July 25, 2020: Not Knowing Best, and Dancing -

I got to see (distantly, masked) a friend a couple of days ago, on the first full day he was home after a week in the hospital. It wasn’t COVID-19 that put him there, though if COVID-19 hadn’t necessitated the cancellation of an appointment back in March, he might not have ended up in the hospital in July. Knock-on effects.

His rueful insight about the whole illness experience was that he always, habitually, Thinks He Knows Best, and that it just isn’t true.

I said, “You know, you aren’t alone in that.”

He laughed and said, “Well, but STILL. After all these years. I still do it.”

This conversation has been rattling around my brain ever since. It fits my current ponderings about the Portland protests.

I don’t know best.

So many conversations, so many analogies, so many competing imperatives, yet again.  I applaud those who are brave. I applaud those who are careful. I feel as if engaging with untrained, unmarked goons with their vans, bullets, flash-bangs and tear gas is dangerous, like poking a bear. And I feel like not engaging is also dangerous, is letting the bear run rampant, unchecked. The bear does enormous damage either way, and I see no way to make the bear leave, and I believe sending an unwanted bear here is "performative authoritarianism," and a rotten thing to do. 

I write checks, and I write letters. I read personal accounts and look at pictures of professors bleeding. I understand that Black people have been bleeding for centuries without getting this much attention. 

I know people who attend the downtown protest in the early, peaceful evening, and people who suit up to be gassed after 11 pm, and people who attend kid-friendly family protests in the middle of the day (those haven't made the national news). I know the area where the cameras go to see lawless and violent "law and order" is only a few blocks of downtown, that having the feds here has made everything much, much worse, that I can hear the explosions every night until the early morning, although I live a mile and a half away from the Justice Center. Sound carries so well across water, and I’m on the other side of the river. 

I know some people who believe that having the protests become national news plays badly in the popular imagination and will cost Trump the election, and those who think it will hand him the election. I know people who are angry when the national news gets stuff wrong (we listened to public radio the other day in wide-eyed amazement) and who are gratified when local reporters finally get a byline in the Times. I read long, thoughtful analyses from local people, national people, international people. I wince when they talk about Portland as a symbol of something. 

I don't know best. Who ever thought I did? There's a time to absorb, a time to amplify.

We are now worrying about the Tenth Amendment – and which ones haven’t we worried about yet? - about state vs federal policing.  And even though the spiciest news features white women protesting, and moms getting gassed and manhandled, and a wall of vets, and a wall of dads with leaf blowers (super-suburban accessory, the leaf blower, and funny, too, except that maybe it does help disperse tear gas), our focus hasn't totally switched to the latest horror: Black Lives are still specifically being honored in the nearest rose garden. 

Just yesterday, someone bedecked the roses with biographies and quotes from (some of the many) Black people who have died at the hands of police.  Here’s Sandra Bland, among the roses:

And a friend of mine posted a wonderful video from the Northwest Tap Connection, six minutes of intricate dancing and Saying Their Names. Well, their names through a couple of years ago. More names now.

You can hear the name of Sandra herself, at around minute 2.59. But it’s well worth watching the whole amazing thing.