"NO MAN IS AN ISLAND"

It's one of those days again, one of those uniquely American days when a death has been caused by unjustified violence.  ("Another Week of Shootings," 8/4/19)  Just when we were feeling like maybe our emotions could handle the pandemic better than we had hoped.  Just when we had our new routines down and were finding our balance.  

Not a shooter this time, but a police officer pressing his knee into the back of the neck of a man in handcuffs lying face-down on the ground.  Pressing with his full weight while the man pleaded: "Please.  I can't breath." Over and over.  Pressing for at least 5 minutes until there was no pulse.  Then 3 minutes more. Inexplicable. The whole world by now has seen the videos.  The man who was killed was black, the officer white.  This happened on Monday, Memorial Day.

While the rest of us were improvising our holiday, Derek Chauvin had George Floyd pinned to the asphalt, crushed under the weight of this officer who had a history of conduct complaints.  Mr. Floyd was being arrested for suspicion of spending a counterfeit $20 bill at a deli, a misdemeanor.  Minneapolis is angry.  So are other communities.  The Third Precinct where Chauvin worked was burned last night.  Tonight the protestors kneel with hands raised and chant "George Floyd, George Floyd."  But the CNN building in Atlanta is being defaced as I write.  Protest is our right.  Property damage is not.  Everything is complicated.  Nothing is simple. The protestors are all colors but more young than old.  Many wear homemade masks in lieu of social distancing.  More of the strangeness of the times. 

Only a few of us can remember the 5 days of riots in Watts, Los Angeles in 1965; a few more the beating of Rodney King by police in 1992.  Today Chauvin was charged with murder.   

Why talk about this?  Or about the milestone of 100,000 people in the United States dead from the coronavirus? (We reached that grim number yesterday at 3:40 pm with a death in Illinois.)  After all, as long as we don't live in Minneapolis, as long as we aren't sick with the virus, I'm not impacted very much.  My granddaughter's  school team won 1st place in "Battle of the Books" today; I did Zoom Yoga; my husband got some work done.  We carried on. 

Of course we know why.  "No man is an island," as John Donne said way back in 1624. He was right.  We don't want a racial divide.  We don't want police brutality.  We don't want our buildings burning.  We don't want to pass a virus to our neighbors.  We don't want hungry children.  We want safe neighborhoods, full stomachs and good health.  And we want it for all of us.  I remember an old song sung by Helen Reddy,  You and Me Against the World.  But that's not really what our lives are like. Let's look instead at the meditation by John Donne:

"No Man is an Island" 
No man is an island entire of itself; 
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, 
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; 
any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.   
MEDITATION XVII
John Donne

                                      From Nina Naomi