Let's just call him "45".
45 aka Bunkerboy holed himself up as protestors gathered outside and as tax-payer funded forces defended him. As the protests have continued, the White House is essentially a fortress, with its lights out.
This is the moment we are living in.
Journalists and reporters are getting attacked and arrested. Sometimes live, on camera. Black reporters especially. Journos and their crew are also getting teargassed. What country are we living in? Once again, the notion of what a "first world country" is versus a "third world country" is a pure fallacy and folly. The press is getting attacked, here, now. This is the moment we are living in.
Daily curfews. Curfews. I'm privileged enough to not have lived in a warzone, to not have lived in a city under curfew before. Yet here we are, under curfew. Not just in Los Angeles, but in dozens of cities across this manifest-destiny-country. Will we get used to curfews? This is the moment we are living in.
How do we learn about such curfews? We get what are called amber alerts, on our smartphones. They BLARE and DISRUPT. Before, such alerts were sent out perhaps every few weeks or so - around here, usually of a missing person every now and then. Now, we get them everyday, often multiple times a day, often with conflicting times about when the curfew starts. I live in a part of LA where one area might have a 6pm or 4pm curfew, but around the corner, the curfew could be at 1pm. Most of the time, these alerts don't arrive until a few minutes before the actual curfew begins, which is suspicious. This is the moment we are living in.
Let's not forget of course, about the amount of militarized police on our streets. And with them, the National Guard. Their trucks and tanks. They are ugly. They're meant to be ugly. And imposing, and intimidating. This is the moment we are...
Helicopters overhead, always buzzing. Often they sync up with the wailing sirens. WE ARE IN A PANDEMIC, STILL. Before let's say about a week ago, I understood the sirens to be related to Covid patients, as the number of cases in LA county continue to increase. Now, these sirens and their playmates the helicopters, are all in overdrive simply because people are choosing to express themselves out on the street. The moment we are living in...
The pandemic, the virus, isn't going anywhere. It's re-surging as I type this, as we breathe, as some of us stop breathing. Hospital and emergency workers couldn't get masks. But our militarized police forces? They didn't seem to have any problem. They've also been pulling off the masks of protestors and are macing them in the face. This is the moment that we are all living in.
Oh yeah, and 45 wants to make this all even more of a dictatorship - on top of curfews, amber alerts, the attacks on the press, and the national guard already being deployed, 45 wants the full military out on the streets of America, to demolish protestors essentially. Even though we have a right to protest.
It's a dictatorship already, and it has been, and the government's been throwing up fascism for a long time. This is the moment we are living in.
Let's zoom in. Allow me to navel-gaze for a bit. Things have felt off since the beginning of last year when I lost my father. Life hasn't been the same since, no matter how smiley or cheery or friendly I may have been at times. The grief doesn't actually go anywhere, it's always there, always. So with these previous months of a pandemic, quarantine and lockdown, life was already warped and just became more and more warped, as we all went into social isolation. Yet we were all still expected to function, and for some, still expected to work, and work was actually helpful for me at times, and a great distraction, and a fair amount of productivity even happened.
But, this pandemic has turned a corner. As the country started to stupidly re-open we are now in a whirlpool of absurdity: we are witnessing what's truly a dictatorship showing its force, people are protesting while wearing masks, businesses are getting boarded up which changes our physical and visual landscape (and I'm okay with the "shopping" that's been happening), but yet we are supposed to fully function, keep our head in the sand, and get on. Perhaps at times, we'll need to do exactly that, in order to stay sane. But at other times, maybe we just don't want to, or can't.
In a zoom video chat with nearly 350 students, staff, and faculty, one after another, black students testified about their pain. Pain. Pain that I'll never be able to understand. The pain was there for all to see, with their tears, or choked up voices, and here they are, and we are, all of us separate and in our own homes, because of this quarantine, this pandemic. Black students testifying and choosing to testify, and showing true vulnerability, in front of us all, on our screens as we watched and listened to them from their homes, from their places of isolation. About how much we don't listen, of how much erasure happens, of how much they hurt. Of pain. It was heartbreaking.
This is the moment that we are living in.
45 aka Bunkerboy holed himself up as protestors gathered outside and as tax-payer funded forces defended him. As the protests have continued, the White House is essentially a fortress, with its lights out.
This is the moment we are living in.
Journalists and reporters are getting attacked and arrested. Sometimes live, on camera. Black reporters especially. Journos and their crew are also getting teargassed. What country are we living in? Once again, the notion of what a "first world country" is versus a "third world country" is a pure fallacy and folly. The press is getting attacked, here, now. This is the moment we are living in.
Daily curfews. Curfews. I'm privileged enough to not have lived in a warzone, to not have lived in a city under curfew before. Yet here we are, under curfew. Not just in Los Angeles, but in dozens of cities across this manifest-destiny-country. Will we get used to curfews? This is the moment we are living in.
How do we learn about such curfews? We get what are called amber alerts, on our smartphones. They BLARE and DISRUPT. Before, such alerts were sent out perhaps every few weeks or so - around here, usually of a missing person every now and then. Now, we get them everyday, often multiple times a day, often with conflicting times about when the curfew starts. I live in a part of LA where one area might have a 6pm or 4pm curfew, but around the corner, the curfew could be at 1pm. Most of the time, these alerts don't arrive until a few minutes before the actual curfew begins, which is suspicious. This is the moment we are living in.
Let's not forget of course, about the amount of militarized police on our streets. And with them, the National Guard. Their trucks and tanks. They are ugly. They're meant to be ugly. And imposing, and intimidating. This is the moment we are...
Helicopters overhead, always buzzing. Often they sync up with the wailing sirens. WE ARE IN A PANDEMIC, STILL. Before let's say about a week ago, I understood the sirens to be related to Covid patients, as the number of cases in LA county continue to increase. Now, these sirens and their playmates the helicopters, are all in overdrive simply because people are choosing to express themselves out on the street. The moment we are living in...
The pandemic, the virus, isn't going anywhere. It's re-surging as I type this, as we breathe, as some of us stop breathing. Hospital and emergency workers couldn't get masks. But our militarized police forces? They didn't seem to have any problem. They've also been pulling off the masks of protestors and are macing them in the face. This is the moment that we are all living in.
Oh yeah, and 45 wants to make this all even more of a dictatorship - on top of curfews, amber alerts, the attacks on the press, and the national guard already being deployed, 45 wants the full military out on the streets of America, to demolish protestors essentially. Even though we have a right to protest.
It's a dictatorship already, and it has been, and the government's been throwing up fascism for a long time. This is the moment we are living in.
Let's zoom in. Allow me to navel-gaze for a bit. Things have felt off since the beginning of last year when I lost my father. Life hasn't been the same since, no matter how smiley or cheery or friendly I may have been at times. The grief doesn't actually go anywhere, it's always there, always. So with these previous months of a pandemic, quarantine and lockdown, life was already warped and just became more and more warped, as we all went into social isolation. Yet we were all still expected to function, and for some, still expected to work, and work was actually helpful for me at times, and a great distraction, and a fair amount of productivity even happened.
But, this pandemic has turned a corner. As the country started to stupidly re-open we are now in a whirlpool of absurdity: we are witnessing what's truly a dictatorship showing its force, people are protesting while wearing masks, businesses are getting boarded up which changes our physical and visual landscape (and I'm okay with the "shopping" that's been happening), but yet we are supposed to fully function, keep our head in the sand, and get on. Perhaps at times, we'll need to do exactly that, in order to stay sane. But at other times, maybe we just don't want to, or can't.
In a zoom video chat with nearly 350 students, staff, and faculty, one after another, black students testified about their pain. Pain. Pain that I'll never be able to understand. The pain was there for all to see, with their tears, or choked up voices, and here they are, and we are, all of us separate and in our own homes, because of this quarantine, this pandemic. Black students testifying and choosing to testify, and showing true vulnerability, in front of us all, on our screens as we watched and listened to them from their homes, from their places of isolation. About how much we don't listen, of how much erasure happens, of how much they hurt. Of pain. It was heartbreaking.
This is the moment that we are living in.
