dpduckworth

Display case, Lisières – David Solís, presented at Maison de l’Amérique latine et des Caraïbes, Paris, May 24-July 24, 2019.

Flora Grubb Gardens, San Francisco.

I had a discussion with Joe and Jack outside Belle Cora early this evening in North Beach.  Jack mentioned having more time to spend on his art with the shelter-in-place policies in San Francisco.  I could appreciate that sentiment.  Consider the output of this blog over time and you will understand that the blog is a luxury and the time available to enhance the venture has been practically nil.

Be that as it may we do what we can to live.  I make a living.  I work for a wage.  Unless you are one of Trump’s welfare recipients sitting this pandemic out on a yacht making a living is rather special.  Sample Anneken Tappe’s “Record 20.5 million American jobs lost in April. Unemployment rate soars to 14.7%,” CNN Business (https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/08/economy/april-jobs-report-2020-coronavirus/index.html; accessed 05/08/2020).

Stella Pastry & Café decided to close at the beginning of shelter-in-place in San Francisco.  Recently someone with a marker wrote the words you see above on the shop’s window pane, covering the paper sign the shop had originally posted from inside.  A defacement with what, certainly provocative, meaning?  I’ve noticed nearly one-third to one-half of the local population not wearing masks in my neighborhood on any given day.  Earlier today on the bus I listened to a man in a wheelchair in his 80’s rail against the use of masks.  His litany touched on several aspects of how his life has been impeded: why he can’t breathe!  But it was the last item on his list that truly astounded: he wants women to be able to see his face without a mask!  No one in particular was being addressed; we were all hostage to his words.

Why are we allowing this travesty to take place?  Wearing masks to help stem a pandemic!  No!  Surely not!  Ahoy Huntington Beach!

But if the I-need-my-nails-and-hair-cut-now-this-is-freedom crowd is making too much noise the rational keep-the-state-afloat managerial class tempers that by letting us know that we can afford to allow some people to die.  It’s in the budget that we must save.  Whose budget accounted for 1,322,163 confirmed cases within the United States as of now with 78,616 deaths? (see ncov2019.live for these figures, and they will change!).

Fnnch is a local artist for whom I do not have an opinion but of whom I am well aware.  His spray painted images of the signature honey bear, as you see above, or flamingos or lotus flowers dot the landscape.  You cannot think of spray can art in San Francisco without including this artist.  Be that as it may, the above image is a work on paper adhered to a postal relay box located on Columbus Avenue near Broadway.  This particular bear did catch my attention two weeks ago because the artist had added the mask.  It also caught others’ attention — with tags “STONER”, “5G”, and “FUCK ‘YO’ COUCH” —  and obviously someone who did not like the message behind the mask.  I had to ask a friend what “5G’ referred to.  She explains that this is reference to a theory gaining popularity that the virus is caused by cell phone towers.

People nonchalantly strolling the avenues mask-less is as much a designer statement as people wearing newer hand-crafted three-layer cloth masks.  There is a smugness to those mask-less strollers.  They have more important things to do than be bothered with the common good.

But what is caring for the common good to capitulation?  This work on cardboard, which I could have nonchalantly stepped on as I strolled today, was part of a soft tide of garbage drifting across my path.  Look how it shouts for attention!  This handmade sign lifts the AIDS epidemic-era slogan of SILENCE=DEATH from a visual campaign originally created in the 1980s by concerned citizens in New York City and members of ACT-UP, who could see that a pandemic seemingly affecting only gay men was being totally ignored by the rest of America.

And I do remember those days.  When we gathered in private homes to assess the coming storm we were asking each other how to care for individuals suddenly fraught with an unknown disease.  There were no institutional parameters to look to.  There was no governmental concern nor support.  No, there was absolutely nothing.  Yet, America would be nothing today if not for the bravery of men and women who reached out during the AIDS pandemic.  Now we have the institutional and governmental structure to address pandemic because of AIDS.

People gripped with economic uncertainty or job loss must certainly be acknowledged (see my post from May 3rd regarding meatpacking plant workers).  But the lack of empathy because of assumed self-righteous claims to  constitutionally guaranteed personal freedoms or latched-on conspiracy theories surrounding cell phone towers is a mentally sick vacuum that shows us who we truly are.  We are not the brave souls who addressed AIDS.  We are a morally bankrupt people.  I do not like America right now.

As we value our meat, sheltering in place  with a favorite cabernet sauvignon for some, screaming beyond sargeant-at-arms for others so that that barbecue rib is back on the restaurant table, the least fortunate are those deemed essential workers.  In fact, the Defense Production Act, a 1950 piece of legislation designed to regulate production of industrial materials, is now in force to ensure your meat consumption does not go away.  But those essential workers preparing your meat in plants across the United States certainly can.  The meatpacking industry has not protected workers’ safety under the DPA even though, as Esther Honig and Ted Genoways report for Mother Jones:

“All told in the US, per data collected by the Food and Environment Reporting Network, at least 99 meatpacking and processed food plants have confirmed cases of COVID-19, and at least 20 meatpacking plants and five processed food plants are currently closed. At least 6,832 workers are confirmed sick and at least 25 have died.”

from ” ‘The Workers Are Being Sacrificed’: As Cases Mounted, Meatpacker JBS Kept People on Crowded Factory Floors: With coronavirus outbreaks at two-thirds of the company’s beef processing plants, employees are asking, ‘Why didn’t they help protect us?’ “; https://www.motherjones.com/food/2020/05/meatpacking-coronavirus-workers-factory-jbs-tyson-smithfield-covid-crisis-sacrifice-outbreaks-beef/?utm_source=mj-newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=food-for-thought-2020-05-03; accessed 05/03/2020

It is time to either begin thinking vegan or step up and protect those you deem essential.

Ringside

I spent Fourth of July at Dolores Park watching San Francisco Mime Troupe’s excellent production of Treasure Island, a musical about San Francisco land owner greed with an insightful focus on the city’s own toxic Treasure Island.  Beginning with the salvaging and scrubbing of radioactive ships destroyed by atomic testing at Bikini Atoll (testing began in 1946) the Navy polluted the San Francisco Bay Area with impunity.  A naval base on the island conducted a training center for radiological decontamination and dumped radioactive material and other contaminants in large rubbish pits.  The base closed in 1997.  The Navy was required to clean up the polluted site in order to transfer ownership back to the City and County of San Francisco.  But the clean up process cannot be trusted; for further information, consult Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice at www.greenaction.org.  The island is phasing into high income housing and hostelry, pushing out low income residents who have lived on the island for many years.

San Francisco Mime Troupe is celebrating sixty years with a benefit concert on October 7th.  For their summer schedule, consult: http://www.sfmt.org/schedule/index.php

LaborFest is offering its 26th annual program of events about labor and culture.  Events are held throughout the San Francisco Bay Area during the month of July.  I will be conducting a walking tour with brother Gifford Hartman on Saturday, July 21st, at 10:00 a.m.  This free tour’s focus is on labor activist Tom Mooney and the Preparedness Day Bombing of 1916.  For more information on this year’s schedule of events, visit: https://laborfest.net/