My Pandemic Journal continues with Part 16: Our Non-Normal November. (I tried to think of something catchier. Maybe you can do better!)
It has been a non-normal month (granted, we have had a lot of non-normal months lately). But this one had the bizarreness of the US election on top of everything else.
One thing that has become normal (at least on this blog): memes! Enjoy!
Mon. 2 Nov. 2020
The day before the election. I’m not sure I can explain everything I’m thinking and feeling right now, but here it goes....
(I decided to make this entry a blog post, which you can read here.)
Tues. 3 Nov. 2020
Election Day.
I just finished my third choice for volunteering today. First was to be a poll worker. I never heard back, and couldn’t get in touch via email or phone. Second was to collect signatures at the polls for Community Control Now. Third was to phone bank for the North Carolina AFL-CIO to get out to vote for union members.
Right as I finished phone banking, I got a call that they needed some help at a polling location for Community Control Now, so I went and did that until it got dark.
Later: We ordered pizza and settled in to watch the results. Everyone was saying it would take longer than one night to have all the results due to various factors (especially counting mail-in ballots) … and that is correct.
It’s about 11:30pm as I type this. It’s going to be close. Way closer than any race involving Trump should be after everything that has happened (impeachment, kids in cages, court packing, outright racism, etc.), during a horribly mismanaged pandemic. I lost a lot of faith in my fellow Americans in 2016. I can’t say much of that will be restored this week. But my hope is that enough Americans overcame voter suppression and the politics of white resentment to do the right thing. It’s shitty it has to be this way.
Hopefully we’ll have some not-bad news in the next few days.
We did get some local races called. Marquita Bradshaw, who I text-banked for and saw at a rally the other day, is probably going to lose the US Senate race by a healthy margin. No surprise, but disappointing. The same for Meg Gorman, who I met at the aforementioned event, in her bid for US House. It looks like Glenn Scruggs is going to lose by a much narrower margin for TN State Senate (although he won in Hamilton County), which is a bummer because the current occupant of that office is terrible. Yusuf Hakeem, running unopposed as my state representative, has 100% of the vote, so that’s good news, but totally expected.
I might go to bed uncharacteristically early. I’m supposed to go to a Zoom event at 8:30am to ask the Chancellor of my university to extend winter holiday for staff and 12-month faculty on behalf of the union. Either that, or whether the university is going to issue a statement demanding that all the votes in this election be counted. Fun times (facetiously “fun” of course).
Alright, good night and good luck.
Wed. 4 Nov. 2020
It’s evening and I realized I was really tired for some reason. But then I remembered this list of just some of the things I did today.
· Woke up early to get ready to attend a Zoom event with the Chancellor of my university, where I asked him if the university or the state system had any intention of issuing a statement calling for all votes to be counted in light of Trump’s speech last night that he had won despite there being no evidence for this claim.
· I also asked about extending the administrative holiday for staff and 12-month faculty, and later in the call plugged my students’ online film festival on Nov. 18. A few people on the call got in touch with me later about promoting that event on the university website.
· After that I spent a long time obsessing over election results, which are trending toward Biden but still not called as of this evening.
· I emailed the Tennessee Secretary of State to ask him to issue a statement in favor of counting all the ballots. Surprisingly, he emailed me back and assured me that he counted all the votes in TN but had no intention of “meddling” in other states.
· I also sent messages to various elected officials about the same issue.
· I worked on well, work, responding to student emails and discussion posts. I started on the reading and prep for next week.
· During online office hours I comforted a student who lost a loved one yesterday.
· I arranged with my union members to be part of planning a Count the Votes rally this evening. I had suggested we could have someone speak, and after consulting a few members, one of whom was speaking in his capacity as a political scientist, it turned out that I was speaking, too. So I had to think of a speech, which I wrote on the back of a receipt. But it was too dark to read it, so I winged it. It went okay, I think. A photographer from the local paper was there and talked to me for a bit.
· A random dude started yelling at one of the Black speakers as she was speaking that she was a “terrorist.” Luckily he was corralled away and didn’t come back, but it was scary.
· When I got home, there were some messages to attend to (including an issue with how the aforementioned security issue was handled by the event organizers), and more election coverage.
· And for some reason I’m taking the time to write all this instead of going to bed early.
Thurs. 5 Nov. 2020
Still no official decision on the Presidential election, but it’s looking good for Biden. I’ve been remembering 2000, when we waited until the middle of December. We can afford to wait a few more days this year (hopefully without the Supreme Court like in 2000).
I wasn’t sure how my speech at the rally yesterday went. I wasn’t mentioned at all in the news stories about it (whether because I was boring or whether the reporter simply left early, I can’t say).
I had notes written down, but I had to wing it. Here’s I think something like what I said.
I’m Ethan Mills with United Campus Workers at UTC. We’re excited/terrified to be out here tonight.
I’ve been voting since I was 18. For those playing along at home, that was a long time ago. But why do I love voting so much? It’s because for a brief moment, for those few minutes you’re filling out those little bubbles, you have equal political power as anybody else voting. You’re equal to any billionaire or Senator. And there’s something beautiful, something ennobling about that.
But you didn’t come out here to learn about some random philosophy professor. So why is United Campus Workers out here?
Since I am a philosophy professor, let’s do a thought experiment. What would a truly democratic society look like?
I think at the very least you would count all the votes. That’s the bare minimum of a democratic society. As Jeremy mentioned, if we’re not counting all the votes, this is not what democracy looks like.
But let’s go beyond that. Would a democratic society require people to register four weeks before election day? Would a democratic society require poor folks and others who have trouble getting to the DMV to get an ID just to exercise their right to vote?
But a democratic society is about more than just voting. Would a democratic society have the levels of massive income inequality that we have, or unequal access to education and healthcare?
I’d like us to ask these questions.
This is a Rally for Democracy. And United Campus Workers and all the organizations out here tonight are working toward making this a more democratic society. We may have different visions of what exactly a society should look like, but we’re here because, as Evelina mentioned, there’s nobody coming to save us. We are the adults in the room. It’s up to us to make this a more democratic society. One that works for everybody, not just a privileged few.
I should mention one of the other organizations out here: Community Control Now. Someone’s out there gathering signatures, or you can talk to me. This is to create a community oversight board for the Chattanooga police. This is also part of a democratic society.
So this event is not just about voting. It’s not about us patting ourselves on the back and feeling better. We have to organize to make this a more democratic society. Nobody’s going to do it for us.
But again, counting all the votes is the bare minimum of a democratic society. Count every vote! Thank you.
That’s probably not exactly what I said, but it was something along those lines. I’m not a fiery orator. I don’t know how to work a crowd (a classroom is quite different). But I hope I made a few people think.
Fri. 6 Nov. 2020
Thought on the election this morning: It’s like 2000, but with five Floridas.
Votes are still being counted in five very close states: Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. Things are still trending toward Biden, who has just overnight and this morning pulled ahead in Pennsylvania and Georgia. He still has narrow leads in Arizona and Nevada. North Carolina is a wider margin for Trump, but those votes may not be counted until next week.
Sat. 7 Nov. 2020
Votes are still being counted and looking better for Biden, but none of the major media outlets have called the race. Here’s something I posted on a friend’s Facebook discussion about the issue.
The statistical issues of calling an election are far above my pay grade, but I think I agree that waiting and counting almost all of the votes might do more to short circuit Trump's later inevitable challenges, or at least they will have less traction in the long run. For this week, though, the delay may be exacerbating doubts among people who are uninformed about how long it actually takes to count votes or who have an active interest in spreading those doubts. That might do some long term damage, too. There's no way out of this moment without damage to our democracy, but I hope taking the time to count the votes may do less damage in the long run. That said, Biden almost certainly won, and it would be nice to have that closure.
I didn’t say this, but in the back of my mind I also wonder if there are worries about violence when the election is called. There was a disturbing video of Trump supporters harassing a Telemundo reporter outside a vote counting site in Phoenix last night. Similar crowds have gathered at election commissions in Nevada and Pennsylvania as well. Does giving several more days allow cooling down or is the kettle just picking up steam?
In other news (because there is other news), US Covid cases are sharply rising again. Cases are also on the rise again in much of Europe. Here are the numbers.
Worldwide
Cases: 49,907,068
Deaths: 1,252,323
US
Cases: 10,071,668
Deaths: 242,340
Hamilton County, TN
Cases: 13,374
Deaths: 114
Later: Not long after I wrote everything above, most media outlets called the race for Biden/Harris! Cheers to President-Elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Harris!
I’m more emotional and relieved about this than I thought I would be, especially since it was expected based on the trends in the last few days. There’s a lot of work yet to do of course, but it’s nice to celebrate today.
Mon. 9 Nov. 2020
I’m still trying to process the political events of the last few days. I’m also busy with other stuff. Maybe I will have more to say in the next few days.
Also, Alex Trebek died yesterday. RIP.
Tues. 10 Nov. 2020
Trump has not conceded the election, and most Republicans in office are maintaining his baseless claims that there is some massive voter fraud (or at least they are pretending that we need to investigate it to appease Trump’s base so they vote for them in the future). At a press conference today, Secretary of State “joked” that he was preparing for Trump’s second term.
I guess a lot of this is what he said Trump would do, but it’s disturbing to see so many go along with it, not to mention the damage this does to the concept of democracy in the United States. I think everything will go fine in January and Biden is doing his best to look Presidential and form task forces and such, but the damage being done in the meantime is real and will affect our country for a long time.
In other news, there’s still plenty of work to do locally: we have a union meeting tomorrow and I need to work more to get signatures for the Community Control Now (I’ll be tabling on campus on Thursday).
Hamilton County today had its all-time highest single-day Covid cases with 260 cases. We’ve been around 100-150 per day recently. I’m also really worried about Thanksgiving.
Beth and I were watching The Purge TV show. Aside from my unease with the pretentious “dark-is-the-heart-of-Man” theme, I find the whole concept a little far-fetched. It’s hard to see how this would reduce crime overall given the levels of crime on Purge Night. And it seems unrealistic that so many people would so gleefully participate in Purge Night. But on the other hand, 70 million Americans just voted for an administration that separated children from their parents and put them in cages, so you never know.
Wed. 11 Nov. 2020
There are many things wrong with the world today, but Walgreen’s just had Golden Grahams on sale for $1.88, so it’s not all bad.
Thurs. 12 Nov. 2020
Here’s an announcement I just posted on the Canvas page for my hybrid course:
Just for old time's sake, I'm going to stop by for the optional face-to-face sessions today just in case anyone wants to discuss Octavia Butler's Kindred (for extra credit), discuss your film projects (films due Monday), or just to say hi. This is totally optional. If nobody shows up, I will enjoy the quiet!
Sun. 15 Nov. 2020
I’ve been busy and haven’t been motivated to write much here lately. And that’s okay.
I’m going to an outdoor event to celebrate the election to collect CCN signatures. This and other things prompted me to write a few things for my random thoughts collection.
One problem (not the biggest problem, but one of them) with online discourse is how smug it is. Like any claim a person is saying something mind-blowing that nobody else has ever thought of and simply felt differently about—or at least less smug about. Often I agree with the statement being made, but resent the implication that I was incapable of thinking of it on my own.
One can be happy about partial victories while recognizing they are partial.
The pandemic and the need to end the Trump administration slightly quelled the American left’s circular firing squad in 2020, but it looks like the rifles are being cleaned and loaded already. Healthy debate is fine, but sometimes solidarity is more important (and yes, from all sides: moderates need to hear this, too).
The event was good. I saw a few friends I had not seen since the pandemic started. I got a good handful of signatures.
Other news: There was a public-private partnership for a rocket launch today (NASA and SpaceX). This prompted a few random thoughts, too, and a later Facebook comment (Feeling random today, I guess).
Unpopular opinion: I’m not thrilled about private space exploration. Space is cool, which is why we shouldn’t leave it to the whims and profit-motives of billionaires.
We’ve already privatized and militarized the Earth. Can’t we leave space alone?
I also don't understand why so many nerds love Elon Musk or care so much about him. The fact that NASA needs help from a billionaire to launch a rocket is sort of like being excited you can pay the rent because you got a predatory loan. The immediate result is good, but the larger situation is not great.
Mon. 16 Nov. 2020
Yesterday I canceled my dentist appointment for later this week and rescheduled it for November. But I worry that even November is too soon.
Well, today was the day. Was November too soon? Maybe. Probably. I can’t say I was entirely comfortable, but they were taking a lot of precautions. They were careful to only have one patient in the office at a time. Besides, I forgot to cancel it 24 hours ahead of time, and one does not simply cancel dental appointments less than 24 hours ahead of time.
The waiting room was empty, and I waited in a solitary chair in the hallway outside the office (it felt a little like I was being punished). The hygienist and dentist wore masks the whole time. The receptionist was behind a glass shield.
Of course, I had to have my mouth open during the exam and routine cleaning. Dentistry sort of requires access to the patient’s mouth. So, that’s a bit disconcerting even if I think they were taking a lot of precautions and I was in and out in 40 minutes.
Good news: my teeth are great! I’ve always been genetically lucky in that respect, despite the amount of candy I eat.
I’ve only been to this dentist once before, so it was strange coming back after a year with everything changed. My old dentist (across the street from my apartment) retired, and his office has now become a vape shop. Go figure.
Wed. 18 Nov. 2020
My Post-Halloween Film Fest for my pop culture students is tonight as an online event! I used to do this in person right before Halloween, but I figured the pandemic is making things horrific enough and the students could use a couple more weeks. And it will be totally online, which is complicated. But it should be fun.
I’m also supposed to do an email interview for the Community Control Now coalition. I’m waiting for the journalist to get back to me. Hopefully that will happen soon, so it doesn’t conflict with the film fest later.
Sat. 21 Nov. 2020
The film fest was a success! Planning the in-person events took a lot of out me, but the online event was hard, too—in some ways harder, or at least with more moving parts. [EDIT: You can watch it here!]
This afternoon I went out to collect CCN signatures, which was good, but that’s another thing that takes a lot out of me.
I feel stretched or worn down… or something. This last week it has hit me pretty hard. I’m exhausted. I was thinking about this today, and then I figured out how to put it with another one for my random thoughts collection: Living through 2020 makes me feel like I have a hangover all the time.
Wed. 25 Nov. 2020
The other day the GSA (the government organization that provides resources for Presidential transitions) got the go-ahead to start the transition to the Biden administration. There are still some court cases, but none of them seem to have much merit, and most attempts to get Republican state legislators to thwart the will of the people in their states seems to have failed.
So it looks like this weird attempted coup (or whatever it was) is petering out. But it’s sad and terrifying that it happened and will continue to undermine our democracy for a long time (especially since a good chunk of the population believes the President’s false claims about rampant voter fraud, which of course just so happens to be directed mostly at Black voters in cities like Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia).
In local news, we almost have enough signatures for the CCN petition. Signatures are due Dec. 2. I might go out one more time to collect signatures, but then I really want to be on personal lockdown over the holidays. Regular classes are over for the semester, and now we have all-online finals (my classes have been effectively all online for the last month or so anyway as students lost interest in the optional face-to-face sessions).
I’m really, really worried about Thanksgiving, especially since it seems like small gatherings of people from different households are one of the main ways the virus is transmitted. Why can’t people stay home to keep themselves and their families safe?
Granted, I haven’t seen my family for Thanksgiving for over 15 years. It’s just not enough time given where it falls in the academic schedule to warrant getting on a plane during one of the busiest times of the year. And I only occasionally go home for Christmas (besides late December in Minneapolis is not exactly a peak destination!). So this holiday season won’t be that different for me. Beth actually prefers to stay home for the holidays. I always feel a little guilty if we don’t go home for Christmas, but this year I will stay home guilt-free. And honestly some time to rest after this semester and year…. sounds pretty nice.
Last night Beth and I were discussing a trip we took to Las Vegas in 2017, which prompted me to look through old cell phone pictures. This reminded me how much I used to travel with folders from trips in the last several years to the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Canada, not to mention several trips to Minnesota to see family (just in March 2020, right before I started this journal exercise) and a bunch of domestic trips for conferences (most recently Philadelphia in January 2020, or what feels like five years ago).
But then abruptly in March all my photos are marked “Home” (with the exception of one socially distanced trip to the beach in Florida in July). So that’s a weird sign of the times.
Another weird sign of the times. I stopped by my campus office yesterday and I realized that I’ve only unpacked about 30% of my stuff after moving in there in early August (almost four months ago). This seems like an apt answer to the question, “How did your semester go?”
Here are the numbers the day before Thanksgiving. I’m dreading where the US numbers will be in a couple weeks.
Worldwide
Cases: 60,418,211
Deaths: 1,420,606
US
Cases: 13,002,520
Deaths: 266,556
Hamilton County, TN
Cases: 16,945
Deaths: 140
Thurs. 26 Nov. 2020 (US Thanksgiving)
Here’s something for social media today on being apart from one's family on Thanksgiving (or maybe a blog post instead; see here.)
Later: I took a little walk around the neighborhood. All of the college students and most of the white people seem to have left. Thanksgiving has de-gentrified the neighborhood.
After that: A pretty good meal! And pie! Honestly not that different than a typical Thanksgiving for us.
Sun. 29 Nov. 2020
A pretty relaxing Thanksgiving weekend. I had a chance to talk to family and play D&D on Saturday night.
Saturday afternoon I went out to collect some CCN signatures. Standing downtown, surrounded by a lot of mask-less people a few days after Thanksgiving, I came to the type of concrete conclusion that I don’t experience often: I didn’t want to be in public spaces anymore. I was outside, so I’m not terribly worried, but the pandemic has made me anxious about crowds as it is—not to mention the dreaded post-Thanksgiving COVID spike and a long winter ahead. Normally I waffle about these sorts of decisions (my aptitude for skepticism, probably), but this felt like the kind of decision that bubbled up slowly and flooded over my entire intellectual and emotional being—all on the sidewalk outside Ben & Jerry’s in downtown Chattanooga.
So instead I tried to reach out to people I know to set up outdoor, socially distanced signings. I did one today and hopefully have a few more tomorrow. Maybe it’s not the most efficient method, but I feel like it’s what I can do at the moment.
Those signatures are due this week to the election commission. We’re past the minimum required number and I think we’ll be okay, but we need as many as possible because the election commission will throw some out. Speaking of the election commission, I’m really annoyed they offered no accommodations for online signatures or lessening the number of signatures required in light of a pandemic. I realize they were never going to make it easy to get something on the ballot, but c’mon.
In an effort to do my part and because I’ve been feeling guilty about not collecting more signatures, I agreed to do an interview with the local paper about CCN a week and a half ago. (I also did a TV interview at an event for CCN a few weeks ago, but they didn’t use it.) The article came out today.
Speaking of the local paper, I got another interview request about my students’ film project. I’ve also done interviews about that for UTC communication and marketing and also for the student newspaper.
It’s weird to be doing media interviews. I’ve done more in the last few months than I probably ever have in my life. Aside from the ones in the last few weeks, I was on the radio in July and on TV briefly in August about being on campus during a pandemic. Like: are these journalists sure they want to be talking to me? Is it a slow news year or something?
I guess I have been doing more visible stuff lately, and I’m more willing to volunteer to talk to the media because I’m tenured. The film stuff is an event that still happened online in a year when a lot of events are being canceled, but then I also mentioned it while I was on a call with the Chancellor advocating for the union (which is there the UTC communication and marketing writer heard about it).
Writing about all this is making me exhausted. Even though I just had a nice break for Thanksgiving and we still have finals to get through, I’m looking forward to a long winter break. Sure, I have plenty to do (a paper to write, classes to plan, and other odds and ends). Yet winter break beckons…
Mon. 30 Nov. 2020
Non-Normal November? Or something catchier to describe this month?
I just extended the due date for one of my final papers from Thursday to next Monday. Hopefully this will help some of the students. I don’t really feel like grading finals this week, anyway, so it’s a win-win! The pandemic has taught us that due dates are imaginary, although apparently the registrar didn’t get that memo because my grades are still due on Dec. 14 at 9am.
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