"CoronaQuarantine" isn't quite what it suggests this weekend . . . most immediately thanks to the murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, but also cumulatively incidents like this, on a stunningly regular basis, for as long as anyone can remember. Minneapolis's police department is merely the most recent one to have an incident like this recorded by bystanders and then spread across social media; this shit happens everywhere, so it's no surprise that passionate protests spread to cities across the nation, including here in Seattle.

And the police were ready for it here, too. I walked on my own to the office and back yesterday, to exchange receiving paperwork, and that meant walking through downtown. Demonstrations were planned for later yesterday evening, but this was late morning. Some civilians were already gathering, but so far as I could tell, at that point they were outnumbered by cops already patrolling the streets.

The East Precinct Police Station, right up here on Capitol Hill on Pine and 12th, less than three blocks from where I live, was already preparing on Friday night. They put up barriers outside their station and blocked traffic from heading west from there on Pine. Thankfully, the destructive aspects of the protests never made it even that close to me at home.

But, by the time things predictably started getting out of hand, I received something I had never seen before: an emergency alert on my phone, alerting me to a citywide curfew of 5 p.m. If you went looking for more information, it became clear there was no intention of legal engforcement of this curfew, but it was still jarring: I can't remember a curfew being issued in this city since the WTO riots in 1999. This curfew, though, was issued almost the moment it was intended to go into effect—at about 4:45.

And, this did pose a problem for Shobhit in particular, who until Tuesday has to take public transit to work because his steering wheel and ignition in his car are locked and neither of us can get them to unlock. Transit from here to Northgate generally necessitates a transfer downtown, but after the curfew, no buses were going through downtown. They had to stop at the downtown border and then just turn around on their route.

There were alternate routes Shobhit could take without having to go downtown, except one of the buses is still a route that usually goes on to downtown (the #49), which meant that bus would inevitably be delayed with no reliable information on when it was coming. He takes nearly an hour to get home on transit even when things are normal, and this was bound to make it a lot longer.

I took a chance that a miracle would occur and I could get the car to start, and I went down to the garage at about 6:50 to try. I even told Shobhit I was going to try, but not to get his hopes up. Of course, no matter what I did the car's ignition would not turn, so, so much for that.

Then it suddenly hit me: Zipcar! I rented a Zipcar for an hour, which after taxes and fees came to $15.33, but at least that was still better than the Lyft estimate of $21 before taxes. In any case, Zipcar kind of saved the day.

But, not without its own challenges. I looked at my account this morning, and I had not rented a Zipcar in four years—last time was 2016. I had not rented one since Shobhit moved back from Los Angeles. Also, the app needed to be deleted and reloaded before it would work properly, it had been so long since I last actually used it. So I had to use the browser on my phone to go to Zipcar.com, update my payment information (I was still using those fuckwads at American Express four years ago), and then I could reserve one of the cars over on 15th & Madison, in the parking lot of the Bank of America.

Because of course it had to happen this way, just when I was rushing to get headed out to pick him up, Shobhit called me at 7:23, at the exact moment I was getting the driver's side door open in the car. At first he thought I was telling him I got our car to start, but I had to repeat myself: no, I was coming to get him in a Zipcar. He said okay, and he would order us dinner from the falafel place by his work. And thank god for that, I did not want to have to cook a dinner after all this crap!

This morning before he left for work again, I told Shobhit it would cost me another $15 to rent a Zipcar to come and get him again tonight, when the same issue will be happening: the 5 pm curfew is in effect tonight as well. His plan is to take the #67 and then the #49 to Capitol Hill without going downtown, but now I am considering spending the money again anyway. I have the money, after all. So, we'll see. The buses may turn out to be slightly more reliable tonight, even with a curfew, if by chance we don't get more chaos downtown, but that part remains to be seen.

Buses were on their regular, but still reduced schedules for lower ridership in the Age of COVID, when Shobhit left this morning. He texted me that there was a lot of damage around, so I asked him to send me pictures. He sent me just one, of a broken window at the Downtown Post Office where he was waiting for his connecting #41 to Northgate—the very bus he will not be able to ride back into downtown tonight.

So, once I was done getting ready for the day, I decided to walk downtown myself and take some pictures of the damage. I forgot my face mask, and I really wish I had brought it; there were way more people down there than I expected—nearly all of them helping with cleanup. That became the focus of the photos I took, as I was kind of moved by it, even though when I later posted about it, I took care to note that reactive cleanup on its own is not enough.

Not that I was exactly doing anything myself, besides taking pictures. I have a 16-shot photo album on Flickr, should you have any interest.

I was checking social media accounts on my way back, and somewhere along the way up Pike on Capitol Hill, I noticed a commemt on Instagram from Beth (Barbara's daughter who lives in Arlington, Virginia), tagging me, under a video post of a little girl who had been pepper sprayed by a Seattle Police Officer. She wrote, @fruitcakeenterprises I need you to mobilize your local resources here to call Seattle's police department to action. I'll call as well, but I think your voice will be heard over mine.

So . . . what to do? First of all, sadly, Beth was probably right that "my voice" would be heard over hers, both because she lives on the other side of the country, and even more pertinently, I am white and she is multiracial—and to most white people, she's simply black. And I won't deny that this request caused me discomfort, but she and I have had enough conversations about race and race issues that my ignoring her request would be a very, very bad move. This was my opportunity to put my money where my mouth was.

And this was tricky, because I couldn't just carelessly pass on some unverified information about this, when the spraying itself was not caught on video and I did not witness it myself. I felt it was important to make that clear when I shared information about it. I never did call the phone number, both because I read that their mail box was full anyway and because I am always far more articulate in writing than verbally. And in the end, I felt I should take an approach that played to my own strengths, and do some actual research. Hence, my relatively lengthy Facebook post (and Twitter thread) went out of its way to include all the important details, including what details would be asked for on the Office of Police Accountability's Online Complain form. Side note: if anyone reading this also lodged a complaint about this there regarding Seattle Police Officer Jared Campbell, Badge #8470, it would be much appreciated. Everything you need to see and know about it is in those Facebook and Twitter links to my posts.

I had initially planned on just coming home and posting what seemed like hopeful photos of people cleaning up downtown, but doing that right after posting about the need to report that cop seemed like it might be a little tone deaf. So, I waited a couple of hours, and then posted the clean-up photos to Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. In all three cases, in an effort to mitigate any potential misperception of my choosing to post the photos of people cleaning up, I felt compelled to add: Note: It’s nice that so many helped out so quickly, but it’s not enough. Fighting systemic racism needs to be more proactive than reactive. You know that oft-quotes phrase, “Find the helpers”? Find the people working to *prevent* catastrophe—and injustice—and, maybe, join them.

In both the comments of my posts on all three platforms, I also took care to include two other links: "Anti-racism resources for white people"—a fantastic resource for white people in particular, which not nearly enough of us will pay attention to but I currently intend to share the link every time major news happens in this country that is clearly tied to its systemic racism—and a link to the Northwest Community Bail Fund's donor page. They are helping post bail for protestors who otherwise can't afford it, and I donated $10. Not a lot, I know, but if lots of people donate even that much, it's a big help.

So, those are the constructive things I did today: I lodged my own official complaint about Jared Campbell with the Seattle Police Department (accidentally calling him Jared "Mitchell" in my initial social media posts; force of habit as that's a guy who works at the office at PCC—whoops! I was so glad someone posted a comment to point out my mistake). I wrote up that information for social media in an effort to get others to do the same. And I donated to the bail fund. I won't say all that was the least I can do, but it's close to it. There's so much more I could be doing. But, it's a start.

[posted 4:41 pm]