The Fight For Our Lives

FIGHT FOR OUR LIVES

MICHELE DARR WORDS BY |

“I Can’t Breathe”- Ringing in the new year of 2020 with a global respiratory pandemic, COVID 19 dominated our attention and as many of us fought for our breath and our lives, the virus and subsequent need for social distancing took hold of our daily routines. School, work, meetings, and celebrations moved to our screens.

“I Can’t Breathe”. As a captive audience, we all became first hand witnesses to a second viral pandemic...and one that is sadly all too familiar. Unable to look away, we witnessed a grisly procession of high-profile, yet all too common murders of unarmed Black civilians at the hands of racist police officers: Ahmaud Arbery, who was chased down and killed in Glynn County, Ga., on Feb. 23, Breonna Taylor, who was in the comfort of her own bed when police entered her apartment and shot her dead in Louisville, Ky., on March 13 and Tony McDade who was gunned down by the police in Tallahassee, Fla., on May 27. By the time that the life of another unarmed Black man, George Floyd, was snuffed out in broad daylight on a street in Minneapolis, Minnesota, we had had enough. As the world watched in horror, Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, knelt on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes while Floyd, handcuffed and lying face down in the street, begged for his life, crying out the fateful words, “I can’t breathe”. 2 other police officers aided in restraining him and prevented bystanders from intervening, breathing life into a dormant human conscience. A third and far more productive viral pandemic rose from the ashes…...the pandemic of righteous outrage. The World rose up in epic and historic proportions and as of the date of this publication, mass protests have only grown in size and intensity.

Whether or not you were caught in the cross-hairs of one of these viruses, you are lucky if your daily routine is only slightly impacted by their presence in our midst. Far more ominous is that the fallout for millions of non-white Americans cannot be underscored. To the degree that inherently racist systems continue to negatively affect marginalized Black communities in matters of policing, healthcare

and in literally all systems across the board, it is equally urgent to also stay informed and vigilant when it comes to the undeniable presence of those same systemic problems within most popularly marketed “solutions” to the problems, particularly COVID 19. Most media coverage has predictably been touting vaccines, with most manufacturers pledging to roll out their “cures” by year’s end. Yet these goals can hardly be justified when not yet one has met even basic benchmarks, let alone been subjected to double blind placebo trials and human testing, processes which generally take 5 years or longer to thoroughly and safely complete. History is rife with examples of the hazards and deadly consequences that result, most often in poorer, more isolated parts of the country and the world, when the process is rushed, so what is the justification and who are the authorities from which it comes?

“Realistically, if we’re going to return to normal, we need to develop a safe, effective vaccine. We need to make billions of doses, we need to get them out to every part of the world, and we need all of this to happen as quickly as possible,” said billionaire Bill Gates, CEO of tech-giant, Microsoft in an article he published in Gates Notes on April 30th, 2020. One might plausibly wonder why a software mogul presumes himself, and is arguably presumed by others, to be an eminent authority in the highly subjective realm of medicine and vaccines, when he himself holds no more medical degrees than Donald Trump. He goes on to dismissively state in his article that while Anthony Fauci, who sits at the helm of the Center for Disease Control stunningly predicts the likelihood that a vaccine could be ready in as little as 18 months, Gates diverges, loftily announcing that a suitable vaccine could be ready for distribution to 7 billion people in as little as 9 months.

“Development usually takes around five years,” Gates says without any noticeable trace of irony. “Once you pick a disease to target, you have to create the vaccine and test it on animals. Then you begin testing for safety and efficacy in humans.”

“Realistically, if we’re going to return to normal, we need to develop a safe, effective vaccine.”

One might find it profoundly disturbing to read the words of someone with no medical degrees or authority other than being a techno-giant and one of the wealthiest people on the planet, pronouncing that a vaccine he funds for production will be developed and distributed to billions of humans in one 5th the time of any vaccine in history. Others in the upper echelons of the medical field have expressed similar concerns and exercised their authority in curbing some of Gates’ more empirical plans.

As the White House’s loudest voice on racial disparities in healthcare and on the heels of his February, 2020 proclamation that the flu was of much greater risk to Americans than the Coronavirus, AfricanAmerican Vice-Admiral and Surgeon General, Dr. Jerome Adams, explained in an interview on live XM radio that the Coronavirus Task Force has effectively sidelined the Bill Gates/CDC/WHO predictive contagion model, and is now working with the real data.

“What the American people need to know now is we actually have real data, and so we’re tracking that data, not the fear-based, overinflated data Bill Gates wants us to believe,” said Dr. Adams. “In those inflated, ‘fear-based’ models, the deaths of millions worldwide and hundreds of thousands in America were touted. These were used as the basis for what many experts have termed a ‘grossly disproportionate response,” Adams shockingly revealed.

His stance is far from surprising when considering that by the CDC’s own admission, several existing vaccines, including the latest flu vaccine, cannot boast even a mere 50 percent rate of efficacy and success in treating or curing their target malady. However, Gates remains undeterred by the potential for alarm and questions arising from the ranks of the billions of humans for whom he plans to administer this latest vaccine by year’s end. “Our foundation is the biggest funder of vaccines in the world, and this effort dwarfs anything we’ve ever worked on before. It’s going to require a global cooperative effort like the world has never seen. But I know it’ll get done. There’s simply no alternative,” Gates stated resolutely.

Wait. No alternative? Says who? What about the time it should take We the People to ask pertinent questions and get satisfactory answers to why there is such a sudden and all-encompassing push to administer a global vaccine in record time, to billions of humans, purportedly to ward off and create immunity to a virus with, currently, a 99.75 rate of recovery? And why aren’t the same efforts being applied to treat and cure diseases with a much higher rate of mortality? Will this vaccine be mandatory and if so, what measures will be employed to enforce distribution? Who are likely going to be the first human recipients of said vaccine, and which areas and neighborhoods at home and abroad will likely be chosen to host the first human experiments? History shows it likely won’t start at the top with rich, white people but at the bottom with those most vulnerable being the first in line to be test subjects.

These questions and countless others need to be raised and answered before we go any further down this very slippery and possibly irreversible slope. Not only does the magnitude of damage that is potentially possible from rushing towards the “Cure” to COVID-19 affect every human alive right now, history and experience painfully demonstrate time and again that there are certain humans who are even more vulnerable and susceptible to abuse and brutal methods of enforcement. The ongoing forfeiture of a growing number of our civil rights through systemic channels and policing disparities are literally the result of centuries of racist, classist, sexist programming and manipulation. It didn’t happen overnight and will not change overnight either.

The bottom line is that no one is coming to save us here and It isn’t going to be easy to hold the line against forces bent on subjugating us using divide and conquer tactics. Throughout this often tragic story, though, there is more than a glimmer of hope and in the end, one undeniable truth remains. A people that have survived and refuse to cede defeat in the shadow of abduction, relocation, and a 400-year reign of terror and slavery over their bodies, will never allow anyone to lay claim to the Soul that drives them onward through the storm, nor will they be overcome in their bid for ultimate freedom, rising high above anything that threatens their existence or legacy on this planet. As Tupac Shakur so eloquently penned,

“The question I wonder is after death, after my last breath When will I finally get to rest through this oppression? They punish the people that’s askin’ questions And those that possess steal from the ones without possessions The message I stress: to make it stop, study your lessons Don’t settle for less, even the genius asks his questions Be grateful for blessings Don’t ever change, keep your essence The power is in the people and politics we address Always do your best, don’t let this pressure make you panic.”

In other words, stay woke, stay focused, stay together and stay tight. Don’t let the merchants of death divide and conquer us, rather, let us rise up together and become the heroes of our own story. We have come too far to do any less and we owe it to future generations to do our utmost to ensure that they have a future worth claiming.