this time shot from behind as he was trying to run away.  Right here in Atlanta.

This is a difficult case.  Rayshard Brooks was drunk and passed out in his car in the drive-through lane of a Wendy's.  After a long and peaceful conversation, he resisted arrest and wrestled with the officers, stealing and running off with one of their tasers. As he was running away, shots were fired and he died.

Should he have been driving drunk?  No.  Should he have resisted arrest and try to steal a taser?  No.  Did his actions justify extrajudicial police execution?  Not at all.

Would the police in the same situation have fired if Rayshard had been white?  No one knows (it's a hypothetical), but your opinion probably says more about your attitude toward race and police brutality than about the likelihood of what might or might not have happened.

This is the kind of situation the Defund the Police movement is trying to eliminate.  A drunk man is passed out in a car.  This doesn't require two armed policemen to deal with.  An EMT and a trained social worker could have responded, intervened, and even got him to the help that he needed. Handcuffs and tasers were unnecessary and as it turned out in this case, fatal.

For the record, the Wendy's where this occurred was burned down, and video that's been uploaded to YouTube show a white woman setting the fire.  The City of Atlanta is offering a $10,000 reward to whoever can identify the arsonist(s).

Also, one month after the restrictions were lifted, the trend of new coronavirus infections appears to be rising.

A luta continua (the struggle continues).

Dreaming of the Masters

Day 81

So this evening, a bunch of people from my neighborhood got together in the park to talk about racism and current events.

It was slightly awkward at times, enlightening and passionate at others.

It was a warm night (I'm talking about temperature here), so face masks came off after a while, but everyone sat at least six feet from each other, except for one good boy who kept coming over to cuddle with me (I'm talking about a dog here).

This open and candid dialog probably did as much good for those involved as a protest, certainly more good than burning down an AutoZone.

Day 80

Day 79

This post is about other things but this has to first be mentioned, although I don't want to talk much about it because it gets me so angry and upset. You've probably already seen all over the news how Georgia's primary election yesterday was run so miserably, with voters in some precincts having to wait in line for up to five hours to cast a ballot and how some people finally walked away without voting after waiting in line for hours.   The weather yesterday was miserable - it rained for parts of the day, and when it wasn't raining the sun came out and warmed everything up to a particularly humid 85⁰, only to have it start raining again.  Enough to discourage anyone.  And to no one's surprise, the problems were most frequent in minority districts - it seems the blacker the precinct, the worse the problems were.

Mail-in ballots that were never received by the voters who requested them. Machines that mysteriously refused to work once they were at the polling places, or required passwords that no one seemed to have.  It's almost as if someone didn't want people of color to vote. It was gross incompetence by the Republican Secretary of State and by Governor Brian Kemp, the former Secretary of State.  It was voter suppression, the very thing that the Voting Rights Act was supposed to have eliminated, at least before key provisions were struck down by the Roberts Supreme Court in 2013. The only solace I can take is the nation seems to have noticed, and Georgia may be forced to get its act together before the November general election.

I was lucky - my mail-in ballot arrived a couple weeks ago and I was able to mail it in with plenty of time left.  The Secretary of State web site confirms that my ballot was received and accepted.

But what I want to talk about isn't the primary election but, once again, coronavirus.  The 24-hour news cycle may have gone on to other things, but the virus is still here.  In fact, sadly, tragically, yesterday 74 people died in Georgia alone, the fourth deadliest day in Georgia history since the pandemic first began.

The chart of daily reported deaths for Georgia has an odd, "spikey" pattern.  About every week, there's a noticeable increase in the number of deaths, followed by brief interludes of relatively few deaths.  I honestly don't know if this is due to deaths not being reported over weekends or on holidays, followed by several days' worth of morbidity data being submitted on a weekday.  I don't know.  But I do know that despite the interference by the spikes, it's clear that there is no decreasing trend in the number of deaths - our fellow Georgians are dying at the same rate now as as the height of the pandemic in late April.  

The biggest spike, by the words "New deaths," was on April 20 when 85 people died.  Governor Brian Kemp, who apparently can't even run a primary election in this state, opened Georgia back up for business and lifted the shelter-in-place orders on April 27.  Since then, the number of deaths have remained steady, and 74 people died just yesterday.

It doesn't have to be this way.  Here is the graph for Massachusetts:

Even though 55 people died there yesterday, and even though there's some "spikes" in the Massachusetts data, there's clearly a downward trend since the late-April peak in the pandemic.  

New York was hit particularly hard by the pandemic and suffered immensely.  But even New York, for all of its challenges, clearly has a downward trend to the number of deaths.

Yesterday, 70 deaths were reported in New York state, fewer than Georgia's 74 despite the fact that New York has 1.8 times the number of people and despite the fact that New York was at one point the global epicenter of covid-19 infections.

So what was different in New York and Massachusetts than Georgia?  For starters, New York had shelter-in-place restrictions imposed by March 23, Massachusetts by March 30; Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp famously didn't shut down Georgia until April 7 when it was "just learned" that the coronavirus could be spread by people without symptoms.  Models have repeatedly demonstrated how even earlier shutdowns might have saved tens of thousands of more lives nationwide.

Kemp also went toe-to-toe with the White House and local mayors over his decision to reopen large parts of Georgia’s economy ahead of other states, starting April 24. Gov. Cuomo only allowed limited reopenings by region starting May 15; New York City, the hardest hit part of the state, didn't move into the first phase of reopening until June 8.  And in Massachusetts, Gov. Baker announced the first reopenings on May 18 for houses of worship and expanded reopenings for salons, offices, and retail stores for curbside pickup on May 25.

So, New York and Massachusetts - early shutdowns and late reopenings, and a demonstrable decline in covid-19 mortality.  Georgia - late shutdown and early reopening, and the pandemic is just as bad  now as at its height.  We can debate the relative merits of shut down orders, but the coronavirus is doing the talking.

To my surprise, with only 70 New York deaths in a population of 19.5 million versus Georgia's 74 deaths in a population of 10.5 million, its statistically safer to be in Brooklyn right now than Atlanta.

Botched elections, a dying population, no end in sight to the pandemic.  Governor Kemp - you're doing a helluva job there, Brownie!

Defund The Police

"Police officers do not protect and serve people, they protect and serve the status quo, 'polite society,' and private property. Using the incremental mechanisms of the status quo will never reform the police because the status quo relies on police violence to exist. Capitalism requires a permanent underclass to exploit for cheap labor and it requires the cops to bring that underclass to heel."  - An anonymous ex-policeman writing in Medium.

Defunding the police isn't as radical an idea as it sounds at first.  Look at how well funded they are now. The town of Doraville, Georgia, a small suburb of Atlanta where the GM plant used to be, has a freaking tank for goodness sake!  Turn on the television and you'll see hundreds of police from various levels of various jurisdictions wearing all manners of state-of-the-art personnel armor and equipment and armed with guns, flash grenades, tear gas, pepper spray and what have you. Meanwhile, our nurses and medical first responders are improvising by wearing garbage bags as PPE and reusing face masks way past their suggested operating life, putting their lives and the lives of their patients at unnecessary risk.  

We've defunded health care and medical workers to fund the police.  We've defunded welfare, unemployment benefits, and mental-health services, too.  As a result, we now have people out of work with no social safety net, no food on their table and facing evictions. Reagan famously emptied the mental-health facilities and deposited an untold number of mentally ill people on the streets, many of whom are now homeless and causing problems that they don't have the ability to avoid. The resulting crime and discomfort to the status quo cause a need for more police, but instead of putting the money back into health care and the social safety net and solving the problem, we put it into more and more policemen.  And to pay for those additional cops, we have to cut budgets even more elsewhere and on and on it goes in a never-ending vicious cycle.  This needs to end.

Why do we need armed policemen to respond to traffic incidents and to direct traffic?  When my car broke down in the interstate HOV lane leaving me in a perilous and life-threatening situation, the responders who showed up and rescued me weren't armed policeman and didn't need to be, but were a mechanic and an EMT to actually deal with the situation.  And if you tell me that traffic directors need to be armed to protect themselves, I'll point out that the only reason they need protection is because they're armed policemen who've done other things to anger other people.  An unarmed traffic attendant isn't going to be in any more danger than the unarmed construction and utility workers otherwise out blocking traffic (and usually the very reason that someone is needed to be out directing the traffic in the first place).

A man with a gun, good guy or not, is not the answer to every societal problem and we shouldn't be responding to everything, from suicide prevention to counselling the homeless to directing traffic to getting a cat out of a tree, with an armed policeman.  And if the past few weeks have showed us anything, it's that in addition to unbalancing our civic budgets, our reliance on armed policemen for everything is causing so many more problems of its own. 

Defund the police.  Now.

OK Boomer Cafe

OK Cafe is a popular diner/restaurant in Atlanta.  It has a great location near the Buckhead exit from Interstate I-75 and a large parking lot.  It's a convenient spot for Cobb County businessmen to stop for some traditional Southern cooking before they venture into the metropolis of downtown Atlanta or to regroup afterwards.  I've found that after a few meals, the charm wears off and it's a little overpriced and there's almost always a long wait.  But it does a good business or at least it did until the coronavirus pandemic hit and everything, especially restaurants, shut down.

That I-75 exit is also the road that leads to the Governor's Mansion, and the large parking lot at OK Cafe (which it shares with a Starbucks, a Publix supermarket, and other businesses) is a natural staging area for Black Lives Matter protesters before marching to the Mansion.  Before that, it was a staging area for protests both for and against the lockdown orders associated with the pandemic.

However, last weekend, a banner on  the side of the restaurant read "Lives That Matter Are Made With Positive Purpose" (whatever that means) while they hosted a “Tea Party” in the parking lot.

The banner has since been taken down, but an owner confirmed that the "Tea Party" was a reference to “America’s Tea Party 1773” and meant to symbolize Taxation Without Representation. "I suppose you know," the owner stated in an email released to the press, "businesses across America are being looted and burned down. We need our tax dollars spent on stopping this brutality. When the businesses are gone you will be living in a 3rd World country."

"WE ARE NOT BEING PROTECTED. Have you wondered yet; who will be held responsible to repay all the business owners for their losses? Will it be Black Lives Matter? Will it be regular taxpayers who did nothing wrong? "

For the record, OK Cafe was not looted or burned during the civil unrest of the last two weeks.

"Selfish, cruel, and destructive people took businesses across America to their knees," she continued. "Hard-working people lost. The question is—who will pay?"  Her statement further explained that she believed small businesses were not being protected or represented despite paying taxes. 

No, ma'am, it's not that you're being taxed without representation.  Your problem is you keep voting for Republicans like Gov. Brian Kemp and Senator David Purdue and so-called "president" Donald Trump, none of whom gives a shit about you, your small business, or your protection.  You have  got exactly the representation that you requested, it's just that what you requested kind of sucks at doing what you need. 

And even more, your financial problems, the reason your small business is "on its knees," is the months-long shutdown due to coronavirus, not looters or rioters.  But whatever, Karen (she's actually named "Susan," but she most certainly is a "Karen"), if you're facing troubles or hard times, blame in on black people.  

It's worked for white people for centuries, so why stop now? 

The Birth of Antifa (Continued)

The anti-fascist movement didn't begin on June 6, 1944, the day which will live forever in infamy, but it was one of it's largest and certainly best organized early moments.  If your grandparents fought in the Second World War, congratulations, you're descended from an Antifa activist.

Subsequent American wars (Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, etc., ad nauseum) weren't against fascism but against totalitarian Communism or, supposedly, terrorism.  Those wars weren't Antifa efforts.  But the World Wars were most certainly directed against fascism or proto-fascism, and the subsequent American economic boom, industrialization, global prominence, and diplomatic strength were all, for better or worse, the direct result of Antifa efforts.

For worse . . . the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were an Antifa action, so there's that . . . 

What really makes me angry today is hearing the government, especially "president" Big-Mouth Bunker Baby, label all participants in the current civil unrest not directly involved in peaceful mourning of the death of George Floyd as "Antifa," and the press by and large going along with it unquestioningly.  Sure, I'm not surprised by Fox News playing along, but even the mainstream media allows the accusations to go unchallenged.

There are a lot of bad actors out on the streets of America right now, including white supremacists, various other hate groups, the so-called "boogaloo boys" who want to incite a new Civil War (the "boogaloo") along racial lines, and, yes, neo-fascists.  And where there are neo-fascists, Antifa is rarely not far away (and thank goodness for that), but from everything I've seen, their presence has not been significant. 

But the ruling junta in Washington will have you believe that the only proper response to current events, rather than quietly going back to work and jump-starting the economy again, is to peacefully mourn the passing of Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery.  Cry a little, fine, but accept it and move on.  Question the motives behind their deaths, protest racial injustice, white privilege,  or police brutality, and you're Antifa and the National Guard or worse are called out.  

Antifa is not a terrorist organization - it's not even an organization but more of an ideology or a movement - and they are not the ones responsible for the looting and rioting which have unfortunately accompanied some of the protests.  They're not responsible for the escalation of violence.  All that is mostly the fault of neo-nazis and white supremacists, or as they're collectively known, "MAGA."

Dreaming of the Masters

Since the nation still appears to be needing some healing and peace, I again offer Pharoah Sanders, who can articulate the rage we all are feeling but can also sooth the wounds to our soul.  Nozipho, from the 1996 album Message From Home.

Day 74

This picture is the perfect metaphor for 2020.

1. "It only affects the elderly and those with underlying conditions!"
2. "They should be proud to give up their life to get the economy going again!"
3. "No lives matter!"

After the City of Buffalo suspended without pay the two cops who shoved 75-year-old Martin Gugino onto the ground during a protest on Thursday, putting him in the hospital (serious but stable condition),  the entire 57-person Emergency Response Team resigned in protest.  They're still fully-paid Buffalo police, mind you, they only resigned from the ERT, not the BPD.  

Proving that at this point, the cops are nothing but just another street gang, more interested in backing each other than the people they're supposed to protect and serve, the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association backed the 57 walk-offs and claimed that the two suspended officers were only following orders.  "This is an example of officers doing exactly what they're supposed to," according to the association president.  Look at that picture and then think of those words.  We should thank the Buffalo police for proving that thuggish police brutality is a real thing and not some liberal conspiracy.  

Discussing the latest jobs report in a news conference this morning, which showed that unemployment had dropped to "only" 13%, our so-called "president" actually said “Hopefully, George [Floyd] is looking down right now and saying, ‘This is a great thing that’s happening for our country.’ There’s a great day for him, it’s a great day for...everybody.”  

If you need proof that black lives don't matter to Trump, just think that at the height of the protest movement and just the day after George Floyd's funeral, he was willing to use Floyd's death as a prop to demonstrate what a great job Trump thinks he's doing.

Oh yeah, and the LAPD shot an unarmed, homeless man in a wheelchair.

2020: The Shit-Show Continues.