Emily- Constant Crisis

I have only one really vivid memory during the months of April and early May, the weekend of May 1st. I was only connected to the world outside of the middle of Brooklyn through Instagram and twitter and the larger net. I had a bike that could only take me so far.
The weekend of May 1st was unforgettable. In lower Manhattan, white people filled parks with picnic gear and sunscreen to enjoy their lovely day in the sun that they believed they earned and deserved after being locked up for so long.
In Brownsville, Black folks sitting outside got beat up by multiple police officers.
While cops handed out masks to white people by the pier, I was assaulted by a police officer for recording them harassing Black Flatbush residents outside their homes. The cops maks was under his nose. I was paranoid for the next two weeks that because of him I'd be sick.

Sometime between the gensis and and the peak, Deblasio told people to call police, a hotline or whatever, if people weren't socially distancing or wearing masks. My boyfriends neighbor did it. I told my boyfriend he's probably been waiting on any excuse to call the cops on two young Black guys since he met your family. Who knew the excuse would be that there were people skating outside on their recetly closed off street who weren't social distancing.

I've never lived in a revolution, in a pandemic, in a recession before. But somehow, it didn't feel like anything new was happeneing, more like everything was happening all at once. Suddenly the curtain was pulled back when our daily distarctions were stopped, and people were forced to see regular shit.
" [Insert inhumane, unjust, racist, classists treatment] is happening... DURING A PANDEMIC", is what I heard and said a lot. But the truth always was that white supremacy and capitlaism never stops, it only comes harder when it is threatened.

Did I forget that white people pulled up to state capitol's with guns and no masks to protest being told to wear masks to stop a raging global pandemic from spreading and killing people? Did I forget that nothing ever happened to them? Did I forget that there is more martyrs from Black Lives Matter rebellions than arrests of murderer cops? Did I forget that cops and landlords work together to kick out, belittle, humilate and violate tenants when people can't pay because they're unemployed? Did I forget Black Trans women die everyday, and coronavirus didn't stop that?
I didn't forget, but I try to.

For immigrant communities, coronavirus is a different king of threat

Hello everyone,

For the format of my project I have decided to follow in the footsteps of nytimes interactive magazine - COVID quarantine sorrow. The structure of every entry on the magazine is incredibly powerful and very personal. So much so that I feel inspired to share a couple of my own journal entries from when lock down had just begun to when things started to get really grim not just for me, but for everyone in my family and community. What I am having issues with is not knowing where or how to integrate the academic research aspect of this project into my personal entries.