Protesting in a time of plague

Firstly, I’d like to apologise – I promised you a humorous follow up to my rather morbid Covid post and I lied. I’ll try fit in something funny for you soon.

I’d like to talk to you about the current situation, in particular the #blacklivesmatter movement during the current pandemic. Most of you are aware that I’m a strong supporter of social-distancing, lock-down and keeping schools closed (another post on the latter will follow… yay, more positive fun – it’s a sign of the times). Having had an exceptionally hard time with Covid, I feel I’m allowed to be more on the paranoid side of the scale.

So, when faced with the protests about #blacklivesmatter, most people seem shocked that I am in support of the protests. So let me clarify: I understand the fear, I understand not supporting mass gatherings during this time, but, and here’s the big thing, we don’t get to choose when the world decides to stop and listen – we just need to be there with a megaphone, amplifying the voices of those who need to be heard.

Do I wish these protests were socially distant? God, yes, of course. Do I wish this happened at another time, or that we had the luxury to postpone the protests until the world goes back to normal and is safe again? Yes. But we have to be realistic and we have to face the fact that this fight has been going on for centuries. If the powers that be start to listen now (and they are!), we cannot sit back and wait for a better time. The protests are working. Things are slowly changing. I have no doubt that it will take centuries more to overturn the damages done by racism, but we can at least start here.

Lastly, do I wish the protests weren’t violent? Of course I do. No one wants to see looters and violence, but, as far as I am able to (as a privileged white woman), I get it. I don’t condone hurting animals and using the protests to go a little nuts, but I can’t even begin to imagine how you must feel – having spent your life facing the fact that your race determines how others see you and that your race could literally determine whether you live or die. There is a lot of anger there and it is so incredibly just. I came across this sign today (and forgive me for using a Facebook picture to depict how I feel about a very serious situation) and I think it sums up how I feel incredibly well.

Please don’t let the violence take away from the message. We need to turn this around. We need to be there for our black men, women and children. Black people are dying purely because of the colour of their skin. They are treated unfairly, they are persecuted, they live a life of fear and injustice. We cannot stand idly by.

The fact that this happened during a pandemic is a cruel coincidence, and is indicative of 2020 thus far, but we cannot choose when an uprising will happen. We just need to seize the opportunity to make a difference.

Unfortunately, the right wingers have now taken over the protests and I can’t tell who is hurting who now, but I know that a lot of the #BLM protesters are getting blamed for the right-wing behaviours. So I’ll stop there and move on.

Now, I’m sure you’re looking forward to the end of this post, but I’d like to discuss a few more points. So many people are upset at the destruction of statues and are getting very angry at those who support this. At first, it upset me that they were tearing down statues. I watched the Colston one in Bristol get torn down and felt it took away from the message we want to send. Until I read some more about it.

Until I realised that black people in Bristol had to pass that statue every day, lauding over them – a man who literally sold their ancestors like cattle. Never mind the fact that so many souls died on the way, in horrific circumstances. As a black person, having to see this face (of a man who would look at your own as if you were nothing more than a commodity to be sold) every day, proudly displayed in your city, must be horrendous.

And I thought, well, there are other ways of going about this. Petition the city to take it down, for goodness sake. Until I found out they had. For years they have been trying to get the city to remove this. For years and no one listened.

I don’t think removing statues is defying our history in any way; it’s acknowledging it, and showing those who have suffered from it that we refuse to continue on that path. It’s showing respect and care for everyone who has been affected by racism. In the perfect world, they would be removed and put into a museum, but, let’s face it. No one listened, so now they’re doing it themselves and I stand with them.

I’d also like to touch on another point that so many people seem to be arguing on: George Floyd. Please, stop saying he’s a not a martyr. I don’t think any #BLM protester has been saying that. Was he a good man? I don’t know. Does he have a past? Of course. Does anything that man did make it alright for a police officer to slowly kill him, in public, while he called for his ‘Momma.’ NO. So no, he wasn’t a martyr. Yes, he had a past. But no one deserves to die like that. And no one is protesting his death alone, we are fighting for ALL THE LIVES THAT HAVE BEEN LOST and all the injustices that have happened, purely because of the colour of someone’s skin.

The hard decisions

Like many parents out there, we have recently been faced with a unfathomable task: to decide whether or not to send our children back to school/nursery, in the midst of a pandemic.

As previously mentioned, my history with Covid-19 allows me to be a little more paranoid than most, so I have been very, very vocal about social distancing, lock down and listening to the rules (Please read Protesting in a time of plague before labeling me a hyprocrite).

Sadly, all over, I have seen people ignoring these rules: People letting whole neighbourhoods of children play together, people partying in others’ gardens, make-shift pubs being run at the height of lock down – it has not stopped. I’m forever grateful that our street has listened to the rules.

When schools reopened, my husband and I were faced with the decision of whether or not both children should return. It was a hard decision. Being a qualified Early Years Educator, I could see the damage I was doing to my son (5). I should never have taught him. He walked into home-schooling with a thirst for learning. Today? He wants absolutely nothing to do with education or learning. My daughter (3) has had one play date since November when we took her out of nursery for financial reasons. She thrives on friends, interactions and being social, so she is really struggling and has been begging for nursery for months.

We decided to follow the science and the numbers. We would watch the statistics for three weeks – if there was no rise, we would send the children back, and if there was, we would keep them home.

Unfortunately, the decision was taken out of our hands, when we received a call last Monday to say that if my son didn’t return to school on the 15th, they would no longer have a space for him (let me add that there is no fault of the school here – smaller classes means they cannot fit all the priority children in). Our hand was forced and we had to make the decision.

We have decided that home-schooling is more detrimental to our children’s future, than the risk they face at school. We are following social distancing heavily and trusting in our ‘bubbles’ (the term used to describe the people we are allowed to interact with. So, in my son’s bubble, he will only interact with his teacher, dinner lady and his 14 other classmates). We also are aware that both children have likely have had Covid, thanks to me, and, whilst they may not be immune, they are undoubtedly more protected than most. However, if we see a spike in stats, they’re getting pulled quicker than my daughter can throw a dining room chair.

It wasn’t an easy decision, far from it. I am terrified and it’s keeping me up most nights. But my son is incredibly happy to have returned to school (I hope – he looked it when I dropped him off and he happily blanked my 6 efforts to flail about waving and screaming goodbye) and my daughter is beyond excited to return to nursery. I realise we will face some judgement for this and that is ok, but in times like these, we can only do what we think best for our families. However, if you live around us, if you’re in any way connected to their schools, then I am literally begging you to follow the guidelines. Please remember that you are part of a community that is relying on you.

And for those who will still consider me a hypocrite, for being pro-protests and simultaneously pro-social distancing, then I am so sorry you can’t see the difference and I really hope you can at least understand where I am coming from.