Black Lives Matter

A lot of things have happened recently, both worldwide and in my personal life.

On a personal level, one of my grandparents and my roommate were recently hospitalized for non-COVID related reasons, and have been in treatment over a series of weeks. They actually both just got back. My mother is staying with my granddad in his retirement community for two weeks to help him settle. She had to get tested for COVID ahead of time to be accepted as a guest, and my granddad had to be tested before leaving the hospital. They both tested negative, but I guess because there is a gap in time between testing and receiving results, during which one could hypothetically be infected, both of them are required to do a 14-day quarantine in his apartment, along with my step-grandmother. Since they live in a non-smoking building, my mother has had to quit during this time. I'm a little worried that this will interfere with her being the calming presence that she intended to be for her father.

I've talked about my roommate's condition a little. Originally, he had an enflamed prostate which he didn't get checked and let it get bad. Eventually he suffered from kidney failure (or kidney almost-failure, he had kind of a kidney-attack). It was a close call, but after attaching him to a catheter, he quickly began to heal. All it would take to get him back to 100% operational would be a fairly simple surgery after his kidney-numbers got normal (I'm not a doctor, okay, this is how it was described to me). So, after some time, his numbers got normal and he was ready to have his surgery. He went so far as getting it scheduled.... but then a global pandemic happened and his appointment was postponed until further notice.

A little over two weeks ago, I had just finished teaching Safe Management crisis intervention training over video chat. In this training, I taught people how to compose themselves when confronted with a crisis scenario, and not to be shy to call 911. Right after I finished, my roommate limped out of his room and told me that he hadn't wanted to interupt, but that his catheter had stopped working overnight.

I offered to link him with a medical consultant over the phone, and to get him a ride to the hospital, but he said he didn't want either of those things, as he was too weak to walk or talk. I offered to call him an ambulence, which he refused. He said he would get a friend to drive him to the emergency room in four and a half hours.

I decided to do what I said I would do during the training session I had just taught, and I called 911 against his consent. Turns out his catheter had stopped working about 48 hours earlier, not just overnight.

He spent several weeks in the emergency room. He came out of it with a second tube, he has to visit the hospital three times a week, and he might die at any moment. As far as neglecting to act when presented with medical issues, I'd say he's in a three-strikes-you're-out situation.

So, while I've only known two people to contract COVID-19, one being hospitalized but recovering and the other being asymptomatic, the measures taken surrounding the pandemic have stopped me from being with my granddad to support him in a time of crisis, and it has stopped my roommate from getting a surgery that would have prevented him from a second attack on his kidneys.

That's that concerning my personal life. In my previous post, I said that, having covered the more recent pandemic news, I would next be concentrating on the murder hornets, aliens, and race wars. This post will be focusing on the "race wars". I really regret using that phrasing, as I recently saw a protester sign saying that the current situation isn't the begining of a race war, it's a call to end one.

I've often said that my intention is for this blog to not be political, but I'm throwing that out the window. It's impossible not to be political anymore.

Because world events have become so much more important than my current living status, I have been reporting things that my readers likely already know. This makes the blog a little repetitive, but concerning the fact that recent events are calling for white media to draw attention to systemic racism, I feel morally obligated to make sure that my voice is heard, and that it is supportive to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Yes, I guess I'm considering this as a source of media.

The most recent resugence of the Black Lives Matters movement has been inspired by the murder of George Floyd. On May 25th, Floyd was reported by a convenience store clerk to police for using a countefeit $20 bill. On arrival, police handcuffed him and after restraining him on the ground, officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee to Floyd's neck for over eight minutes. He did this, despite Floyd stating sixteen times that he couldn't breathe while begging for his life, and even crying for support from his deceased mother. When onlookers begged Chauvin to stop, he raised a bottle of pepper spray to intimidate them. He ordered two officers to help him detain Floyd, and one to control the crowd. He even refused to remove his knee after medical staff arrived and asked him to back off, long after Floyd had lost consciousness. After arriving in the hospital, Floyd was announced dead due to medical complications.

I just want to note that, while race relations are vastly different in Canada, I have knowingly used a counterfeit $20 bill. My mother accidentally used one that was in circulation, and the person who discovered it denied her purchase but gave it back to her. She told me and my brother, and I said that I would spend it at a place where I knew they wouldn't check. It was a local convenience store, and I most certainly never feared for my life.

I also want to say that, I am trained in three forms of crisis intervention training, and if I ever put my knee to the back of someone's neck, I'm sure that not only would I lose my job, I would also lose my career, even if the person I was detaining was fine. No one teaches you to put your knee to someone's neck. You can begin to lose consciousness from asphyxiation after eight seconds. The rule of three is: never go three weeks without eating, three days without drinking, three minutes without breathing. Eight minutes is clearly deadly.

It's been brought up that Floyd has been depicted positively by media, while he was actually a career criminal. While I've seen maybe an unfair bias toward his virtue through media, I really don't think it matters what kind of life he lived. Those police didn't know him, and he was murdered over $20. He never asked to be a martyr. As a human, he had both good and bad qualities, and he didn't deserve to be murdered, especially not in such a brutal manner.

This event sparked widespread outrage throughout the United States and internationally. It created a resurgance of the Black Lives Matter movement, and has resulted in massive protests, both in and out of the US. We even had one in Kitchener.

I'm in favor of the protests. Obviously it creates risk of a second wave of COVID-19, but we really can't afford to relinquish all of our freedom to the government, even during times like these, if atrocities like this are allowed to occur.

Other stories that have emerged recently are those of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and Christian Cooper.

Ahmaud Arbery was out on a jog in Glynn County, Georgia on February 23rd this year. During this time, he stopped to look at a construction site before continuing his run. Several men, namely Gregory and Travis McMichael, accompanied by William "Roddie" Bryan, felt his behaviour suspicious, as he'd been caught on tape admiring the construction site before. They felt that this constituted trespassing, so they pursued him in vehicles, blocked the road he was running on, confronted him while armed with shotguns, and when Ahmaud tried to direct the gun away from himself, he was shot and subsequently died.

Now, Ahmaud was known to go on daily runs for exercise purposes, and he was known to be fond of architecture. Also, cameras show that a number of other people also visited the construction site. It wasn't a rare thing to do.

By the letter of the law, he wasn't trespassing. There was no signage present to prohibit him from entering, and the site supervisor confirms that he never directly connected with Ahmaud. But the McMichaels wanted the video footage to be shown, to clear their names. To show that Ahmaud had attacked them before they shot.

Some people say that if Ahmaud was innocent, he would have run away instead of attacking. These people forget that running is what he was initially doing. When he saw he was being pursued, he ran harder. Literally, he only "attacked" after his exit routes had been cut off by pursuers and he was confronted by a man with a shotgun. Even then, he only tried to position it away from himself.

The sick thing here is that, even if you assume he did everything bad that he is accused of, if he was guilty of "casing the joint", tresspassing with intent to steal, what happened to him is wildly unethical. The police had been contacted and were on their way, meaning a citizen's arrest was impossible. Use of deadly force as a form of self-defense was completely unwarranted, as the McMichaels were the ones to put themselves in harms way.

Breonna Taylor was a 26-year-old emergency medical technician, living in Louisville, Kentucky. Her home was entered by police on March 13 this year, as they suspected her of housing two people who were already in custody. They claim they announced their presence, which has been denied by survivors. Her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, attempted to defend their home upon entry with gunfire. Police responded with counterfire, and Taylor was killed during the shootout.

Nothing about this is just. Imagine a team of people being allowed to enter your home and murder you, claiming they were doing so in pursuit of two people that were already in custody.

And finally, let's leave this on... I don't want to say a high note, but at least a story where nobody dies. Christian Cooper was out watching birds on the same day that George Floyd was killed. Amy Cooper (no relation) was walking her dog off-leash in an area that requires them. Christian asked her to either leash her dog or walk in a different area, as they were disturbing the birds. As Amy became enraged, Christian began filming her. She demanded he stop filming and threatened to call 911, phrasing it as "An African American man is threatening me". You get the implication. While on the phone with the police, she spoke in a frantic and panicked manner, as if she were being assaulted. At this time, she was holding her tiny dog by the collar and absentmindedly strangling it. Dog was fine afterward.

When police arrived, neither person was still on the scene. Christian later released his video recording.

These four incidents are by no means isolated. I'm just going to rip a post I saw on Facebook and put it onto here. It's a list of crimes of violence against African Americans. I hadn't heard of most of them, to be honest, which I guess is part of the problem. Outside the four stories I mentioned, I had only heard of the case of Trayvon Martin and the Charleston 9. I looked up each one though, and they are all real:

I have privilege as a White person because I can do all of these things without thinking twice about it...

I can go jogging (#AmaudArbery).

I can relax in the comfort of my own home (#BothemSean, #AtatianaJefferson, #BreonnaTaylor).

I can ask for help after being in a car crash (#JonathanFerrell and #RenishaMcBride).

I can have a cellphone (#StephonClark).

I can leave a party to get to safety (#JordanEdwards).

I can play loud music (#JordanDavis).

I can sell CD's (#AltonSterling).

I can sleep (#AiyanaJones)

I can walk from the corner store (#MikeBrown).

I can play cops and robbers (#TamirRice).

I can go to church (#Charleston9).

I can walk home with Skittles (#TrayvonMartin).

I can hold a hair brush while leaving my own bachelor party (#SeanBell).

I can party on New Years (#OscarGrant).

I can get a traffic ticket (#SandraBland).

I can lawfully carry a weapon (#PhilandoCastile).

I can break down on a public road with car problems (#CoreyJones).

I can shop at Walmart (#JohnCrawford) .

I can have a disabled vehicle (#TerrenceCrutcher).

I can read a book in my own car (#KeithScott).

I can be a 10yr old walking with our grandfather (#CliffordGlover).

I can decorate for a party (#ClaudeReese).

I can ask a cop a question (#RandyEvans).

I can cash a check in peace (#YvonneSmallwood).

I can take out my wallet (#AmadouDiallo).

I can run (#WalterScott).

I can breathe ( #EricGarner).

I can live ( #FreddieGray )

I can ask someone to put a leash on their dog when it is required in the public park we are in #ChristianCooper).

I CAN BE ARRESTED WITHOUT THE FEAR OF BEING MURDERED. #GeorgeFloyd

#BlackLivesMatter

You should look them up too, because they matter.

Now, because this blog has become political, let's look at President Donald Trump's response to the protests.

I think everyone is as burned out of talking about Trump as they are with the Coronavirus, which is partly why I don't cover him. In an effort to keep things factual and not political, in my previous post I actually edited out his and Obama's names after publishing it.

On June 1st this year, a peaceful protest was taking place outside the whitehouse on Lafayette Square. Without provocation or warning, rubber bullets were fired, and pepper balls and flash bombs were thrown into the crowd. Law enforcement, clad in riot gear advanced on the crowd to force it back.

Now, peaceful protest is a civil right within the United States, and Lafayette Square is the hot spot to do it. There have been incidents of looting alongside some of the BLM protests, but that wasn't happening in this instance.

So, why were such violent measures taken on American citizens who were only exercising their legal right to protest? Well, so this could happen:

So Trump could have his photo taken, holding a bible upside down in front of St John's Episcopal church. I'm not Christian, but that upside down bible gives me inverted cross vibes.

If that's not Satanic enough for you, a reverend at the church who was tending to the wounded was pushed out of her own church so that Trump could get that photo op. Just the symbolism of ousting a religious leader from a House of God so that it can be presented with an inverted symbol of the faith...

Another symbolic occurence was when the lights in the White House were shut off as Trump hid in his bunker from protesters. Now, that's less harmful, but apparently shutting off the lights is supposed to represent the death of a president. Could represent the death of the sacred role of the presidency here. I've also heard that turning the lights off at night is a routine process, so I don't know what to believe. Still, the light of America being extinguished is certainly eery.

An extra fence has been built around the White House to keep protesters out. In reference to Trump's iconic promise to build a wall across the Mexico-US border, I've heard Trump's new fence phrased as "He wanted to build a wall to protect America, but he built a wall to protect himself from Americans." I just felt that was very nicely put.

Honestly, those three things, the inverted Bible, the darkened White House, the new fence dividing the presidency from its citizens are just such strong images of the times. If this were a work of fiction it would be darkly beautiful. But it's reality, so it is only frightening.

Anyway, I hope that all the information in this post is accurate. Just a reminder that I am not a proper news outlet, so don't go citing me in any of your essays.

For posts going forward, I want to write on Phase 2 of our reopening strategy, I want to talk on how the virus has effected the homeless community, I want to do an update on my remote work situation, I still want to cover the Murder Hornets and aliens, and I got enough for another Apocalypse Dining and maybe another Pandemic Phrase Guide.

So let's hope we don't have another global disaster until I'm done with those.