If you were expecting one of those metaphorical exhortations to blaze your own trail, hack your way through the many barriers we face and ultimately find meaning from the journey, then you'd be wrong.
I literally made a path today. Where once was four foot teazel and couch grasses, now lies a flat, walkable path. I have blazed a fresh trail through the neglected allotment plot, hacked my way through the jungle and ultimately found meaning in a cold beer on my return. A beer or wine after editing copy just doesn't have the same glorious let-go sigh of happiness as a post-sod digging session.
I documented my journey along the path thus…
Before shot from a few weeks ago when the weed path was only a foot high.Note dug-up couch grass and teazel pile in the distance also. The weeding never ends.Cardboard layer – it'll last a few months.Hay layer – et voila!
Thanks
Speaking of a drinks after work during lockdown. Today I discovered the joys of new Covocabulary (hat-tip and thank you to Julia Catnip!). New vocab includes lockdown drinks at home called quarantinis, also known as locktails, often drunk during virtual happy hour. I kind of want to add coronawinos to the list (too tenuous?).
Others I like include:
upperwear – the part of your clothing seen on screen
covidiot – self-explanatory
zoombie – when you've used Zoom too much.
On dictionary.com there's also doomscrolling (for endless Covid-19 news), quarantine and chill (the new Netflix and chill), and Miley (Cyrus, virus). And today I saw pandemonstration and normstalgia under the Twitter hashtag for #coronaspeak. Let's see if my pun f(r)iends come up with anything better when I publish…
I'll file all this under gallow's humour, shall I?
The magnificent cinnabar moth – killers of ragwort! – chilling on allotment teazel yesterday.
A disease modelling study from Imperial Collage London has estimated that without lockdown three million lives in Europe would have been lost, including 470,000 in the UK. The study ran up until the start of May when 130,000 had died in the 11 European countries assessed; and the UK had a death toll of 26,771.
I think we all know that, without us all staying home, the numbers could have been so much worse. But the buried intro to the story is that statistically, only a small proportion of people have actually been infected, and that means that we are still only "at the beginning of the pandemic".
Food for thought as we start to relax. And another reminder that it is yet to go through most of the population.
We're all individually on a spectrum of how we perceive the risks of Covid-19. Sometimes I feel like I've forgotten there is a global pandemic going on because even socialising at a distance has become normal and therefore less noticeable. Other times, I'm jumpy when someone else forgets and gets too near, or coughs and sneezes nearby.
I'm just glad it is summer here so we can meet up outside and that I don't have to go into a workplace where the risks need to be managed daily. The winter is going to be… difficult.
Thanks
Did I mention that I got to meet my three-month-old great nephew this week? I feel like I have missed so much of his development as he is already so different from a newborn, and it was hard not to be able to hold him and burble like a high-pitched loon. But it was also great to see my niece doing so well and looking so happy.
And how drunk do babies look when they are tired? Hilarious.
In other news, tonight I came home from the allotment – beans, cucumber, sweet potato and tomatillos now transplanted – to find the ineffable Battlecat snoozing on my beanbag.
I tried to explain allergies to him but the little fecker just wandered off and jumped over the fence. Between him spraying my ferns and lolling around on tables and chairs, and Clem chinning all obstacles, this is a most scented garden!
Battlecat chilling on the beanbag – earlier he spent a good 20 minutes rolling around on the table in the foreground. No respect! None!
Rabbit news – we got a leaflet through the door today saying a neighbour had lost their pet ferret. So we are now on high predator alert as well as all the other alerts we have to stay alert to..
I don't think I've ever actually met my next guest poster but I've become her internet fangirl. Claire Edwards writes an irregular newsletter from her world, plus what she is reading, listening to and watching. It's called Emotional Whiplash, it's very good and you can view the archive and sign up to it here. I found it via following her partner Andy Cowley of the Walsall band, 8-bit Ninjas, who local friends may know. Claire kindly said yes to me reposting her April newsletter extract on her lockdown experience. Claire, Andy and their awesome dog now live in Surrey. It's no Walsall but they seem to like it.
As to her lockdown experience Claire says in 800 words pretty much what I have been talking about in 74 posts, covering deep change, new sleep cycles, new ways of communication, the welcome absence of cars, missing family, missing holidays, home exercise and the compulsive news cycle.
This is my tl;dr…
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It's been over a month since the UK entered lockdown, and probably two months since it started to become clear that this pandemic was something that was going to profoundly affect all of our lives. Over the last month the rhythms of my life have shifted profoundly – I've barely been more than a mile away from my house, apart from one or two bike rides which have taken us as far the next few villages. Freed of the need to actually travel to an office I can wake up naturally, and go to bed later as befits my night owl nature.
Video conferencing has become part of my daily life – I chat to academics in their box rooms, and occasionally catch a glimpse of their children or pets. My own dog has become a standing joke with colleagues as he invariably starts barking furiously at some imagined intruder outside at least once during every call I have.
Zoom drinks with friends are joyous and anarchic – we started off with the intention of running a quarantine book club but ended up just drinking wine and talking nonsense for two hours. The irony of social distancing is that I'm now seeing friends who live further away or who have children much more frequently than before – I wonder if perhaps this is a shift in communication we should keep?
People say hi in the street much more frequently than at any point since we moved to Surrey, overcompensating for the fact that we all have to physically avoid one another.
We walk the dog on the field opposite our house, primarily because it's quiet and offers plenty of space to stay away from other walkers. I note with amusement how many more people are using "our" field now that outdoor time and space is at a premium.
The road outside our house, in normal times always busy with cars, is quiet even in the week. The noise of a single car seems much greater than before, particularly in the evenings and at weekends when everywhere is deserted.
My desk faces the window and I spot deer, pheasants, a heron, and lots of warring ducks. The dog mostly ignores the wildlife but saw a fox on a late night walk last week and got extremely angry.
I miss my family. We talk every week but it's not the same. I see my sister's 11-month-old baby change and grow week by week – since I saw him last he's mastered crawling and is starting to talk. I know I'll miss his first birthday and it breaks my heart. As does the fact that he strokes the iPad screen when Andy or I are talking. I really hope he remembers me still when we're allowed to travel again.
I worry about Andy's mum, recovering from pneumonia and still grieving. I miss being able to jump in the car or get on a train, at a moments notice if need be, to go and see the people I love.
We have a cottage booked in the Lake District for late June. I wait to see whether by some miracle we might be able to go, knowing deep down that we'll have to postpone it. Not knowing when to postpone to – will September be possible? Would it be more sensible to just write this year off and rebook for next June?
I watch the TV and make mental lists of everywhere I'd like to go once I can travel. Most of the destinations are in the UK. I can't imagine when I'll next get on a plane.
I do a lot of yoga and cycling in our back bedroom, converted to an exercise room for the duration of the lockdown. Our next door neighbour uses his turbo trainer in the garden which seems like a nice idea but I can't be bothered to change our set up now. I cycle with the window open and the fan on instead!
I run when I can, finding new routes in the local countryside that avoid people and taking flying leaps into hedgerows to maintain appropriate social distancing. My running club organises virtual relays, treasure hunts, and virtual training sessions – after not getting as involved as I'd like since we moved I suddenly feel much more part of something. I resolve to stop making excuses for not going to club nights once we are allowed to train together again, whenever that may be.
I miss swimming so much I dream about it.
The temptation to keep refreshing the news and Twitter to see if something has changed is overwhelming. I've deleted and reinstalled Twitter several times now to try and resist the temptation of scrolling but it doesn't really help.
Some days I feel positive, like I've adapted well and that the future will be brighter soon. Some days I feel like this might never end. I think that's normal?
Today I (back to Fiona here) am thankful for anti-histamines and easy access to medicines in the UK. It's hay fever season and today it hit me. By 5pm I was able to function again and went to do some digging, groaning and sighing at the allotment.
In positive statistical news – strange how a death toll can be positive – the UK recorded 77 deaths yesterday, the lowest since lockdown began. And no new coronavirus deaths were recorded in Scotland or Northern Ireland. It's partly the effect of lower incoming stats after a weekend apparently.
Speaking of transmission, I saw two teenagers snogging in the park on the way to the allotment, surrounded by their mates hanging out on the swings. I'm not here to demonise them but a whole world of quips were going through my mind: from "You'll catch something…" to "Wash your hands after." Or as friends have suggested: “No, no, it’s Stay Alert, not Start To Flirt”, “Kiss of death”, “Two metres… unless you two are from the same household, in which case I hope your mother doesn’t find out!”, “[name] and [name] sitting in a tree / D-I-S-T-A-N-C-I-N-G” and “This is NOT Solihull!”
Of course, I said nothing. Teenage first kisses and first loves are probably always going to trump coronavirus. As someone said to me today after I wrote about my uncertainty over mass protests in a time of Covid-19, some things are just more important to those involved, also and some things are going to happen now and can't be postponed.
Life goes on. Death does too.
PS. A message from the Zoe Covid-19 app: "If you joined any peaceful protests this weekend, please don’t forget to quarantine yourself afterwards to protect others."
Behold my tomato structure – they are protected on nearly all sides from the wind but will grow up to 2m tall so hoping for a mild summer.
People make allotments look so easy and I'm equally guilty of posting pretty pictures of my plot to the Instagrams. Today it took my almost four hours of back-breaking preparation to get 16 tomatoes plants in the ground.
This is because the soil needed a dig over and de-weed. Then a rake. Then figuring out some kind of structure that creates a little mesh-wrapped micro climate for the toms since I don't have a greenhouse or polytunnel. Then bashing the stakes in the ground with a mallet. Then filling the wheelbarrow with compost. Then planting the delicate little things and tying them to the stake. Then watering. Then wrapping in mesh and tying that on. Putting tools away, bringing stuff home. And no guarantee of blight-free tomatoes at the end of it. We'll see what this summer brings.
I've got another 20-30 plants to go in the ground all with different needs and planting structures (at which I'm rubbish – see tomato structure in top photo.) Here's this year's plan, currently on a three-year crop rotation. (Anna is my occasional plot partner.)
Allotment 2020.
Meanwhile at home I've been sorting out my collage cuts and resource library. I've been resistant to sorting them out as there are cuts everywhere from various sessions last year and many works in progress that haven't been stuck down yet. But it was actually quite enjoyable and I now have a cube of (clockwise from left):
Cuts and tear sheets in organised folders and random boxes
Magazines going back years
Picture books for cutting up
Collage books/inspiration and coffee table books for cutting up.
Here's a close up of the folders. The 'folder of folders' contains sleeves of stuff such as weird backgrounds, limbs, other body parts, vehicles, maps, etc. The boxes contains odd cuts for that lovely random element of collage plus other materials (Quality St wrappers, foil, sofa samples, autumn leaves).
I have a sneaking suspicion that I like the foraging for images and the sorting out more than the actual collaging. A bit like at the allotment I like the digging over and preparation in Feb-March more than the planting, weeding and cropping.
I have to go back to the allotment tomorrow to get the peas and beans and courgettes in so I'm now chilling with a glass of white and waiting for dinner.
I'm on one sofa tippity-tapping away, Pete is on the other doing the same. It's like some kind of digital marital ballet. Soon we'll stop and eat and watch a ridiculous TV series.
Thanks
Today I'm thankful for having an allotment half-plot. This is my fourth year and I nearly gave it up. But it's taught me a lot about how to grow food from scratch. Which is potentially a very useful skill to have during a pandemic.
And there is a lovely community around it – I have been given lots of plants from other's leftovers/excess. Some of the plants, I don't even know what they are. Tomatillos, for example.
I'm feeling very George Orwell – he used to write about his allotment and World War 2, mixing political newss/views among crop growing updates.
Big world events make the headlines of history but there is a world of small mundane or marvellous happenings – such as seeing my great nephew for the first time since he was born yesterday – in between the tragedy.
I haven't known what to write about the protests over the death of George Floyd but I have to admit the mass protest element worries me and I didn't go to the Birmingham demo partly for that reason.
Yesterday 4,000 people gathered for the Black Lives Matter protest in Birmingham. The continuing protests are emblematic of an issue that is of massive significance in our time, and they may or may not trigger change. (Background: my protest spirit was broken after the 2003 London Anti Iraq War march, in which one million voices were not enough to stop Blair going to war). But the #BLM protests are showing solidarity and signalling to those in power that change is coming, whether they like it or not. I sincerely hope it is a wake-up call.
But I'm also conflicted because how can this not have an effect in terms of virus transmission, which means further deaths? That the Birmingham, London and Manchester protests took place during a pandemic is astonishing and shows the strength of feeling. The mass protests were said to be unlawful under current lockdown rules. The passionate anger over George Floyd's death is rightful but the outlet action feels risky.
The number of additional UK deaths on Friday 5 June 2020 was 357, taking the UK to a total death toll so far of 40,261. The West Midlands remains a relative danger zone, with more deaths than the capital currently. The threat is still very real – transmission hasn't changed, though it is perhaps understood slightly better than 12 weeks ago. Being outside helps but it's not enough on its own.
This week I witnessed two personal stories at opposite ends of the protest spectrum. Firstly, in Tampa, Florida, my cousin was tear-gassed and hit with rubber bullets at a protest. I saw her wounds. It was shocking. It didn't need to happen; it was a peaceful protest. Secondly, my neighbour whose husband works as a nurse called out our local MP on his silence over George Floyd. She received a long letter in reply in support of equality and his actions towards tackling racism in the UK. (He has now sent out a newsletter on Black Lives Matter.) Two very different approaches to raising the issue.
It made me wonder: How can we protest under lockdown in ways that are safe?
I'm not sure I have any answers. But ultimately I have to figure out where I stand on this particular spectrum and what action I'm going to take. As a woman it can feel as if we are also fighting against a system that can't or won't change, but that doesn't mean we can't also be there for others who are reduced by it.
I think the most powerful thing I can do is speak up and, knowing the situation, try to effect change where I can. For example, I have a job interview in a couple of weeks and my initial research shows the organisation to be predominantly white but trying to engage people across multicultural Birmingham. A new person on the team brings new voices and opportunities for growth.
Again I find myself wondering: If this job did come down to between me and a BAME candidate, should I stand down? Although I suppose the truth of the matter is, how would I even know?
These aren't easy things to discuss or to get right. So I didn't go to the mass protest but I am still thinking about it and asking what I can do.
++
Thanks
Today I am thankful that I finally got my collage resources sorted out. In the process these two images accidentally juxtaposed themselves together inside a plastic sleeve, into which I read all the issues of gender, race, white privilege, power and change on my mind tonight.
Despite the RSI twangs in my wrists, I showed up to virtual Moselele tonight. To avoid a cacophony caused by lags on video conference calls, the ukulele group is playing along to pre-recorded songs from past sessions. Which means we don't actually have to sing and play at all if we don't want to.
Many were strumming, a few were singing, some were drinking, one was knitting. It was all very contemporary in its performance tone.
A toy accordion appeared at some point when someone's kid wanted to join in. Then a proper piano accordion appeared. So I went and fetched my Dad's old accordion. The accordion thing escalated quickly.
It was kind of fun to play an Irish tune badly to a backing track of REM. So I cast around for what other instruments were lying around and spotted my 1994 harmonica. Glen Frey's The Heat Is On never sounded so good!
Today I was thankful for the cool, soft drizzle of British summer.
Guest post incoming – heeeeeeere's Pete, writing about his experience of coronavirus, lockdown and furlough, framed through the perspective vortex of unfolding time. Brevity bio for those who don't know Pete: he works at community bakery Loaf in Stirchley, teaches photography and makes art. The rest of the time he is also my beloved husband and bunnypops.
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When this all started it was cold. While my sense of when has been skewed by pandemic mindfuckery, I can be sure of this because when we stopped people coming into the bakery by moving the counter right to the front door I had to wear a hat to keep my bald head warm. The funny thing about our bakery is while the actual bakery is hot as all hell, the ventilation draws air in through any open doors creating quite the cold wind in the winter. Where the counter usually sits is in the perfect sweet spot where the warmth of the ovens meets the cool of the outside. The counter was moved for sensible health reasons and necessitated lots and lots of changes to how we worked, but for some reason the change in temperature and necessity for a hat is what stuck with me.
Soon after this I was furloughed. It's been weird. I wrote about it.
It's now hot. We've had quite the mini-heatwave through the end of May and while today's rain has cooled things off, it feels like an intermission before June summer kicks off properly. While I was furloughed the pandemic crossed seasons.
When this all started and I was trying to get my head around it I came up with the idea that a viral pandemic is like a natural disaster but unlike a tsunami or volcano that kills horrifying numbers of people in seconds, it kills them over months, maybe years. This extension along the temporal axis is what, I think, makes it so hard to deal with. I don't know whether it's the modern media news cycle or a natural human habit of looking for the immediate threat above all else, but as a species we're shit at dealing with big important things that take place over long periods of time.
There's a project called The Long Now which is all about thinking beyond human timescales. It comes from the sort of west-coast tech-utopia thinking that should be taken with all the salt (their 10,000 year clock is being built in Jeff Bezos' private mountain, ffs) but the big idea is pretty sound – encouraging humans to think beyond their immediate timescapes and consider a different scale. The Long Now guys are futurists, but they're no different to archeologists, professional and amateur, communing with the ancient past. To hold something that was held by someone thousands of years ago and try to make sense of what they were doing with, and around, it. It puts you in perspective.
My personal version of this is considering the vastness of space and time visible above us. I love the idea the the night sky is a time machine. When we look at the stars we're seeing nuclear reactions that happened years ago, sometimes hundreds of thousands of years ago. The famous Hubble image, The Pillars of Creation, is a photograph of something that happened 7,000 years ago. For context, this is what was happening on Earth. Imagine having a photo of that.
Barring accidents and disease, humans currently live for about a century. Beyond that things get harder and harder to comprehend. My grandparents saw the arse-end of the Victorian era and the march towards WW1 and all that entailed. I can get my head around that because those epochs had a tangible effect on my life. But the lives of my great-great-grandparents? No fucking clue.
I've always had a very reactive approach to life. This came up the other day when talking with Fiona about our future plans. I realised I didn't really have any. Whatever happened, I'd make the best of it. Give me a few things to chose from and I'll figure it out, but I have no idea how to make that list. I've always bounced from one situation to the other, my hand forced by circumstance rather than by choice. I probably should have taken the initiative at times and not just waited for thing to happen, but it's not something I'm practiced at. I don't think this is a massive problem. If anything it helps me deal with the now more effectively. But it is something I'm trying to get better at.
This pandemic needs to be considered on at least two timescales. There's the day-to-day adjusting to things that used to be taken for granted and are now massively complicated. How do we do what we do when we don't know if doing what we do will kill us? Every action needs to be considered, assessed, deliberated. I've noticed this weird feeling in my hands after going outside. They feel larger, my fingers thicker, because I'm so incredibly aware of them and their quantum superposition-ness. You really haven't lived in the now until you've traversed the pandemic-scape in full awareness of your ignorance.
On the other hand, it's like watching a disaster movie at one frame every 10 minutes. To put that another way, imagine watching The Towering Inferno but it takes two years 8 months to complete. The world is on fire and hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of people will die, but it's going to take AGES with loads of boring bits between the scene changes.
Soon it will be cold again and everything and nothing will have changed again. I guess that's the new normal.
Thanks Pete
Today I am thankful for Pete's support over the past few weeks. As my furloughed forever-friend, he's brought me drinks on demand, done the shopping, cleared the back room out, reorganised the kitchen and put up a massive whiteboard (also in the kitchen) to work through lists of big and little house chores, Pete-specific tasks and shopping oddities.
And now he's written a guest blog post for me because I'm having an RSI flare up.
Blogging is how we met btw. He was an early blogger (since 2000) and eight years later I turned up and asked for some blogging advice. And now here he is blogging his blog posts on my blog. </blog>
PS. You can read more Pete perspectives on his blog.
Waiting for the weather to cool so I can plant out some food crops at the resurrected allotment later this week.
I work for a freight and logistics firm a few hours a week. Their journey through the coronavirus outbreak has been pretty interesting. It's an industry of small margins across a multitude of jobs and so the sudden hold on the economy is as difficult for them as anyone. But they are also essential key workers, responsible for keeping supplies moving. Most recently they have been part of the NHS supply chain for medical supplies.
As lockdown starts to lift I was interested in what kind of cargo was moving through their yard now. Apparently one of the biggest movers is sunscreen. Stacks of the stuff. Daily. Because people are exercising more and because:
May 2020 has been the sunniest calendar month on record with 266 hours of sunshine, beating the previous record of 265 hours in June 1957.
Today the public have been asked to go easy on water consumption amid a surge in demand (BBC News). That's been coming, I suppose, with the recent heatwave and lack of big rain over the lockdown.
Anyway, I was just going to note that sunscreen consumption was up. But then it put me in mind of that song from 1999: Baz Luhrman's 'Everybody's Free To Wear Sunscreen'. The one with all the advice?
Quite pertinent advice even now, like:
Get to know your parents; you never know when they’ll be gone for good
Be nice to your siblings; they are your best link to your past and the People most likely to stick with you in the future
Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you Should hold on
Wear Sunscreen
And always wear sunscreen (hear that, Pete?)
Anyway, anyway, I looked up the source of the lyric monologue and it turned out to have been written by journalist Mary Schmich for the Chicago Tribune, after a sunny walk around Lake Michigan in 1997. Short of ideas for a column, she saw a sunbather and hoped she was wearing sunscreen. She then cobbled together a column out of all the advice she, as a 40-something, had for 18-24-year-olds. She wrote it in four hours. (More on how it came to go viral here.)
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.
In the song it was read out by a man but it was written by a woman, which maybe alters the reading of it? Either way, it's good to know that she got credit in the end.
Anyway, anyway, ANYWAY! What was incredible on tonight's sunscreen journey was the discovery that Schmich, now 66, still writes her column up to three times a week for the paper.
Anyway, anyway, anyway, ANYWAY! I just wanted to point that out. I'm feeling the universe connecting tonight.
Thanks
Today I am not exactly thankful but bemused to see British Vogue putting three London key workers on its cover. A train driver, midwife and a supermarket worker will all feature on July's front page. If mags did this a bit more often, I might even start buying them again instead of tearing them up for collage.
Also glad the weather is breaking a bit tomorrow. The plants and potato crops need a drink.
Even so, don't forget to wear sunscreen. It's still good advice.
Back to school, it's all fine, says the government! Clem is not impressed.
Primary schools are reopening today for children in reception, year 1 and year 6. Nurseries are also able to reopen. Apparently 28 primary schools opened in Birmingham today.
Even if the risk is low to to children, the risk that they might bring Covid-19 back into households with vulnerable adults seems to have been underplayed. And, tbh, I'm not even sure the risk is low to the kids as long as they play or have classes indoors. Viral load is much higher in contained spaces and the risk of transmission much higher as a result.
Plus, so many people don't trust the government's advice anymore.
I don't know. If I had kids, I don't think I'd be sending them back yet.
Meanwhile at the opening of our local IKEA… massive queues.
Today I am thankful for not having to make tough decisions about children, schools and risk management. Decisions are coming soon to my world, though. There is a wedding happening in August – it's outdoors but still. It is low-level stressing me out that it might go ahead even with risk mitigation. Anxious wedding guests will be the norm for quite a while to come.
For all that I might moan or complain about things, or write about lockdown life while being able to work from home/garden, I know I'm coming from a massively white privileged world.
I may have grown up the daughter of Irish immigrant parents in the era of 'No blacks, no dogs, no Irish' but the advantage of having a white face has ultimately meant our family has thrived in the multicultural city of Birmingham. Discrimination has generally not victimised us through our fair, freckly skin, though childhood bullying was a feature.
This is why I have to make serious mention of the murder of George Floyd as part of this diary. It is the one news story that has cut through Covid-19, causing riots in the US, protests in the UK, a global petition of 10 million and counting. It has broken my heart to read about what happened to him at the hands of brutal racist police, as they knelt on his neck, ignored his pleas and let him die. I accidentally saw a few seconds of the video (autoplay should be banned) and have felt sick to the stomach.
I have little faith that much will change in the US. After all, if they can't change gun laws to stop mass shootings of white children in schools, then what hope is there for an innocent black man murdered in a divided country where systemic racism is rife from the president down?
My friend, Steve Lawson, a local musician who has toured in the US, posted something today that goes beyond the outrage and disgust over this crime. He likens white privilege to being tall in a society that stacks the best stuff on the top shelves. And he suggest some positive action we can take from our position of power in our white-biased societal structure.
Where to start? Well, today is our wedding anniversary. 12 years with my amazing, brilliant partner in… well, not crime, at least not often. And certainly not crime that would mean our life was threatened by the police. Because, of course, we're white. So we have far fewer reasons to be scared of police in the regular run of things. Sure, the police do occasionally tear gas white people (my mum got tear gassed protesting in Genoa), or tase people (a white friend of mine with mental health issues was tased to death by US police in a gas station a few years back), but if I get pulled over by the Police in a car, or I walk past a cop in the street I'm not routinely fearing for my life.
But that's the reality for so, so many black people. Every black person I've ever spoken to about this, in fact. And if your instinctive reaction is to try and explain it away, to go looking for stats to make it seem less of a problem, to conjure up some version of 'if you've nothing to hide you've nothing to fear', then hurrah! You're using your white privilege to do the work of white supremacy.
Wait, what? That's a bit harsh, Steve! Nope. White supremacy is the outworking of the belief that white people are inherently superior to other races. So if you are more inclined to question the testimony of a black person in describing their lived reality, and will run to try and corroborate it with information from a 'trusted' (read: white) source, that's white supremacy in all its masked wonder. Because there are decades of scholarly work from within black institutions and communities documenting their systemic oppression at the hands of law enforcement. There are absolutely white scholars – allies, truth-tellers – working on this too, but the vast majority of the work here is from within black communities. And we – collectively, white-led western society – haven't listened. We haven't changed – at least not enough. We've failed to shut down a bunch of racist bullshit about the 'good side' to the British Empire, about how the increasingly stressful situation of being poor and white in the US means that racism isn't real, that the US having had a black president means it's 'post-racial'. We've allowed fear of foreigners to land us with Brexit – some on the left placed their own economic concerns so far above the threat to non-white people in the UK that they happily partnered with out and out racists to push for 'Lexit'. If you're willing to endorse the opinions of racists to get your economic vision pushed through, your pragmatism is indistinguishable from racism.
But the voices are there, loud and clear, to tell us the real legacy of colonialism, the brutal impact of the UK's stop and search laws, the endless parade of black people being brutalised and murdered in police custody on both sides of the Atlantic, the ongoing legacies of slavery and the total lack of any serious response to multiple instances of far-right white-terrorism in the US while the media still goes on and on about 'islamic extremism', as though actual Nazis murdering people are just 'lone wolves' or misguided kids, but muslim youths watching their grandparents homeland collapse under US mortar fire wondering what the hell to do about it are evil extremists who need deporting to countries they've never even visited… It's documented what goes on in 'immigration centres' – we have first hand accounts of the atrocious treatment of people being held at Yarlswood, first hand accounts of the rape culture infesting the immigration patrols along the US/Mexican border. But we're still more vocal about a Target being set on fire than we are about the rape of undocumented migrants who have literally zero power to do anything about it.
So what do we do? The first and most important step for my white friends and family is to acknowledge that white privilege is real. It doesn't make you 'guilty' but it does absolutely mean you need to acknowledge being a beneficiary of its privilege and start doing the work of how to exercise that privilege in the service of dismantling it.
An analogy: a tall person who can reach a high shelf isn't guilty of being tall, but if they go round shops moving all the stuff to a higher shelf, then they're sure as shit guilty of making life worse for anyone not like them. A decent tall person would do a number of things – instantly, get things from the shelves for anyone needing it there and then, secondly, move the stuff back down to lower shelves for whoever's next, thirdly talk to the dickhead moving the stuff, and if needed stop them from doing it, and fourthly, work with everyone willing to help to take down the higher shelves and restructure the shop so everyone who needs to can get to the stuff they need.
We've been perfectly happy for successive governments to stack all the stuff on the high shelves for us, and we just pick it up saying 'well, I didn't make the shelves, I don't run the shop'. Not good enough. Time to remake the shelves. And if the shelves are immovable, build a new shop. In the short term, we can put in ramps, to elevate those who need access.
Right now, there are a lot of people in the US protesting. The arrest of Oscar Jiminez, reporting for CNN live as he was arrested shows just how ridiculous the situation is. The numerous corroborated reports of undercover cops and far right agitators infiltrating the demonstrations and weaponising the deep, righteous anger to start riots show us just how hard it is to both acknowledge that righteous anger at deep injustices CAN lead to the destruction of property, but that same destruction of property can be weaponised as a pretext to an armed clash between protesters and police.
So if you want to do something right now, donate to the Minnesota Freedom Fund https://minnesotafreedomfund.org/donate to help those who are being arrested right now for protesting. Not all will have the chairman of CNN calling the city mayor on their behalf.
For longer term solutions, you can support the African American Policy Forum – aapf.org – "an innovative think tank that connects acadmics, activists and policy makers to promote efforts to dismantle structural inequality".
We don't get to stand by, we don't get to look away, we don't get to stay quiet. #BlackLivesMatter
(And yes, I'll write more about our wedding anniversary later, but right now this is what's important).
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Today I am thankful for the many opportunities that are available to me and that my biggest problems right now are just a blip in the whole scheme of things.
