"Coronalone". It's like "Home Alone", but without Macaulay Culkin. And without the burglars (we hope). It's our ridiculous name for the surreal and strange circumstances in which we currently find ourselves.
And we currently find ourselves having to adjust our numbering of this series to account for the fact that we haven’t managed to post each and every week since this whole mess started. So, we have jumped to Week 11 in the title, since it really has been eleven whole weeks since I started working from home and came up with this crazy idea of sharing our experiences with you via blog post.
Where do I begin? The pandemic continues. Good people take to the street, despite the possible risk to their own health and the health of others, because systemic racism and the long-standing and continued threat of violence against the black community in this country has finally reached its boiling point and cannot— should not— be cooled down until serious change is enacted. UNICEF is warning that polio and measles could surge due to immunization programs being put on hold. Washington is siding with Serbia— a nation against whom we once fought to stop the ethnic cleansing perpetrated by their government— rather than support our once ally, Kosovo.
Oh, and murder hornets.
Has anyone else read the poem by Leslie Dwight entitled, “What if 2020 Isn’t Cancelled?” Perhaps all of this chaos and upheaval could really be the labor pains of a new and more compassionate, fair, and equitable America? Maybe even a better world? Oh, how I want to believe that is possible. Oh, how I hope we can all see how complicit we have been in allowing things to get as bad as they currently are. Oh, how I wish any of my words could be of comfort to anyone right now. And yet, I don’t really feel like my words are what are most important right now. I feel like perhaps I just need to use my “voice” (a.k.a. this blog) to amplify the voices of others, those whose messages are the ones that currently need to be heard by all of us, those whose voices have perhaps gone unheard for far too long.
So, here are a few links to articles by POC— and one antiracism educator/author— which I hope you will be willing to read. These are the voices we should be seeking right now. These are the lessons we need to be learning. I urge you to please listen:
Shared on Arno Michaelis’ Facebook page:
“I’m Black. I’m A Peacebuilder. I Want Your Help.” by Jessica Murrey
medium.com/@SFCG_/im-black-i-m-a-peacebuilder-i-want-your-help-8ab32f84c572 Shared by my beautiful friend, Jennifer Foreman:
“Performative Allyship Is Deadly (Here’s What to Do Instead)” by Holiday Phillips
forge.medium.com/performative-allyship-is-deadly-c900645d9f1f Thanks to my brother, Bill, for sharing this one:
“White Denial- Bad Apple Edition” by Tim Wise
medium.com/@timjwise/white-denial-bad-apple-edition-ff4ec02f4999 And lastly, an incredibly powerful Facebook post from “The McStuffin Mommies”, who are “a collective of nearly 1,200 women physicians of color… nearly 1,200 women physicians of color who are, also…mothers.” This was compiled and posted by one of their members, Nicole Edwards.
If you read nothing else, read this. And bring tissues.