The Counterpublic Papers vol. 5 no. 27

July 04, 2020

In 1998 Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight was released, a crime comedy featuring George Clooney (playing career bank robber Jack Foley) and Jennifer Lopez (playing US Marshal Karen Sisco), and also starring Don Cheadle (playing Maurice Miller, a stone cold killer from Detroit), Albert Brooks (playing white collar criminal Richard Ripley), among others. Based on an Elmore Leonard novel (Leonard supposedly got the idea for the novel after seeing an FBI agent with a shotgun on her hip outside of a Detroit courthouse) the plot of the film revolved around Foley’s attempt to pull off one last job after escaping from jail and Sisco’s attempt to recapture him. While in jail Richard Ripley told both Foley and Miller that he had a stash of uncut diamonds in his suburban Detroit home, and both Foley and Miller decide to rob Ripley.

The film ends more or less in Ripley’s house with Clooney trying to rob Ripley while keeping him from getting killed by Miller (Cheadle doesn’t get anywhere near the credit he’s due—Cheadle plays the hell out of stone cold killer characters).

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Last week at a peaceful march through Saint Louis’ central west end (Saint Louis’ most exclusive neighborhood) in order to protest the city’s mayor (who in only a somewhat stunning action for Saint Louis decided to publicly read the names and addresses of Saint Louis residents calling for the police to be defunded), protestors were accosted by a guns-wielding wealthy white couple who stood in front of their mansion as protestors simply walked by. Mark McCloskey (carrying an AR-15 the wrong way—if he’d used it he’d have likely shot himself and his wife before he shot protestors) and his wife Patricia are both Trump-supporting private property lawyers.

One of the legacies of racial segregation in St Louis is that a number of its neighborhoods are actually private—gated off of the rest of the city. The McCloskeys accused the protestors of being on private property and then of breaking the gates to gain access to the neighborhood—posting a picture of one of the gates ripped off of the hinges. Their supporters argued that the two were standing their ground. In their bare feet and khakis, holding their guns all the way wrong. Reporters following up on the story found evidence that suggests that the McCloskey’s doctored the photo of the broken gates, and that the McCloskey’s have a history of racism (one of their nannies from a couple of decades ago anonymously shared the McCloskey’s request that their children not be exposed to black culture). Forty Central Park west residents signed a petition supporting the protestors.

Anyway, when I saw the picture of the bare feet polo wearing McCloskeys, the first thing I thought about was Out of Sight and Richard Ripley cowering in his house with his girlfriend as Miller and Foley rob him.

Albert Brooks is too long in the tooth to play McCloskey when someone decides to make a movie out of this. But damn I wish he wasn’t.

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My leave ended a few days ago. I’m now technically back on the clock.

And we still don’t know what we’re doing in the Fall. I don’t know whether I’m teaching in class or from home or some combination. While my middle son’s college has a plan—school starts in a few weeks with the kids all coming back in Thanksgiving—I don’t know what my youngest daughter’s college is doing.

The New York Times ran a story last week basically blaming this on reluctant professors. Like me I guess. A number of us are on the wrong end of fifty, and even those that aren’t are at significant risk. The story is worth reading. But not because it paints a picture of a labor force that now realizes itself as “essential”….but rather because what it doesn’t reveal.

Read this thread in its entirety. And then share it with your friends. And have them share it with their friends. And reach out to your representative. If you’re a parent share it with your children. Talk to them about it. Talk to college administrators about it. At best what they’re doing is waiting for state officials to call it a wrap so they won’t have to. But this just kicks the bucket down the road.

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One of the ways we can disrupt that “kick the bucket down the road” circuit….is through storytelling. Telling different stories can create the type of counterpublics we need to create a world worth living in. I’m going to end with a story from a friend.

I recently helped test about 300 male inmates in the Baltimore city jail for coronavirus, as a volunteer.

[The backstory: On May 7, the ACLU and other advocacy organizations called for MD to begin a program of “aggressive testing” of incarcerated people. On May 20, Governor Hogan announced the state was going to implement universal coronavirus screening at all state-run corrections and juvenile facilities.   

One June 11 (three weeks later), I got an email stating that the MD Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services was looking for medical personnel to volunteer to help. The testing dates were between June 8 and June 29 for staff, and between June 15 and June 29 for inmates, and they were looking for somewhere between 6 and 24 volunteers per site, depending on the date/site. The first sentence in the email announced this was a REAL-WORLD EMERGENCY (yes, in all caps). The email also noted that volunteers needed to have been previously fit-tested for an N95 respirator and that PPE would be provided.]*

So, I volunteered. I didn’t sign up for a fuzzy feel-good experience, and didn’t expect one because, well, jails and prisons are inherently hard places to spend time in, even short term. I signed up because I’m a nurse and feel compelled to show up when I am called to help; there’s a global health emergency, and prisoners and the people that work with them are vulnerable in an epidemic, and I worry about their well-being and safety. I also worry that their vulnerability also puts the larger community at risk, because jails and prisons aren’t closed systems). It is, in fact, a REAL-WORLD EMERGENCY – as a public health practitioner, I have no quarrel with that characterization.

And it was a hard day that I’m still turning over in my mind. It wasn’t the inmates that made it hard; they weren’t difficult. Most were extremely polite. Some looked exhausted, obviously stressed out. Quiet, withdrawn, sad eyes. Others flirted with the nurses and volunteers, horsed around with other inmates, or made jokes. Many were very nervous about the test, worried it would hurt. (It shouldn’t be painful, but it’s a swab that goes WAY up and WAY back in your nose – it’s extremely unpleasant, and makes you sneeze and cough and your eyes water).

Rather, the part that got me was seeing how obviously vulnerable the inmates and staff really are to this virus exploding in their midst. For one, it was astonishing how underresourced the staff were. We didn’t have N95s when we got there; we could barely find enough pens. When I asked about N95 masks, I was told they didn’t have any at the jail; they were expecting some to arrive, but I was also informed they weren’t necessary for screening. (Another staff member remarked in response to this: “No one gives a shit about people who work here – they don’t care what happens to us.”) The masks did eventually arrive, and they provided those of us who were screening with them. Unfortunately, the masks were low-quality, not fit-tested, didn’t fit anyone’s face appropriately, and weren’t adjustable. The volunteers ended up putting them over the cloth masks we wore from home, hoping that would provide some extra protection somehow.  I’ve quarantined myself at home since then, because I don’t want to get anyone else sick; this probably isn’t practical for the people who actually work in the jail, some of whom have families and other jobs in healthcare settings.

The inmates we screened were in an open room without cells -- with bunk-style beds and bolted-down chairs and tables placed throughout.  I understand there have been some efforts to depopulate the jails and prisons, but there were definitely plenty of men in each room. They sat at the tables, stood in groups around the room, crowded around the windows to watch us. They weren’t “socially distanced,” and I’m not sure that it would have been even possible for them to be socially distanced if they wanted to – there’s just nowhere to go. I could see they all had cloth face masks, all the same dark gray color (thus evidently issued to them) – is a step in the right direction. However, maybe only a third of the inmates were actually wearing their masks, and many of those incorrectly (e.g., only over their mouth); the rest had them dangling at their necks, with no apparent attempts by the guards to require the inmates to put them on.

I wrestled with writing about my concerns in any way that was public. I have put it off as I tried to think through it. I recognize the limitations of extrapolating information from one anecdotal observation. (Like, I don’t know how it looks different in other corrections sites, like the prisons. And maybe since I was there, the jail staff have great PPE and all the inmates are safely social distanced and wearing masks. Somehow I doubt this, but I can only speak to what I saw on one date). A far larger concern for me is that I don’t want to somehow unintentionally harm the people that live in the jail, or the people that work there. And maybe I’m not adequately cynical, but I’m not really even trying to come for anyone higher up.  I’m political as fuck, but I’m not trying to be political here. I’m glad there was at least some effort to start testing inmates and staff. The issue is--  I’m just really, seriously afraid for the inmates and the staff as this pandemic rages on, and nothing I saw made me less afraid. I still wake up in the middle of the night thinking about them.

And I am left with all of these questions. Like, how is it that-- staff and volunteers screening hundreds of inmates -- a high-risk exposure activity in a high-risk population -- had substandard PPE? (Despite the universal testing program having been announced by the governor almost a month before the date we were doing this screening?) Was this a fluke, or was this typical of other screening sites and dates that followed? Are N95 respirators still in that short of supply in the state? Do the staff have better equipment when caring for sick, symptomatic inmates? How much risk are we asking these staff to take on in a pandemic?

How could an inmate in the Baltimore jail avoid being exposed in this place-- where new people are presumably being arrested and brought in frequently (it’s a jail, after all), where there’s no social distancing, where most of the other inmates aren’t wearing masks? Why go to the bother to issue them all masks, only to have most of them dangling around their necks?

And what was the point, exactly, of this grand effort to test all these inmates and staff if we aren’t going to continue to test them regularly, which is what the CDC recommends? (Because these are such high-risk settings, the CDC actually recommends weekly testing for all people residing and working in correctional and detention facilities).** Is there an actual plan for that in Maryland? I can’t find any information about this anywhere – I have looked and looked. There were quite a lot of medical volunteers requested for this effort, but the schedule suggested this was a one-off. So… now what? And when are the juveniles who are locked up going to be tested? None of them have been tested yet, as far as I’m aware.

* An N95 respirator (or better) is recommended for healthcare providers collecting specimens for testing, although a facemask can be substituted if an N95 isn’t available (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/lab/guidelines-clinical-specimens.html).

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Take this story too, and share it with your friends. And your friends friends. If we're willing to force our colleges and universities to stay open to meet revenues, institutions that we ostensibly care about....what are we willing to put up with to deal with institutions we don't care about? I imagine some combination of you either see yourself or the institution you work for or manage in this story. I ask that you begin to write these stories down. And share them. You can share them with me—I’ll post them here. You can share them with others. But it is becoming increasingly clear that we’re not even seeing the tip of the iceberg.