Coronavirus: A Turn Must Be Made

At the 1951 founding convention of the National Negro Labor Council, Southern union leader Viola Davis said of Jim Crow and reactionary politics in the South, "A turn must be made." This important civil rights organization was particularly focused on equal opportunity in employment; my father, Ernest Thompson, was one of the founders and told me many stories of the Council's highly successful work, including stunning efforts, like the Gateway to the South campaign, that fought employment injustice in the Southern states.

Ms. Davis's words echo for me today, and remind me of a dream I had back in January that humanity had hit a wall and our only hope for survival lay in making a turn. One article in the news today really reinforced that this is not a dream I had but a reality I glimpsed.  It was a piece about forcing the meat packing factories to open, without requiring strong protections for the workers, thousands of whom are infected with coronavirus and many of those people are dying.

This broke my heart open. I have seen so much injustice in the past two months: poor hospitals held together with duct tape and verging on bankruptcy; tribal peoples with horrendous rates of infection and death; essential workers with no protections; a loan program for small businesses raided shamelessly by multinational corporations aided by their bankers. And these are not the stories in the radical press.  These are stories in the Times and the Washington Post.

Perhaps the task of the managed retreat was two-fold.  To pause, as best we could, to save as many lives as possible.  And in that pause -- that boom against the wall of the ecosystem which can't take much more of our abuse -- to have time to hear and see how it all works.  To watch squirrels get fat and goats frolicking in cities because they aren't afraid, and the vulnerable dying because of the weight of all the deprivations and deprecations.

Having seen, having felt, can I -- can you -- just go back to the life that produced this moment?

I say no.  Perhaps you are thinking so, too.  When Viola Davis said to the NNLC, "A turn must be made," it lit a fire in the organization, and sent sparks throughout the South that ignited the Civil Rights Movement.  We can ignite the Turn.  And we now know -- if we weren't sure before -- that it must be made.