#The Opioid Crisis in a Post-Covid World - Where Do We Stand?

[tlbodine]

Of Course We’re Angry

In 2016, I remember having a heated argument with my brother on Facebook. I don’t remember exactly what started it, but we were clashing heads over the Democratic primary. He, a Clinton supporter, had just called me a gender traitor for continuing to support Sanders -- that my unexamined latent misogyny is the only possible reason why I might oppose her candidacy. 

“It’s not that,” I remember trying to explain, confused and alarmed to be having this argument with my brother. “It’s just that I like Bernie. He stands for all of the things that I value! He’s like the Mockingjay of our revolution.” 

My brother questioned why I thought we needed a revolution. 

I wondered how he could possibly think we didn’t. 

--

They feed us all of these stories about plucky revolutionaries, and then balk when people start to protest. 

If you didn’t want a revolution, you shouldn’t have raised us with Robin Hood, Harry Potter, Star Wars and The Hunger Games. 

When V for Vendetta said, “Governments should fear their people,” we listened. 

Did you expect us not to? 

--

The thing you have to understand about Millennials is that many of us feel we have nothing to lose; we do not believe in the future. 

Everything we were raised to expect turned out to be a lie. We were told, “Study hard, go to college, and get a good job. You don’t want to grow up to be a garbage man.” And so we did. More than half of us went to college, more than any previous generation. We studied science and arts and humanities, and then graduated into a world where no one respected science, no one valued art, and no one had any humanity. 

We graduated with crushing debt into a massive recession. The jobs we were promised did not exist. The college diploma, once a guarantee of higher pay, became the minimum requirement at every office job and call center. 

All of my friends have college degrees. All of us make less than $15/hr. Very few of us have children. Even fewer can afford houses. Many of us had to move in with our parents, and some have never been able to leave. Some of my friends have been unemployed or working the gig economy since 2008 -- people who are no longer counted among the unemployed, a whole lost generation of young people. None of us will be able to retire. Most of us do not have health insurance. Many of us do not have credit. 

And we are the lucky ones. 

We are the privileged. We are not being murdered on the streets and in our homes.

But we are, in our own small way, also victims of the robber barons of a ruling class that profits off of suffering and enforces its cruelty with a corrupt legal system.

You told us to go to college, and so we did. We studied history and economics and literature and learned how the world was made by Black people and brown people and women and LGBT people. 

-- 

Occupy Wallstreet.

Black Lives Matter. 

If you didn’t want us to protest, why were the rebels the heroes in all of the stories?

--

In 2018, scientists told us we had 20 years to solve global warming or the damage would be unstoppable. Climate change is a looming existential threat, a potential end date to our survival on this planet, but we don’t have the time or the resources of the energy to deal with that right now because we’re a little busy with a pandemic, a race war, a national recession and an opioid crisis. We’re a little exhausted because we’ve been alive for 17 of the 25 deadliest mass shootings and instead of passing gun laws, we’re manufacturing bullet-proof backpacks for children. We’re a little tired because we’re working low-wage jobs for corporations that earn billions of dollars and don’t pay taxes. 

--

“Make America Great Again,” Donald Trump said, and he was a goddamn liar.

But Clinton said, “America is already great!” 

And still people did not understand why young people didn’t want to vote for her.

-- 

We say: Burn it to the ground.

We say: Bring back the guillotine. 

We say: No justice, no peace. 

And somehow, still, people are shocked to consider that we mean it. 

The thing you have to understand is that when you don’t believe you have a future, you don’t have anything to lose.

--

It’s May 31, 2020, and the nation is on fire. 

Literally. There are buildings and vehicles burning in cities across the country. Protests, looting, rioting, police driving into crowds, fights breaking out, National Guard deployment. Some people have been injured. Some have died. Of the four police present at the death of George Floyd, only one has been arrested.

105,557 people are dead in the USA of COVID-19. Hospitals are using trash bags as PPE and can’t afford ventilators, but the police have a seemingly endless supply of riot gear, rubber bullets, and tear gas.

=====

EDITED TO ADD: 

It’s unclear how and why all of the property damage is occurring at these protests. From reports, it seems clear that there are bad actors stepping into the protests to agitate and escalate. Who they are seems up for debate -- antifa, police, disaffected white people, anarchists, whoever. This shit is not OK and it is going to get Black people arrested and/or killed. 

I want to make it extremely clear that my post above is not written to promote violence or excuse the behavior of white people causing trouble at these protests. This is not about us, and our anger should not be speaking over Black protesters or putting them at harm.