Living in coronavirusworld 124: collateral damage

7/28

Harlem Tavern

The heat continues unrelenting.

We measure our lives by small victories. At the Best market, the Barbecue counter is back for the first time in 4 months. To tell the truth, I didn’t understand what the issue was with barbecue to begin with. But hey, welcome back. And I’ll be taking some barbecue brisket home with me.  For what it’s worth, the sushi bar is back, too.  Didn’t know why got shut down either. Step by step.

in the park....

In the Park, a goose is walking around in the picnic area, checking out the grounds. The turtles are sunning themselves.  When I see them swim, they look like I do swimming the breast stroke.

In Portland, the face-off continues between protestors and the presidents federal troops.  An op ed in the Times has wondered whether the “weird” that Portland…and other places like Austin, Texas and Lake Worth, Florida pride themselves on being may be a function of privilege. Only white people can be “weird.” For people of color it’s too risky.  

Birth control activist and feminist pioneer Margaret Sanger has had her name removed  from New York City’s Planned Parenthood clinic although her statue remains in Greenwich Village. For the moment. Sanger’s reproductive activism was rooted in eugenics and a racist commitment to remove the “weeds” from America’s birth stock. The early connections between abortion and eugenics and the continued disparity of abortion in practice raises some uncomfortable issues in the abortion  conversation that cannot be avoided much longer.

The Ozone Park Session meets  for the first time in four months with an advisory commission from Presbytery.  Like many small churches, this has been a difficult time. They have lost their weekly offerings. They had survived mainly from the rental of their education building by another congregation and that income  too is gone. They  have been unable to pay their insurance and have had to take out a loan from Presbytery. To pay off that loan, tonight they commit to selling their education building. During the covid crisis, they lost two bulwarks of the church, a husband and  wife who died within  weeks of each other from the virus. A member of the Advisory Commission was asked to develop a plan for reopening the church. And it was decided  that the first service after reopening would be a memorial for this couple.  This church of primarily ethnic Asian  Indian immigrants from Trinidad and Tobago and other former British colonial West Indies islands is barely hanging on. Many of our small ethnic churches may not make it through the pandemic, collateral damage. 

I’m a guest of “an independent leftist historian” and Carl Dix, revolutionary communist organizer on the topic of police violence.  We talk about the roots of the word police, in Latin politia, or citizen, government and policy, or public order.  How originally “policing,” in English tradition was carried out by citizens each taking their  turns under the direction of a constable. (So humorously portrayed in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.) The permanent organizing of a public police force grew directly as part of the chattel slavery system of the south.  Until today, when the municipal police serve as an occupying army in service of the empire. (Of course not denying that there are still those, especially immigrants and persons  of color who see this service as away of helping  their families and building good lives. And perhaps aiding their  community.

The heavily armed militarized police and the LA style SWAT teams are latter developments. But the President’s new force is a  different and ominous   element. We could go on with the litany of victims of police violence  and brutality for days without ceasing. (Say their names…) But I press Carl to give us a picture of what a better, socialist world might look like. (I’ve read the party’s constitution several times over and although it is amazingly thorough,  well thought out and attractive, this area apart from the general category of armed forces, militia and other organs of public defense and security..is relatively vague. For Carl, it is all based on commitment  to principles. He recounts a story from his youth where an epileptic woman was mistaken for drunk, manhandled and arrested. Carl retells it as now being handled with committed mental health professionals and community workers.  Ultimately the party (rightfully) believes that the current police crisis is inseparable from the system as it were.  Therefore the best  you can do is to devote yourself to full time  revolution.  I can’t go there. I also have to attend to damages being done to real people in the inexorable present. 

And as unchanging  as the story of police violence is, the response today is unlike anything I’ve eve seen before in my life.  It's  time to bring about changes that can save real lives while the larger battle continues.