Coronavirus: This new togetherness

My friend Cynthia texted me that she was walking her dog and I texted back that I was walking myself.  She texted back, "We are alone but together!"  Which reminded me of Robert Frost's poem, "Tuft of Flowers," which ends with the lines, "All men work together... whether they work together or apart."

It was three blocks further in my neighborhood walk when I saw this door:

I stopped to read the sign:

I really appreciated the message, in the face of the grim news from the Centers for Disease Control that, at a minimum, they expect 100,000 deaths from coronavirus.  A friend in Britain texted that the death rate had risen 50% overnight.  At-risk workers are going on strike for protection.  And the New York Times reported on the weaknesses in our national supply chain of food.  

If only that were all.  Another friend asked, "When were the fires in Australia?" 

We pondered that for a minute, and I wanted to say, "Last summer," but it was only two months ago.  Years ago, I defined "root shock" as losing all or part of one's emotional ecosystem.  I would include "climate change" as a process that, in changing the ecosystem of the world, has caused all of us root shock.  Coronavirus comes on top of the stern confrontation with climate change that we had when the continent of Australia was burning and a billion animals died.  This series of massive upheavals fits with what I have called "serial forced displacement," a repeated ripping apart of communities and ways of life.  The psychological ramifications are powerful: we are disoriented, disconnected and stripped of the part of our identity that came from knowing our place in the world.  

In such moments we are open to fears but also to new truths.  I feel hit over the head with all these realities, which are stripping away my illusions and pretenses and myths, until I see the sparkling atoms that spin in and around us in webs of connection I have only just begun to imagine. I used to ask my class in Urban Space and Health, "Who is more important to city, the bus driver or the doctor?"  Trick question, of course, as they are equally important, but my students would routinely fall into the trap and say, "Doctor."  And as a person who lusted to go to medical school so that I would be important, I must say I have spent a good bit of my life climbing out of that hole, slowly learning to see the dance of the universe.  

However far I had gotten on that journey to ecological consciousness, this moment in history has shoved me forward.  The poet Mary Oliver spoke to what this series of events -- these displacements from the known universe -- is opening for me and perhaps to all of us:

“I tell you this 

to break your heart,

by which I mean only

that it break open and never close again

to the rest of the world.”

If my heart is open to the world, then I can see and show that I stand with us all.  People have been proclaiming their solidarity in myriad ways, but I plan to follow the lead of my neighbor: I'm going to make a big sign that says, "We're all in this together," and put it on my door.  

Main Street, Wall Street: Occupy for Root Shock

In the years that I've been strolling Main Streets, I've watched the recession hit and it's been a hard hit. In the common parlance, Main Street is the antonym of Wall Street, both as places and as sets of people. With the recession and the concentration of wealth, Main Street has gotten poorer and Wall Street has gotten obscenely richer. This has shaken Main Street's way of life. Foreclosures have taken people's homes, unemployment has left them with no money to spend for food, shelter or clothes, and the hostility of the right has left them -- us -- with no hope of a safety net in times of troubles. Eric Fullilove, an economist and planner, described this as "root shock," using the term I coined to describe the painful disorientation and confusion people experience after the destruction of their neighborhoods. I studied root shock in cities that had undertaken urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s. People whose neighborhoods had been bulldozed still suffered from the pain of that loss. They told me about losing not only their homes, but also their social networks, political organizations, friendships, even close ties to family were disrupted. As I describe in my book, Root Shock, the costs of root shock were astronomical, and they had not been remediated. Eric's assertion that the current economic dislocations are causing root shock offered me a new way to look at the impromptu demonstrations going on now and spreading all over the world. In New York they have the title "Occupy Wall Street." Demonstrators in other cities have attached their city name to "Occupy." While it might seem that the "occupy" is simply indicating that the demonstrators plan to go and stay for a while, I think that the "occupy" can be interpreted as a definitive cure for the root shock we are all suffering. The cause of root shock is the loss of all or part of one's emotional ecosystem. The cure: to get settled in a new place. What better place for uprooted Main Street to seek new roots than Wall Street?