The Meltdown Crisis

COVID has revealed what many of us already knew: we are living on the razor’s edge. More than any other crisis of recent memory, this public health crisis has exposed the deep weaknesses of American society. Not everyone is taking to the message with equal amounts of grace. On the one hand, thousands of people are marching and protesting police violence. Others are also linking communities of care that have long existed in communities that the state left behind ages ago. And, then there is the Trader Joe’s woman.

I have lived in Richmond, Virginia for the last five years. You may have seen footage of the daily protests happening there. Ostensibly the protests are about police brutality and removing the city’s vaunted monuments to the Confederacy. But, beneath the grainy cellphone video of tear gas and protest chants, there is the daily life of building something for after the statues are gone. My assistant Lauren sent me pictures of her friends dropping off more books for the Little Free Library that has popped up at the pedestal that has lifted Stonewall Jackson’s likeness nine feet above the city for 100 years. Community members renamed one site for a young black man killed by Richmond police two years ago — Marcus Peters.