One apology, millions to go.
Sunday, June 14th, 2020
From the video (uploaded by @jaimetoons on Twitter) of the event, because of course there’s video.
This is one of those follow-ups where I said back at the screen “oh yeah, of course she is.” Maybe several times.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The CEO of a cosmetics company issued an apology Sunday after a video was widely shared online showing her and her husband confronting a man and threatening to call police because he stenciled “Black Lives Matter” in chalk on his San Francisco property.
“There are not enough words to describe how truly sorry I am for being disrespectful to him last Tuesday when I made the decision to question him about what he was doing in front of his home,” Alexander said in a statement. “I should have minded my own business.”
Also, apparently at least one cosmetics distributor has cut ties with her company over the furor. That might hurt a bit. There are days when I think this uncomfortable nearly one-on-one ceremony of shaming and exposure has to happen over and over and over again in neightborhoods as fancy as SF’s Pacific Heights or as blue collar as suburban Pittsburgh…or Atlanta. Daily. Hourly. Every time it happens.
This means that maybe we’ll have a better and more just society in…80 years or so? That realization of “I should have minded my own business” I would hasten to edit toward “I should have offered this person the respect he deserved as a human being.”
It sure seems like we have to embark on major, systemic change to get this done more entirely in our lifetimes.
We’ve been here before.
Saturday, June 13th, 2020
“They’re smashing the windows at the Wendy’s right now.” —WXIA’s Jeff Hullinger reading a tweet from an AJC reporter.
At 10:33 pm Friday, there was an officer-involved shooting, where 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks was shot when police were called by a Wendy’s just south of downtown asking for help clearing their drive-thru lane of Mr. Brooks.
There was tasering. Mr. Brooks threw a punch. The officers killed him. Some of this was caught on video. I’ll assume you can go find some real reporting.
And now, roughly 24 hours later, protestors have shut down Interstate 75/85, a few hundred feet from the Wendy’s, and at this moment, the police have not responded with more force, yet the television anchors commenting seem to consider that inevitable. Isn’t that part of the problem?
This section of I-75/85 is fourteen lanes across at that exit. It’s a protest point that will get some sort of attention.
Atlanta’s police chief Erika Shields has resigned over this incident. The mayor has said that the shooter should be fired.
Oh, man. So much work to do.
The actual day.
Friday, June 12th, 2020
My family had what was an unannounced but seemingly cast-into-stone tradition that when you had a party or any commemoration of a person’s birthday, it had to happen on the actual day, or it was somehow diminished or of less repute. You could blow out the candle and eat that cake on the next day, or the day after, but it wouldn’t have the magic.
I think that now my father, the chief enforcer (?) of those traditions is no longer around to make arbitrary pronouncements like that, we’ve come to be a bit more flexible, realistic. The next generation, advanced on matters of birthdays!
That said, given the stresses of the past few months, I’m glad that my brother had a celebration of his birthday on the actual day, with his nuclear family, and I’m glad that we’ll have a safe, socially distant but in person commemoration with him and them on the next day, and no magic cake (as far as I know) will be involved.
Because, you know, the magic. Happy birthday, JPB.
Astro gazing.
Thursday, June 11th, 2020
The optimism that surrounded the first part of the space program, marching toward President Kennedy’s challenge goal through the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs was truly something to behold.
Space was new, cool, and everyone wanted to be a part of it, and the stoic white (at first) test pilots who became America’s first astronauts defined a new frontier of celebrity—guys who would sit on a huge, very combustible cylinder with fins, and take a multi-G ride into orbit, and to the moon.
Ohioans knew well that the first guy to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong, was born in the small town of Wapakoneta, Ohio, about midway between Toledo and Cincinnati (now) on Interstate 75. We pass it every time we go to Michigan, and just as we pay our respects to the Butter Jesus II and the prominent Mosque at the south end of Toledo (your signal to exit if you want to head toward Ann Arbor or Lansing), we traditionally nod at one particular ‘Wapok’ landmark.
If you ignore the white dome of the Armstrong Air and Space Museum, the other notable I-75 roadside attraction is one of those “being a part of it” businesses: Astro Lanes, an out-of-this-world bowling alley with a fancy neon sign that manages to merge bowling pins with a starburst because, hey, why not. It has apparently gone through several owners but seems still in business, with current postings of the State of Ohio Covid-19 distancing instructions in the lobby entrance. (We dropped by at 9 am, so, a bit early for dining, lounging, or bowling.)
Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the…7-10 split?
Familiar drone.
Wednesday, June 10th, 2020
During the coverage of the protests, during the coverage of George Floyd’s funeral, during the coverage of the Georgia primary elections yesterday, one visual component you can begin to expect is lovely low altitude sweeping aerial footage captured by drones. It’s hard to argue that hovering just overhead isn’t a compelling angle, but after a while, I think we’re inured to it.
I thought of that watching flying cameras swoop over the Park Tavern, which, normally, is a place to eat and drink on the edge of Piedmont Park, but yesterday, it was a multi-precinct polling place (for reasons still a bit obscure to me.) But hey, the hot and thirsty people in line look quite picturesque from this angle, right?
AP’s drone aloft over Atlanta’s Park tavern, June 9, 2020.
The FAA tells amateur pilots that they absolutely cannot fly over people or crowds, and yet, well, this is journalism, right? Is there a better visual way to show you how long the line was or how many people marched? I’m torn, because I have one of these things and I am very wary of dropping it on someone’s head (I’m equally wary of flying it into a tree, which in Atlanta, is a frequent challenge.)
There are also all kinds of restrictions (basically “no fly zones”) near airports, sporting events, political rallies, and concerts (a lot of events that aren’t happening in the days of The Virus), and, well, much of the online collection of rules, regulations, and anecdotal advice does not cover mass protests or police action.
There’s also the annoyance factor. Although yes, drones are quieter than, say, helicopters, they have a rather distinctive noise that tends to make passers-by look up in alarm or perturbation: they sound like a swarm of angry bees.
So there’s that to work on.
I voted.
Tuesday, June 9th, 2020
March 17, 2015. Ah, those were the days.
Sammy and I have made a tradition over many years of walking to our polling place, up until recently the Ponce de Leon branch of the Atlanta Fulton Public Library. But the past couple (three? four?) elections the library has been closed for renovation and we instead had to drive a couple of miles (three?) to the Butler Street Baptist Church to cast our ballot. The election stuff was crammed in there somewhat awkwardly amidst the pews and the altar itself, giving the voting ritual a slightly odd overlay of beat-up golden chalices and tattered hymnals.
But this year! Big election year! Even the primary has some important races to weigh in on, and then a batch of odd party-preference questions (carrying absolutely no legal weight) and unopposed judges (who are probably very important in any consideration of judicial reform and yet, what do you do? Affirm them? Ignore them?)
After two coronavirus postponements (no, no, the virus is still very much around, but we’re going about our business here with varying degrees of safety and obliviousness), the Georgia Primary was today, and by many reports, it was a mess of considerable proportions. Here are just a couple of places to look for the details:
‘I Refuse Not to Be Heard’: Georgia in Uproar Over Voting Meltdown in the NYTimes
Key Georgia primaries to be decided after ‘unacceptable’ voting problems in Politico
And having watched in annoyance fading to disgust as the state’s Republican Secretary of State supervised purchasing an complete state’s worth of rather dubious voting machines (to “fix” problems), and having watched how our state has been dealing with flattening the coronavirus curve (i.e., not very well), we decided for the first time ever to take up Georgia’s kind offer of a mail-in ballot, essentially an absentee ballot. We filled out our request forms and waited until, well, pretty much the last moment to receive them in the mail.
So, we spent this morning in contemplation, research, and correctly following instructions, and then took our sealed and oathed and signed ballots down to a dropoff box down at the Auburn Avenue library branch. (We were but one in a steady stream dropping by to drop off.)
And then, because we wondered what it would have been like if we just said, heck, let’s go down to the precinct to vote as normal, we drove by our polling place, and things were anything but normal. The lines snaked around the church and up the street, more than once. It was hot. People were hanging in with a fervor.
We have a fair amount of confidence that our votes counted, even without getting a coveted ‘I Voted’ sticker in person (pictured above. I mean, we have a couple of dozen of those things at this point.) We also have a fair amount of anger that many of our neighbors had to stand in line for hours, and some probably still couldn’t do what our country, our state, our county, our city has asserted is one of our highest civic responsibilities.
And so we look ahead to November, and yeesh, what can we do to make it better between now and then?
Post-trip checklist.
Monday, June 8th, 2020
- ✓ House in good shape, or at least the way we left it.
- ✓ Georgia absentee ballots (finally) arrived, ready to be dropped off Tuesday.
- ✓ Doc Chey’s still has good fish tacos.
- ✓ Hot weather arrived while we were gone, unconcerned if there’s a pandemic or not.
- ✓ OS updated on phones and tablets using that fast, fast fiber connection.
- ✓ No mystery bills, summonses, or subpoenas.
- ✓ House air conditioning doing its magic.
- ✓ Still lots of citizen-work to do to make it to November.
Southward.
Sunday, June 7th, 2020
I am always rejuvenated by a road trip with Sammy, and we’re on our last leg tonight. Home soon.
Practicing.
Saturday, June 6th, 2020
There’s no certification or licensing to become a journalist. When I attended the Ohio University School of Journalism (since renamed the E.W. Scripps School) back in the dawn of time, there were courses on Communication Law, News Writing, News Editing, Review and Criticism…it was really interesting stuff, and only the practical material has become well and truly obsolete. The blue pencils and the proportion wheels have gone the way of the Linotype. I have a News Editing textbook where literally everything in it is no longer the way it’s done.
I bring all this up to say I am watching with interest (as they say) as journalism of all flavors navigates its way through a global pandemic and a nation filled with protestors on the streets and police violence in the name of “dominating the battlespace” and, oh yeah, a presidential election.
And they’re doing this in an era where media mergers that suit investors have pared newsrooms down to alarming levels and budgets, beats, and the product itself has been pared to the bone.
It’s a time where people find it convenient to blame something called “the media” when they’re really frustrated with a very specific subset.
It’s a hell of a time to do this for a living.
But I think what you have to do, if you do this for a living, is put your head down and set aside any inflated visions of changing the world through your writing and just do the work. Report what you see. Report what you hear. Report when your access is blocked, and report the parts of a very secretive government you may only see the outlines of. Tell the truth. Tell the truths of the people who are being teargassed and clobbered with “less lethal” projectiles.
These are the first principles of reporting. It may not be that highfalutin’ “analysis” or even what some bend the term journalism to encompass, but truth-telling, in sober detail, the who, what, why, when and how of the situation—that remains a way through.
Don’t try and sell your readers on a point of view, don’t ornament your prose with near-hyperbolic adjectives. Don’t say “countless” when crowds can and should be counted. Don’t tell them it’s “horrific”—tell them the events vividly yet without spin and believe me, they’ll come to the same conclusion you would. Don’t talk about your emotional reaction to it—I mean seriously, just don’t bother. There’s too much important story to tell that does not involve you personally.
You can help change the world with transparency, sobriety, precision, and a willingness to just put your head down and do the work.
Best of luck.
The Days of the Week.
Friday, June 5th, 2020
Darn, can’t even get a decent VW bus-served espresso during a pandemic.
It’s Friday! We had a discussion today at our socially distanced dinner about what day it was, and computing devices had to be pulled from pockets to verify that it was indeed Friday, the 5th of June, 2020. It is, for a few more minutes, anyway.
* * * * *
I delighted in seeing that the Mayor of Washington D.C., her choices constrained to an enormous degree by her district’s lack of statehood and full congressional representation, could, overnight, get a crew of people to paint “Black Lives Matter” on a stretch of road north of the White House and Lafayette Park in huuuuge yellow letters, north of the area the apparently very defensive president has fenced and walled in, creating an “end of the reich” look that is, although appropriate, kinda uncomfortable to see. Also delighted to see that her renaming of that stretch of 16th to ‘Black Lives Matter Plaza’ is already up to date on Google maps.
* * * * *
The title of this post is from an SCTV parody of soap operas from the very early 1980s. Ah, SCTV…we owe the Canadians so much for sharing their vast entertainment resources with us. We are enriched beyond all calculation.
Dismantling.
Thursday, June 4th, 2020
Some notes toward systemic change:
- If you cover up or hide your identification, you are fired and subject to arrest.
- If you are asked by anyone, you must disclose your name, your agency, and who you report to.
- If you are required to wear a body cam, disabling that is a firing offense.
- If you stand by while a colleague is violating policy and do not step in to defuse the situation, you can be charged as severely as the police perpetrator.
- If the suspect or protestor you are interacting with asks you a question, you will answer, clearly and politely.
These would be national laws, if not a component of a constitutional amendment. They would not be subject to executive branch meddling from any future administration.
- Completely dismantle the program that gives police agencies hand-me-down military equipment. Confiscate and junk the equipment they have received.
- Eliminate “warrior” programs that train cops to do battle instead of defuse volatile situations.
- Establish completely transparent review processes with public access to video and other evidence.
- Reward successes and achivements in peaceful interactions with communities of color (and all communities). Have a good idea to make a tough situation better? You’re rewarded.
- Eliminate chokeholds.
- Eliminate no-knock warrants.
- Establish national standards for police salaries and benefits that would make police unions less necessary. If you’re a cop, it’s hard work, we expect a lot, but you have to deliver, or you’re through being a cop.
The next administration and legislature has a lot of work to do.
I got a marketing call today from a tough-sounding guy asking if I would support candidates who promote legislation that protect police “in these difficult times”.
As the kids say, that’s a hard no.
Wednesday fatigue.
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2020
I hear more and more interviews that express how tired people (many of them peacefully protesting the killing of George Floyd) are. I can feel that. I spent a fair chunk of this morning churning through the available online news related to the protests, police violence, and the attempts to set our country on a better course. Man, oh man.
I have to look away for just a moment and let some of it process. Reset, refresh, renew. Just for today, I’ll again shamelessly attempt to echo the Sammy blog style:
Look! It’s a bird. I think it might be some sort of plover, but that’s only because Sammy was plowing through bird books this afternoon.
In conjunction with the National Park Service, I present a digger with my initials on it!
This, my fellow blog readers, is a Superior photographer (in every way.)
Doing something.
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2020
Frequently during frustrating times (and we frequently have been having frustrating times of late), the world as expressed by social blurbs on the internet plaintively asks “What can I do?”…or confidently offers something that, they’ll tell you, will help.
Today, after yesterday’s empty symbolism of the President’s photo op in front of the church across from the White House (“Look! I’m holding a bible! Right here! I’m at a church because, look, this bible!”) we awakened to a well-meaning yet ultimately empty symbolic gesture online: if you support Black Lives Matter, post a rectangle of black instead of the usual post you would post!
From CNN, what happens when the black squares take over.
Okay. A lot of people did just that, perhaps longing for a way to do something, anything useful in a world where the government is putting cities under curfew and the message of systemic police violence against African Americans is getting drowned out by…well, all kinds of noise.
So they posted those rectangles! And were alarmed when the useful communications indexed under the hashtag #blacklivesmatter were “pushed off the screen” by these rectangles. And so (this is still Tuesday morning) the call went out to hey, stop doing that! Use the hashtag #blackouttuesday if you want, but get those #blm-related tags off of those black squares and rectangles, stat!
This to me is indicative of just how much pent-up frustration there is out there when it feels like you can’t do anything that really affects the situation…so you resort to liking and retweeting and putting logos on your Covid-19 mask and crying out in despair, both online and in the privacy of your possibly still quarantined home.
I’ve been having dreams that I can best describe as “making dramatic, systemic changes,” but they also involve me having the power to take, say, the Attorney General of the United States and instantly teleport him to a small shack in the Mojave desert with the absolute minimum for human survival, food and water. And then a steroid-crazed cop, in mid-baton-swing, fwoosh and he’s transported to a matching shack, exactly 15 miles away from Barr’s. And then..uh..er…time travel is involved, because a lot of these criminal acts by policemen and politicians have already happened, and it’d be nice to be able to get to that moment right before Officer Chauvin’s knee goes down on Mr. Floyd’s neck, and…well, I probably should talk to someone about my intense need to rewrite these outcomes because the outcomes are so sad and fly in the face of what I thought we stood for.
So maybe I should just black-rectangle it and call it a day.
Battlespace.
Monday, June 1st, 2020
“I think the sooner that you mass and dominate the battlespace, the quicker this dissipates and we can get back to the right normal.”
The Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, on a first of June that was filled with comments from the Trump administration (particularly the President) that give us a clear indication that they look at the protests as insurrection that must be met and overcome with force.
You know, as in Iraq. Afghanistan. Vietnam.
The President on a conference call (it was unclear if he was in his bunker during it) lambasted America’s governors for what he saw as a weak response. The comments, so unhinged and deranged-sounding, leaked widely during the call itself, with reports that “those on the call” were outraged. One Governor (were there more?), JB Pritzker of Illinois, dared to speak some truth to unhinged power:
“I wanted to take this moment — and I can’t let it pass — to speak up and say that I’ve been extraordinarily concerned about the rhetoric that’s been used by you. It’s been inflammatory, and it’s not OK for that officer to choke George Floyd to death. But we have to call for calm. We have to have police reform called for. We’ve called out our National guard and our state police, but the rhetoric that’s coming out of the White House is making it worse. And I need to say that people are feeling real pain out there and we’ve got to have national leadership in calling for calm and making sure that we’re addressing the concerns of the legitimate peaceful protesters. That will help us to bring order.”
Trump basically said, yeah, well, buddy, I don’t like your rhetoric very much either.
Clueless. Like a 9 year old.
All I can say is: protest is speech. The First Amendment protects speech. The police are supposed to protect peaceful protestors. Black lives matter.
I was going to sit back and nostalgically write about the 40th anniverary of CNN’s launch, as I did, yikes, 20 years ago. But it just doesn’t feel right.
