Until the spring of my senior year of high school, blue jeans were banned.  I was warned by the school principal about wearing blue jeans at school during the first week of that year.  In a brave act of civil disobedience, about once a week, I defied the ban by wearing a shirt, tie, and a pair of blue jeans.  In early spring I led some of my fellow students to the football field, under the west end goal post, to protest to be allowed to wear jeans to school.  

Times were changing, whether we protested or not, jeans were probably going to be allowed the following year, but we were seniors.  Later that afternoon I was sent to the principal’s office.  To my surprise, the principal had talked to the chairman of the school board and agreed to not enforce the ban on blue jeans, pending the formal policy change by the full school board.  Protests sometimes work when the timing is right. 

Resolving an issue requires getting the powers that be to focus on the issue. Protests tend to encourage them to focus on the issue.  Once you’ve gotten their attention, sometimes the issue gets resolved.

The First Amendment to the United States of America Constitution grants Americans the right to assemble in support of a cause:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

There were numerous anti-Vietnam war protests during my entire three years at the University of Minnesota, (1972 – 1974).   Sometimes they were more intense than others.  I was crossing the Northrup mall on the way to my Cognitive Psychology class. A tear gas canister exploded with a mild bang, spewing clouds of gas, about 20 feet from me.  My eyes burned and itched. It was hard to breathe.  The professor sent me to the campus clinic where they flushed my eyes.  From then on, I had less sympathy for the heavy-handed police tactics used during a non-violent protest.

About nine or ten years later, I was the Industrial Relations Manager at White Farm Equipment Company in Hopkins, MN.   As part of the bankruptcy proceedings, White Farm stopped the pension plans and turned them over to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.  The net result is the pensioners got about 85% of their pensions.  They were not happy. 

Retirees protested with signs and news crews in front of my office.  I felt bad for the pensioners but protesting does not retroactively increase farm equipment sales, thus preventing bankruptcy, which is basically what I said to the reporters with three microphones shoved in my face.  Protesting can only affect future change, not the reality of the past. 

Years later while working for Anoka County,  there was a credible bomb threat from an anti-government protest group.  My team spent two years electronically mapping the County.  The data was backed-up but not off-site. So, I took about 10-15  minutes to gather the backup disks to carry them off-site.   As I headed out the door of my office, two police officers very intensely questioned why I was still in the building and carrying two obviously heavy bags.  Terrorist acts, even threats of terrorism, are not protected by the Constitution.  When terrorism is threatened, being in the wrong place at the wrong time can be dangerous. 

Several years after that, as I headed into work on my first day at MN/DOT, four protesters chained themselves to the doors. It looked like a bigger deal on the news than it did in person.  I just walked through the set of doors next to the doors they were chained to. When I told my boss about the protesters, he told me to get used to it, lots of people protest about roads. I think the protesters saved a couple of trees.  Sometimes the publicity resulting from the protest can make a difference.

I ended my career working for about 12 years at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA).  Each and every one of those 12 years, there were several protests which made the evening news. The unofficial protocol was to walk behind the camera and be quiet if a person was being interviewed.  Officially, we employees followed the same process in making determinations whether or not there were protesters. However, I suspect the protests were often effective in educating the public and gaining support for particular issues.  

The Women’s Rights protests after Trump was elected were large and there were a large number of them.  Clearly these protests moved the needle.  Like many protests, at first, the exact desired outcome is both obvious and still not exactly clear.  Yet over time, additional clarity is often achieved. 

The racial justice protests ignited by the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police are the largest, most widespread, multi-generational, diverse, sustained I have seen in my lifetime.  We are probably still too close to the moment to know what the outcome will be, however, clearly the role of the police in our society will be rapidly evolving. The intentional or unintentional enforcement of racism by social, governmental, and business systems is now in the spotlight and universally condemned. 

The United States Constitution grants Americans the right to protest.  Protests focus attention on an issue. Changing our ways requires focussing on the new way forward.  Change is tough to achieve, yet, change can and does happen.   

 

The closer you look, the more you see.

www.scaleandperception.com

 

Within the past three months, some 108,000 Americans died from COVID-19 disease.  Over 95% were over age 40.  COVID-19 creates orphans. Mostly adult orphans but orphans nonetheless. The surviving children, adult or otherwise,  will very much miss those who succumb.

I am 67 years old.  I was orphaned thirty years ago.  To this very day, I still miss my parents. I think about them regularly.  I talk about them with others regularly. I talked to a stranger walking by our house yesterday, and during the conversation, I mentioned my dad was a bricklayer.

I am so glad for my memories of my parents. However, memory does not come close to actual live interaction.  I wonder if mom would still give me a look of disapproval if I swore in front of her.  She met my children but never knew my grandchildren.  I bet she would like them a lot.   

Mom died in 1990, dad died twenty years earlier, in 1970.  Linda’s mom died in 1964 and her dad thirty years later in 1994.  We’ve been orphans for over 25 years. 

Mom was a no show for dinner with some friends. She did not answer her phone when they called her, so they called me.  Drive to her apartment, knock on the door. No answer.  Manager’s office, key, door chained from inside, hacksaw, There on the couch in her living room was mom, obviously dead.  I was calling my sisters while waiting for the police to arrive when it dawned on me, I was now an orphan.  

My guess is the children of each COVID-19 disease victim recalls where they were when they heard and the various extraneous details of their parent’s passing.  If that parent’s passing made them an orphan, I would guess the empty feeling of being an orphan hit them within minutes of finding out their last parent died. 

Being an orphan sucks. COVID-19 sucks for creating so many new orphans.  

The virus SARS-CoV-2 causes COVID-19 disease.  The infected spread the SARS-CoV-2 virus to others mostly via the droplets of saliva dispersed into the air by breathing, talking, singing, screaming, and the like.  Which is a fancy way of saying, COVID-19 spreads by social interaction.  

Most of the time, COVID-19 is not fatal. As our healthcare providers learn more about treating the disease, the mortality rate is decreasing.   Which is wonderful but over 108,000 times in the past three months, the infected person died before their time.  Every day many hundreds of our fellow citizens die from COVID-19.  Yep, COVID-19 sucks. 

Unfortunately, much of the economy is built around our personal interactions with each other. Limiting social interactions delays the spread of COVID-19 but it also severely limits the economy.  

The trick moving forward is to walk the tightrope between loosening up on social distancing enough to put more people back to work without lessening it so much that the number deaths skyrocket.  We need to strike a balance between limiting people sharing too much of the same air and allowing some limited face to face transactions between buyers, sellers, and other customers.

The impact of striking the balance is devastating to some businesses and actually helps some others. It is a tough test of leadership.  Public health vs. jobs requires strong political leaders.  

The SARS-CoV-2 virus does not care about politics or economics. The SARS-CoV-2 virus spreads whenever it has the opportunity to spread.  Social distancing slows the spread, congregating increases the spread.  Face masks slow the spread, not wearing a face mask increases the spread.  Having enough ICU beds and trained healthcare professionals to limit the number of deaths vs. letting COVID-19 kill our parents. 

Managing the United States’ response to COVID-19 is a tough, very difficult job. There is no perfect solution.  It requires strong, informed, leadership to lead the nation through the deadly minefield that is this global pandemic.  The competing interests all have compelling, often mutually exclusive interests.  There is little to no precedent from which guidance can be taken. Managing this crisis is not about winning, rather about doing the best you can under very difficult circumstances. 

The United States President failed to respond to the early warnings.  As the crisis built, the President abdicated to the Governors of each state his responsibility to lead our response to the pandemic. As the crisis heightened the President did not then seize control of the response, rather choosing to make a series of confusing, seemingly politically motivated statements about the actions taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic by the Governors. 

Right now there does not appear to be any coherent national plan for reaching the balance between economics and public health.  The number of orphans keeps increasing day after day, week after week, with only wild speculation as to when a vaccine will be available. In the meantime the economy is tanking with the unemployment rate is at historic highs.

We are watching our President taking potshots at our governors one minute and praise them the next, seemingly more concerned with the optics than saving his fellow American senior citizens.   We are left telling each other our sad tales about how COVID-19 decided which of us should become an orphan next.

In case you did not know how I feel, let me be clear. Being an orphan sucks. COVID-19 sucks for creating so many new orphans.  

 

The closer you look, the more you see.

www.scaleandperception.com