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APRIL 22-28, 2020
after the curve has begun to dip down.” The other day I walked into an essential business, and on the way in to purchase an essential 750-ml. bottle of Kraken and an essential 12-pack of Bud Light, I ran into a good buddy of mine. After bumping elbows, we chatted for a bit. I felt a little ridiculous in my homemade facemask as he stood there talking with a visible, wideopen mouth and nose like normal. I also thought maybe he was judging me a little, like maybe I wasn’t manly enough to go buy essentials without caving into the alleged fear-mongering going on (according to that one certain “news” channel). I’m still glad I wore it. I don’t know about you, but I caught the flu a couple of years ago. I wouldn’t wish it on the worst Trump family member. (Note: That would be Donald J.) Coughing nonstop, running a high temperature, and not being able to sleep because I was constantly trying to cough up the phlegm stuck in my throat, I was capital-M Miserable. As I waltzed into that essential business the other day, paid for my delicious essentials, and waltzed back out, I kept thinking of those days when I couldn’t clear my throat and couldn’t sleep. I don’t care how dorky I look or may be, I’m not going anywhere anymore without a facemask now. You shouldn’t either. My social media feed has been full of friends and “friends” claiming they now have no plans on eating at Ruth’s Chris anytime soon, which is kind of like saying you’re giving up launching yourself into the sun every day. I appreciate the sentiment and feel it myself. I only hope the employees are feeling the same way. I only hope that worker bees all over the country are feeling this way, because there needs to be a reckoning for the ineptitude and ignorance that doomed us. What I’m hoping for, basically, is a $100,000 Ruth’s Chris gift card. Solidarity among worker bees is a dream as long as racism not only exists but is fueled by the devils passing themselves off as leaders today. As The Atlantic says, “Poor Americans don’t uniformly support greater government intervention on behalf of workers, and it’s not clear whether the pandemic is going to shift those hardened political fault lines. In the past few decades, many low-income whites have become allied with other whites, not with other poor people.” The closures are coming. Make no mistake about that. Small operations all over the world are going to shut their doors for good. Maybe even us. I’m as desperate as anyone else to reignite the economy yesterday. I’m still not going to risk my life or the health of my family for it. As a formerly low-income white guy and his hard-rock band once sang, “Need a little patience. Yeeeeeeah, yeah.”
FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY
keep practicing social distancing. What we do not need, Greg Abbott, is for businesses to reopen too soon. Last week, the governor announced a strategy to open Texas back up incrementally. Despite closing schools for the 2019-20 year, he said that state parks would reopen, hospitals would be able to perform some non-elective surgeries, and that retailers would be allowed to deliver items or offer them for pickup. If this week goes well, Abbott said, he intends to use Monday, April 27, as the day to announce the reopening of Texas bars, bar/restaurants, and theaters with social distancing in place, which may mean they open at half-capacity and with employees in facemasks. “If I am honest,” recently wrote Megan Henderson, director of events and communications for the urban development nonprofit Near Southside, Inc., “we are not hearing anything about our businesses being able to change anything by Friday. The governor’s new policy really doesn’t favor small business, as most of our small guys have been already conducting business via online sales (if possible for them, as not everyone can showcase their entire inventory online) and simply delivering orders or sending them via mail. Friday does not really signal a change for our community. That’s what our small businesses are reporting.” Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price is not bullish on reopening anytime soon either. In a TV interview recently, she did not acknowledge Abbott’s plan, instead deciding to stick to the national guidelines set forth by the current presidential administration. One of them, a big one, includes a downward trajectory of new cases for 14 days before reopening can even be entertained. “We know that we can meet the hospital responses, but we’re not meeting the 14 days of declining just yet,” Price said. One way to tell if a local politician has done something right is by listening to the chorus of naysayers on the right. Most Texas conservatives were not pleased with Abbott’s executive orders. One right-winger called them “a plan to reopen an economy that should have never been closed to begin with, politicians coming up with solutions for problems they created.” We, however, are glad that Abbott understands that COVID-19 is not the flu and that we have no vaccine for it or builtup immunity to it. Like most people who aren’t brainwashed by one certain “news” channel, he understands. Most Americans don’t want to reopen now anyway. Nearly 60 percent of us are concerned that loosening restrictions too soon will result in a spike in COVID-19 cases and deaths, according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Thirty-two percent are worried the restrictions will stay in place for too long while 3 percent are worried about both scenarios. You can count me among this last group, though “too long,” to me, means “a month
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