#I think Bethesda may lose a lot of trust after this I think | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

stxrrywildflower · 5 years ago

Text

lost

pairing - emily prentiss x reader

summary - emily returns after doyle, you and spencer don’t take it well

warnings - cursing, mentions of suicide, talks about mental health, drug use

word count - ?

note - sections of this regarding the language may be extreme so please take that into consideration before reading

you and spencer walked into the bau together, each sporting a coffee cup in hand.

after emily’s death, the two of you found comfort in each other. you knew about reid’s abandonment issues and he was well aware of your’s and emily’s relationship. everyone on the team did. morgan did a fairly good job at hiding his emotions. but you and spencer, you two broke.

hotch had noticed the signs of you first. you had a history of depression and anxiety dating back into your teen years. after her death, you began to slip back into a depressive state. you lasted two weeks before, without argument, he placed you under temporary leave and sent you to a mental facility for you to ‘get better’.

spencer was next. after confiding in morgan about his dilaudid cravings, it was then alerted to hotch also. just like you, spencer was placed on temporary leave and set to the same facility as you.

inside, your communication with other patients was limited. you and spencer, however, got to see each other all the time, resulting in your now closeness. two months in, both of you returned to the bau. slowly, you returned back to doing field work. but, you relied on spencer and he did the same to pull you through. you felt like you were finally getting better, like you were back with a sense of normality.

that was, until the current day at the bau managed to reverse all of that.

the first thing you noticed was hotch and j.j. in the conference room. that already wasn’t a good sign. “new case?” you asked spencer who then shrugged, “probably.” rossi stepped into the conference room next, before motioning for the rest of the team to join.

you quickly dropped your bag and coffee off at your desk before following spencer up the stairs into the conference room.

“alright everyone have a seat,” hotch spoke as he crossed your arms.

“why? what’s going on?” morgan responded.

you didn’t follow hotch’s orders. a lot of trust had crumbled and fallen away after he had put you on leave with little remorse. instead, you leaned against one of the file cabinets, spencer finding a spot next to you.

“seven months ago i made a decision that affected this team,” hotch started. you instantly tensed up at his words. seven months ago, you had all lost emily. alas, he continued, “as you all know, emily had lost a lot of blood as a result of her fight with doyle. but the doctors were able to stabilize and airlift her from boston to bethesda under covert exportation. her identity was strictly need-to-know and she stayed there until she was well enough to travel. she was reassigned to paris where she had access to several identities, none of which we had access to for her security.”

those words hit you like a brick. your throat felt dry and your hands started to shake. you turned to spencer who looked like he was experiencing a similar reaction.

“she’s alive?” garcia asked. morgan’s eyes darted frantically between garcia and hotch. “but we burried her,” spencer surprisingly spoke up from beside you. his voice was extremely shaky and you weren’t sure if he could even finish his sentence.

“as i said i take full responsibility for the decision. if anyone has any issues, they should be directed towards me,” hotch tesponded.

you wanted to say something, you really did. but no words came out of your mouth. instead, morgan decided to talk. “any issues? yeah i got issues!” he shouted. just as he went to continue, you heard footsteps from down the catwalk.

just then, emily appeared, bag in hand, a sorrowful look on her face. you felt like you were going to pass out.

you turned towards j.j. who seemed to be smiling, no shocked emotions displayed. that only meant one thing. “you knew?” you spoke, moved from your position against the filing cabinet. j.j. started to speak, most likely an apology, but you cut her off.

“don’t,” you said as you pinched the bridge of your nose.

emily was now standing beside hotch and j.j. “y/n,” she spoke, taking a slight step towards you. you, instead, took one step back, itching closer to spencer, who was having a hard time taking this all in.

“you let me, you let us mourn her for seven months and you knew the entire time? you sent us away hotch!” you yelled, motioning towards spencer.

“sent them away? what do you mean?” emily asked.

instead of hotch responding, most likely giving a shitty answer, you stepped in. “he sent me and spencer away to some stupid fucking mental facility to ‘get better’. barely any contact to the outside for two months. how do you really think that helped hotch? how do you think being locked in a room for two months really did for our mental health,” you asked. hot tears slowly welling up in your eyes.

“i’m sor-” emily started to apologize.

“you’re sorry? i was so close to shooting myself up again and instead of actually getting the support from others, i get sent away. do you realize how much it sucks to be abandoned your whole life and then the one group of people that keeps you sane leaves you too? i got to talk to maybe four people at the hospital. and besides y/n, none of them were any of you. i can forgive garcia, morgan, and rossi, but j.j.? you really name me as your sons godfather and you can’t even tell me the truth half of the fucking time,” reid revealed. the room went quiet, obviously shocked at the young genius’s outburst.

“before you say another word that your sorry or that you didn’t know how much this affected us, just know that for weeks, i sat in my apartment, not sure what to do. do you know how many times i wanted to take my razor and slit my wrists, just to end it. or the advil, i always kept. everytime i took two for a headache, i always considered just taking the entire bottle. because, what did i even have to live for at that point. and then with barely any sympathy, hotch forces us to leave, not wanting to deal with our issues. we were finally getting better. we were finally able to be back on the job and continue living our lives. but now, you just saunter in here expecting forgiveness,” you seethed.

anger began to rise in you. you made fists out of your hands, no doubt causing slight bleeding from your fingernails as your knuckles turned white. upon seeing emily’s saddened facial expression, that made you even more mad. you needed to let out your anger or else you knew you probably wouldn’t be able to recover. after a few more moments of complete silence, you rolled your eyes, pressing your lips together as you walked out of the conference room, spencer right behind you.

you quickly grabbed your bag, leaving your paperwork on your desk before glancing over to the conference room. morgan and garcia were just exiting, tears falling freely down their faces. the remaining team members remained in the room, each with defeated expression.

you turned to spencer. “let’s go,” you whispered. anything above that and your voice was sure to crack. both of you decided that you needed to be alone for awhile. so, you dropped spencer off at his apartment with a small smile that you could barely muster and you drove to yours.

once entering, you tossed your bag carelessly on the table, your badge alongside it. your gun remained carefully placed on the side table.

you placed your back against the door. you held back the first sob, but after that, you couldn’t contain it. tears flowed down your face as you sobbed loudly. you felt betrayed, the trust between you and hotch was already fragile and now with j.j., you weren’t even sure who you could trust. you mainly felt angry.

the only thing you could think to do was punch your wall. your hand went though the drywall, leaving a large hole in its place. surprisingly, your hand was barely injured from the punch, just a cut across the top of it.

just as you moved towards the kitchen to grab wrap to bandage your hand, your mind was only filled with one though; emily. you loved her. you knew you were going to love her for the rest of your life. and then that had been ripped away from you.

you cried harder, tears falling onto your now bandaged hand.

you shuffled into your room, quickly changing into sweatpants and a t-shirt. you collapsed onto your bed, pulling the blankets over you and a pillow closer to your chest. it wasn’t the first time that you cried yourself to sleep.

emily knocked on your apartment door only a half an hour later. hotch had allowed everyone to go home, as the day had been a bit shocking. emily, however, grabbed her bag and drove to your apartment.

after no response, emily took out a set of keys, praying that you hadn’t change the lock. after rotating the key, a satisfying click echoed. she let out a sigh of relief before turning the handle.

your apartment was drastically different than the last time she was in it. the once darker colored walls were now painted soft tans and pastels. there were a lot more plants than there had been. more artwork and pictures scattered the walls. ‘very few are of the team,’ she noted. your voice brought her out of her thoughts.

“spencer helped me redecorate,” you spoke, leaning against the wall with your arms crossed.

emily spun around and remained frozen in place. “it looks great, i really like the hole in the wall,” she first joked. “you two closer than before?” she asked, mentally smacking herself for asking such a dumb question.

“you’d be surprised how close people come when you lose a person you both love, whether it’s romantically or family,” was all you said. “would you like something to drink?” you offered.

emily slightly nodded, “maybe a cup of tea? thank you.” you grabbed a mug, filling it up with hot water before handing her the cup with a tea packet. emily watched as you moved though the kitchen, grabbing the different stuff to make a pot of coffee.

the tension in the room was almost unbearable.

finally, you finished making your coffee and placed it on the counter, milk and sugar already added. you then opened the cabinet and reached to grab the bottle of advil. you had a killer headache and needed to take something. out of the corner of your eye, you noticed emily tense up.

“relax, i’m not going to overdose,” you spoke calmly.

your words made made emily visible flinch. the fact that you were so casual about talking about killing yourself scared her immensely.

you moved out of the kitchen and sat on the couch, motioning for her to do the same. the two of you sat at opposite ends, each sipping your drink as silence fell over you.

“you don’t deserve this,” emily spoke, breaking the tense silence.

you sat up slightly, looking over at the woman but kept your mouth shut.

“you really don’t deserve what i did to you. none of the team does. but i need you to know, that i really has no choice. if i didn’t do what i did, doyle would have gone after all of you,” emily revealed. “wouldn’t have mattered, i honestly probably would have been dead already. probably spencer too, i mean you heard him. he almost took dilaudid again.”

“but you stopped him.”

you chuckled slightly. “not really. just got sent to a mental hospital against my will with reid to recover. so, wasn’t really my choice. it’s really fucked up that he almost relapsed over something that wasn’t even true.”

“i’m really sorry for that. if you want i will go talk to hotch about his actions,” emily offered but you shook your head. “it’s over now. only bringing it up because i have to.”

“i know i have a lot of trust to earn back from everyone. and i fully intend on heading over to everyone’s apartments to apologize to them after you. but it’s been almost eight months since i’ve been with you. all i want is a hug, as stupid as that sounds. you don’t have to but-” emily was cut off when you wrapped your arms around her.

the two do you fell back into the couch. your buried your head in the crook of her neck as her arms moved so they were around your waist. you shut your eyes to prevent the inevitable tears from leaking out. her perfume filled you senses. it was the same one she always wore. you had never realized until now how much you loved the smell of it.

she looked and acted slightly different, but she was your emily.

“i should probably get going. i really need to talk to reid,” emily spoke as she let go of you and stood up. you crossed your arms again and nodded at her. “i’m really sorry again. i know it’s going to take some time to regain your and the teams trust again but i promise, i will make it up to you.”

with that, emily grabbed her bag and made her way over to the door. you shot her one final weak smile before disappeared from your apartment and made her way down the hallway.

#criminal #criminal minds #emily prentiss #emily prentiss x reader #spencer reid #spencer reid x oc #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x y/n #aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner x reader #derek morgan #penelope garcia #jennifer jareau #david rossi

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notyetneedcoffee · 5 years ago

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Old Fashion Way Pt. 7

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Warnings: None this chapter

When you finally unlocked your apartment door and kicked it closed behind you, you could barely stay on your feet. The entire SHIELD complex went through extreme screenings before being allowed to leave the building. You were starving. Because of the bullshit, you never got dinner.

Kicking off your shoes, you dropped your purse on the hall table on the way to kitchen. That’s when you noticed. The scarf covering the table was wrong side up. You flipped up the silky fabric and opened the little drawer in the front of the table. The few mementos you kept there had been moved.

A movie ticket stub. A dried rose. A sketch on a napkin. Someone went through your things. Thankfully, nothing in your apartment could be directly tied to Steve. Unless, they could recognize his sketch of a fox.

You looked around, feeling uneasy. SHIELD went through your home. What did they leave behind?

In the kitchen you ate leftovers, leaning against the kitchen counter. Your brain was moving too fast to even register what you ate. There was no way Steve would ever move against SHIELD without reason. You trusted him, more than any organization. Now your work, your organization, was after him.

You had to find a way to stay safe.

If anyone out for Steve knew about the two of you, well, you didn’t want to think about that. Grabbing your nightshirt, you shut off the lights and changed in the dark. Laying there, your mind wouldn’t shut down enough for sleep. However, by the time the sun was coming up, you had a plan.

Getting up and dressing for work as usual, you left a few minutes early. Stepping into your favorite coffee shop, you let the one other person go ahead of you. So you would be alone in the shop. “Hey, Mandy.” You smiled at your favorite barista.

“Morning.” She smiled. “Want your usual?”

“Yeah, please.” You stepped up to the counter. “Hey, could I ask you for a favor? Could I use your phone real quick? I pulled a bone-head move on my way here.” You showed her your old phone with a broken face.

“Sure,” Mandy unlocked her phone and handed it over. You stepped away and quickly dialed your sister’s number. She answered with a sleep fuzzy voice.

“I need you listen and do exactly as I say. This morning call my cell and my work leave priority messages. I need to come home. Dad’s in a bad way.”

There was a momentary silence. Then she responded, clear and clipped. “Got it. Talk to you soon.”

You hung up. Her husband spent eight years working for the DOD. The whole family knew how to respond to an emergency and get the details later.

Handing the phone back to Mandy, you also gave her your coffee money and a generous tip. “Thanks for the help.”

“No worries. Have a great day!”

The morning went as planned. You received phone calls from your sister and then you put in for three weeks of emergency leave. Almost immediately, Angela arrived at your office door demanding you follow her. She led you to a small conference room, where you were left alone for more than three hours.

One of the agents finally came in, a folder in hand. He sat across from you. You leaned forward, spinning your empty coffee cup slowly in your hands. “Going to tell me why I’ve wasted half a morning here when I’ve got so much to do?”

“It’s a rather suspect time to put in for an emergency leave of absence." He replied.

You sighed. “It’s not, really. Dad’s been going downhill for some time.” You frowned. “You ever taken care of someone with Alzheimer’s? It’s awful. It’s exhausting, and it can go to shit at a moment’s notice.” You frowned hard at the agent. “I’ve got tons of leave on the books. Time that the agency owes me. This is my family. Are you going to make me chose between my family and my job, agent?”

“The timing is...inconvenient.”

“I’ll be sure to let my dad’s doctors know.” You swallowed, not having to fake your nervousness. “Don’t make me quit over this. Please. I don’t want to leave SHIELD and I sure as hell don’t want to sue because I was forced to quit under duress despite policy.”

“When were you planning to travel?” The agent opened the folder and clicked his pen.

“Nothing’s booked yet. Tomorrow sometime, next morning at the latest. There are several flights from DC to Seattle.”

“You’ll be gone how long?”

“I don’t know. I put in for three weeks. May be more, or less.”

“Where will you be staying?”

“Not sure yet.”

At that the agent gave you a suspicious look.

“My sister’s place is small. Emotions are running high. I may be there. I may get a hotel. I won’t know until I’m there. It’s not like I’ve had a lot of time to plan this.”

“Very well.” He closed the file, never writing a word. “Take your work phone in case any current activities require your input. Your leave is granted.” He stood up and walked to the door. “You’re free to go back to work now, and...” He paused in the door, glancing back. “I remember how rough my grandmother’s dementia was. I’m sorry.”

You were home packing after finding the latest flight you could justify taking. By nine o’clock tomorrow morning you would be on a plane to the Northwest. The scuttlebutt at work only got worse. No one at SHIELD seemed willing to outwardly say anything, but you gathered enough bits and pieces yesterday to hear Steve supposedly went rouge, Director Fury might be dead, there was a terrorist attack on one of the major roadways in Bethesda that wasn’t really a terrorist, and Agent Romanoff was missing.

Getting the hell out of Dodge was looking better all the time.

Your personal phone rang. Unidentified number. “Hello?”

“Sweetheart, don’t say anything but yes or no. Just listen.” Steve’s clipped voice came quietly over the phone. “You know I didn’t do what they say I did.”

“Yeah.” Your heart was in your throat. You had so many questions, wanted to say so many things.

“Things are bad, really bad. You need to get away from there. Can you do that?”

“Yeah.” You answered, more determined.

Steve paused. “You already have, huh?”

“Yep”

“Good girl. Thank God.” He breathed. “Can you lay low someplace? Not at home?”

“Yeah.”

“Nearby?”

“No.”

He knew about your family. “West coast?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Really good.”

You could hear Steve breathing as you waited for him to continue. His voice dropped down to a whisper. “I don’t know how this is all going to turn out, but just in case, I need to let you know how much I... You brought part of me back to life that I thought died with that plane crash... thank you, Sweetheart, just thank you.”

You swallowed back tears, biting your lip to keep from saying all the things you desperately wanted to. The realization that this might be the last time you spoke with him, just hit you so hard that it stole every bit of breath from your lungs.

He heard your light gasp, a small sniffle. “It’s okay. Alright? You’ll be okay. I have to go. I’m sorry.”

The phone went dead.

You hung up and tried to swallow down your tears, you still didn’t know if your apartment was bugged our not. Instead, you finished packing, moving on autopilot. The band of pain wrapped around your chest made breathing difficult. You schooled your face to an impassive calm, much like you did when you dealt with your father. No outward pain to see.

Finally, the suitcase zipped up, you moved to the bathroom and stepped into the shower. Scalding hot water beat down over your head, poured over your face, as the pain unwound. Tears mingled with the water. You silently cried, wept for what you could be losing, released the tears from the tension and fear, until the water ran cold. Once dry and ready for bed, exhaustion pulled you into a deep sleep.

You’d gotten to the airport with plenty of time only to find out your flight had a two hour mechanical delay. So, you waited, and waited. Sitting at the lounge, drinking coffee and watching the morning show on the television, you debated on ordering lunch. It looked like two hours was an optimistic estimate.

The local news cut in to the show with an emergency. Three enormous heli-carriers were battling each other over the city, over SHIELD. You called out. “Hey! Turn that up!”

The bartender turned up the volume.

“...also getting reports of a massive data dump from somewhere within SHIELD. All initial indications seem to show that the Hydra infiltration included key positions, including the top director.”

Another news anchor cut in. “They’re going down! The carriers are indeed crashing. I sincerely hope anyone in the vicinity have been evacuated. We can see debris falling in all directions. The reports that Captain America led the team to stand against whatever the Hydra action may have been are yet to be substantiated. There are no official communications coming from any of our sources.”

You watched in horror as the heli-carrier busted apart and exploded, falling from the sky. One of the television anchor’s word rang in your ear. “Let hope he wasn’t aboard, because I don’t know how anyone could survive that.”

The phone in your pocket vibrated, making you jump. You looked at the number. Your sister’s. “Hey.”

“On the news. That’s why you’re coming home, isn’t it? You knew something was going to happen.” She sounded frantic.

“I knew something, but not this. I had no idea it was this bad.” You stared at the screen, unable to look away. Please, you silently prayed, let Steve survive.

“You didn’t know? Had no idea?”

“Of course not!” You snapped.

“Sorry. Sorry.” Your sister huffed. “You got a heads up, though. You were running.”

“Yeah.” You looked around, seeing you were alone and figuring there was no point in secrecy any more you answered. “I saw them, from my office, try to gun down Steve. He’s my friend and I know him well enough that he would never move against his superiors unless they deserved it.”

“Wait,” She paused. “Steve? Steve Rogers. You’re friends with...”

“Yes. Good friends. I trust him and I really hope he’s okay.” You curled into your seat, watching the footage on the screen.

“Are you still coming?”

The question took you by surprise. You really didn’t have to, not yet. Of course, you didn’t know if you even had a job now. “I think I need to figure a few things out first.”

“Okay, let me know. And sis, stay in touch. I’d be lying if I said this doesn’t worry me.”

“Promise.” You hung up, paid your bill and went to the counter to change your ticket.

It was late evening before you gave up and checked into a ridiculously expensive hotel room. Traffic was impossible. The city was on lock down. Every hotel room was taken. No one was moving. Still, it was relatively safe, food was available, and your credit card could handle the expense.

Flopping on the bed, you contemplated pulling out your computer to find more information while you ate room service. The news had been non-stop speculation. The details being pulled from the data dump were becoming more salacious. Still, none of it gave you what you wanted.

Close to midnight your phone rang. “Hello?”

“Hey, uh, is this Y/N?” A deep male voice asked.

“Who is this?” You knew that voice but couldn’t place it.

“Yeah that’s you. This is Sam.”

“Sam.” You breathed. You’d only met him the one time, when Steve brought him over to help you move.

“Hey, I just wanted to let you know that our, uh, mutual friend is alive and healing up.”

A whoosh of air left your body. “Thank god.”

“Don’t know how long it will be. Don’t know how messy the red tape is going to get either. Still, I thought you should know.”

“Thank you.” Tears, not so painful now, ran down your face. You could wait. Steve was alive.

TAGS

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#steve rogers x reader #steve rogers fic #captain america fic #steve rogers fanfiction #captain america fanfiction #steve rogers angst

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ir0n-angel · 4 years ago

Note

Okay, so I know TWCC, part 4 of Chicken McNoodle, can guess Ill-Considered (squee), and I know Unicorn and the Lion and Awake My Soul. The rest of those, though...tell me. I have grabby hands.

*bonks my stupid head with yours* I love you.

Good money would say, yes, you know what Ill-Considered is. 😉 So a couple of these are WIPs from my FO days that I have about 1k words for that I don’t want to just toss. They may or may not get scrapped and repurposed for something else in future, though.

Send Me An Angel (FO4) - I think we discussed this one, maybe?? The SoSu changed/saved a lot of lives in the Commonwealth. Every person we touch leaves part of our soul with them, even if it’s no bigger than a grain of sand. But what would happen if they didn’t make it out of Vault 111? Y’all really ought to be nicer to the Vault Dweller, just sayin’.

Necessary Inhumanity (FO3) - A Charon fic. Necessary inhumanity is the term used to describe the alienation required of doctors to treat patients. Charon has trained himself to not care about his contract-holders; just follow orders and don’t ask questions. Until the Lone Wanderer gets injured and he VERY reluctantly has to take care of them during recovery. Trust me, neither are happy about it. Why did she think it was worth it to pay that many caps for the contract again?

Mara’s Aid, Dibella’s Blessing (Skyrim) - Welcome to Rare Pair Hell, this one. Nords are stupid drunks. So stupid, in fact, that troll-hunting sounds like loads of fun. Athis, the dunmer Companion, gets dragged along. Yeah, it doesn’t end well. Only by sheer luck (or Bethesda’s game mechanics), the Dovahkiin saves them and takes them back to Heljarchen Hall to be healed and recover. Lots of nods to the game mechanics where the player character becomes the most eligible bachelorette while wearing the Amulet of Mara, which grants a boost to restoration/healing spells. Mostly just an excuse to latch on to a character/pairing that doesn’t have many fics written -- currently there’s only 15.

Secrets, Visions, and the Lies We Tell Ourselves (Stardew Valley) - Canon divergent explanation and the following ‘heart events’ involving Shane, his alcoholism, and his habit of self-destruction. The spell to wipe his memories of being in love with the farmer went very wrong, adding one more thing to regret and hate himself over.

Ask Them (DA:I) - A sweet one where Cole uses his abilities to help the companions go after their heart’s desires by giving them courage and self-confidence to just “Ask them”. Multiple pairings.

Tides (Stardew Valley) - Elliott finds his muse in the new farmer come to Pelican Town. And then promptly fucks it up. Communication in relationships is IMPORTANT, people.

Crisis (DA:I) - When the dust has finally settled from the Exalted Council and the immediate danger is over, Eve -- a sword-and-shield warrior -- takes the lost of her arm very badly. Learning how to accept a new disability, to trust people enough to help you, and just learning how to ASK for that help is a much greater trial than facing would-be gods.

The Nobility of a Fool (DA:O) - Elissa refuses to ask Alistair to perform the Dark Ritual with Morrigan, guaranteeing her death with the defeat of the Archdemon. Morrigan’s despair over losing her one true friend because of some (in her opinion) misguided sense of nobility sends her into a rage at the plot-ignorant bastard prince. Consent is everything.

Well, what do you think? Interesting?

Thanks for the ask, love. 💜💜💜

#asks

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brajeshupadhyay · 4 years ago

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The nexus between coronavirus and protests: ?The virus was the kindling. Police brutality lit the fire.?

The protests mean exposure to the virus and potentially accelerating its spread. The virus has killed more than 109,000 Americans, including a disproportionate number of blacks. Yet the Smiths and tens of thousands of others have chosen to take the risk.

Far from being separate crises, the deadly epidemic of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and the sudden explosion of street protests against police violence are intimately connected, according to protesters and public and mental health professionals.

“People are so pent-up with frustration from being inside for so long,” said Patricia Newton, chief executive and medical director of the Black Psychiatrists of America, which has about 2,000 members. “That was the kindling, and the police brutality lit the fire. People tell me, ‘I need to get out of the house,’ and ‘I’m having cabin fever.’ When people feel hopeless, they feel they have nothing to lose and caution goes to the wind.”

For Shae and Walt Smith, the decision to leave home and walk among strangers for the first time in months was calculated, the result of a thorough discussion about what lay ahead for their two young sons as black men in America.

In Columbia, Md., Jada Smith made the pivot more impulsively. On the day a Minneapolis police officer drove his knee into George Floyd’s neck until he died, Smith had barely left her house in three months.

Smith, 23, broke her self-isolation, joining teeming, screaming, shoulder-to-shoulder protesters who packed streets north of the White House.

“F— coronavirus. Who cares about coronavirus?” she said. “You can’t even walk out the door without being afraid for your skin color. This is more serious than what the coronavirus was. This is our lives out here. This is our children’s lives.”

For medical professionals, the nightly images of huge crowds walking city streets, shouting and chanting, sometimes wearing masks but with hardly any possibility of social distancing, is frightening, even if it’s also understandable.

Newton and others who have counseled protesters describe the connection between the two crises as complex — very different for different people. Some protesters consciously weigh the risks of catching the virus against a moral calling to voice their anger about racial bias. Others simply follow their passion to meet the moment on the nation’s streets. What both groups have in common is a web of emotions stemming from the pandemic: anger, isolation, loneliness, frustration, powerlessness, hopelessness.

“There are a lot of factors weighing on people,” said Reed V. Tuckson, chairman of the Black Coalition Against Covid-19 and a former D.C. health commissioner. “It would be the height of hypocrisy for people protesting on behalf of those who cannot breathe to then bring home a virus that will prevent the people you live with from breathing. At the same time, a major appeal of protests like these is that they are exciting, engaging and morally compelling, and even more appealing when people have been quarantined for so long.”

Newton has counseled protesters to consider the health impact of large gatherings. “I keep telling people, ‘You can’t protest if you’re dead and you can’t protest if you’re on a ventilator,’ ” she said. “If the people in your home and your community get the virus because of your unwillingness to take precautions, who are you helping? But when people get angry, they stop thinking.”

The clash between the need to take precautions against the virus and the desire to take part in the protests came home to Kitaw Demassie when his 13-year-old daughter asked if they could join a demonstration.

Demassie, a physician who is dean of the School of Public Health at the State University of New York Downstate, said his daughter understood the risk of infection, “but the anger and the isolation from the stay-at-home order combined to make her and other young people feel the need to go out. The isolation of the past three months increases anxiety, depression and also symptoms of indignation. Demonstrating peacefully helps people do something with their anger.”

Father and daughter decided to join a group of physicians protesting in their white coats in Manhattan — “using protection and social distancing,” Demassie was quick to add.

For many years, protests against racial bias have erupted anew after each incident of police brutality that gains national attention. But this time, Demassie said, the explosion of outrage is louder in part because “the interaction with the virus shutdown is fueling these protests.”

Demassie understands why people feel compelled to protest — after all, he’s joining a crowd himself — but he remains “very sure that this will have a big impact on the number of virus cases. There really is no social distancing in these demonstrations.”

It’s a tricky moment, he said: “We have two epidemics — racial disparities in health care, as we see in the death rate from covid-19, and racial injustice as exemplified in the death of George Floyd. In both cases, we need to flatten the curve.”

It’s not that protesters don’t know that gathering in large crowds is likely to further spread the virus. Rather, they often view that reality through a blend of fatalism and idealism.

Shae Smith, a 34-year-old manager at a Gap store, sometimes sounds fatalistic. The virus, police brutality and the way she and other black Americans lived before this year’s events all added up to a deadened life, she said: “We’re already in survival mode. The unemployment that people are facing. . . . How much more can we take? We’re already at our wit’s end. It’s like, we’re walking around, in a sense, feeling defeated.”

Yet she also sounds idealistic. The protests are a chance “to see to it that people are going to be held accountable,” she said. “We got our mask on, and I made a sign and we went out.”

The fatalism is sometimes literal.

Kelly Rudin, of Bethesda, Md., had lived in terror of the virus. Kelly, 63, would send her 62-year-old husband Tom out to do the grocery shopping. But the couple, longtime activists who protested President Trump’s inauguration and the police choking death of Eric Garner in New York, knew immediately what they would do after Floyd’s death.

“This,” Kelly said, “is worth dying for.”

“If white people don’t come out, our society — ” she hesitated, then finished: “Our society is basically done anyway.”

Until recently, the Rudins had taken all precautions they could. Now, they donned cloth masks and promised each other they would stay six feet from everyone else.

But marching amid the crowds, Kelly didn’t feel worried anymore. Watching a group try to breach a police barricade on Pennsylvania Avenue, Tom lamented that because of the virus, they could not go closer.

“Ordinarily,” Kelly said, “I’d be in the middle of that.”

They leaned against a fire hydrant for a few minutes. The shouting rose. People ran back and forth. Tom and Kelly looked at each other. In tandem, they waded into the crowd.

Such stories are both inspiring and worrisome, Newton said.

“I never thought I’d see Americans so fatalistic and idealistic at the same time,” she said. “The fatalism is very scary. I’ve heard repeatedly people saying to me, ‘If I’m going to get killed, I want it to be for a reason.’ At the same time, there’s this idealism — they feel it’s their civic duty to go out on the streets.”

Chante Burg, who recently left her job as a special-education teacher in Louisville to become a disabilities consultant, had plenty of cause to fear the virus. Recently recovered from Lyme disease, she takes 26 pills a day to boost her immune system. She had spent the past two months at home with her boyfriend, a former teacher.

But then, after Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old black emergency medical technician, was shot and killed by Louisville police in her own home, Burg heard a call to action through her network of teachers.

“I was livid,” she said. “Just livid. I was furious, I was devastated. I felt like, this is the end. This is the end. It can’t go on.”

Burg, 34, felt compelled to act. “The virus didn’t concern me at all,” she said. “My immune system, I’ve built it up, and I have faith, I have faith in God, I have faith in my immune system.”

She did worry that some people carrying the virus might be among the protesters, that some people may have gotten cabin fever and were “using these protests to get out of the house,” she said. “But I don’t dwell on that.”

She feels in the dark about the virus. She mistrusts the White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, basically all of the often-conflicting guidance she hears on the news.

“We don’t know what to believe or who to trust, so we need to take care of ourselves,” Burg said.

In contrast, she’s confident that protesting is the right choice: “It’s important to me to be able to speak out and not live in fear, and it’s important for me to exercise my right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I’m not doing that when I’m sitting at home. Today, I feel empowered, I feel strong. I feel that we’re making progress, and we are going to win.”

In the sea of young faces massed in front of the White House during the past week, Louis and Merianne de Merode stood out. He is 71 and she is 64. The Georgetown couple both have compromised immune systems from battles with cancer; they had strictly quarantined themselves, living on delivered groceries, venturing out only for bike rides on lonely stretches of the C & O Canal.

Fearful of joining the protests because of the risk of infection, they changed their minds when they read their neighbors’ comments on a listserv where affluent Georgetowners complained about the looting visited upon local shops without discussing the rioters’ motivations.

The de Merodes put on cloth masks and headed downtown.

“This is 1,000 times more people than we’ve been around,” Merianne said. “We’re walking with people who don’t all wear masks. So we’re scared.”

But just as they felt morally obliged to protest, they also felt compelled to put themselves in a 14-day quarantine after the demonstration.

Tuckson, the former D.C. health commissioner, said the same moral responsibility that brings protesters onto the streets should lead them to quarantine themselves afterward. “If you’re going to follow your idealism,” he said, “you’re going to have to also protect the people you live with.”

Some health advocates feel a tension between advising protesters to take precautions against the coronavirus, which has produced disproportionately high death rates among blacks, and endorsing action against another epidemic — racial disparities in everything from housing quality to police brutality.

But Newton said the two epidemics are more closely connected than many protesters realize.

“The virus exposed the underbelly of the problems we’ve had in health care for decades — a disparity in care that reveals some of the same bias we see in police brutality,” she said.

For more than two months this spring, Denelle Acosta locked herself indoors, leaving her San Antonio home only to buy groceries or ride her bike. As a cancer survivor who is also diabetic, Acosta said she had to remain hypervigilant as the coronavirus swept across Texas.

But when she watched the video of the last nine minutes of Floyd’s life, “I just started sobbing,” said Acosta, 36, who works as a sommelier and bartender at an upscale restaurant. “I have all these health issues, but I don’t care. I don’t want a virus to take me, but if I’m going to be fighting for what’s right, I’ll go out like that.”

Acosta saw the officer crushing Floyd as a metaphor for how the system weighs on vulnerable people. She decided to protest in San Antonio, then drove an hour north to Austin to join another crowd.

In front of Austin police headquarters, Acosta, who wore a black mask, pointed to a camp of tents and couches where homeless people find shelter beneath a busy highway and began listing reasons she believes “the system is broken. So many people have no health care, our education system is a joke, we’re not taking care of our veterans or the elderly.”

Police brutality is front of mind, but she thought also about Trump’s aggressive tweets, the plight of vulnerable communities and the pandemic, which she said has exposed inequity in American society.

“Laying my life on this line for this movement is more important to me than dying because of a virus,” she said. “I can’t take it anymore.”

Fisher and Jamison reported from Washington. Wallace reported from Louisville. Holly Bailey in Minneapolis, Peter Holley in Austin and Hannah Natanson in Washington contributed to this report.

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saintcheryl · 8 years ago

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McElstuck Classpects (So Far)

I don’t have all of them because I’m simply not familiar with some of the players. Also just went over possible players, not all of em have to be there. Anyways, here’s what I got.

Grifin

Bard of Light: He needs the codpiece it’s the only way. His story-weaving prevalent in many different pieces of content could fit with the vibes of a traditional fantasy bard, but fuck it, I’ll admit it, the outfit is just really funny. He needs it. He needs the goof. Now for the light part: look, a bard “invites destruction through aspect/allows for destruction of aspect.” Light is about fortune and knowledge. I think that fits pretty damn well, most prevalent in TAZ but honestly? I get that vibe from him in a lot of things. He has the knowledge of games (especially Bethesda) that allows (invites) him to destroy them even more thoroughly.

Travis

Knight of Hope: He is an optimistic, friendly boy whom I love, and I trust. Did you see his mentorship with the Teens? He is supportive and believes in them and a knight takes advantage and fights with their aspect. A valiant, noble agent of hope, of belief. A good man. He does a hit sometimes, yes, but he apologizes. That’s just the knight-y tendencies coming through a little more. And everyone learns from the experience. Don’t do a hit! (Addendum: All HS knights “hide their innermost selves.” Travis may be hiding his true strength, his true power, his capacity for destruction since he does not want to hurt anyone.)

Justin

Heir of Blood: Blood’s all about camaraderie, and in this case with his bros it’s very literal. There isn’t much solid lore behind heirs, but they seem to be surrounded by their aspect in some way, speculated to “protect themselves with,” “become,” or “receive” the aspect. In Justin’s case, his relationship to his brothers is an essential part of his life, not just because of blood relation but also because of their bonds of friendship. As the oldest bro, it makes sense for him to embody such values.

Clint

Rogue of Life: He literally, in a way, gave the boys life. Life also pertains to his role in TAZ, or at least the role he’s SUPPOSED to have, and the safety he contributed to his town through Peace on the Playground. I was struggling with the class and settled on Rogue, but that’s still up for debate. And I’m not saying he’s going to kill anyone (that’d be more thief-y), but there was that story of him POSSIBLY killing that guy in college and selling (redistributing) all his stuff, or whatever. He also “distributes” country music via radio, which I’m sure some people see as life.

Nick

Seer of Space: Originally I felt strongly about him being a Breath player, but after going over descriptions again, Space is undeniably fitting of his role in Car Boys; they’re concerned with “the size of things and their velocity, and their existence in relation to physics” which is basically Car Boys? Dimension, creation. The whole deal with frogs, and Nick DOES greatly enjoy Kero Blaster, starring a frog. Seers “use knowledge to coordinate their team,” which I feel he does since he’s established that the workings of playing beamNG.Drive are VERY finicky and require a depth of experience. He coordinates the show quite well, and certainly uses all the little intricacies to his advantage. TTS is based around him identifying mods, which are quite obvious at times, but still humors seer tendencies. In a fairly literal sense.

Porter

Mage of Time: Okay, I’ll admit, I originally landed on time because of the thought process that went this boy->music/DJ->Dave Strider. But that’s okay, because it works, especially with Nick as space. The boy’s aesthetic caters more to space or maybe void, but works with time because of the theme of reality-bending and alternate universes. Time players are shown to have interests in death and destruction in some way, which this boy has DEFINITELY got with his prominent obsession with worlds ending in unique ways. Especially game worlds, and a huge part of time players is….the responsibility of destroying a game world. A mage possibly “gives up their aspect to gain knowledge of it,” which also just kinda Feels Right for a buncha reasons. Plus, mages are regarded as the counterparts to seers, so there’s even more connection between him and his bro.

Russ

Page of Mind: I’m mostly going off of his LAC-persona, but that makes it all the more fun. Mind is concerned with decisions and their consequences, which Russ has some...interesting history with. A page’s untapped potential ties into his development in decision-making over time. Given, a lot of his decisions were based off of Doug (and the plot of LAC definitely has to play a part in this AU with the whole patron troll thing because uhhh how could it not it’s too good) but that could just be the push he needed to become his true self.

Tara

Witch of Void: Remember Basketball Ignoring Simulator? She turned their game into a game about nothing, about doing nothing, a void, and despite the efforts of the boys and it being THEIR podcast they couldn’t stop it. They couldn’t. She was simply too powerful. Witches “manipulate” or “unlock,” which is certainly what she did here. She was one of the last members of Rev3 before it died out (became a void?) but she was there til the end, both trying to keep it from its void-y fate (“manipulate”) while also finally deciding when to let go (“unlock”). And I’m not sure how to tie in her appearance on PoolGames, Inc. in which she sat in a hot tub drinking various types of alcohol, but it feels like it fits with the classpect, in some way. Witches may break the rules of their aspect, and while I’m not sure exactly how, I do feel like she’s breaking some void rules and choosing what parts of the aspect she wants (also a witch thing). Maybe my inability to pinpoint these reasons is part of why she’s a void player. Who knows.

Simone

Knight of Heart: Heart encompasses soul, motivations, emotions, and possibly attraction. Let’s focus on the last two. Two of Simone’s videos focus on her asking strangers on the street about a) which Joy-con is Sexier, and b) which Pokemon they would date. (Kinda horny things that are also definitely a theme with her.) Very, very focused on emotion and attraction. She brings motivation into it, too, by asking why. A knight “exploits their aspect as a weapon,” and honestly? She really drilled into those people. I wouldn’t say attacking, but it’s got that Vibe, and honestly a lot of these are based on Vibe. She’s also just a funny and honest/open girl in ways that strike me as a heart player. She is, of course, quite jumpy and scared of spooky games, and is quite controlled by her uhhh Feelings during them and voices such. But, she is shown to enjoy them nonetheless, the kind of courage one might associate with a knight. She could grow into it even more; room for character development. Knights also conceal their true selves; she’s suggested that despite her fear of horror games, she absolutely loses it in the moment when playing it. Gets buckwild. Maybe that’s it.

Rileigh

Maid of Heart: I haven’t listened to Still Buffering, but from what I know, she is a Teen and a sweet, sweet girl. Maids may be connected to sylphs, drawing a connection between her and her older sister; they’re also speculated as “made of,” “provider of,” or “protects with” aspect. Heart is the soul or essence of being, and her podcast is all about Being a Teen, something that everyone struggles, struggled, or WILL struggle with at some point in time, and is arguably essential to not only one phase of life but the entirety of one’s life itself. The time in which they learn who they are and find their essence, their soul. The definition of the word “maid” is either a server or an heiress; the former could be a metaphor for how Teens are often controlled by emotions in some way, and the latter could connect to her younger-sisterhood. Thanks, Teen.

Sydnee

Sylph of Breath: She’s a doctor. It’s a given. Making her life just seemed too obvious, and we already got that one heal-y thing going, but breath is also kind of important to living? I haven’t heard her podcasts, so a lot of this is just based on the Vibe I get. Please help.

I still need help figuring out Dwight, Rachel, and Teresa, plus more depth with Sydnee, since as I said, I’m not as familiar with them and their content and don’t have enough to go off of (like I did with some others here that idk as well).

I’ll update this as it happens!

#mcelstuck #long post #im. sorry. not really #i actually do kno dwights content (TIBAS) but i still couldnt figure him out

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d2kvirus · 5 years ago

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Dickheads of the Month: October 2019

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of October 2019 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

In a really, really mature move proven liar Boris Johnson sent a letter to the EU to request a Britait extension but didn’t sign it, in a feeble attempt to try and say that an official letter from his office doesn’t count if he didn’t sign it and he absolutely should not have to fulfill his promise of claiming he’d rather be dead in a ditch than request an extension

Of course Priti Patel would try and claim the Tories are the party of law and order during her conference speech in spite the minor issue her speech came a week after the Tories were ruled to have unlawfully suspended parliament, because what else did she have other than a strawman about he “North London Liberal Elite” to say for herself?

...although we can thank Geoffrey Clifton-Brown for completely undermining Patel’s speech by his being arrested at the conference due to getting into a punch-up with event security an hour before Patel even took to the stage

Hapless businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri would look a lot less like she’d been handed a script if she asked what business of ours is it to ask why a six-figure sum of public money ended up in her bank account courtesy of proven liar Boris Johnson, rather than the narrative she attempted to spin asking who we are to ask whether or not he had an affair...because the actual question is a matter for the courts instead of the court of public opinion, as whoever wrote her script knew all too well

In the latest bout of the Liberal Democrats showing how they’re definitely not Tories in disguise, all nineteen of the MPs abstained on a vote to keep the NHS out of Britait negotiations and, in the process, handed Boris Johnson his first-ever parliamentary win over Jeremy Corbyn - which Jo Swinson attempted to defend by squawking “something something antisemitism” in an attempt to distract people from noting the day before she couldn’t stop talking about the handful of Labour MPs who voted in favour of the proven liar's Britait timetable as she continues to try and delude herself and others into believing she’s a kingmaker and not a Tory enabler

...although she’s not alone in that regard, as Gavin Shuker took to Twitter to say how The Independents would do anything in their power to prevent Jeremy Corbyn getting into Downing Street, which only serves to justify him losing a No Confidence vote from his constituents when standing as a Labour MP

It says a lot about Blizzard that their response to Hearthstone streamer Blitzchung voicing support for the Hong Kong protestswas to boot him out of an upcoming Hearthstone tournament, suspend him from any further Hearthstone tournaments for a full year, and withhold the earnings he had made - and attempting to hide behind their competition rules does not adequately explain why they also ditched the two commentators who happened to be hosting when Blitzchung made the comments in spite their cutting to commercial as soon as he made them, which definitely does not make it look like Blizzard are shit scared of losing the Chinese esports market or anything considering they didn;t do a damn thing to any American players or commentators who subsequently spoke up on Blitzchung’s behalf...

It didn’t take long for the BBC to start gaslighting the public during the election campaign, with Fiona Bruce telling a Question Time audience member that Vote leave was cleared of breaking electoral law in spite the fact that they were found guilty of breaking electoral law, at which point panellists Paul Scully and gaslighter extraordinaire Isabel Oakeshott piled in to continue the bullying somebody who showed more aptitude for journalism than Bruce, Oakeshott and Scully managed between them

I have no idea how Rudy Giuliani managed to give a journalist on the Orange Overlord’s no-no list reason to further investigate the Trump regime leaning on foreign governments to dig up dirt on their opponents when his right buttcheek somehow dialled their number, but what I do know is that it does not surprise me in the slightest that the stop fell into a journalist’s lap because Giuliani was so careless he managed to butt dial them

I’m sure it’s a coincidence that both James Cleverly and Mark Francois both used their Tory conference speeches to threaten rioting on the streets if Britait isn't done, which definitely isn’t a well-worn trope of the Leave camp by this point and certainly not something the police should look into

Isn’t it interesting how Lib Dem staffer Steve Wilson was quick to accuse Dawn Butler of making up incidents of experiencing racist abuse, which not only undermined the Lib Dems’ attempts to portray themselves as anything other than the Tories under a different coat of paint, especially considering the fact that Wilson just so happens to be husband of recent Lib Dem appointee Angela “funny tinge” Smith?

I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot about how Matt Hancock tried to claim that the 20,000 new police officers the Tories claim will be on the streets by 2025 will replace the 21,000 they have laid off since 2010 in an interview with Good Morning Britain, just as I am sure people will mention he kept repeating his soundbite even when being told that the UK will still be 1000 police officers worse off than they were ten years ago several times until he started to look like a malfunctioning computer

Of course Louise Ellman responded to a vote of no confidence being called against her by her local party by resigning from the Labour party and using the usual “Corbyn is an antisemite” arguments we heard numerous times before from people facing deselection. It’s passed cliche and is rapidly headed towards high camp at this point

...especially when Karen Pollock of the Holocaust Educational Trust posted a video to her Twitter telling her followers how terrible it is that Labour are looking to have Jo Bird replace Ellman and regurgitated the exact same claims of antisemitism...yet never once deigned to mention that Bird is Jewish, which looks uncannily like the “wrong type of Jews” argument we’ve heard more than once from the Board of Deputies

Of course Anne Sacoolas expressed regret at her reckless driving being responsible for the death of Harry Dunn...after she legged it back across the Atlantic as soon as humanly possible, waiting a few days for the heat to die down, and then issuing a press release saying she regrets her actions but will not actually face consequences for them due to scurrying to hide behind diplomatic immunity in record time

On paper it looked as if WWE had merely given wrestler Jordan Myles a really unimaginative shirt design because the character they gave him is Smiley Guy Who Is Happy To Be Here 708...but the thing is that, on paper, the design didn’t look uncannily like something from a minstrel show, which Myles was particularly vocal about when he saw it - and even more vocal when WWE’s statement in response was the usual ass-covering gaslighting they issue when the company is shown in a bad light

It appears that the BBC are taking the threats against politicians so seriously that they invited Julia Halfwit Hartley-Brewer onto the Question Time panel little more than a week after she shared the home address of Jo Maugham on her Twitter account so her followers could happily dogpile

You would think that Bethesda would have learned that Fallout 76 has been nothing but a humiliation conga line for them by this point, but apparently not, as they had the genius idea of charging $99.99 (or £99.99, because fuck British players amirite?) for a premium subscription for a game that came out to critical derision and commercial stagnation a year before someone hit on this idea, and if that wasn’t humiliating enough it soon transpired that the supposed benefits of paying $13 a month didn’t work to the point where players paying the premium were losing items while those who weren’t had no problems at all

Once again it seems nobody told Extinction Rebellion that there’s a way to protest that doesn’t mainly involve being a bunch of dickheads and generally pissing people off with dickheaded stunts, with James Brown taking the prize for most dickheaded act after he climbed on top of a plane at Heathrow, although the bloke at Canning Town getting a shoeing after trying to hold up the train runs him a close second

I have no idea how Roland Rudd imagined his boardroom coup to take over the People’s Vote campaign would have gone, but I’m going to guess the mass walkout of staff when his plan to make the campaign a fully-fledged political party who would position as pro-business “liberals” in an obvious bid to try and split the Labour vote may have had something to do with it

The sheer spinelessness of the BBC was exposed for all to see when it emerged that a solitary complaint from a viewer was all it took for the corporation to reprimand Naga Mulchetty for suggesting that Donald Trump saying non-white congresswomen should go back where they came from, yet when Brendan O’Neill saying people should take to the streets and riot if Britait isn’t delivered received over 600 complaints no action was taken. And as if that didn’t make it any clear, when Priti Patel was called out by Andrew Marr for smirking through an interview when a list of businesses facing bankruptcy due to Britait drew a couple of hundred complaints, the corporation issued a grovelling apology that said they should not make light of Patel’s natural facial expression, even though there’s a wealth of evidence that smirking is not her natural facial expression

Funny how the dogwhistling boneheads have nothing to say about Jess Phillips’ mental flub during an interview when she claimed she'd knocked on the doors of 25,000 doors in the previous two weeks when she meant to say 2500, yet have spent the past two years continuously howling about the one time Diane Abbott flubbed her sums in an interview. Hmm, I wonder why the white middle-class Phillips gets better treatment than the black working-class Abbott...

Luckily for Rebekah Vardy it isn’t exactly difficult to do a disservice to the image of footballers wives, but her being caught out leaking stories that Coleen Rooney planted on her Instagram to find out who was leaking stories to The Sun wasn’t the logical defence of trying to claim that The Sun hacked Rooney’s phone as they have previous in that regard but to reel off ever-more spurious attempts at a denial and threatening legal action

In a desperate bid for attention Tracy Ann Oberman accused Jeremy Corbyn of stalking her at her place of work by posting a selfie of herself standing near a table where Corbyn, his wife and Shami Chakrabarti were having a cup of tea at a theatre in Corbyn’s constituency, and to prove she’s definitely not unhinged this soon degenerated into her getting into the usual vicious Twitter spats that occur when her behaviour is called out

Pity poor Savid Javid for having to endure the pain and humiliation of Hugh Grant not shaking his hand at a film premiere. Of course, maybe if Javid didn’t publicly dismiss the concerns of those who have been victims of press intrusion, maybe he wouldn’t be in a situation where a victim of press intrusion such as Hugh Grant would not want to shake his hand at a film premiere...

It was finally revealed how mug salesman Steven Crowder looks borderline informed when in debates with other people. It’s because his father prevents him from taking part in debates against opponents who will show him up as the ill-informed blowhard that he is. Yes, really

Sentient testicle Toby Young decided this month’s dogwhistling about Meghan Markle would be how she obviously can’t be depressed as the rich and famous are never depressed, which plumbed new depths of ignorance even for him

Britain’s most triggered man Piers Moron Morgan thought he was being clever when asking Good Morning Britain viewers to vote in a poll about whether he should be fired or not. The look on his face when 56% of voters said he should be sacked revealed how clever he actually is...

And of course, what would a month be without Donald Trump being utterly moronic, on this occasion saying it’s okay for the Kurds to be attacked as they didn’t help the US in World War II in spite the act that a.) They did, and b.) KURDISTAN IS NOT A COUNTRY. But then again, he does seem to be running out of material as the best he can say about Joe Biden is “But his text messages!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

#dickheads of the month

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terabitweb · 5 years ago

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Original Post from SC Magazine Author: Victor M. Thomas

Looking for insights in modern literature to address the challenges facing CISOs might seem farfetched, but there is some logic to this. Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass illustrates the challenges posed by ransomware. While this might seem contradictory on the surface, the options and twisted logic Alice faced are eerily similar to those posed by this pernicious malware.

Yet fight ransomware CISOs must do, so be prepared to abandon logic and enter the looking glass that is modern-day cybersecurity.

The good news is that there are ways to tilt those ransomware calculations in the company’s favor so you are less likely to have to pay the ransom. Fighting ransomware in 2019 forces CISOs to embrace quite a few contradictions that are most vexing. Here are some to consider:

• In a logical world, it is only the ransom-demander who is the criminal with the enterprise target merely a victim. But in the contrarian world of ransomware, there is an excellent chance that a company — or a company employee — paying a ransom might be violating federal law by sending money if the attacker is associated with terrorists or is in a country that doesn’t play nice with the U.S. Ultimately, you could be prosecuted for it. If you do not pay, you can lose your data. If you do pay, you might go to jail. Tough choice.

• There is potentially more legal trouble for the ransomware victim: Compliance and breach disclosure issues could be expensive and damage the company image. There could be related costs, such as states that require purchasing identity theft insurance for all impacted consumers. But were the consumers impacted? This raises a question that is difficult to answer: How far can a CISO trust the representations of the attacker? The company’s decision here can have expensive repercussions.

By all indications, an attack merely seemed to encrypt sensitive data. But given that the bad guys needed to first access it to encrypt it, might they have copied the data first so they could double-dip and sell the data on the black market even if the company pays the ransom? If the attacker has not yet done so, does that exfiltration still trigger compliance-related costs and efforts? Are companies required to assume that the attackers did more than they claimed? Will regulators make that assumption? Questions like these can send even the most grizzled CISO down the proverbial rabbit hole looking for answers.

• As is the case when anyone is dealing with a kidnapper who demands a ransom, it seems foolish to trust such a thief. What would stop them from taking your ransom and then opting to renege and not release your data? And yet, ransomware experts say that ransomware in 2019 is a highly professional business and that these ransomware businesses, which will often have customer service and free tech support, can be trusted to do what they say. If they do not, their highly lucrative business model would quickly implode. Is there a CISO or CEO willing to take that chance?

• The official policy of just about every Fortune 1000 company is to never pay a ransom. And yet, just about all of those same companies routinely will pay that ransom when the ROI calculation of fighting versus paying makes it clear that paying is better. That said, the calculation sometimes tells companies to not pay, depending on the situation and the nature of the attack. Was the City of Atlanta correct in saying no to a $51,000 ransom (the exchange rate for six bitcoin at the time of the attack) when experts say the costs to restore the data might well reach an estimated $17 million?

• If the situation is dire enough, CISOs always retain the option of surrendering and simply paying the ransom. And yet, many companies then discover that the nature of buying cryptocurrency — the ransom of choice these days — is next-toimpossible to do in volume given the limits the system imposes on cryptocurrency brokers, especially if the company does not have existing relationships with multiple cryptocurrency brokers. Buying a lot of cryptocurrency to hold in reserve for a future ransomware attack also does not work, both because of the potential loss of value due to the dramatic shifts in cryptocurrency exchange rates and because there is no way to know which cryptocurrency will be demanded.

• The limits as to how much bitcoin a single broker can sell changes from broker to broker, as do the precise procedures. Regardless, it is critical to start establishing those relationships before an attack hits so that your team can get as much of the paperwork wrapped before you need the virtual currency, experts agree. A second option is to get ransomware insurance and let the insurance company do all of that paperwork and logistics.

• Senior executives often assert that when the time comes to deal with ransomware, they will be the ones to decide, often in concert with the board. And yet, some ransomware attacks are now designed for mid-level or entry-level employees to be able to pay on their own — with demands as low as $100 or a few hundred dollars, in cryptocurrency — so the lowerlevel employee can, in theory, avoid the embarrassment and potential punishment of admitting to management that they clicked on the attachment and caused the problem.

Dante Disparte, CEO, Risk Cooperative

Unraveling the contradictions

A typical first line of defense includes aggressive backups, but attackers plan for that. Attackers often plant malware that goes silent for weeks or more before sending a ransom demand. This is designed to not merely infect backups with the malware, but to make it difficult to determine exactly when the infection began. Also, even if the security team identifies the exact date of infection, it might mean restoring a backup from a month or longer ago, losing considerable critical data.

This is all part of the ransomware return on investment (ROI) strategy. Attackers want the enterprise’s ROI calculation to make it worthwhile to pay the ransom.

The most obvious way to combat this strategy is to separate data backups from executables backups. In theory, this would allow protection of all data, as a database of raw data should not be able to house a malware executable. But homegrown legacy applications, along with legacy apps made from companies that are no longer in business or at least no longer selling that application, make that executable backup essential. This would suggest keeping secure backups of all legacy code on disks that are entirely off-network, ideally with multiple copies in multiple air-conditioned and air-gapped vaults.

Bryan Kissinger is the CISO for Banner Health, an $8.5 billion chain of 28 hospitals along with physician groups, long-term care centers and outpatient surgery centers in six states. Kissinger argues that his security team has done everything it can think of to thwart a ransomware attack.

“We’re preparing ourselves as best as we can,” Kissinger says. “We don’t allow our workforce to have administrative privileges on end-user devices.”

That restriction on administrative privileges is a key part of Banner’s defense strategy. Given that the typical ransomware attack involves attachment malware intended to compromise administrative credentials, “we attempt to head that part off. Our remedy would be to flush the system and reload it from a clean backup.”

Given that Banner performs backups on everything in the network — applications, data and operating system — there is always a risk of the malware infecting the backup so “we try and go back to a good time.” But by sharply limiting who has administrative privileges, Kissinger is hoping an attack would not ever touch any of the backups.

When asked about whether his firm, if indeed caught in a ransomware web, would ever pay ransom, he says he would recommend such a payment in only a few circumstances, such as if the system was “hopelessly locked and if the ransom is lower than our operating costs to repair the damage.”

Kissinger adds that it is hardly practical to have an ironclad policy against ever paying such a ransom. “I think anyone who says flat out ‘no’ is not being realistic.”

Bryan Kissinger, CISO, Banner Health

But if it ever happened, Kissinger says, his top priority would be identifying how the attacker got in and patching that hole. “We would try and close the threat vector so they can’t just attack again” after the ransom is paid, he says.

The question of whether paying encourages more ransomware is a difficult one to answer, which is why most companies that pay do everything they can to keep the payments secret.

“Broadly, I would advise ‘don’t pay’ because I do think it encourages the problem,” says Sean Tierney, director of cyber intelligence for security consulting firm Infoblox of Santa Clara, Calif. “But (CISOs) have to be aware of what the business reality is and what the impact of not paying will be. This does require the decision-makers to decide in advance what their decision will likely be.”

When an enterprise is trying to craft strategies and policies to counter today’s ransomware threats, it must look closely at its abilities to pay a ransom if it chose to do so. Many companies have tried and quickly discovered that the logistics of paying a large ransom in blockchain currency can be overwhelming if arrangements have not been put in place months earlier, says Mark Rasch, a former federal prosecutor who today serves as a private practice cybersecurity lawyer in Bethesda, Md.

Can I? May I? Should I?

“With ransomware, the first questions a company must address are ‘Can I? May I? Should I?,’” Rasch says.

The “Can I?” part addresses the tricky nature of cryptocurrency. “Do I have access to cryptocurrency — in multiple denominations and multiple types? Anywhere from (a value of) $300 to $3 million?” Rasch asks rhetorically. “If you have a need to deploy cryptocurrency, who in the organization will be responsible for making that decision? And how do you get that information to that person?”

Sean Tierney, director of cyber intelligence, Infoblox

When an attack hits, the extortionist typically gives a very short window for paying, often 24-48 hours. That means that every minute is critical. When some employee receives an extortion demand, does that employee know where to send it? Does that employee’s supervisor know? And what if the designated recipient is on vacation, traveling or otherwise unavailable? Is there a backup assigned to handle it and is that backup’s contact information widely known among employees? If designated contacts and/ or their backups leave the company, is there an immediate trigger for someone to select a replacement? Are such plans routinely rehearsed to learn of holes?

“Who makes that decision? Is somebody is going to own that decision?” Rasch queries. Sometimes staffers have different spending approval limits, so it becomes a question of determining which person has the authority to approve the ransom spend.

The “May I?” part refers to the tricky legal environment surrounding ransomware. There are various regulatory rules — the most prominent coming from a unit in the U.S. Treasury called the Office of Foreign Asset and Control (OFAC) — that restricts where money can go (prohibited countries) and people/organizations where it can go (entities on suspected terrorist or terrorism organization lists).

This is where the nature of ransomware makes payments complicated. Communications between the victim company and attacker typically improves after a ransomware attack, which is at least a microdot of a silver lining. “You’re never more secure than you are two weeks after having been attacked. It’s a motivating event, at least temporarily. You’re going to be doing some locking down,” Rasch says. “The idea that paying ransomware invites more ransomware is probably not true. But being vulnerable to ransomware probably does invite more attacks.”

Rasch argues that there really is a professionalism among many of the larger ransomware groups and punishing a paying customer is rarely seen. “In the incidents where I have dealt with ransomware, we haven’t had the experience that they immediately get hit again,” Rasch says, adding that not delivering a paid-for decryption tool is something else that rarely if ever happens.

Mark Rasch, private practice cybersecurity lawyer and former federal prosecutor

“They don’t make money if you can’t unlock it,” Rasch says. “They want to be known as a trustworthy thief. They want four stars on http://www.hostages-r-us.com.”

The final consideration, the “Should I,” essentially addresses the aforementioned discussion on comparing the ROI of paying the ransom versus not paying it. The CISO calculates what it will cost the company to try and repair the damage itself—factoring in down-time, status of backups, how long ago the system was impacted—versus paying the ransom. It may be galling, but a hard calculation will inform the “Should I?” decision. It also overlaps with the May I factor when it comes to the legality of paying, plus addresses a host of business and ethical considerations unique to each company.

Legal beagles

On other legal matters, there are the compliance issues dealing with states and other rules requiring disclosures, and possibly consumer insurance purchases, when Social Security numbers or other specified personally identifiable information (PII) is stolen. Given that even a forensic examination does not always deliver a complete and definitive picture of what attackers did (especially given the ever-present possibility that the bad guys manipulated security logs to hide their true tracks), it is hard to know if data was stolen (copied and exfiltrated) before it was encrypted.

As with almost everything in compliance, each rule depends on its definitions and phrasing. “One of the triggers is unauthorized access,” says Tatiana Melnik, a Tampa-based attorney who specializes in cyber issues. “At the same time, there is a requirement under HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) that requires integrity of the data remains in place. If someone has encrypted the data, does integrity of the data remain in place?”

The answer is to do everything your company can to determine what happened. “If you can, see what the malicious code was intended to do. If it was merely designed to find information and encrypt it, arguably, it may not be a breach,” Melnik says—and then make that argument to regulators and hope for the best.

Tatiana Melnik, attorney

Dante Disparte, CEO at the Washington, DC-based security consulting firm Risk Cooperative and a member of the national report entitled Black Market Ecosystem: Estimating the cost of ownership. “If either a nameserver or front-end is blocked or taken offline, a new one is automatically created in its place, allowing the back-end server hosting the criminal customers’ content to remain online.”

Deloitte noted that companies are quite open, on the dark web, at least, about the software suites they sell specifically for ransomware attacks, including whether fees are flat or involve a percentage of ransom acquired.

There is an advantage that the larger ransomware companies are so well known. That means that their tactics are well known. Companies, such as cyber insurance firms, often can identify the company attacking by looking at the code used. “Is it a variant of some known code? Has it been used before?” Rasch says.

Sometimes, attackers reuse their decryption tools and even decryption keys, which creates the slight possibility that victims can find the decryption items online from a recent victim of the attack rather than from the attacker.

Another concern is about the attackerprovided decryption tool. Not whether it will work necessarily, but how well it will work.

“In the last three months we’ve seen the Ryuk strain of ransomware become very active. It is the fast growing ransomware strain we see,” says Joshua Motta, CEO of San Francisco-based Coalition, a cyber insurance company. “More worrisome is that the ransoms for Ryuk are much larger than other strains of ransomware, totaling between $200K to $700K.”

This graphic illustrates a dark web page with ransomware for sale. Ransomware become a commodity, often sold the same way as packaged software with support and a license. According to Deloitte, “This enables [ransomware sellers] to provide a malicious ‘suite’ of services in conjunction with ransomware, known as Ransomware as a Service (RaaS).” *note – monthly costs for ransomware builds distributed over 12 months

He adds that “Unlike previous forms of ransomware, including SamSam and Dharma, Ryuk is extraordinarily difficult to remove. It is also very difficult to recover from. Even if you pay the ransom, the decryptor provided by the threat actor doesn’t work well. It does decrypt files, but it frequently fails making recovering extraordinarily time consuming for the victim.”

Scott Laliberte, managing director and global leader of cybersecurity and privacy for consulting firm Protiviti of Menlo Park, Calif., argues that ransomware is likely to get a lot worse before it, actually, it will just continue to get worse.

“My thoughts are that we are going to see escalation in ransomware over the next few years. I think the payload will start moving beyond just denying access to data to other types of actions that could threaten harm. For example, attacking healthcare providers to put patient lives in danger unless ransom is paid, distribution companies’ logistics systems to prevent them from making shipments, chemical plants, threatening catastrophic accidents, etc.,” Laliberte says.

Cybercriminals will “look for ways to monetize their attacks [given that] credit report monitoring and credit card tokenization [is making] identity theft and credit card fraud less profitable. Consequently, I believe [cyberthieves] will be upping the stakes. We need to start preparing now for these types of attacks and expanding our view of risk assessment beyond loss of confidential data.” Laliberte says he expects IoT and mobile will be ransomware’s new focus in the near term.

The post Going down the ransomware rabbithole appeared first on SC Media.

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Go to Source Author: Victor M. Thomas Going down the ransomware rabbithole Original Post from SC Magazine Author: Victor M. Thomas Looking for insights in modern literature to address the…

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peristeron · 7 years ago

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so y’all its time for the rare “maybe i need to re-examine my dæmon form" time with mala, thoughts under the cut

right, so. for those not in the know, who happen to decided to poke into this out of curiousity — i use the dæmon forum’s methods, which are basically taking the whole thing as a personality typing dealio, for self-reflection and shit. for the past several years i’ve been solidly settled as a tawny frogmouth, and before that, before the shift in analysis style i was a palm cockatoo

BUT recently i’ve been noticing some thought patterns i think i’ve pretty much always had but never entirely paid much attention to or noticed, namely some stuff relating to being image-oriented, particularly when i’m actually dealing with conflicts and not running the fuck away or otherwise avoiding the shit out of them. this isn’t something i ever considered about myself because generally i hate the spotlight and am so conflict-avoidant that the competitiveness that almost always goes along with being image-oriented doesn’t fit me At All

however

i’ve been noticing as a pattern through the past few months just how much i am Deeply Concerned with how things will Look, even when i feel generally past the point of going through the motions/playing the social game/doing my usual sugarcoating that is a lot more purposeful and careful than it probably seems. i Care about how i’m going to look to a theoretical Audience, to the point that it will utterly stress me out in some environments to the point of turning into a slug (see: dreamwidth). i want to make sure my shit is water-tight, i want to make sure that i come out looking Good. which, given internet culture (and especially dreamwidth and tumblr cultures), makes sense, especially for someone whose brain spends 75% of its activity centered on Avoiding Stress/Conflict/Unpleasant Things. if facing something Unpleasant and actively getting involved, it makes sense to not want things to get More Unpleasant due to one’s own phrasing or actions, etc.

anyway

one of my biggest problems with form finding, right, is that my cognitive functions are INFJ and my enneagram is 6w7. that isn’t a combination that’s very common and, from what i can tell, is viewed as kind of weird. i’ve re-examined both of these things (bc i try to avoid quizzes with personality typings and instead try and figure out how the systems work to pick The Most Accurate One, bc im that nerd), and i’m pretty heckin solid on it. but because its an uncommon and weird combo, it can make form finding difficult — bc finding an analysis that has the right combination of weird INFJ/6w7 traits is ............ yeah

NOW FINALLY ON TO THE GOOD SHIT

so i’m poking around on the spreadsheet, bc i know it isnt infallible but its a handy resource to get started with, and i keep pulling up things that are absolute duds. and then im like, “coyote, sure, lets just fuckin look” bc its listed as infj and 6. the analysis linked to that needs some editing, but doesn’t seem egregiously wrong and ... weirdly ... fits more than i expected. so out of curiousity, i popped over to the other two coyote analyses, both of which were written by forum analysis experts

and i stare. because this is............ hmm. it isnt a Perfect Fit, at least i dont think so, but its............... its more on point than i really expected. wtf. the other analysis doesn’t fit nearly as well, which i wonder how much of that is really down to differing interpretations or if it’s because of............. something else idk, but ironically that’s the one that has infj listed in the coyote’s possible mbti. this one doesn’t, but is more accurate to me. /scratches head

this is just So Weird to me bc i’d largely like. not........... considered a canine for myself before, not seriously, not since i got started and went through the “Maybe I’m A Wolf” phase. i’ve been birds for the longest time. but the birds that worked for me before (tawny frogmouth, mourning dove, though that second one fit a lot less closely) are distinctly missing the image-oriented stuff. and the bird analyses i know that definitely do center on it too much. so looking outside of birds, let alone finding one that fits as well as that coyote analysis, is just.................. Weird. it feels so Weird

it even nails something that, like. i never looked too closely in regards to myself bc i didnt like it:

¤ Possessive (revisited) Only some coyotes are territorial year round, but all are territorial during breeding season. Although there's not a lot of information out there on the subject, it appears that coyotes are territorial of the core 10% of their territory year round (usually where the den is located). How aggressively a coyote defends its territory will depend on available resources. In times of plenty, they're more lax; when food is scarce, they're less welcoming. Similarly, coyote people are not Possessive with a capital P, but they are possessive of things they see as uncommon or unique to them. The more obscure the interest or thing, the more possessive they are. Finding someone who shares these interests makes them feel like their individuality is being threatened. In contrast, when something is really popular or common, they don't expect it to be "their" thing and aren't upset by others embracing it. Basically, you could call them conditionally possessive.

SWEATS..................... LOUDLY. i. yeah. this is a kneejerk reaction i have. its not as uniform/regular/predictable as that, and i really need to pay more attention to that feeling and analyze it more when it happens, but i uh. sometimes........... i......... yeah

like. typically, i am not a jealous person. 97% of the time, i dont get jealous about my relationships, to the point that polyamory is a very real possibility for me and has been a thing for me in the past. but occasionally. occasionally. i’ll get... possessive a bit. and a bit jealous, wanting to helicopter and wanting to demand All The Person’s Time, No, Play With Meeeeeeee. i dont let myself do this, ever, because i know its Bad and it feels extremely uncomfortable to feel it to begin with. and there are some things i’ll get weirdly possessive about, usually more along the route of ideas kinda thing. i get the whole insecurity about “if this other person does the thing, then everyone’s going to like them more than me, and no one will like me any more because that person is better than me.” which is bullshit but i haven’t figured out how to bury it yet

squints off............... also i wanna talk about this:

¤ Competitive ... Coyote people are competitive by nature. They want to succeed and have trouble enjoying themselves if they're losing or struggling. This might cause them to drop activities they find difficult while focusing on what they're good at. They have a habit of comparing their achievements to their peers', which can lead to motivation or jealousy. They want to be the best in their field (or at least feel comfortable with their status), and they'll do what they can to stay there.

again, like i said earlier — being competitive isn’t something i typically consider a trait i have. i dont like conflict, competition feels way too much like conflict to me, i dont like negative attention, etc. ..................... but. b u t. the way this is phrased here? the bolded shit? which is pretty much the entire thing? y...eah. this hits it right on the fuckin head for me. i avoid competition because i hate losing and dont trust my reactions when im not doing well in a competition situation. i avoid things i’m bad at for the same reason (and bc feeling like a failure, bad thought spirals, perfectionism (which is also a trait in this analysis), etc). and, here’s the kicker, even if i’m not participating in something competitive at all, i’m still constantly comparing myself to other people, esp other people who are doing similar things to me (such as, say, role-playing courier six, the most open-ended player character in the bethesda fallouts and thus why am i comparing my OC to other OCs that’s fucking stupid). i may not feel like i want to be The Best One (is that bc i have no ambition/drive, which is a thing, or is it bc i have a huge amount of self-worth problems and therefore can’t imagine myself as being The Best and besides i wouldn’t want that pressure to be and stay The Best) — but i want to feel comfortable and safe in a status of being One Of The Better Ones, or even just One Of The Good Ones. and i want to maintain that status because i hate change (even if i can deal with it after some adjusting)

again — all of this is shit i’ve never wanted to really look too closely at or even admit too much, but it’s been there for a very long time, so its not like i’m magically developing this. its just............. that i’ve ignored it. and now im starting to be more honest with myself about it and its raising a lot of questions

anyway i may not be a goofy af looking bird guys i may be a clumsy, goofy coyote. ???????????????????????????????????

#mala talks #long post #TDF #dæmons #i'll probably make more posts like this #as i poke around at other forms #i'm not Sold on coyote yet despite everything #i wanna keep shopping around #bc u never kno what u'll find #for those'a y'all who are brave enough to try to read more on the dash #and are wondering why i bolded my links #its so the links stand out more on my layout

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brajeshupadhyay · 4 years ago

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At 2:15 a.m., Walt went downtown to see, to make a statement. The Smiths had talked and talked about the virus; they knew joining the protests against police brutality meant a higher risk of being infected. They took the risk to give their 10-year-old son a chance at a future in which he is not “walking around with the spirit of fear,” Shae said. They took the risk because after dealing with the pandemic “we still have to do whatever it takes.” The protests mean exposure to the virus and potentially accelerating its spread. The virus has killed more than 109,000 Americans, including a disproportionate number of blacks. Yet the Smiths and tens of thousands of others have chosen to take the risk. Far from being separate crises, the deadly epidemic of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and the sudden explosion of street protests against police violence are intimately connected, according to protesters and public and mental health professionals. “People are so pent-up with frustration from being inside for so long,” said Patricia Newton, chief executive and medical director of the Black Psychiatrists of America, which has about 2,000 members. “That was the kindling, and the police brutality lit the fire. People tell me, ‘I need to get out of the house,’ and ‘I’m having cabin fever.’ When people feel hopeless, they feel they have nothing to lose and caution goes to the wind.” For Shae and Walt Smith, the decision to leave home and walk among strangers for the first time in months was calculated, the result of a thorough discussion about what lay ahead for their two young sons as black men in America. In Columbia, Md., Jada Smith made the pivot more impulsively. On the day a Minneapolis police officer drove his knee into George Floyd’s neck until he died, Smith had barely left her house in three months. Smith, 23, broke her self-isolation, joining teeming, screaming, shoulder-to-shoulder protesters who packed streets north of the White House. “F— coronavirus. Who cares about coronavirus?” she said. “You can’t even walk out the door without being afraid for your skin color. This is more serious than what the coronavirus was. This is our lives out here. This is our children’s lives.” For medical professionals, the nightly images of huge crowds walking city streets, shouting and chanting, sometimes wearing masks but with hardly any possibility of social distancing, is frightening, even if it’s also understandable. Newton and others who have counseled protesters describe the connection between the two crises as complex — very different for different people. Some protesters consciously weigh the risks of catching the virus against a moral calling to voice their anger about racial bias. Others simply follow their passion to meet the moment on the nation’s streets. What both groups have in common is a web of emotions stemming from the pandemic: anger, isolation, loneliness, frustration, powerlessness, hopelessness. “There are a lot of factors weighing on people,” said Reed V. Tuckson, chairman of the Black Coalition Against Covid-19 and a former D.C. health commissioner. “It would be the height of hypocrisy for people protesting on behalf of those who cannot breathe to then bring home a virus that will prevent the people you live with from breathing. At the same time, a major appeal of protests like these is that they are exciting, engaging and morally compelling, and even more appealing when people have been quarantined for so long.” Newton has counseled protesters to consider the health impact of large gatherings. “I keep telling people, ‘You can’t protest if you’re dead and you can’t protest if you’re on a ventilator,’ ” she said. “If the people in your home and your community get the virus because of your unwillingness to take precautions, who are you helping? But when people get angry, they stop thinking.” The clash between the need to take precautions against the virus and the desire to take part in the protests came home to Kitaw Demassie when his 13-year-old daughter asked if they could join a demonstration. Demassie, a physician who is dean of the School of Public Health at the State University of New York Downstate, said his daughter understood the risk of infection, “but the anger and the isolation from the stay-at-home order combined to make her and other young people feel the need to go out. The isolation of the past three months increases anxiety, depression and also symptoms of indignation. Demonstrating peacefully helps people do something with their anger.” Father and daughter decided to join a group of physicians protesting in their white coats in Manhattan — “using protection and social distancing,” Demassie was quick to add. For many years, protests against racial bias have erupted anew after each incident of police brutality that gains national attention. But this time, Demassie said, the explosion of outrage is louder in part because “the interaction with the virus shutdown is fueling these protests.” Demassie understands why people feel compelled to protest — after all, he’s joining a crowd himself — but he remains “very sure that this will have a big impact on the number of virus cases. There really is no social distancing in these demonstrations.” It’s a tricky moment, he said: “We have two epidemics — racial disparities in health care, as we see in the death rate from covid-19, and racial injustice as exemplified in the death of George Floyd. In both cases, we need to flatten the curve.” It’s not that protesters don’t know that gathering in large crowds is likely to further spread the virus. Rather, they often view that reality through a blend of fatalism and idealism. Shae Smith, a 34-year-old manager at a Gap store, sometimes sounds fatalistic. The virus, police brutality and the way she and other black Americans lived before this year’s events all added up to a deadened life, she said: “We’re already in survival mode. The unemployment that people are facing. . . . How much more can we take? We’re already at our wit’s end. It’s like, we’re walking around, in a sense, feeling defeated.” Yet she also sounds idealistic. The protests are a chance “to see to it that people are going to be held accountable,” she said. “We got our mask on, and I made a sign and we went out.” The fatalism is sometimes literal. Kelly Rudin, of Bethesda, Md., had lived in terror of the virus. Kelly, 63, would send her 62-year-old husband Tom out to do the grocery shopping. But the couple, longtime activists who protested President Trump’s inauguration and the police choking death of Eric Garner in New York, knew immediately what they would do after Floyd’s death. “This,” Kelly said, “is worth dying for.” “If white people don’t come out, our society — ” she hesitated, then finished: “Our society is basically done anyway.” Until recently, the Rudins had taken all precautions they could. Now, they donned cloth masks and promised each other they would stay six feet from everyone else. But marching amid the crowds, Kelly didn’t feel worried anymore. Watching a group try to breach a police barricade on Pennsylvania Avenue, Tom lamented that because of the virus, they could not go closer. “Ordinarily,” Kelly said, “I’d be in the middle of that.” They leaned against a fire hydrant for a few minutes. The shouting rose. People ran back and forth. Tom and Kelly looked at each other. In tandem, they waded into the crowd. Such stories are both inspiring and worrisome, Newton said. “I never thought I’d see Americans so fatalistic and idealistic at the same time,” she said. “The fatalism is very scary. I’ve heard repeatedly people saying to me, ‘If I’m going to get killed, I want it to be for a reason.’ At the same time, there’s this idealism — they feel it’s their civic duty to go out on the streets.” Chante Burg, who recently left her job as a special-education teacher in Louisville to become a disabilities consultant, had plenty of cause to fear the virus. Recently recovered from Lyme disease, she takes 26 pills a day to boost her immune system. She had spent the past two months at home with her boyfriend, a former teacher. But then, after Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old black emergency medical technician, was shot and killed by Louisville police in her own home, Burg heard a call to action through her network of teachers. “I was livid,” she said. “Just livid. I was furious, I was devastated. I felt like, this is the end. This is the end. It can’t go on.” Burg, 34, felt compelled to act. “The virus didn’t concern me at all,” she said. “My immune system, I’ve built it up, and I have faith, I have faith in God, I have faith in my immune system.” She did worry that some people carrying the virus might be among the protesters, that some people may have gotten cabin fever and were “using these protests to get out of the house,” she said. “But I don’t dwell on that.” She feels in the dark about the virus. She mistrusts the White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, basically all of the often-conflicting guidance she hears on the news. “We don’t know what to believe or who to trust, so we need to take care of ourselves,” Burg said. In contrast, she’s confident that protesting is the right choice: “It’s important to me to be able to speak out and not live in fear, and it’s important for me to exercise my right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I’m not doing that when I’m sitting at home. Today, I feel empowered, I feel strong. I feel that we’re making progress, and we are going to win.” In the sea of young faces massed in front of the White House during the past week, Louis and Merianne de Merode stood out. He is 71 and she is 64. The Georgetown couple both have compromised immune systems from battles with cancer; they had strictly quarantined themselves, living on delivered groceries, venturing out only for bike rides on lonely stretches of the C & O Canal. Fearful of joining the protests because of the risk of infection, they changed their minds when they read their neighbors’ comments on a listserv where affluent Georgetowners complained about the looting visited upon local shops without discussing the rioters’ motivations. The de Merodes put on cloth masks and headed downtown. “This is 1,000 times more people than we’ve been around,” Merianne said. “We’re walking with people who don’t all wear masks. So we’re scared.” But just as they felt morally obliged to protest, they also felt compelled to put themselves in a 14-day quarantine after the demonstration. Tuckson, the former D.C. health commissioner, said the same moral responsibility that brings protesters onto the streets should lead them to quarantine themselves afterward. “If you’re going to follow your idealism,” he said, “you’re going to have to also protect the people you live with.” Some health advocates feel a tension between advising protesters to take precautions against the coronavirus, which has produced disproportionately high death rates among blacks, and endorsing action against another epidemic — racial disparities in everything from housing quality to police brutality. But Newton said the two epidemics are more closely connected than many protesters realize. “The virus exposed the underbelly of the problems we’ve had in health care for decades — a disparity in care that reveals some of the same bias we see in police brutality,” she said. For more than two months this spring, Denelle Acosta locked herself indoors, leaving her San Antonio home only to buy groceries or ride her bike. As a cancer survivor who is also diabetic, Acosta said she had to remain hypervigilant as the coronavirus swept across Texas. But when she watched the video of the last nine minutes of Floyd’s life, “I just started sobbing,” said Acosta, 36, who works as a sommelier and bartender at an upscale restaurant. “I have all these health issues, but I don’t care. I don’t want a virus to take me, but if I’m going to be fighting for what’s right, I’ll go out like that.” Acosta saw the officer crushing Floyd as a metaphor for how the system weighs on vulnerable people. She decided to protest in San Antonio, then drove an hour north to Austin to join another crowd. In front of Austin police headquarters, Acosta, who wore a black mask, pointed to a camp of tents and couches where homeless people find shelter beneath a busy highway and began listing reasons she believes “the system is broken. So many people have no health care, our education system is a joke, we’re not taking care of our veterans or the elderly.” Police brutality is front of mind, but she thought also about Trump’s aggressive tweets, the plight of vulnerable communities and the pandemic, which she said has exposed inequity in American society. “Laying my life on this line for this movement is more important to me than dying because of a virus,” she said. “I can’t take it anymore.” Fisher and Jamison reported from Washington. Wallace reported from Louisville. Holly Bailey in Minneapolis, Peter Holley in Austin and Hannah Natanson in Washington contributed to this report. The post The nexus between coronavirus and protests: ?The virus was the kindling. Police brutality lit the fire.? appeared first on Sansaar Times.

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