A Time of Fire & Ruin

John Minchillo / AP

I've been trying to avoid posting things that are personal to me at the moment - no new mixes, no new writing, no nothing - in an effort to keep the conversation on the protests revolving around the death of George Floyd (and numerous others in the last several months). I've been firmly focused on the events happening in my own downtown area, as well as those of other cities across the country (and the world, at this point!). But I think this is an important thing to speak on, if only because I'm sure others are feeling it too.

When I moved into this apartment right before quarantine, I thought I was mentally prepared to be cooped up until August. In fact, I told my coworkers that's how long I thought it would probably last and that I was ready for it. I moved into this new place because it had a (tiny) gym and a pool and teh apartment was spacious enough for my current needs. I expected to be bunkered up with my books and my vinyl and my movies, waiting for a plateau of cases so that the world could interact normally again without completely overcrowding hospitals or medical workers.

However, I did not expect the world to catch fire during the middle of that. Though with the way half the population treated the COVID-19 lockdown/quarantine measures and proposed guidelines, I probably should've expected it. People have a beautifully selfish way of disappointing you when it matters most and that's a truism you can take with you to the grave.

I am definitely missing physical contact. I am missing spending time with my friends in various locales doing various things at all times of the day or night. That's a bit of normality that has been removed from my personal daily activities. I avoid people (all but maybe 2 or 3) as I'm currently running errands for a parent going through her fourth round of chemo. Because this ruins her immune system, I try to do all I can on her behalf with the stuff that requires public interaction. Luckily, she is also pretty self-sufficient and hasn't needed much. Still, I remain hyper-cautious about my interactions.

This has certainly created a bit of mental strain, but nothing that can't be overcome. It was previously fought against with binge-watching shows I needed to catch up on or movies I'd seen a million times before. Then my apartment complex started demanding that people make appointments to use the gym. Only two people would be allowed inside at once, and each person was allowed 45 minutes (leaving the last 15 minutes of an hour to sanitize the equipment before its next use).

I signed up immediately and got 4pm slots from Monday through Saturday the first week. Same for the week after that. And I plan on keeping that same schedule for as long as possible since I'm working from home and the job flexibility allows it.

I started working out the Tuesday after Memorial Day, the first day of protests over the murder of George Floyd by four police officers, and I wondered if anything was going to come the protests. I wondered if, like so many times before it, if the voices and the righteous (and justified) anger would get us closer to a place where we needed to be in regards to stifling police brutality. My optimism was low because we've seen time and again that justice rarely works in favor of the people when the police are the ones who've done the damage, who have violated the supposed trust between protector and protected.

Years ago, during my first year of college, I was a member of Anti-Racist Action. I won't go into details, but I will say that I was involved in some very intentional dust-ups with bigots and racists in our small college town. My boots got a good workout, but my anger at the stupidity of bigoted thoughts never diminished. Racism has always been a stupid ideology to me. It is illogical and dehumanizing and we have seen what it does to large swathes of people before.

The working out has, luckily, been stifling my anger. I have been able to place it somewhere else, somewhere healthier, while I am unable to be with the masses. But I imagine there are others like me without a proper outlet to let that anger dissipate. These are hard fucking times for even the strongest of people and these times require a LOT of out the average person. Yet every night, I watch live streams of cities on the brink and the anger rises again.

This is all to say that I should've been protesting with my city. I should've been down there, side by side with my people, the same ones fighting for the safety of people that don't look like them or come from the same backgrounds as them. Because of lasting nerve damage from back surgery a few years ago, I am unable to stand for long periods of time (though the working out has helped get rid of the random cramping that often occurs up and down my entire leg). Because of my home situation, I can't afford to be near so many people at once.

And so I sit at home, angry, watching police in militarized gear using tear gas and shooting rubber bullets at the unprotected, the populace they are SUPPOSED to be watching over. I continue to see instances of elderly protestors pushed over and ignored as blood spills from their ears. I see children gassed. I see the indiscriminate use of force against peaceful protestors (though there are certainly those in the crowds who are there to instigate bullshit, but their numbers are far fewer). I see intentional aggression against medics on the ground and press corp documenting everything and that old and familiar anger bubbles up, simmers, begins to boil over.

Buffalo Police Department / June 4th, 2020

Which leads me to wonder how much anger must reside within the hearts and minds of those in uniform. When you're taught to actively look for criminals, when that is your literal job, you inevitably SEE everyone as a criminal. When you're surrounded by coworkers who are constantly armed and seeking out acts that justify the need for the weapons at your disposal, how much of that negatively affects your thinking? How much of that daily toxification of thoughts seeps into every fiber of your being and becomes a precursor to your more violent actions? I have to think it's quite a bit, purely based on my own emotional experiences happening this week. I believe this is a massive part of the problem of current policing.

It is a good thing I am forcing myself to stay home because I see fascist tendencies in all their (uni)forms playing out in our streets, the protests against police aggression being met with, ironically, the very police aggression being protested against. The number of times I've wanted to lace up my boots again, purely to get violent when the police turn first has been numerous. Were I to end up downtown, I would also absolutely end up in jail; that is the kind of thought process I don't normally have, but the constant onslaught of seeing these actions has turned my own thoughts toxic. Round and round we go, an inevitable tit-for-tat exchange of anger for anger, of violence for violence...and none of it doing much good for the self.

The only thing giving me hope right now is that the people are very much over this shit and, without widespread policing policies placed under serious microscopes and then altered and adapted, the protests will continue until there is a solid solution or outright violence. While I'm not advocating for the latter, I'm totally expecting it based on what history has shown us.

And if there are so many "good apples" amongst the (apparently) so few "bad apples," where the fuck are they and why aren't they standing up and screaming for the changes they also need to be implemented? This country was started out of violence, spent 222 of its 239 years at war with other countries, and will most likely end due to violence. It's practically baked into our DNA at this point.

Here is a list of resources if you'd like to lend a hand in some way.

• https://www.naacp.org/campaigns/we-are-done-dying/
• https://blacklivesmatter.com/
• https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/12y7-Wa4gi8HUeFTv17gPcbMGuVX5cqIudLJmhOrq1-k/mobilebasic

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