Days 80-137-----

The murder of George Floyd triggered a sustained revolution that has swept across the entire country, filling every city's streets with protest and retaliatory police brutality on par with the civil rights movement in 1968. It has been two months of daily protests today. They fill our very street. The punishing throb of police helicopter blades filled the sky every night for weeks on end--getting louder the more brutally the police attacked--so many innocent people protesting the very thing they are being victimized for every night--the particularly fierce battles are mostly on the weekends now. As the city opens up, some people have to work or lose all unemployment, even if their work is unsafe.

Everyone predicted the protests would trigger the second wave of covid, but as you can see in the second photo, protestors have been more careful to socially distance than any one else. When I was out most people were wearing two, sometimes three masks, at once, despite the stifling humidity of this sudden summer. We joined from the fire escape whenever protests marched down our street and once they passed during a nap and I threw on converse and mask and dashed out to join them. Of course bambi woke up and sobbed because the sound of the chanting terrified her at the beginning (now all her animals and dolls don signs and march around the apartment shouting "NO JUSTICE NO PEACE!").

The only times protests became unsafe have been when the police kettle us. They force us to stop or be beaten. That only happened once when I was out. But it haunted me and I quarantined for 14 days and avoided looking up all the emerging threats of the virus on children. One night during the first week or two the police trapped protestors on the Manhattan Bridge (half a block from us) for hours in pouring rain--thousands of people in standing room only. The helicopters were deafening and no one slept that night. The bambi is still terrified of helicopters, and rightly so. They always mean horrific injustices are being rained down on people simply asking not to be killed.

During the first week I fractured my toe with the vacuum and couldn't attend anymore protests and by the time I was healed they were recommending no one go out who couldn't be arrested. I am still wrestling with that... does having a child count? She is so scared but how much more Black children??? I don't know what is right but there's much that can be done apart from marching. There were all these lists going around matching activisms to different abilities and giftings... the thing is, I think I'm really good at the marching kind of protest. But I'm also a parent. And I'm still there. I spent hours arguing with people who haven't talked to me in a decade but suddenly want to tell me why supporting Black Lives Matter isn't "christian" somehow.... But they refused to listen to me and I think I was trying to punish myself for not marching by continuing to engage them. And it was not helping Black lives so I stopped replying to most. But continued talking to family members--some--more on that later.

On day 100 of covid NYC parks re-opened. We use them cautiously and not at all daily now. I bring alcohol wipes for swing chains and we mostly stick to the sprinklers. Even sitting on benches feels wrong still. Although they now say its not spread by contact. So out of doors is reasonably safe and so are benches. But everything makes me feel crazy-- Haley Nahman explained the feeling well: "Compulsively sanitizing always makes me feel half crazy, because I'm either doing it unnecessarily or I'm literally wiping away a lethal virus, neither of which I want to be true."

I started working again-- selling books on the street, as it turns out, is a very virus friendly (unfriendly?) way to distribute used books. In fact, I and the other street booksellers are the only used booksellers open right now, that I know of. The Strand is sort of open but they encourage pick up rather than browsing and used book buying is best done browsed.

We've been going out more-- to the coffee shop around the block. They re-opened and I am now doing a weekly pop up with the bookcart in their street seating.

Street seating is now a thing. Pretty much any restaurant in NYC can convert the parking space in front of them into seating. In this way it's a wild and lawless summer. No rules apply. Unless you think Black lives should be treated with justice and not crushed to death under the knee of any cop who sees fit. Abolish police. NOW.

The small minded maniac in who is president for the time being is unleashing unmarked federal agents on Portland and now Seattle. They are arresting and attacking anyone who protests with impunity. I read a quote somewhere about the spread of fascism in Nigeria-- something about you will never feel like a line has been crossed because they will always move the line. I need to find the direct quote.

I have read so much these two months--at first I couldn't read at all, like at the beginning of everything in March-- but then I could and so much non fiction and anti-racist, anti- white supremacy, Black women books. And the more I read the less I know. For a blip I think I grasp it--my own culpability, that I am all of it. Then the trauma of that guilt pushes it out of my mind and I writhe in unacceptable confusion--confusion that I'd rather have than feeling sure of something that I should never feel sure and smug about. The sleepless nights, the beat of helicopter wings, the curfews broken then removed, shops happy to be looted, occupy city hall....

Calls to ignore my own privilege, not to pretend it doesn't exist but to simply not enact it: "I have privileges I do not enact because of the importance of just, ethical parenting." -Latonya Yvette

Then a vacation that we'd planned in the early days, when no one could leave their tiny apartments and there was no grass or public space. And when jesse's work said vacation time was use it or lose it before august. The guilt of leaving. How can we leave our city at this time?? And yet knowing everyone not vacationing would if they could for their kid's sake. Or is that what I have to tell myself?