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. @monaeltahawy has said, FUCK NORMAL, in a short video that rightly pins the pandemic on the status quo that made it possible. Going back to normal isn't what we need. https://twitter.com/monaeltahawy/status/1276916507839266817 1/
My friend and colleague @akapczynski and I have talked about a new politics of care that is anything but normal, relies on overturning the political status quo I've lived with all my life. 2/ http://bostonreview.net/politics/gregg-gonsalves-amy-kapczynski-new-politics-care
I've been thinking about Virginia Woolf's "Jacob's Room" lately. It's a story about someone who is not coming back, a country where as Leonard Woolf said, "people are ghosts." 3/ http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5670/pg5670-images.html
The last chapter will rip your heart out: "'He left everything just as it was,' Bonamy marvelled. 'Nothing arranged. All his letters strewn about for any one to read. What did he expect? Did he think he would come back?' he mused, standing in the middle of Jacob's room." 4/
We are not coming back from #COVID19. Like that Great War, there is another world on the other side of it and some will not make it over. But we, in part, get to choose what this new world will look like. 5/
Right now in the US, #COVID19 is on the march, it burning through the South and West. And all people can think about is "getting back to normal." School. Work. Play. When can we have it back? 6/
But the politics here are not normal at all. Instead of trying to reset our national response to the pandemic, our politicians are telling us to learn to live with the virus. 7/ https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/we-need-live-it-white-house-readies-new-message-nation-n1232884
This is the culture of death. Not in figurative terms, but in real ones. Think of this: possibly 100,000 cases per day in the US of #SARS_CoV_2. 8/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/30/us/politics/fauci-coronavirus.html
We're going to need to remake the future. Politically for sure. @realDonaldTrump, @senatemajldr and the entire @GOP have to go down in flames in November, but we also cannot wait until then. 9/
The dead will keep piling up, unless we attempt the extraordinary. We don’t have to ask what we would have done in the darker moments of human history. Our test is here, now, today. Act up. Fight back. Fight Covid-19. 10/ https://www.thenation.com/article/society/schuchat-truth-pandemic-coronavirus/
But this is the easy part. What if reopening schools, universities, workplaces, all sorts of venues is simply too dangerous for the next six months or the next year? 11/
What I've heard is "we simply have to," "life as we know it will stop" if we can't send kids back to school, open up our colleges, get people back to work as fast as possible. 12/
What if the price of reopening is death? 13/ https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/05/us/penn-state-student-dies-coronavirus/index.html
It means we take up the advice of @realDonaldTrump and @VP, we learn to live with the virus, with the tens of thousands of deaths that face us. 14/
What would it mean to imagine our future where we could minimize deaths, reconceive education and work, provide for the social and economic support people need over the next 1-2 years? 15/
The economic, personal imperatives are urging us to charge back into the past grasping for the objects we remember, trying to hold onto them, like normal. 16/
"Jacob! Jacob!" cried Bonamy, standing by the window. The leaves sank down again.
"Such confusion everywhere!" exclaimed Betty Flanders, bursting open the bedroom door.
17/
"Such confusion everywhere!" exclaimed Betty Flanders, bursting open the bedroom door.
17/
Bonamy turned away from the window.
"What am I to do with these, Mr. Bonamy?"
She held out a pair of Jacob's old shoes.
18/
"What am I to do with these, Mr. Bonamy?"
She held out a pair of Jacob's old shoes.
18/
The grief at what we've lost is palpable every day. The pain we feel, emotionally and economically, is real too. 19/
But something tells me, I can't quite articulate it, that we're on the cusp of a new future. The virus has shifted the ground underneath our feet. 20/
Are we nimble enough to figure out what's next for us? To walk through that door? It's going to take people smarter than me to figure out what to do. But we can't go back. 21/
