Or maybe the fact that everyone is suddenly all for mass protests suggests that police brutality is a horrible forever unaddressed injustice that doesn't care if there's a pandemic or not?
There are many people that don't care if there is a pandemic of not. They were forcibly kept away from their jobs and families for three months.
It most certainly was not optional.
So I get it it’s a short term push to get recognition but if the pandemic is as bad as they say it means many people will be hospitalized or worse.
Of course it’s a devils bargain, damnned if you do, damnned if you don’t, but it’s still present.
I'm not sure if you mean "they can't join the protests when sick" or "they can't protest getting sick from doing this". For the former, I imagine those that are technically can if they really want to. For the latter, those that aren't are seemingly willing to take the risk of getting sick in order to help address this.
> it means many people will be hospitalized or worse.
Yes, they seem willing to risk that consequence.
No, it's not. The ones that are protesting are also being ordered to disperse and go back home. The reason they're not is because they're disobeying.
For those that aren't explicitly ordered, it's because it's pointless, given that civil disobedience is in the nature of protests.
On a more personal note, my 98 year old Grandma has been confined to her room at the nursing home for three months. Good luck to her civil disobeying orders.
Exactly. The fact that you can't effectively do a sizeable protest around that so goes to show how the population in general prioritizes these issues.
> On a more personal note, my 98 year old Grandma has been confined to her room at the nursing home for three months. Good luck to her civil disobeying orders.
Yeah, public support for your grandma risking getting sick is going to be even less.
Total aside: Also what's our country's obsession with masks that are designed to make people look creepy - like a dead skeleton. And same truck window art, like skulls with bullets for teeth or something. I don't understand are these people just murdering thousands of people daily or something?
You're not teaching me anything I don't already know, so what point are you attempting to make here?
As for me not teaching you anything you don't already know, I can't possibly have any idea what you do or don't already know and I think it'd be more productive to leave that kind of snark out of the discussion here.
- You can do this over Zoom / online
- Just because this is important to YOU does NOT give you the right to sacrifice the lives of the others who will be denied hospital care because of your selfishness
- You really can't wait a couple months until this LITERAL PANDEMIC is over?
Where does "a couple months" come from?
I don't mean to nitpick, as I wish to uphold the high community standards here, but this is false when compared to the worldwide data in aggregate. New cases are actually spiking, higher than during the lockdown. See [1] , at the bottom right, "daily cases" tab. The record for 'total daily new cases' of ~130k was set 2 days ago, on 3 June.
Making individual (or collective) decisions based on the false premise of "cases are trending significantly downwards" is very dangerous.
[1] https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...
The sentiment is absolutely correct and any loss of life is too much, but we have to put this pandemic first until it burns out or there is a vaccine, then we can talk about mass gatherings again. This energy is much better spent crafting ballot initiatives that are capable of enacting real change, gathering signatures, registering voters, and getting people to the polls. Protesting alone doesn't solve anything. We saw the further militarization of police after Rodney King, and we saw nothing change after occupy wall street.
Protests give people an outlet to vent but they don't enact real change. Laws and votes do. I worry too that even if people vote in the presidential election, they will continue to leave their local elections by the wayside and these races are what really decides how your community is governed and policed, and have a far more real affect on your life than whoever sits in the white house.
1. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-12/lapd-use...
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Ben Franklin
Everyone falls on one of two sides of this coin, and its startlingly difficult to understand the thought process behind those on the other side: That people are willing to, gladly, risk their lives and die in the cause of something greater.
My parents wanted me to travel home a month or so ago. They're about 80 years old. I told them it was too risky; that its not about me, its about them, I could have the virus and not know it, they're incredibly high risk, I live in a dense metropolitan area with roommates... They didn't care. Seeing me was more important to them. That's not being stupid: Its being Human.
There's no cause worth fighting for greater than human liberty, and that's what the black community, and along with them many Americans, are fighting for right now.
We're all going to die one day. Sacrificing your life, and ability to live without freely, without fear, to delay your death is never a trade one should make.
>risk their lives
Risk other people's lives, you mean.
There have been protest since King, though not at this scale, no. The current circumstances are Political with a capital P, the class of things that can reshuffle a society. If this isn't the time to protest for redress of grievances, then there is no time.
And I disagree if you're arguing that protesting is not essential.
I am suggesting that the our reaction to the issue very much depends on whether there is a pandemic or not, and that the vigor of these protests is not despite the pandemic but because of it.
I can respect and admire the decision that you personally dying of COVID-19 is worth it in order to express this grievance, but the nature of infectious disease is it's not just yourself that you're sacrificing here.
Now we're likely to see a 2nd peak because of these protests.
This wouldn't be happening in a world with 4% unemployment. But 20 million Americans are now out of work, stuck at home, and pissed off. Not to mention without the usual distractions of sports or live entertainment. When the bread and circuses break down, this is the result.
ie there's not an implication that these riots were avoidable by not having lockdowns
Also protesting in some cases risks employment. A decent portion of these people likely no longer have that as a concern.
Some people, particularly introverts, may be able to satiate themselves indefinitely with television or the internet. But a lot of people get antsy if they're made to spend even just a single weekend inside at home.
Perfect opportunity for the large chains to close up some of these locations that had to be marginally (if at all) profitable.
I mean, who's to say this won't happen again in November?
The other alarming aspect for other countries should be that this is quite likely a preview of what other countries will see. The unemployment numbers are awful everywhere and as the programs enacted come to a halt things are probably not going to get better.
Why blame it just on the media? The current federal administration has done a fantastic job at destabilizing the country with no plans of deceleration in sight.
And yes, there's probably going to be profound effects on disease control: but let's not also forget that it is also black community bearing the brunt of the pandemic, because of widespread systemic injustices. Let's not let talking about coronavirus distract from what's behind the anger.