{"id":5969,"date":"2020-09-05T19:24:24","date_gmt":"2020-09-05T19:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/pandemicbook\/?page_id=5969"},"modified":"2021-11-13T16:43:59","modified_gmt":"2021-11-13T16:43:59","slug":"09-05","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/pandemicbook\/09-05\/","title":{"rendered":"09-05"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Saturday, September 5<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tUS Cases 6.25 million
US Deaths 188,685<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Sep 3: Three studies report that inexpensive\u00a0steroids<\/a> are the most effective treatment to date for serious COVID-19.\u00a0 Nineteen bioethicists outline measures for equitable distribution of limited supplies of any COVID-19\u00a0vaccine<\/a>; the plan is called the Fair Priority Model. Rochester, New York, suspends<\/a> seven police officers after video surfaces from last March of them pinning down a Black man who is , handcuffed, with a mask over his head.\u00a0 Twitter and Facebook on flag tweets by President Trump repeating his call for Americans to vote twice,<\/a> by mail and in person, to test anti-fraud measures in their states’ election systems. President Trump has privately said on several occasions that U.S.\u00a0military personnel captured or killed in battle are “losers”<\/a> and “suckers.” For example, in 2017, Trump did not attend a memorial for U.S. World War I dead at Aisne-Marne American Cemetery outside Paris because “it’s filled with losers” and “suckers.”<\/a> Trump nonetheless, calls the reports that he has said these things, which are corroborated by\u00a0The Associated Press<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0The Washington Post<\/em>, “totally false.”<\/p>

Sep 4: Multiple outlets corroborate the report (which the president has denied) that Trump has called veterans “suckers” and “losers.”\u00a0\u00a0The Associated Press<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/i>The Washington Post<\/a>, and even\u00a0Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin reports<\/a> that while planning a July 4th military parade, Trump was opposed to including “wounded guys,” saying, “that’s not a good look” and “Americans don’t like that.” President Trump directs<\/a> White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to “ensure that federal agencies cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund” racial sensitivity training sessions, which he described as “divisive” and “un-American.”\u00a0<\/p>

Sep 5: Protests continue<\/a>. New York Attorney General Letitia James announces<\/a> that she will set up a grand jury to consider evidence in the death of Daniel Prude, a 41-year-old Black man who suffocated in Rochester, New York, after police officers placed a hood over his head and pinned him to the ground during an arrest in March. Jacob Blake shares a video message from hospital bed (see below). Blake was shot seven times by police while his children watched last August in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He is paralyzed from the waist down and in constant pain.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Once taken into custody, Rob tells us that the police orchestrated his arrest in order to make him turn over his plans with the \u201cAntifa.\u201d The police played the \u201cGood cop; bad cop\u201d routine. They wanted him to divulge the organization structure, to name names. \u201cClearly, they perceived me as a leader,\u201d Rob laughs. But you can\u2019t be a leader of a thing that does not exist. \u201cSometimes I wish we could<\/em> get coordinated\u2026But these are just regular folks protesting against state violence used on regular folks.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

After he was arrested, neither good cop nor bad cop read him Miranda rights. He told them that he wouldn\u2019t answer questions without a lawyer present anyway. So, they processed him by carting him, not to the large city jail, which was apparently reserved for COVID-positive inmates, but to one further out in an industrial part of the city.<\/span><\/p>\n

I ask about his night in jail. \u201cIt was really, really bad,\u201d he says immediately, his eyes foggy with fatigue and stress. \u201cJust the complete lack of bodily autonomy, being given nothing, in this room with all these other people you don\u2019t know. We didn\u2019t have mattresses to sleep on. We didn\u2019t have pillows or blankets. We didn\u2019t have food until breakfast the next day. We didn\u2019t have water, unless you want to drink out of the little bathroom faucet or the three small Styrofoam cups that were set on a ledge for the 30-plus people in the cell to share. There was one toilet that was exposed completely\u2026 When I generalize it out to how many millions of people are going through this on a daily basis, and how bad we have racialized this and aimed it at the poor, it\u2019s just like, shit, man<\/em>. I was radical about these things before, but the felt experience of it has been transformative.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

[read_more id=”1″ more=”Read more” less=”Read less”]<\/p>\n

After a pause, Abe, the lawyer, replies, \u201cNot a single bit of that was news to me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Rob continues, \u201cIt seems like everyone knows how f—ed up it is. But it is a system that has its own momentum.\u201d It\u2019s far more chaotic than a prison, and perhaps a worse place to be during a pandemic. Almost no one wore a mask, even though they were issued one with their sandals. Even the nurse whose job it was to check his temperature was not wearing a mask. When Rob questioned her about it, she angrily retorted that it was her \u201cConstitutional right\u201d not to wear the mask. She held her temperature gun so far away from him that there is no way she measured anything. \u201cHygiene theater\u201d prevailed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Overnight, Rob curled up in a corner of the concrete cell and tried to use his jail-issued sandals as a pillow, but he didn\u2019t sleep much. The deputies reminded him and the other inmates on a regular basis \u201chow horrible this is.\u201d He was fortunate enough to be bailed out early in the \u201clottery\u201d the next afternoon.<\/span><\/p>\n

He and his wife\u2014who just left her job to try to start a new career\u2014are scrambling to collect the money to pay the retainer for a good lawyer, who says he will take the case despite having little sympathy for the Black Lives Matter movement. As Rob put it, \u201cAt one point he called my actions on the street \u201cchildish and the acts of a p—y.\u201d The attorney reminded Rob that this is exactly what the prosecutors will tell the jury. \u201cThey will say to the jury, \u201cWhat if your wife was giving birth and this guy was blocking traffic and you couldn\u2019t get through to the hospital?\u201d That is the easy story that a prosecutor will tell. And you\u2019re obstructing motorists why? Because you\u2019re a f—ing asshole?\u201d  Even the attorney thinks that it is a risk to go to a jury; even the attorney thinks that the prosecutor\u2019s story is better.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the one hand, Rob isn\u2019t suffering the same treatment as other protesters over the last few months. He wasn\u2019t roughed up, wasn\u2019t thrown into a truly desperate financial situation.[1]<\/a> But he’s scared.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rob\u2019s case is a startling demonstration of just how distorted our understanding is of what is happening this year. The US Crisis Monitor tracked over 10,000 demonstrations and protests across the United States since the killing of George Floyd. Fewer than 600 involved any sort of violence by demonstrators. What\u2019s more, a high percentage of that violence appears to have been instigated by far-right agitators\u2014Boogaloo, Three-Percenters, Hells Angels, Aryan Cowboys\u2014not the BLM protestors themselves.[2]<\/a> As Rob emphatically stated, his group assertively tamped down on even emotional reactions, like shouting at the police. When he was arrested, he was stopping cars so that protestors could cross the street. This comports exactly with all the protest marches I\u2019ve been involved with this year or learned about from others in other cities. We march against police violence. We know that the police are not friendly to us marching against them. Why would we want to incite it?<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s statistical information, and then there\u2019s anecdote. I want to believe that the majority of educated people rely largely on the former and can see that protesters are only asking for police brutality to be curbed, in part by diverting funds from hugely swelling police budgets spent in part on military-grade hardware, and toward the kinds of white-collar professionals who can help vulnerable citizens without beating, shooting, or arresting them.[3]<\/a> Nonetheless, despite the fact that the BLM marches this summer were some of the largest in American history, only a small fraction of Americans actually took part in them. That means that what most people \u201cexperience\u201d is what appears on television and on social media. When the media proclaims that there is a terrifying organization called Antifa out there, that BLM protests are really just a cover for Antifa, and that American cities are on the verge of exploding into looting and violence, the under-informed power structures operate under that assumption. That\u2019s the world into which Rob has been swept. Abe\u2019s years of experience working with police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges in multiple cities at the municipal, state, and even federal level affirms this reading.<\/span><\/p>\n

As we enter Labor Day weekend, it feels like America is turning another corner. The rush of empathy for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and so many others that translated into the BLM marches in late May has dissipated somewhat.[4]<\/a> Most of the nation\u2019s schools will be open by next Tuesday. Universities are already dealing with exploding cases of coronavirus. Some, like my own, shrug off the consequences for students, staff, administrators, and faculty. Telework is now firmly in place. Masks are either being worn or aggressively not. With most football out of commission, the news media seems to have one sport on their minds: a game that pits those who say, along with ESPN commentator Kirk Herbstreit that \u201cwe have to do better\u201d against those who want \u201ctwelve more years,\u201d of this.[5]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n


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Notes<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve and Somil Trivedi, \u201cWhy Prosecutors Keep Letting Police Get Away With Murder,\u201d Slate Magazine<\/i>, June 5, 2020, https:\/\/slate.com\/news-and-politics\/2020\/06\/why-prosecutors-keep-letting-police-get-away-with-murder.html<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Sam Jones, \u201cUS Crisis Monitor Releases Full Data for Summer 2020,\u201d Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, August 31, 2020, https:\/\/acleddata.com\/2020\/08\/31\/us-crisis-monitor-releases-full-data-for-summer-2020\/<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> https:\/\/twitter.com\/businessinsider\/status\/1295950122971549696?s=20<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Perry Bacon Jr, \u201cCould A Backlash Against Black Lives Matter Hurt Biden? The Two Don\u2019t Appear Linked So Far.,\u201d FiveThirtyEight<\/em> (blog), August 27, 2020, https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/could-a-backlash-against-black-lives-matter-hurt-biden-the-two-dont-appear-linked-so-far\/<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Jeff Sharlet, \u201c\u2018Say 12 More Years\u2019: At the RNC, Trump\u2019s Authoritarian \u2018Joke\u2019 Slips Closer to Reality,\u201d Vanity Fair<\/i>, August 24, 2020, https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/2020\/08\/at-repulibcan-national-convention-trump-authoritarian-joke-slips-closer-to-reality<\/a>; Umut Uras, \u201cPortland Police Make \u2018multiple Arrests\u2019 as Protests near 100 Days,\u201d Al Jazeera<\/i>, September 4, 2020, https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2020\/09\/portland-police-multiple-arrests-protests-100-days-200905090951359.html<\/a>.<\/span>
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Jacob Blake’s message from the hospital, September 5, 2020. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LNAmkM3-F_I<\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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“Mussolini to Antifa: The History of Anti-Fascism,” Imperial War Museums, July 14, 2020, https:\/\/youtu.be\/CSkUdsbCJVw\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Trevor Noah, “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Antagonists of the Alt-Right,” The Daily Show, August 31, 2017, https:\/\/youtu.be\/kmpqnxpYUqA<\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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