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| George Floyd |
We’ve been ordered to stay at home here in Oregon due to COVID-19 for about 10 weeks now. On the one hand the time has been OK for me. I’ve preached via video and on zoom, and taught Spiritual Practices for a Pandemic on zoom. I keep up with my duties as President of Farm Worker Ministry Northwest via email and zoom, as well as my other board member duties. I was even able to join the farm worker picket line at two fruit companies in the Yakima Valley, Washington. As much as I might have provided them with support and hope by my presence and donation, they surely provided me with a much needed glimpse of good, hard-working people asking for justice and dignity, clearly in solidarity and community with one another.
What has been hard for me is the feeling that I lack safety and community in the physical spaces that I inhabit here in Portland. Yesterday I left the house to go to the grocery store, and within the first half-mile from home, no less than three cars, sliding through intersections without stopping, made me slam on the brakes. The freeways are less congested, but there are no lack of cars that go way over the speed limit, weaving in and out, and/or tailgating. I don’t know why I thought that in the pandemic, people would be way slowed down and more generous in yielding the right of way. Not so here in Portland.
And the grocery store experience! I am 68, almost 69 years old, so once I came out of denial that I was in a “high risk group,” I started being vigilant about wearing a mask and staying 6 feet away. Impossible to do! Even during “senior shopping” times people will not stay away from me. A few weeks ago Safeway put in one-way aisles, which I thought was a great idea, if people would comply. Pointing out the one-way aisle to some customers coming at me was met by one woman instructing them that they could do whatever they wanted, “she’s just a bitch,” she said. Even the employees disregard the one-way, congregate in the doorway, and pass you within inches, all while the company signs say “Your and our employee’s safety is our top priority.”
I hate the feeling that I have to scan the aisles for safety and have an escape route planned. I don’t say anything to anyone anymore as I just don’t feel up to the sort of confrontation that might ensue. Instead, I have found a store that has little traffic and go in there at off times. That was working good for me until in the 5 minutes that I was in there two employees came by me within 2 feet, one stopping to chat with me! Really? I guess I am a bitch! I don’t want to chat with you up close and personal!
I have to think that the stress of the pandemic has helped ignite the ticking time bomb of police brutality against yet another black person, erupting into the protests and riots we have seen in the last few days. What do people do when they live day in and day out, year in and year out, with the kind of systemic racism, inequality and poverty that is so intractable in this country? Add to that the stress of the pandemic, and violence erupts. I am not saying that violence is OK, but it is understandable.
It reminds
me of Spike Lee’s 1989 film, Do the Right
Thing, in which a black man is choked to death by a police officer, and
simmering racial tensions erupt on the hottest day of the year. It is sad that so little has changed in over
30 years. Since then there have been far too
many deaths of black people at the hands of law enforcement. And the consequence is that we become
deadened to the horror of it.
