What follows is an adapted, re-edited version of a Facebook post from today that seems to have struck a nerve, attracting dozens of likes, comments, and shares. As a result, I concluded that perhaps I should add it to this blog.
No pictures here, just observations:
We as a nation come from ancestors who nearly starved to death at Valley Forge but stuck it out to ensure the success of a revolution that created a new nation built on liberty, imperfectly at first, but expanding its range over centuries.
Some of the toughest Americans come from ancestors who endured slavery over centuries to help build upon that legacy of liberty when they finally won their freedom.
We come from ancestors who endured four grueling years of civil war to ensure that liberty and equality retained a fighting chance to become this nation’s hallmark.
We come from ancestors who endured long passages across sometimes rough seas to reach a land that promised them a better life, and when they arrived, many endured hard work and, often, discrimination to assert their role in building our democracy.
We come from ancestors who, toward the end of World War I, endured endless months of influenza pandemic, with shutdowns and deaths and illness comparable to those we are experiencing now, until the danger passed and lives could be rebuilt.
We come from ancestors who, just a decade later, underwent the grueling agony of the Great Depression. We elected a president who, riddled with polio, understood the virtues of patience and perseverance in solving problems that seemed daunting by any measure, then entered World War II to help save the world from some of its most vicious tyrannies in modern times.
I could go on. But . . . .
Someone forgot to teach these lessons to a narcissistic president with the attention span of a fruit fly, a spoiled upper-class brat who has never faced serious challenges in life until now, a man who never learned much history, judging from the evidence of his comments.
Someone forgot to teach those lessons to protesters who, after a single month of one of the greatest public health challenges in anyone’s lifetime, refuse to learn that life never promised them that everything would turn up roses at the flick of a finger, and who never learned to analyze and understand a problem to find out whether the reopening they say they want might produce more harm than good, that a temper tantrum never solved anything.
Millions of Americans, probably most, of course, despite everything, understand that sacrifice will be part of the solution. But others have never, apparently, been steeled by a personal Valley Forge and just want what they want. Isn’t it time for a little maturity to settle in? Thank God for some governors and mayors out there with common sense and fortitude.
This is America. We’re supposed to be tougher than just throwing temper tantrums. Let’s prove it, people.
Often in this blog, I employ my professional expertise in urban planning to illuminate issues for readers, as I have tried to do with aspects of the pandemic in recent weeks. But in this post, my aim is far simpler and more mundane. I will apply the most generic form of personal planning to an issue that perhaps is needling your thoughts in coronavirus-imposed isolation. Perhaps you are working from home if you are lucky. Perhaps you are retired but unaccustomed to having nowhere to go. Or perhaps you are struggling with sudden job loss or taking care of another family member. If I help anyone to sort through the opportunities and silver linings within the dark clouds, then I will have served a function. And there is nothing I love better in life than feeling useful. That is one reason this blog even exists. I could instead be standing on a bridge over a river, watching birds migrate. Oh, yes, forgot. I blogged about exactly that more than a month ago, before stay-at-home orders kept me in Chicago instead of Nebraska.
My days at home have been filled with two very different types of activities. One involves thinking big thoughts about the current crisis and its aftermath, while engaged in the planning and administrative activities associated with chairing the Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division of the American Planning Association. In sunnier days in the fall of 2017, I was elected chair-elect, a two-year voluntary position that leads automatically to becoming chair, which happened on January 1, 2020. I hardly envisioned the current circumstances. No one has such a crystal ball. Much time has been consumed with moving meetings online and thinking through the needed changes in programming.
Beyond that, I have other volunteer work with a regional authors group and our church. It is enough to fill many of my days. For the moment, I have abandoned the search for paid work. Consulting seems secondary, and no one is inviting speakers to conferences in the foreseeable future. I do, however, need to begin preparing to teach my fall semester online course at the University of Iowa. I can be a bit relaxed, if uneasy, about generating income because the pandemic allowed me to begin collecting a pension and Social Security. Yes, I know. Not everyone is so fortunate. There were times in my life when I felt more need to hustle. Now I have more time to think. There is no jet waiting to fly me to Texas, or Hawaii, or Sri Lanka. Flights are few and far between these days for all of us. Maybe we are all giving the earth a break, although it will not last.
In any case, each of us is unique, with our own skills, experience, and interests. I have a sister who sews. She is making masks that many of her neighbors in a small Pennsylvania town are happy to acquire, perhaps because they are less available at the nearest pharmacy. Others are rallying to support food distribution to the newly unemployed. Retired teachers have volunteered as online tutors, even if some have had to quickly master the technology. With no restaurants to visit, no sporting events to attend, many of us find more free time on our hands than we have known in a long time. The question is how we use it.
I started, however, by mentioning two categories of activities. The second one is my focus in this essay. When I was racing to the airport to catch that next flight, or catching a CTA train to the next meeting downtown, there were often nagging tasks that I habitually left undone. They involved cleaning up my office, or better organizing my computer files, or painting the walls, for crying out loud. Mowing the lawn got my attention, but cleaning out the garage sometimes had to wait too long. I wasn’t always or necessarily procrastinating; sometimes I just had too much on my plate and ran out of time.
But what happens when the time stretches and you have nowhere to go, even if you need to log in for a virtual meeting now and then? The only traffic jam is on the way down the stairs to the kitchen to get more coffee. Even my workouts, such as they are, take place at home rather than at the gym. Those nagging, neglected tasks have far more opportunity to stare at me all day long.
Alex’s action figure beneath the shredder? Oh, yeah, it reminds me to save the world, I guess.
Like shredding. Yes, shredding. I decided some time ago that a lot of old financial records no longer needed to exist, and if they did, I could scan them into my laptop, then shred them. I’ve stepped up the schedule to two or three sessions per week, lasting up to a half-hour (the shredder needs time to cool off by then), and recently, I found a new use for all that shredded paper that the recyclers don’t want, which would have forced it into the trash bins. About three months ago, my wife arranged to adopt two guinea pigs from another family at our church. They became our grandson’s pets, and he is responsible for cleaning up, feeding, and entertaining them. They seem to need a supply of bedding in their cage, which needs regular cleaning, and it turns out that shredded paper is ideal. At least, that’s what Jean tells me, and I won’t question it because the convenience factor is so high. Here’s another bag! Fortunately, my schedule and years of avoiding the task of shredding have provided quite a backlog, so the guinea pigs should be well supplied for weeks to come.
Sally is happy with her new cage bedding. At least as far as I know.
Then there are books. My mother, when she visited in years past, would ask what I wanted with so many books, though I must say they line the shelves neatly. They are not scattered everywhere. (I was tempted once to reply that I fried them up with salt and pepper for breakfast, but respect got the better of me.) Many have gone unread for lack of time. One at a time, I am reducing the backlog, and my intellectual curiosity remains well fed, perhaps even glutted, but learning is calorie-free, so I am unlikely to get a fat head. I make time every day. I also used to donate books I no longer wanted, but alas, the Salvation Army is not taking donations right now. I also use my Nook to download e-books, reducing clutter. The latest was John Barry’s The Great Influenza, about the 1918 pandemic, prompted by my wife watching his interview on a news show. You ought to get it, she said. Two minutes later, I had it.
Then there is my long-standing, never-got-started project of electronically storing all those photos I shot before I first acquired a digital camera. Merely writing that sentence proves I am a boomer. Beginning in the early 1990s, I sent numerous rolls of film to processors with the foresight to request copies on CDs in addition to printed photos. Because many of them pertain not only to family vacations and personal milestones but also to planning projects and disasters dating as far back as the 1993 Midwest floods, I have wanted to upload and catalog those stacks of CDs, but it will take time. Once I have done that, my photo inventory will expand enormously. If someone decides to write my biography after I kick the bucket, I will have left them a gold mine. In the meantime, I may use the newly accessible photos in teaching, in presentations, and who knows what else. What gems are hiding in your photographic closet? Heck, my wife just this week found an old, long-lost folder of baby and childhood photos my mother must have sent (probably years ago).
You get the idea. If you’re like me, you may have spare-time projects that could last you for years, long past the time someone will perfect a COVID-19 vaccine and tests that will get us past this public health crisis. The restrictions will end, and compulsive extroverts like me will inherit the earth. Or at least the big cities. When we can finally go to the ball game, and meet our friends for a big birthday party at an Italian (or Greek or Mexican) restaurant, will we ever find time to finish what we’ve started—if, like me, you are determined to get started?
Maybe not, but we can put a noticeable dent in the problem. Look, I’m just trying to keep you out of trouble and make you feel good. After all, they say that idleness is the devil’s workshop. Is that where you want to spend your time?
On April 29, I will be moderating “Demanding Equity:
Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery,” a 45-minute session in a special
three-day virtual conference of the American Planning
Association, NPC20 @HOME.
The online conference is an attempt to replace the experience of the canceled
National Planning Conference, which would have taken place in Houston, April
25-28. For the first time in APA history, the annual event will not go forward
as planned. Like numerous other conferences, it was untenable to assemble
thousands of participants in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. But it is
possible to provide a decent educational opportunity in its place by broadcasting
and recording distance learning and letting participants ask questions
remotely.
But why do I mention this one session, when APA is offering
two dozen? Because it touches on some issues so central to the social and
economic impacts of coronavirus, and speaks so directly to what planners and
planning can do as we recover from this experience, that I wanted to highlight
the subject in this post. It has been said often that the coronavirus does not
discriminate. That may be true, but our society has done so and still does,
often in ways people are reluctant to consider or admit. The result is that, as
happens with most disasters, minorities and low-income people, those with fewer
opportunities in life or greater exposure to danger, are disproportionately
affected. And so it will be when the histories of this pandemic are written.
The evidence is already stark enough for passionate discussion.
To give credit where it is due, the session was the
brainchild of Adrian Freund,
a veteran, semi-retired planner in Oregon. Before the NPC was canceled, however,
Adrian was hospitalized (not because of coronavirus) and realized he would be
unable to go to Houston. He reached out through a former president of APA, David Siegel,
also of Oregon, to ask me to take over, and I agreed. We are on the same page
on this issue. When APA decided to replace NPC with NPC20 @HOME, this was one
of the sessions they felt must be included, and I reassembled the speakers to
modify our plans for the new format.
All of them have a ton of wisdom to contribute on the subject.
Shannon van Zandt is
a professor of urban planning and department head at Texas A&M, and has
authored numerous articles and led many projects on subjects related to equity
in disaster recovery, particularly in the Texas context in which she works. Marccus
Hendricks, an assistant professor of planning at the University of
Maryland, is a Texas A&M graduate who has focused on infrastructure issues
and environmental justice, writing his doctoral thesis on stormwater management
in Houston. Chrishelle
Palay is director at the HOME
Coalition in Houston. Obviously, the panel has strong Texas roots, but there
are few states where one can get better insights into the impacts of
environmental inequities.
But it is the screaming headlines of the past week that have
brought renewed attention to the issue in the context of coronavirus. In Chicago,
we have learned that African
Americans are dying from the virus at six times the rate of whites. Gary, a predominantly
African American city, is the new
coronavirus hot spot in Indiana. It is also where it gets personal for me. A
12-year-old granddaughter lives there and, as of yesterday (April 10), appears
to have COVID-19 symptoms. Her mother called and was asked not to bring her to
a hospital, but to isolate her at home. She will not be tested because, as everywhere
else, this nation has
not gotten its act together on testing. Will she even be included in the statistics,
then, as a known case? Good question. I have no idea how Indiana is tallying such
numbers. But she is in for a rough ride in the immediate future, and Gary and
surrounding Lake County are certainly not fully prepared.
But what is happening in Chicago, as numerous commentators
and public health officials have noted in the past week, is not only not
unique, but to be expected. Detroit
is emerging as a hotspot with major disparities in racial impact. State
health data reveal that, while blacks make up 14 percent of Michigan’s
population, they account for one-third of the cases and 40 percent of the deaths
so far. In
Louisiana, with one-third of the population, blacks account for 70 percent
of the deaths. New Orleans has clearly emerged as a southern hot spot for coronavirus
infections. Across the nation, one can find similar racial disparities.
Beneath those figures, however, are other disparities that
weave in and out of racial and ethnic numbers. Age is perhaps the best-known
factor, but so are many others. People in low-income service jobs, for instance,
to the extent that they are still working, are more dependent on public transit
and much less likely to be able to work from home like white-collar professionals.
Public transit contributes greatly to mobility in urban centers, but does
little for social distancing. It is still unclear just how transit will be
affected for the long term, although it remains a vital link to jobs for many
of the working poor. But coronavirus is clearly
challenging the economic viability of many transit systems, one reason they
were the target of assistance in the CARES
Act.
It goes without saying that health care workers are significantly more exposed, but they are not just doctors. Their ranks include nurses, nursing assistants, and many others, some with much lower incomes, who nonetheless are risking their lives every day. Some of them work in nursing homes, which have not been the focus of any noticeable attention at the federal level. There are many ways to slice and dice the data to identify patterns of exposure, including those for access to health care, quite possibly the single most important factor driving disparities in this particular disaster. Lack of insurance coverage and inability to afford adequate health care leave many people untouched by the system and untested until it is too late. Poor or nonexistent health insurance coverage, especially for undocumented immigrants, accompanied by food deserts in many inner-city neighborhoods, endemic poverty in many rural areas and small towns, and exposure to job-related ailments, can produce numerous chronic conditions that make exposure to a new virus fatal or disastrous instead of merely survivable.
It remains remarkable, in view of these factors, that the Trump
administration can maintain its drumbeat of opposition
to the Affordable Care Act, including the recent
refusal to allow newly jobless Americans to sign up for coverage. But this
is one of many ways in which this nation, through both federal and state
policy, continues to resist expanded, let alone universal, health care coverage
to shore up health care deficiencies for the most vulnerable among us. There is
both a meanness and short-sightedness that underlies much of this resistance.
As I noted just two weeks ago, these health care vulnerabilities, with all the
racial and socioeconomic inequities they embody, form the weak
links in the chain of overall vulnerability for our communities when
pandemic strikes.
And that brings me back to the point of the session I will
moderate. One essential element of the planner’s skill set should be demographic
analysis. The coronavirus
pandemic highlights the critical value of addressing
public health in comprehensive plans and other efforts to chart the future of
cities, counties, and regions. Issues of national health care policy may be
well beyond the reach of planners and their communities, but exposing the glaring
disparities that have been made evident as the data on coronavirus cases grows
is critical to knowing how resilient our communities are or how resilient we
can make them. Access to health care is not merely a matter of insurance, as important
as that is. It is also affected by the practices of local hospitals, the access
to open spaces for densely populated areas, environmental regulations controlling
industrial pollutants, public education around personal health, access
to healthy food, the quality
of our food distribution systems, and a myriad of other considerations that
can be addressed to one degree or another through local or regional planning
and through policy commitments to social equity.
That is precisely why, as the White
House dithers, and federal management of the coronavirus crisis continues
to fall short, dozens if not hundreds of mayors and governors and other local
and state officials have stepped up to fill the gap. It is sad that there is not
better national leadership in this crisis, but we are learning who our real leaders
are. Enabling planners and other policy makers to support those officials with essential
and meaningful data is an ongoing task, but if we are going to emerge from this
disaster in a better place, identifying the inequities that weaken our
communities and finding ways to build resilience across those weak links is going
to be essential. There is no good alternative.
Okay, now I’m angry. I had not intended to produce another blog article quite so soon, but false prophets are rampaging through the vineyards of the Lord. Fortunately, there are only a few of them reported so far, two of whom have been cited for certain misdemeanor offenses. But with the coronavirus, it takes only two megachurch pastors calling hundreds of people to live church services to let loose the plague on not only their own followers but everyone around them. They need to get some common sense and knock it off.
In addition, Rev. Jerry Falwell, Jr., son of the founder of the fundamentalist Liberty University in Virginia, has called students back to the campus after spring break, ignoring the actions of almost every other college in the nation to forsake such close contact and take lessons online for the duration of the semester. With several documented cases on campus already, the question is how many more students and staff will be infected.
In Central, Louisiana, Pastor Tony Spell of Life Tabernacle Church was arrested after holding services on Sunday in violation of the emergency order by Gov. John Bel Edwards for Louisiana residents to stay at home for the coming month. Released after his booking, he proceeded to defy the order again by holding services on Tuesday evening. As on Sunday, curious onlookers wondered what he was doing. On Sunday, according to the Chicago Tribune, people in the neighborhood were questioning what made the people of the church think they were so special as to disregard Gov. John Bel Edwards’s stay-at-home order. No one is discriminating against anyone’s religious rights because the order does not prohibit online gatherings and similar modes of worship. It aims to limit large crowds to inhibit the spread of a deadly virus for which there is, as yet, no known vaccine or effective cure. That is a matter of public safety. Thousands upon thousands of other congregations nationwide are live-streaming church services as a substitute for assembling masses of people in a Sunday morning petri dish for coronavirus.
I write from personal experience. My own congregation, Augustana Lutheran Church of Hyde Park, in Chicago, suspended services more than two weeks ago, but provides recordings, readings, and other online and private opportunities for worship and meditation as we can. I serve as the coordinator for the Adult Forum, the Sunday school session for adults, which predictably draws its fair share of devoted seniors, who are at greatest danger of exposure, and about whom we are most concerned. We are not meeting until further notice. We may miss the interaction and the discussions, but we do not wish to put anyone’s life in danger. Our priority is safety. We want everyone to emerge from this in good health.
In Tampa, meanwhile, Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne of the River at Tampa Bay Church violated a stay-at-home order by holding services this past Sunday. He later turned himself in to authorities, but the law firm representing him maintains that the church practiced social distancing. Given the human interactions inevitably occurring in large crowds, that may be beside the point. However, USA Today reports that, in a Facebook post, Howard-Browne described coronavirus as “blown totally way out of proportion.” It is worth noting that Florida is nearing 7,000 confirmed cases with 87 deaths so far, and the trend is moving rapidly upward. One wonders if the families of victims share his perspective.
Mark my words: In the face of the pervasive concerns of neighbors and fellow citizens and fellow Christians, such defiance soon turns to arrogance. And arrogance demonstrates egotism, not faith.
Given several thousand deaths to date in the U.S., out of hundreds of thousands of confirmed cases, with untold suffering likely still to come, I have a simple question for these three ignorant gentlemen:
Who the hell do you think you are?
Pastor Tony Spell insists he will do it again because “God
told us to.”
I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that. All those other pastors and rabbis and imams and nuns and priests, including Pope Francis, who is not asking anyone to come to the Vatican for Easter because he cares about the lives of fellow human beings, seem to be getting a very different message, which I suggest might sound something more like this:
Take care of my people. Save lives, especially those of my elderly servants, by taking precautions. This is your chance to show how you love each other, protect each other, and lead each other through the valley of the Shadow of Death. Use this opportunity to make your communities stronger. And, for my sake, think about the lives and health of my thousands of servants on the front lines–the doctors, the nurses, the EMTs, the social workers, the police—they are parts of your flock to whom I have assigned great responsibilities. Please do not think me so vain nor so cruel as to insist on the continuation of live worship services during this crisis. This is your opportunity to show that I have gifted you with moral imagination. Use it.
