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vocalfriespod · 4 years

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Bilingualism is. It just is. Transcript

Megan Figueroa: Hi, and welcome to the Vocal Fries podcast, a podcast about linguistic discrimination.

Carrie Gillon: I’m Carrie Gillon.

Megan Figueroa: I’m Megan Figueroa. How you doing there, Carrie?

Carrie Gillon: Better today. Yesterday was rough. I mean, I’m pretty convinced that I have COVID, even though I have not been tested because I’m not sick enough to get tested. I don’t wanna walk around and infect other people unless I absolutely have to go to the hospital.

Megan Figueroa: Right.

Carrie Gillon: It’s been pretty mild. Then, yesterday, you and I had this awesome conversation with two guests – it’s gonna be in six weeks, probably – and it was an amazing conversation. But then afterwards I had lunch and then I just crashed, and I got much sicker, and I’m like, “Ugh!”

Megan Figueroa: You exert yourself and then there you go and get it.

Carrie Gillon: And exerting myself was just conversation. It’s just – oh, man. It just depressed me.

Megan Figueroa: I know. I have heard that a lot of people, they describe not being able to do any sort of task because it’s just too much. I’m like, “Oof.” I mean, that kind of sounds like the flu but in the way that people are describing it, it sounds like nothing I’ve ever experienced.

Carrie Gillon: For me, whatever this is, it is not the flu because all it did at first was just attack my lungs. I felt like they were on fire. Then, it was just more tight and I had some fatigue but not like flu fatigue. It’s just – I dunno. It’s very different.

Megan Figueroa: Yeah.

Carrie Gillon: Anyway, in better news, we have an email from, let’s see, I think it’s /silʌm/. So, “Hi. Big fan of the podcast. I was actually planning to send a message just last week to ask if you had any plans to do an episode about names, so I was really excited when I saw the title of the newest episode.” By the way, we got this email a while ago, and I meant to read it on the last episode and just plum forgot. That’s why it’s a little bit delayed.

“They’re something I’ve always been interested in and I wanted to share some things about my name(s) in case you found it interesting. I’m Chinese Canadian, Cantonese and Hakka specifically, and like many others, I grew up with a ‘Western name’ that I used in everyday life and Chinese ones that I use with my family. My name is pronounced super differently in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Hakka.” I’m not even gonna try because it involves tones and I really suck at tones. Anyway, there’s three different pronunciations.

“I’d been thinking about ditching the Western name for a while, especially since coming out as agender, since it’s very gendered and my Chinese name is gender neutral. I was hesitant because I didn’t know which Chinese name to use and I wasn’t really used to hearing non-Chinese speakers pronounce any of them. It’s a bit silly but seeing Hasan Minhaj correct everyone’s pronunciation of his name and seeing people reacting” – I think – “positively to that gave me a confidence boost and I’ve been using my Cantonese name full time for most of the last year. People have been pretty good about pronouncing it, although it took me a while to get used to hearing it without the tones.” Exactly! We’re not good at tones most of us who –

Megan Figueroa: Who didn’t grow up with it.

Carrie Gillon: Yeah, especially each tonal language is different too, right, so even if you speak a tonal language, you’re still gonna have to learn a whole new system. However, if you don’t grow up with it at all, it’s just really hard. “I went back and forth on the spelling between S-E-E and S-I for the first syllable and L-A-M and L-U-M for the second, but I think I’ve ultimately settled on S-I-L-U-M, although I’ve only been using this spelling for a couple months so I’ll let you know if I change it.” It’s fun. I love it.

Megan Figueroa: Oh, my gosh. I feel so happy that someone would share that with us. Thank you so much.

Carrie Gillon: There’s a lot more, but I think that’s the gist of it. That’s really great! We need to talk to people who are speakers of any of the Chinese languages. Silum mentions, for example, that people often haven’t heard of Hakka before, which is true. Most people haven’t. I only have because I’m a linguist.

Megan Figueroa: Right. And I haven’t at all and I’m a linguist.

Carrie Gillon: I’m also from an area with a lot more – I don’t know if this person is from Vancouver area, but there’s a lot of people from China in the Vancouver area. You do encounter more things. But they mention a language that I have never heard of before – Teochew? I’m not even sure how to pronounce it. There’s lot of Chinese languages and we’d love to talk with them.

Megan Figueroa: Yes. We wanna talk to everyone.

Carrie Gillon: There’s too many things.

Megan Figueroa: Consider this your invitation if people wanna reach out because there’re so many areas that we have not yet touched at all. Again, another reason why I feel so happy that they would share that with us because, yeah, learned a few things and then I get to hear something very personal about a listener. Awesome. That name episode was fun. It’s good to think back onto to it.

Carrie Gillon: Yes.

Megan Figueroa: Speaking of names –

Carrie Gillon: Ugh! Oh, god.

Megan Figueroa: I know. I mean, I hate to say it out loud to give it any sort of –

Carrie Gillon: I know, but you have to say it out loud to address it, sadly.

Megan Figueroa: So, “Chinese Virus” – [sighs] words matter.

Carrie Gillon: My favorite thing is that he’s like, “Well, we call it ‘Lyme Disease’” – how many people know that Lyme is a place?

Megan Figueroa: Yeah, I didn’t know that. Although, I knew “Lyme” wasn’t spelled like limes that you eat, but I’ve never really looked into why it’s L-Y-M-E.

Carrie Gillon: I’m certain about a decade ago I found out that there was a town called “Lyme,” and then I promptly forgot because that’s how little that matters. “Ebola” also is named after a location. But, note, it’s not an entire country in either of these cases. It’s not “US Disease.” It’s not – I dunno which part of Africa; I don’t remember – “Sierra Leone Disease” or something. It’s not an entire country, it’s just one location, which is maybe still problematic. I don’t know. But we don’t have the same racial associations at least. So, no, Trump, you’re wrong.

Megan Figueroa: And any person that wasn’t just a raging racist would see what was happening. There are literal hate crimes – physical hate crimes, verbal – all of these hate crimes that are being committed against people that others perceive to be Chinese. I’m sure they’re not even very discriminatory on this at all.

Carrie Gillon: No. Basically any East Asian or someone of East Asian descent. That’s all. They don’t know what a Chinese person looks like versus a Japanese person versus Korean.

Megan Figueroa: Any person that actually cared would step it back, but we all know he doesn’t.

Carrie Gillon: He has stopped – shockingly, he did stop call –

Megan Figueroa: Did he?

Carrie Gillon: Yes. He has stopped calling it the “Chinese Virus.” I don’t know why. I think maybe – he said something like, “Oh, it’s not okay to hurt Asian people” or something like that. Ever since then, he hasn’t used it. I’m pretty sure – unless he’s reintroduced it. But he definitely stopped.

Megan Figueroa: Well, who knows why, but the damage has been done because all of his little minions – supporters – are calling it the “Chinese Virus.” That’s not okay. I don’t know why anyone would feel like that’s okay.

Carrie Gillon: Because they’re racist. I mean, it’s not even a question!

Megan Figueroa: I know.

Carrie Gillon: I mean, as bad as that is, there’s actually something that’s even worse, in my opinion. Some people are calling it the “Kung Flu.”

Megan Figueroa: Oh, god.

Carrie Gillon: Yeah. It’s so gross, it makes my skin crawl.

Megan Figueroa: I haven’t heard that.

Carrie Gillon: Well, I haven’t actually heard it. I’ve only read it. But it’s definitely on Twitter, although less so recently. Around the time Trump was saying “Chinese Virus” all the time that was coming up a lot.

Megan Figueroa: Oh, my god.

Carrie Gillon: People are gross.

Megan Figueroa: People are gross. Words matter. That’s racist.

Carrie Gillon: We already have a name for it – COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2, which is such a mouthful. “COVID” is better, in my opinion. Don’t, obviously – who among our listeners are gonna be calling it the “Chinese Virus”? Nobody. I don’t know what we’re –

Megan Figueroa: We’re just rage venting. Make sure to call people out if you do see it. It’s fucking racist. It’s gross. It implies that somehow some people are more susceptible or – there’s so many implications in calling it the “Chinese Virus” that are so –

Carrie Gillon: Blaming. It’s basically blaming all of Chinese people for a virus that comes from bats. Nobody got it on purpose. No one spread it on purpose. It’s just a thing that happens because we live in proximity to animals and sometimes animal viruses jump to humans. Sometimes, they mutate and then go human to human. It’s nobody’s fault.

Megan Figueroa: It’s definitely a blaming thing.

Carrie Gillon: Anyway, please – [Laughter]

Megan Figueroa: Let’s take a break from COVID-19 for a minute. Got a very special episode today. I talk with Drs. Jonathan Rosa and Nelson Flores. It was an amazing chat.

Carrie Gillon: It was pretty fun. And I wasn’t in this conversation because you guys were gonna talk about Latinx, and then you didn’t talk about it!

Megan Figueroa: I know.

Carrie Gillon: I could’ve been part of this conversation.

Megan Figueroa: I know. I’m so sorry! [Laughter] I thought we were gonna get – yeah. But, yes, you would’ve enjoyed being there, I’m sure. So, I’m sorry about that.

Carrie Gillon: It’s all right. It was very long, so I ended up cutting out a significant portion, which we are going to put in our bonus episode this month.

Megan Figueroa: Yes!

Carrie Gillon: If you wanna get access to that, and you don’t already have access, then you can join us at patreon.com/vocalfriespod at the $5.00 level.

Megan Figueroa: We forgot to say it at the end, so don’t be an asshole.

Carrie Gillon: Oh, yeah! That is true. Definitely. Definitely do not be an asshole.

[Music]

Megan Figueroa: We have Dr. Nelson Flores, who is an associate professor of educational linguistics, and we got a title change over here. We have Dr. Jonathan Rosa, who is now an associate professor because you were an assistant last time we chatted. That’s exciting.

Jonathan Rosa: Yes. I was recently promoted. I mean, now, technically, as to whether the promotion takes place in a couple of months – you know but maybe by the time the episode airs. But, yeah, it’s more or less a for sure –

Megan Figueroa: Okay. Nelson’s at Penn and Jonathan is over at Stanford. But you’re on sabbatical in Chicago right now, right?

Jonathan Rosa: I was in Chicago. Now, I am traveling for conferences and other things, so I’m actually here in the multilingual bastion of Miami – the fraught, let’s say, multilingual space of Miami.

Megan Figueroa: The theme of this almost could be misconceptions because both ya’ll are talking, that means there’s two of you. I think a lot of people didn’t know there were two of you. I feel like a lot of people think that either you’re one person, which is what I’ve seen on the internet, confusing ya’ll. And you said “married” or also “related” you’ve gotten too?

Nelson Flores: Yeah. I don’t think people know what to make of us. I think part of it is that we both have flower last names, and so people get the “Flores” and the “Rosa” confused. I’ve gotten “Nelson Rosa.” I know that Jonathan has gotten “Jonathan Flores.” I don’t think people know what to make of us sometimes because, of course, we’ve very close. We clearly have a lot of love for each other. But we’re also queer, and so I think people are kind of like, “There must be some type of marriage or something.” Just to clarify, we’re not married.

Megan Figueroa: Could it just be a marriage of ideas and love?

Nelson Flores: I mean, we’re academically married, I suppose, but not married in the heteronormative ways that people oftentimes mean it.

Jonathan Rosa: Let me say one thing about Nelson’s and my presumed inter-changeability, or perhaps a couple of things about it. In one sense, I think this is a very common phenomenon that happens with marginalized populations where people who are marked in particular ways based on race, gender, and sexuality, especially, there’s this sense that you’re all the same and you all could be a spokesperson for whatever set of ideas.

I guess, if I’m being generous, then I would say, “Oh, well, maybe because there are so few of us or because we’ve been positioned as the spokespeople for particular kinds of stances or ideas that we get equated with one another.” My much less generous take on this is that it demonstrates the ways that we get recruited to enact or inhabit these tokenized positions where, essentially, the kinds of contributions that we could make are already predetermined and the question is which of us is needed to make that contribution on which day at which time – this sort of thing.

I think it’s a very troublesome situation. It happens with a whole range of colleagues where we get equated with one another and the sense is just that we could all be one another – any distinctive contributions we might make. That has concrete kinds of consequences in one’s professional life but also in terms of broader political struggles. Professionally, when so much of what we’re up to – or the assessment of what we’re up to – is based on whether you’ve made a unique contribution and you’re equated with someone else constantly, then that can be tricky.

But on a much – I don’t wanna frame academics as the most marginalized or something like that or I don’t wanna say that the goal, then, is to secure the individuality of our contributions. It’s more politically that I’m interested in the ways that our contributions to the world or the kinds of struggles in which we could engage are really narrowly defined and constrained and that this equation of us or interchangeability is a reflection of that.

Megan Figueroa: I’m not even in ya’ll’s field and – because I’ve kind of gotten a little bit of a platform now speaking about these things, but I’m speaking about them personally, so I don’t study it in the way that you do – that I’m often included now when people @ you on Twitter. They’ll put me now, too. I love to talk about these things when it’s right for it, and if I’m emotionally available for it, but I noticed that ya’ll might not always be emotionally available for that and you get dragged into it a lot – “dragged.” I say “dragged.” But a lot of times it might feel like that, right?

Nelson Flores: I mean, I think Twitter in particular is an interesting platform. I mean, clearly, I love Twitter. I mean, it’s connected me to people like you, Megan, who I didn’t know before I was on Twitter. It’s connected me to a lot of interesting people, and I’ve learned a lot off of Twitter. At the same time, I think sometimes people take Twitter way more serious than maybe it’s intended to be. There’s this – like, I just write a tweet that’s kind of like an off the cuff tweet, and then people are like, “Send me 10 references to what you just said so that I can read up on it.”

And it’s like, “Well, you know, I’m not in class right now. I’m just writing some tweets.” If you wanna learn more about it, you can certainly google and do some of that work for yourself, but I don’t know if – almost coming from a sense of entitlement in terms of like, “You need to teach me this because your tweet made me uncomfortable. So, you need to further clarify what you mean so that maybe I can feel a little less uncomfortable with what you just said.”

I don’t think that that’s always coming from a bad place. I think people sometimes feel uncomfortable and they wanna know more. I just don’t know if Twitter is actually the best venue for doing that. Maybe they need to do some of the work for themselves rather than expecting people on Twitter to do extra labor and getting them to really understand things that maybe they really need to do the work for on their own.

Megan Figueroa: How does that play out for you in your job as a professor or as an academic that travels to conferences? Are you asked to do a lot of that emotional labor for people when it comes to Latinx issues?

Jonathan Rosa: Well, it’s interesting. I mean, I think that it requires us to do a lot of careful, strategic engagement where you say – yeah, there are invitations that ask you to represent a certain perspective or recruit you to represent a certain perspective. There’re also efforts to invite you to participate in mentoring activities that are based on a presumed shared experience. There’re some of these efforts that feel really substantive and meaningful where you say, “Okay, wait. There’s something that I have to say here that I think contributes to this dialogue or contributes to this bigger project.”

There’re other moments when you say, “Oh, they just want someone else to read the script. They just need another person to read the same script. Am I just gonna be that person today?” I’ll never forget when one of my mentors, Melissa Harris-Perry, who used to have her show on MSNBC, when she was leaving MSNBC based on some fraught relationships there, I’ll never forget when she was very public about saying that she was not going to be anyone’s little brown bobblehead. She was not going to be this ornamental piece and really an object.

I think that that’s the part that’s deeply concerning in some situations where you become an object, and you don’t have anything to say. The on-demand part of it is also tricky because I think we want to make meaningful contributions and we want to engage with publics, but there’s an accessibility issue that could be complex to navigate as well where you’re on the clock or on call or you’re expected to be the go-to person on such and such issue.

I found that has happened to me in certain situations as well where the expectation is that anything related to any language and identity issue I should just speak to casually. I worry. In some situations, some of my ideas about these topics – and this is why I appreciate Nelson’s comments about Twitter. Sometimes, I just wanna be irreverent. Sometimes, I just wanna make a joke about language.

I mean, I said it after the Joe Biden landslide victory on Super Tuesday that one of the things that’s most interesting to me about his success there is it demonstrates how irrelevant language is in some situations because, from many people’s perspectives, he’s been more or less incoherent in a range of situations. Yet, his incoherence has not prevented his political ascendance.

In some cases, I just wanna be flippant about language. And other moments, I’ve done a tremendous amount of research, and I wanna be careful, and I wanna weigh in on a debate in a nuanced way. But I think that the on-call part of things invites people to offer their opinion constantly as though they had carefully developed a serious perspective. In many situations, people haven’t developed that kind of a careful perspective and yet are asked to be the expert on something.

Megan Figueroa: Do you feel like there’s different work going into it when you’re being flippant? Because I feel like, sometimes, I’ll say something on Twitter or even around colleagues and I feel like it takes less emotional toll on me than if I really wanted to get into something. That’s why I feel like I really appreciate Twitter because, when I put something out there, I feel like I’m not actually having to do as much emotional work. I feel like I can get something quick out of there and then maybe someone will learn something.

But it always becomes more emotional. I had a tweet the other day that said – so this gets into the idea of semilingualism, which I wanna talk to ya’ll about. I said that that’s not a thing. You can’t have kids that end up in school and have low skill in both languages. That’s the idea of semilingualism. I wanna get into it with you. And someone retweeted me and was like, “I’d like to know what my language acquisition colleagues think.” And I’m like, “I’m a fucking language acquisition expert.”

I really sometimes wonder, “Oh, are they seeing my last name and all of a sudden I’m not taken as seriously because I’m too emotional about this?” I really, honestly, feel that sometimes. Do you have that happen as well?

Nelson Flores: I have been accused of being a bully.

Megan Figueroa: Which is so funny to me. You’re so kind. But, yes. [Laughs]

Nelson Flores: I think a lot of that stems from precisely my resistance to feel like I need to do the emotional labor of making people feel comfortable about what I’m saying. In particular, as a Latino scholar doing work in bilingual education, I’m particularly resistant to the idea that I need to make white people feel comfortable doing work in bilingual education. I put my work out there. I let it speak for itself. I certainly have never targeted anyone individually and personally insulted them, which is what bullying actually is, right? “Bullying” actually has an actual meaning.

As a gay person, I’ve experienced it personally as a gay person. I know what bullying is and I know that what I’m doing, which is working to dismantle white supremacy in how we think about issues in bilingualism, is not bullying anybody. I do think that there are these strong emotional reactions that people have to my work in both ways. I’ve also had people tell me that it’s given them a vocabulary for making sense of things that they kind of always knew didn’t make any sense and had visceral reactions against but really didn’t have a vocabulary for thinking about.

I mean, in the end, I think what it boils down to is that all researchers have emotional investment in the work that we do. It’s that people who are coming from marginalized positions, oftentimes, that emotional investment is marked in ways that it’s not marked for white researchers, but they also have an emotional investment, oftentimes, in whiteness and the objectivity that oftentimes ascribed to whiteness.

When that’s called into question, and the ways that Jonathan and I have called into question in our work, that oftentimes leads to strong visceral reactions. Oftentimes, people feel personally attacked when it’s really not a personal attack at all.

Megan Figueroa: Let’s ignore my sloppy definition. Will you tell me, Nelson, what semilingualism is?

Nelson Flores: Well, we can trace the discourses of semilingualism back to the origins of European colonialism. That’s something that Jonathan and I wrote about in our 2017 piece, which is essentially one of the primary mechanisms for dehumanizing indigenous populations, African populations, by calling into question their language practices and suggesting that their language practices were somehow illegitimate or subhuman.

Now, the concept of semilingualism itself emerges within the context of the Bilingual Education Act in the United States. It actually emerged originally in Scandinavia, but I’ll focus on the work in the United States. The term itself emerges in Scandinavia. Within the context of the Bilingual Education Act, which was passed in 1968, they were accountability metrics that had to be used to show that these programs were being successful. One of the things that they had to do was assess students to see if they were Spanish dominant or not because if they were not Spanish dominant, then they wouldn’t be eligible for most of these programs.

Some of these students were assessed and their assessment suggested that they were not proficient in either English or Spanish. The discourse that was developed by scholars at the time to make sense of that was to say that they were semilingual, that they didn’t have full competency in any language. That was quickly critiqued by other scholars who said you really can’t describe people that way. That’s not really a thing.

Then, the discourse shifted to the discussion of basic interpersonal communication skills, or social language, and cognitive academic language proficiency, or academic language. The discourse shifted towards they have BICS, or social language, but they don’t have CALP, or academic language. You can trace directly that discourse. I’m not making a leap there. Scholars who originally used the term “semilingualism” shifted towards a discussion of social and academic language.

Whenever we talk about social and academic language today, that’s really the legacy that we’ve inherited – a legacy of semilingualism, of suggesting that there’s something illegitimate about the language practices of racialized bilingual students.

Megan Figueroa: I just had a friend tell me that the latest TESOL conference, a major theme was semilingualism.

Nelson Flores: As a good thing or as a bad thing?

Megan Figueroa: I asked him. I said, “Were they debunking it?” although – even though we still have to debunk it in 2020. But he said, “No. I don’t think so.” He said that his friend was not happy.

Jonathan Rosa: Semilingualism. I think actually my experience with this conversation ties together the previous dialogue that we were just having about the ways that we’re positioned as ideological or overly emotionally invested in certain topics which then is presumed to distort our opinions on these topics. I was writing an article a few years ago that Nelson and I have been in conversation with about ideas related to semilingualism. I was writing about what I called, “ideologies of languagelessness,” that just framed certain populations as deficient in any language that they use. It’s not just certain populations. It’s racialized populations.

I think, for example, Nelson invoked the ways that the discourse of semilingualism emerged in Scandinavia. Part of what’s distinctive about how it gets enacted in the European context versus in the Americas and elsewhere is that it’s framed in the Americas as a highly racialized concept that maps onto a population across generations and is presumed to be somehow inherent to particular populations in ways that really articulate alongside race or in concert in with race.

This notion, for me, of an ideology of languagelessness is reflected in the ways that semilingualism is taken up in the United States, reflected in the ways that particular populations are framed as “non-nons” in the United States, or non-verbal in English and their so-called native language. “Linguistic isolation” is a category that was used by the census for about 30 years to designate certain households as lacking language altogether.

Megan Figueroa: That happens to real populations, too. That’s really offense. There’re deaf children that are actually experiencing language isolation, and yet this is where they’re using that.

Jonathan Rosa: It’s problematic in every direction. There’re people who are really being denied access to language learning and meaningful cultural opportunities that are mislabeled because of these sorts of stereotypes about isolation but also isolation in terms of the ways that it articulates in relation to policy. It’s messed up because it’s intended to serve as a tool for ensuring compliance with the voting rights act – to make sure that you have resources in languages other than English. You need to designate the number of households within a community that require those resources.

In order to access those resources in languages other than English, you have to be designated as “isolated” rather than designated as “using languages in addition to English.” I’ve found that these sorts of stereotypes map across a whole range of institutional contexts. In everyday discourse you hear people say, “So-and-So doesn’t speak English well. They don’t speak Spanish well.” In a school where I was working, the principal, who had a doctorate in education and was a Puerto Rican woman, one teacher said, “She speaks English like one of our ninth graders. From what I understand, her Spanish isn’t that good either.”

When I was writing about this, I said, “These are these ideologies of languagelessness that map onto people regardless of their credentials, regardless of what might seem to be their empirical linguistic practices.” The initial response to that article, when I tried to publish it, from reviewers was that I was ideological, that I was imposing an analysis onto these situations and imposing this idea, this attribution of deficiency that wasn’t really there. But for me, I was observing connections across all of these spaces.

I think that for scholars who are attentive to particular patterns of marginalization – that we’re drawing connections that aren’t observable from other perspectives and so we look like conspiracy theorists, or we look as though we’re over-generalizing, or over-applying, or over-reaching in our analyses when, in fact, I think part of what is so troublesome about normative social-scientific and scientific research more generally is that the kind of empiricism that it embraces recruits you to accept the world as it is and to naturalize that world and then to observe things in such a way that allows us to reproduce that world at the same time that we proport to just be noticing things that are happening within it.

For me, drawing connections across these patterns is essential to my critique of the way that this world has come to be structured. I’ve found that a lot of reviewers are unwilling or not inclined to engage in that kind of a critique.

Megan Figueroa: I had a moment of realization here too that that’s happening to me because I spent a lot of time in psychology because I did study psycholinguistics and do language development. It is fraught with really disgusting views of communities that they’ve marginalized. These are marginalized speakers and they’re always looking for disorder in some way.

I have a background, too, in speech and hearing so there are legitimate concerns to be had about children that do have language disorders, right, but that’s not what’s happening here. These are neurotypical hearing children that people are looking for a disorder at every turn and they’re finding it because it’s easy to find it when you’re looking – you’ll find evidence for anything that you’re looking for.

Every time I say something about this, I do feel like some people think I’m a conspiracy theorist and they’re saying – like, when I say, “Talk to your children however you want and however you feel comfortable with,” people think that that’s – they’re like, “We have all this evidence that suggest that some input is just not as good.” They really want that to live on.

Nelson Flores: Well, I think that connects back to the emotional investment in whiteness’s objectivity. I think that that really throws people off when we refuse to allow whiteness to be framed as objective. If your position is that these ways are better input because they’re more normative and they’re more aligned with whiteness, then say that. I would be okay with you. We would disagree, but at least you’re being honest with what your perspective is, what your ideological position is.

I always say – I own my ideological position. I own where I’m coming from, and I own my locus of annunciation. I just push other scholars to do the same thing. If you’re using discourses that come from the specter of semilingualism, then just own that ideological position and say what you’re essentially saying is that everyone should speak like a normative white person. That’s not progressive and that’s not liberal, so don’t pretend that you’re progressive or liberal if you’re actually promoting an agenda that supports white supremacy. At least don’t be disingenuous and try to proport that what you’re saying is some type of objective representation rather than an ideological one.

Megan Figueroa: Right. Exactly what they’re saying when they say, “No, there is a right way to speak to children,” is there is a white way to speak to children because that’s what we know of all of these studies on language development. I mean, I don’t know the exact number, but it’s in the 90% of – it’s been done on white, middle-class, suburban babies. Yeah. That’s one way of talking to children, but it’s not the only way. We are continually investing in speaking like white, middle-class parents when we say that these studies are basically how it should be for everyone. People don’t really like to hear that. You’re right. I’m realizing this now.

Sometimes, I still feel very naïve because I’m like, “Oh, well, they’ll just hear it once and then that’ll be enough,” like people will stop and reflect. That’s not what’s happening. I’m always a little bit surprised because I’m hoping that it just takes one moment of reflection and then you can start dismantling. We’re really invested in these things, in these ideas.

Nelson Flores: The challenge is that we continue to frame things as empirical questions that are really ideological questions. You can keep trying to disprove an ideology, but if it’s an ideology, it’s kind of, by definition, something that you can’t really disprove because people have really deeply ingrained investment in those beliefs. At this point, we’re not really having an empirical question.

I think, empirically, we have the data that shows that all communities have complex, rich language practices that they engage in, but people don’t believe it because they don’t wanna believe it because they have deep investment in these ideas that certain communities have more rich language practices than other communities. At that point, you can’t disprove white supremacy. If people are invested in white supremacy, then they’re gonna be invested in white supremacy. That’s the challenge that I think we’re trying to highlight in our work is what do we do in that context. How do we intervene in that context?

Jonathan Rosa: Part of, I think, what’s particularly challenging about this ideology is the way that it is associated with a liberal benevolence where the people who are perpetuating it are deeply invested in staking a claim to helping. They see themselves as really participating in projects that are progressive or even projects that are aimed toward social justice, this kind of thing. They really want to understand themselves as addressing the marginalized.

I think when Nelson was talking about having been called a bully in the past or this kind of thing, I think part of why some people are so off put is that even the remote suggestion that linguists – sociolinguists, linguistic anthropologists, applied linguists, psycholinguists – that we have, in fact, contributed to the problem. Many scholars want to understand themselves as the people who are solving problems, but I think one of the things Nelson and I – that brings us together in our work is our deep suspicion that many of the scholarly labels and categories and approaches have in fact emerged from the very systems of power that we’re trying to critique here.

I think we have a long way to go in terms of trying to unsettle some of these assumptions. I encounter this constantly, the sense – Ana Celia Zentella always says – a mentor of mine – always says, “The helping hand strikes again.” In so many of these situations, when we’re talking about bilingualism and multilingualism and standard language and academic language, just educational language learning, it’s the helping hand strikes again. It’s we wanna help the kids. We wanna help their families use more quality language with them. We wanna help them to become proficient users of such and such language.

I think when we keep pushing – and we always push – “What’s your theory of change? What is it that changes?” These families use language in this way, so this school institutionalizes language in this way to change these behaviors. Then, what happens? Then, people have access to a different world? Then, the structure of the economy transforms? Then, stable housing and living wages and political representation – then that emerges from language use? Or are we facing a fundamentally different kind of challenge? Should our critique, should our efforts towards promoting language learning and our engagement with language, be oriented towards those bigger challenges? Or should they be narrowly focused on changing people’s language practices in their homes, in classrooms – really changing the behaviors of the marginalized?

I think this so much of what Nelson and I have been trying to call into question – just fundamentally rethinking the project of educational language learning.

Megan Figueroa: We’re in the epicenter of funding for things like Closing the Word Gap. I’m like, if we spent that money towards universal housing or some sort of universal basic income, it would go way further than spending money on fucking trying to close the so-called word gap. But that’s where people wanna spend the money. That’s where funding agencies are funneling the money because, you’re right, they feel like they’re the helping hand that’s gonna fix the marginalized.

Another buzzword term that I wanted to bring up – “bilingual brain.” Jonathan, what is a bilingual brain?

Jonathan Rosa: It’s interesting. I was mentioning to both of you that I sometimes make flippant comments about these sorts of catchphrases. This notion of the bilingual brain, like the language gap or word gap, I’ve often had a knee-jerk reaction to it where I felt as though it were locating language within a cognitive system rather than within a historical and cultural system. To be clear, I’m really interested in the cognitive dimensions of language, but that’s not the primary focus of my research. It’s something that I’ve certainly studied and something that I respect research in this area.

However, sometimes, when I talk about it, I’m more concerned with the slogans, with the ways that it’s turned into this commodified project. As soon as it becomes a slogan, then very quickly we see which populations will benefit from that kind of a project of turning something into a commodity that you could achieve somehow. If this is a justice project, if part of what we’re up to is trying to address marginalization, then these notions of a bilingual brain, I don’t know how far that will get us.

Now, I was saying to you all that a colleague recently was pushing me on this to say, look, there’re different ways that that kind of notion has been developed within, say, psycholinguistics or within psychology of language versus, say, within neurolinguistics – neurolinguists who understand themselves to be more attuned to some of these cultural and historical issues and are not trying to promote the narrow view of what bilingualism is.

I will say I continue to be concerned, regardless of the meaningful work that people might be doing in these areas. I continue to be concerned abut the ways that “bilingualism” is defined and the ways that languages are separated from one another in order to reproduce this notion of bilingualism. I wonder what languages even count as legitimate in this research. When you’re staking claims to a bilingual brain, which languages are involved? Are they languages like Chatino that my close colleague Emiliana Cruz studies in Oaxaca in Guatemala? Which languages are we staking these claims to cognitive advancement based on?

That’s one piece of – yeah, just this notion of who is a legitimate bilingual such that we could study their brain. It frankly reminds me in my most – perhaps not my most critical take on it – but it reminds me of some of these genetic ancestry tests which proport to find race in your genes but, in fact, have to presume that race already lives in your genes in order to then find it there. If you understand race to be something historically constructed, then it doesn’t live in your genes.

Similarly, you have to presume that bilingualism lives primarily in the brain in order to then measure it – measure what it’s doing there. I think bilingualism lives between people not within people. My neurolinguistics colleagues were saying – the colleague who was pushing me on this – was sort of saying, “No, I understand brains to be across people not just within an individual” and that from the perspective of psychology, often, it's on that individual basis. So, I think that there are interesting debates to have. I continue to be concerned about the slogan though.

Nelson Flores: Of course, I agree with everything Jonathan is saying. This whole idea of a bilingual brain is still, from my opinion, coming from a monolingual perspective in the sense that most of the world is bi- or multilingual. Why are we exceptionalizing the, quote, “bilingual” brain instead of the quote, “monolingual” brain to begin with? Why aren’t we saying, “What are the unique cognitive traits of monolingual people who are the minority of the population?”

Maybe a bilingual brain is just a brain and it’s the monolingual brain that’s actually this weird thing that we need to study. Of course, I don’t actually believe that, but I feel like some of the discourse exceptionalizing bilingualism, when we reverse it and really think about, well, if we describe monolingualism in that way, that would be really strange. Yet, “bilingual” describes more of the world’s population than “monolingual.” What exactly are we doing there?

Of course, connecting to something Jonathan was saying before, the bilingual brain discourse, I would trace its origins to the classic Peal & Lambert study that found cognitive advantages to bilingualism. In that study, they threw out more than half of the sample because they weren’t appropriately monolingual or bilingual. From there on, we already inherited this idea of bilingualism that’s coming from a very normative idea of what bilingualism even is to begin with.

Then, I would add to that whenever we ask the question about whether bilingualism has cognitive advantages, it always opens up the question of whether there are disadvantages. It’s a slippery slope. If we’re willing to ask the question if there are advantages, then it opens up the question of whether there are disadvantages. I think that we shouldn’t do that. We should just say, “bilingualism is,” it just is. Most of the world is bilingual, multilingual, it’s just what human societies are. There are no advantages or disadvantages. It just is. We start from that perspective, and I think that would allow us to ask different questions about cognitive processes of language learning and whatnot.

Megan Figueroa: This is where we got ourselves into trouble because all of a sudden Pete, in all of these polls, people are saying that they think he’s the smartest and I really believe it’s tied to his so-called multilingualism. Then, you’re right that it’s so ideological because Spanish in Pete’s brain is beautiful and amazing, but in my father is somehow a deficit and they beat it out of him when he started school.

It was really frustrating to see that play out on the national stage. I’m like, “That’s what we’re doing” – a lot of academics are doing. We’re perpetuating this by asking these bilingual brain questions or what are the cognitive advantages. It always just seems to steer toward, okay, there’re cognitive advantages for people like Pete but, all of a sudden, it’s a disorder or deficit when it’s someone like my dad.

Nelson Flores: This is why, whenever people ask me to speak on my analysis of multilingualism and politicians, the first question that they wanna ask me is how good their Spanish is. I always say, “That’s actually not the question I’m interested in” because how good someone’s Spanish is is connected to the social status of that person. Whenever we begin to sort people into good Spanish speakers versus bad Spanish speakers, it’s always the most marginalized that are going to be most victimized and receive remediation for it.

I actually never – even though people insist that I do this all the time – I 1.) never evaluate the Spanish of white politicians and 2.) never say that they should never speak Spanish because 1.) I don’t have the power to tell them that they can’t. They can do whatever they want. They’re white. That’s kind of the definition of whiteness in the US. But I don’t think that that type of language policing is productive anyway. I’m more interested in how bilingualism is talked about differently depending on the race and social status position of people. That’s my primary focus in analyzing these things.

Yeah, Mayor Pete, people are like, “Wow! He speaks like a gazillion languages. Isn’t he so smart?” And I’m like, “Well, actually, you could go to many places in the world where people speak those gazillion languages, right, and they’re not positioned as smart in the same way.”

Jonathan Rosa: Part of what’s so striking to me about some of these popular discussions of language – whether we’re talking about Mayor Pete or if you’re talking about Donald Trump – if you’re talking about someone whose speech is seen as more sophisticated or more cognitively advanced and multilingual or you’re talking about someone whose language use from a liberal perspective is often derided as somehow non-grammatical or unintelligent, this kind of thing, that in each of those cases it seems to me again, as Nelson was saying – the discussions of language seem to miss the point in many situations. It’s less about language and more about a whole range of other issues that we’re not paying attention to.

These discussions about a particular politician – non-Latinx politician’s – use of Spanish in the United States often have nothing to do with what they’re actually saying in Spanish or communicating in Spanish. It’s more about the idea of Spanish that positions them somehow as a particular kind of person. As Nelson was saying, we get roped into playing the game when we start assessing how good their Spanish is and suggesting that, no, they should improve their Spanish. That’s not the point. The point is to ask why it is that, based on their position, this ends up being advantageous for them or seems to become framed as a benefit.

Similarly, with Donald Trump, I think a lot of the discussions about his language use miss the point fundamentally when people are saying, “Ugh! We need a more respectable, intelligent person in office.” Well, you’re totally missing the point. Donald Trump is a television show host and a celebrity and he’s very effective at those roles. His performance of being a buffoon in some situations or being a clown in some situations is very politically strategic just like George W. Bush was very politically strategic in his dissimulation in certain ways. He comes from –

Megan Figueroa: In his folksiness, right?

Jonathan Rosa: In his folksiness. He comes from an incredibly wealthy family with access to a range of educational opportunities and then plays off of this persona – an imagined folksy persona. I think we miss the point sometimes when we critique or celebrate language use. We’re not paying attention to the performance that’s happening. We should be thinking about what makes those performances possible, what makes them valuable, and what makes them strategically useful. Perhaps, we should be attacking that system rather than just focusing narrowly on language use.

Nelson Flores: I think that’s something that you were talking about. The idea of Spanish in liberal politicians is an interesting one because, oftentimes, I think Pete did this, and Joe Kennedy and Tim Kaine, where they use Spanish to directly speak to Dreamers, which is interesting because of course the whole narrative around Dreamers is that they grew up in this country and so their English is just fine. Of course, not all dreamers are Latinx and wouldn’t be expected to be Spanish-speaking anyway.

They’re not actually directly addressing Dreamers there. They’re directly addressing white liberals who feel good about themselves because a politician is bilingual. It’s not actually serving what would seem to be the explicit – what they’re saying explicitly is not actually what they’re communicating because they actually don’t need to communicate in Spanish with Dreamers. It actually doesn’t make sense because a lot of Dreamers wouldn’t understand what they were saying anyway. It’s just to show – look at me! I speak Spanish.

That’s where I say, “Well, you don’t get a cookie.” People took my “You don’t get a cookie” as to be like “White people shouldn’t speak Spanish.” It’s like, well, no. If they’re speaking to the Spanish language media and are trying to actually engage a Spanish-speaking audience, that’s great! But to randomly do it in a speech of people who are not Spanish-speaking, to an audience that you’re imaging is an audience of Spanish speakers who most of them probably – or many of them – are probably not Spanish speakers, then that’s disingenuous. That’s more you want the props for being bilingual rather than you’re using your bilingualism to actually communicate with a marginalized community who may actually benefit from knowing more about your policy positions.

Megan Figueroa: Well, I really appreciate both of you being here. I mean, I know it’s hard for you to see each other, I’m sure. I heard that you’ve never skyped together.

Nelson Flores: Yeah! We never skyped together. We text a lot, and I said – on occasion, we’ll talk on the phone if we set it up in advance. We put it on our calendars. But we do audio. I said we’re old millennials. We don’t do the FaceTime stuff. Oh, last thing. Something else that people confuse us. People think I’m an anthropologist because Jonathan is an anthropologist. Just to clear the record, I am not an anthropologist and I don’t really have any particular investment in contributing to the field of anthropology, though I find some of the frameworks helpful.

Megan Figueroa: Okay. Yes. [Laughter]

Nelson Flores: I mean, I get interpolated as an anthropologist a lot now. That’s only because of the collaboration with Jonathan.

Megan Figueroa: Or the fact that they just think you are Jonathan.

Nelson Flores: Right. I think that that’s – I mean, I’m not hating on anthropology. It’s just not my training, it’s not my discipline, and I don’t have any particular vested interest in that disciplinary perspective and its contributions.

Jonathan Rosa: We see you, Nelson. Welcome. [Laughter]

Nelson Flores: I haven’t gone to the dark side of linguistic anthropology.

Jonathan Rosa: We see you Nelson!

Megan Figueroa: Next time we chat in a year from now, you’re gonna be like –

Nelson Flores: I’m gonna be like Boas. Yes, Boas is my godfather.

Megan Figueroa: [Laughter] Well, thank you, again.

[Music]

Carrie Gillon: The Vocal Fries podcast is produced by me, Carrie Gillon, for Halftone Audio, theme music by Nick Granum. You can find us on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @vocalfriespod. You can email us at [email protected] and our website is vocalfriespod.com.

#linguistics #linguistic discrimination #sociolinguistics #educational linguistics #Spanglish #transcript #anthropological linguistics

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anonsally · 4 years

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Days 79-82 of COVID-19 shelter-in-place

These have been four very intense days both globally and personally. This admittedly long post will focus more (but not exclusively) on the personal side of that.

Day 79 was Wednesday. I hadn’t had enough sleep, but I got up at a reasonable hour because I needed a ballet class. Before class started, I got a call from the medical center for scheduling a procedure I need to have done. That will be in 2 weeks, contingent on me testing negative for COVID-19 four days beforehand. I’m anxious about the procedure but will be glad to get it over with after several months of worry. Anyway, ballet class was good for calming me down.

It was hot out. I did my parents’ grocery shopping (and bought a few things for us) and then had a nice conversation with my dad when I dropped off his groceries. We talked about the state of the world. He told me about a city that had literally fired its entire police department and started over... which is what we probably need on a national level, with very few exceptions.

I refueled the car on the way home and got a predictably late start on my work day. Wife got two more job interviews scheduled at very different companies. I took a walk, spotting another Steller’s jay at the bird feeders. The jays are so much larger than the little birds who frequent the feeders!

I then went to try to buy milk, but the tiny independent market had closed early to enable the employees to get home before curfew. So I had to go to Trader Joe’s instead. By the time I got home I was somewhat demotivated about food prep, but luckily Wife pulled herself together and scrambled me an egg. I didn’t manage to get to bed till 1am, which was at least an hour later than I’d intended, but Wife was still up at 4am!

Day 80. I forced myself to get up at 8:30 since I knew I would need to go to bed early that night. I arranged to (video-)meet with my boss at 12:30. I started work around 11am or so and got a few thing done. The meeting with my boss was good--partly social, discussing how we were coping with the situation and working from home, what we missed about the office, and such, but we also talked about what I’ve been working on. She reminded me that the study section reviewing my grant application will be meeting this month, so I will have to remember to check my scores.

Afterwards we had a meeting with a few other coworkers, which was fairly productive. I had a short “coffee break” video call with a colleague, too. The county-wide curfew was lifted a day early.

After work, I took a walk in a direction I hadn’t gone in a while. Was heartened to see Black Lives Matter signs even in cul-de-sacs in a wealthy, mainly white neighborhood. I picked up takeout for dinner, and did a bunch of Adulting in the early evening, including preparing for the next morning. I was in bed by 10:45pm.

Day 81. My alarm got me up at 5am, and we left at 6am. We got to the medical center on time at 7am and I went in (Wife was not allowed to accompany me, but had to be there to drive me home; there was a separate room across the street for visitors to wait in, which was good because it was suddenly very cold outside). Initially, there was a lot of waiting, during which I did a little bit of yoga and dancing as I knew I would not be able to move much for the rest of the day. I was there for a diagnostic procedure involving a needle (for data privacy reasons I won’t get more specific here; it’s unrelated to the procedure I’m having in 2 weeks), which required me to remain horizontal for 4 hours afterwards, at least according to the information they’d given me beforehand. I had to be fasting from midnight the night before: no food or drink, including water.

Eventually I was wheeled down to the ultrasound department, where the doctor who planned to do the procedure met me and the radiologists. However, when they looked at the images, there were a lot of vessels around. The doctor did not feel confident that she could do the procedure based on a mark on my skin without accidentally hitting a blood vessel. So she asked the radiologists to do it as an ultrasound-guided procedure, which would be safer since they would be able to see what they were doing on the ultrasound. This procedure was done with only local anaesthetic. Mostly I couldn’t feel what was going on, and it was supposed to be very quick, but unfortunately, the resident had a lot of trouble--the senior radiologist was trying to guide him through doing, but he couldn’t get the needle positioned quite right, and in the end the senior radiologist had to do it herself. It was pretty uncomfortable and there were some moments where it was quite painful. I tried to breathe deeply and stay relaxed, but it was hard. When they finally got it to work, it was over pretty quickly. I was relieved. It was about 11am by then.

However, I had to spend an hour in a large recovery room with many other patients, while my blood pressure and pulse were monitored. I had expected to have the procedure done upstairs in the room where I’d started, where I had left all my stuff. They very kindly sent someone up to retrieve my phone for me so I could at least text Wife and my parents so they would know the worst of it was over.

After an hour I was wheeled upstairs and transferred from the gurney to a bed (this took 3 people as I was not allowed to stand up yet) for more monitoring. They drew my blood to test my blood counts; I was going to be allowed to leave after only 2 hours of bed rest if the counts were stable. After the 2 hours, I was allowed to get up and use the bathroom (and grab the crossword puzzles from my backpack to work on), and then I continued resting while waiting first for the blood counts, which finally came back fine, and then for the discharge papers, which took an unreasonably long time. Around 2pm the nurse finally allowed me to have some ice--hoorah! (I was parched. I normally drink at least 2 liters of water per day.) At 2:40pm I was cleared to leave; I texted Wife, who went to get the car and picked me up at the entrance to the hospital at about 3pm.

Literally every single person on the hospital staff was kind and friendly. They all introduced themselves to me by name, including the people whose job it was to simply wheel me from one place to another, and they all seemed to be invested in my well-being. When I was being wheeled through the hallway, whenever we passed anyone else who worked there they smiled and said hello both to me and to the person in charge of transporting me. It seemed like everyone working really considered themselves a team, with respect for everyone regardless of place in the hospital hierarchy. Since, like all patients during this pandemic, I was there alone and a bit anxious, it made the experience much less unpleasant than it could have been.

I spent 8 hours in the hospital, so I really hope I didn’t catch COVID-19, but the procedures seemed pretty good. I was wearing a mask almost all the time (except in the room where I was waiting at the beginning and end, which was essentially private), as were all the employees, and everyone was sanitising their hands every time they entered or exited a room or touched any equipment. I also didn’t spend the whole time with any one person. So, hopefully it was safe.

I spent the rest of the afternoon vedging out at home, rehydrating, and finally eating, and I went to bed earlier than usual though later than I expected, around 12:15am.

Day 82. I wanted to try to get a lot of sleep so my body could heal from yesterday’s ordeal, so today I slept till about 10am. The wound from the procedure is tender to the touch and there’s a small bruise near it, but otherwise I’m not in pain from it. Except my ankle is in more pain than it’s been in for ages, and I have no idea why. Maybe I slept on it funny? Or maybe it’s an aftereffect of the weird position I had to hold during the procedure.

I think my joy at getting to eat cereal this morning was perhaps a bit over-the-top!

Wife had a bad headache today, likely caused by neck tension from all the driving yesterday. I am still pretty tired today, despite all the sleep, but I suppose that’s to be expected.

We went to the farmers’ market and stumbled upon a socially-distanced, family-friendly protest. A friend of mine was there with her kids, but I didn’t see her. We bought our produce--though I had to make an extra trip back to the car to drop off my purchases, as I am not supposed to lift anything heavy today. The stand with the curried fish had run out, but they still had some uncooked prepped fish, so we bought that and they explained how to steam it at home. We came home and cooked the fish and ate it for lunch; it was just as good as it would’ve been if they’d cooked it. Phew! Other than that we’ve been relaxing at home, though Wife did gather her energy and go for a run, which has helped to relieve her headache a little (as has the bath she took afterwards, and the painkillers she took).

I’m hoping to feel up to taking a dance class (online) tomorrow.

#personal #dance #birdwatching #Health Care #food #even though there is no picture of food here #black lives matter #epidemiology #activism #tl;dr

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originalmemorieshere · 3 years

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Covid, the Aftermath

Two nights ago, August 16th - I could hardly sleep. Every time I did fall asleep, I would immediately awaken, thinking that I couldn’t feel my husband breathing. I was so scared. I now realize that I was on death watch. He has continually refused to allow me to take him back to the hospital and he won’t listen to me when I plead with him to just let them check him out.

So, yesterday we got up and started the day as usual with the fruit and supplement smoothies. He really liked the extra banana in that one and drank it more quickly than he has some of the others. We were both happy that he was going to have a telephone appointment with the doctor at 7pm.

The day dragged and Fred did not eat much and his energy was drained quickly. I was working from my desk and he slept watched several episodes on Green Acres. Sometimes when I checked on him he was asleep, always with the right eye stuck in an open position, eye rolled up where I could only see white and the bottom portion of the brown. It is strange, but that is how he sleeps now. I do worry that his eye will dry out and get infected.

By 7:30pm and no call, I called the docor’s office. It rang, the answering machine came on and it hung up. I called again and the same thing happened. This made me so mad that Fred was unable to speak to the doctor and get his prescriptions refilled or find out what the next step is.

This morning I got ahold of the doctor’s office and asked for a supervisor. Of course there was noone available to talk to. I was informed that all their offices closed yesterday at 5pm. The girl also told me that he has an appointmen for tonight at 7pm. What can we do about this? Well, I plan to write a strongly worded letter to the doctor and explain that the lady who schedules these appointments needs better training or to be fired. I am livid now. So, at that point I figured we would wait and talk to the doctor.

Not too long after my call we got a call from a supervisor who told Fred that they would make him a 6pm appointment to go in person. Okay, we had a plan. I could tell that Fred was really getting fed up with all these things going on because when asked how he was and was he better by the supervisor, his reply was that he was not a doctor and he could not say. He also said he had no training to know. WOW. This coming from Fred was something I had never seen before.

We sat down for lunch a little later and I had heated soup for Fred. When I started to pray, he got mad. He said that we need to start praying before the meal is cooked because he wanted his food hot, not having to eat cold food after a prayer. If he wanted it cold, he would have eaten it from the can. I have to admit that I liked the fact that he was getting emotional. He had shown no signs of any emotions, just sitting around in a daze for days. I saw more life in him this morning that I have in two weeks.

Luckily, the patient advocate nurse from our insurance called and inquired about Fred while we were eating. I spoke with her and told her about everything up to now as far as his upcoming appointment and all the problems with the doctor’s office. I also told her that his sugar had been at 305 and he took 8 units of insulin and the other kind, too. That had happened about 2 hours prior. She asked that she be allowed to call the doctor’s office and get things in gear. She also asked for a new sugar reading. It was 353 now and he was barely keeping his oxygen at 90-91 with 3 liters of oxygen coming in. When he removed it, it was in the low 80′s.

While I was on the phone with the advocate, she asked if he was depressed or suicidal. I told her that he was depressed, but - no, not suicidal. He is a man who is used to being physical and going out and doing things. He feels helpless. She stressed the importance of calling 911 if he needs it, even if he does not want to go.

After I hung up I told Fred what had been said. He said that he was depressed and starting to feel “that way” that she said. I asked him if he really was and told him not to give up, he’s going to get better. I told him that its okay to be depressed, but if he starts saying he is suicidal, I will have to call someone. He started yelling at me that everyone wanted him locked away, either in the hospital or in the mental hospital. He said I was just like the rest of them. I told him that if he needed help, I was going to get it for him, but that it is all going to be okay- he is going to get well. I know he is lashing out at me because I am the one who is here, but that was really hurtful.

We quickly got a call that we could go to the doctor right then. Because I was worried he may be going back to the hospital, I snuck his overnight bag into the truck. The portable oxygen machine starting going downhill quickly and all the charge was gone by the time we got to the doctor. We had it plugged into the lighter and we also tried using our inverter.

The nurse took his sugar and it was so high that it did not register on their meter. It actually showed “HI”, so he was sent to give a urine sample. He was tested and no longer positive for Covid. His blood pressure was 124/86. He had weighed fully dressed on the 6th and was 204 by their scale. Today, fully dressed he was 184. That is 20 pounds in 12 days. The doctor explained that the diabetes is eating his muscles. They gave him a breathing treatment, an inhailer, and said that the key to beating this is to get his diabetes under control. She gave us one of those patches for his arm and he will now test three times a day.

I was really worried driving home because Fred’s oxygen machine did not work. I got him home and hooked back up to the electrical outlet. Then, he watched Fantasy Island and slept through much of it. He did eat some dinner and went to bed by 8:30pm. This has been a long day.

#originalmemorieshere #COVID19 #depression #diabetes

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womenofcolor15 · 4 years

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Cardi B Donates 20,000 Meal Supplements To Medical Staff After Hospital Stint + Oprah & Jeff Bezos Donate Over $100M To Coronavirus Relief

Celebs are joining forces to pitch in for Coronavirus relief efforts. Deets on what Cardi B, Oprah and more are doing inside…

The Coronavirus crisis is taking a toll on everyone. More people are being confirmed to have tested positive and more people are dying from it. As of the time of this post, the United States have over 257,000 confirmed cases and over 6,500 deaths.

As most of us have been staying inside to help slow the spread of the deadly virus, celebs are pitching in to help healthcare workers on the front lines and citizens who need help feeding their families.

Last week, Cardi B and DJ iMarkkeyz announced they will be donating the “Coronavirus Remix” proceeds to those affected by the pandemic. Now, Bardi is doing more.

The Grammy Award winning rapper has donated 20,000 bottles of OWYN – a plant-based, vegan meal supplement – to healthcare workers and staff in NYC hospitals and ambulance crews. It’s reported the “Press” rapper donated the drinks because she wanted to gift workers something to put on their stomachs when they don’t get a chance to eat during shifts. As you can imagine, they’re likely eating very little if at all while on the clock with the way the pandemic continues to spread.

Raise your hand if your Cookies n Cream order is on it's way pic.twitter.com/9wusmdrVsA

— OWYN (@liveowyn) April 8, 2019

The "Money" rapper made the donation after she went to the emergency room for stomach pains.

Cardi B Rushed To Hospital with Stomach Pains pic.twitter.com/SAWIE1leRB

— Kollege Kidd (@KollegeKidd) April 2, 2020

Thankfully, her health issues aren’t related to COVID-19. She shared with her fans that her stomach had been hurting for four days and that she dropped six pounds, so she went to the ER. Good news is she’s doing well now. And it's equally good news she's no longer calling Coronavirus a consipiracy that celebs are being paid to say they have....

View this post on Instagram

@chefjoseandres and Claire Babineaux-Fontenot have teamed up with @leonardodicaprio, Laurene Powell Jobs and @Apple to launch America’s Food Fund to help feed local communities. I was struck by the work these organizations are doing and while everyone’s priority right now is to stay safer at home, I know there are many of us looking for ways to help. I believe that America’s Food Fund will be a powerful way to make a difference for our neighbors in need and am committing $1 million to this fund to support those facing food insecurity. I am donating $10 million overall to help Americans during this pandemic in cities across the country and in areas where I grew up. For more on this Fund and how everyone can be of service, tap the link in my bio to watch this free AppleTV+ conversation.

A post shared by Oprah (@oprah) on Apr 2, 2020 at 5:45am PDT

Several celebs have joined forces, gathered their coins and launched a new initiative, America’s Food Fund, which will provide funding to help feed vulnerable citizens impacted by #COVID19, including children who rely on school lunch programs, low-income families, the elderly, and individuals facing job disruptions. The organization has already raised $12 million and will work with hunger relief organizations World Central Kitchen and Feeding America to continue providing meals.

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio serves as a co-founder of America’s Food Fund with philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs. Apple and the Ford Foundation are also donating funds to the movement.

Yesterday, Oprah donated $1 million to help launch the new initiative.

Thank you, @JeffBezos, for your extraordinary $100 million gift. Read more: https://t.co/gQuozZvqXT pic.twitter.com/u27ihEhPbj

— Feeding America (@FeedingAmerica) April 2, 2020

Jeff Bezos - Amazon founder & CEO - made a huge donation to Feeding America that will be distributed to food banks in the U.S. to help amid the crisis. He donated $100 million to Feeding America.

View this post on Instagram

Even in ordinary times, food insecurity in American households is an important problem, and unfortunately COVID-19 is amplifying that stress significantly. Non-profit food banks and food pantries rely in large part on surplus food from a range of food businesses. For example, many restaurants donate excess food. But during this time of social distancing, restaurants are closed, and many other normal channels of excess food have also shut down. To make matters worse, as supply is dwindling, demand for food bank services is going up.⁣ ⁣ Today, I want to support those on the front lines at our nation’s food banks and those who are relying on them for food with a $100 million gift to @FeedingAmerica. Feeding America will quickly distribute the funds to their national network of food banks and food pantries, getting food to those countless families who need it.⁣ ⁣ Feeding America is the largest non-profit focused on food security. Millions of Americans are turning to food banks during this time. If you want to help, the link to Feeding America is in my bio. They’d be excited and grateful for donations of any size.

A post shared by Jeff Bezos (@jeffbezos) on Apr 2, 2020 at 11:00am PDT

"Even in ordinary times, food insecurity in American households is an important problem, and unfortunately COVID-19 is amplifying that stress significantly," Jeff wrote on IG. "Millions of Americans are turning to food banks during this time."

“We are deeply grateful for Jeff Bezos’ generous $100 million contribution to Feeding America’s COVID-19 Response Fund," said Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, CEO of Feeding America. "This donation, the largest single gift in our history, will enable us to provide more food to millions of our neighbors facing hardship during this crisis. Countless lives will be changed because of his generosity.”

You can donate to the fund here.

While we're def happy Jeff offered up that uber generous donation, maybe now he can listen to the workers in his warehouses who have been complaining about working in unsanitary conditions. A recently fired Amazon worker wrote an open letter to Jeff Bezos to air out his frustrations.

Below are a few excerpts:

Dear Jeff Bezos,

When I applied to work at Amazon, the job description was simple. It said you need to have a high-school diploma or a GED (general educational development) and you have to be able to lift 50lbs. That’s it. Now, because of Covid-19, we’re being told that Amazon workers are “the new Red Cross”. But we don’t want to be heroes. We are regular people. I don’t have a medical degree. I wasn’t trained to be a first responder. We shouldn’t be asked to risk our lives to come into work. But we are. And someone has to be held accountable for that, and that person is you.

I have worked at Amazon for five years. Until I was fired last week from the Staten Island warehouse in New York City, I was a manager assistant who supervised a team of about 60-100 “pickers”, who pick items off the shelves and put them on conveyer belts to get sent out for shipment.

At the beginning of March, before the first confirmed case of coronavirus at the facility, I noticed people were getting sick. People had different symptoms: fatigue, light-headedness, vomiting. I told HR. I said: hey, something’s wrong here. We need to quarantine the building. I wanted us to be proactive not reactive. Management disagreed and assured me they were “following CDC guidelines”.

The lack of protections worried me. Inside the warehouse, there are gloves, but they are not the right kind. They are rubber instead of latex. There are also no masks. Hand sanitizer is scarce. There are limited cleaning supplies. People are walking around with their own personal hand sanitizer, but good luck finding one in a local grocery store.

Because of those conditions, I didn’t feel safe, so I took paid time off to stay home and avoid getting sick. Eventually, though, I ran out of paid time off and I had to go back to work. Other colleagues don’t have that option. Many of my co-workers and friends at the Amazon facility have underlying health conditions. Some have asthma or lupus or diabetes. Others are older people, or pregnant. They haven’t gone to work in a month, so they haven’t been paid. They’re only doing that to save their lives: if they get the virus they could be dead. One of my friends, who has lupus, is living with his relatives so he doesn’t have to pay rent. Can you imagine if he couldn’t do that? He’d probably be homeless.

Another problem is that Amazon has imposed mandatory overtime to keep up with the demand of everyone ordering online. The result is that Amazon employees are going to work sick as dogs just so they can earn $2 per hour on top of their regular pay. Do you know what I call that? Blood money.

The Amazon worker started to raise awareness about the unsanitary conditions. When a worker became sick, management told the worker to NOT tell the other associates. He said he contacted the New York state health department, the governor, the CDC and the local police department to try and get the warehouse closed down so that it could be properly sanitized. It never happened.

Because Amazon was so unresponsive, I and other employees who felt the same way decided to stage a walkout and alert the media to what’s going on. On Tuesday, about 50-60 workers joined us in our walkout. A number of them spoke to the press. It was beautiful, but unfortunately I believe it cost me my job.

On Saturday, a few days before the walkout, Amazon told me they wanted to put me on “medical quarantine” because I had interacted with someone who was sick. It made no sense because they weren’t putting other people on quarantine. I believe they targeted me because the spotlight is on me. The thing is, it won’t work.I am getting calls from Amazon workers across the country and they all want to stage walk-outs, too. We are starting a revolution and people around the country support us.

If you’re an Amazon customer, here’s how you can practice real social distancing: stop clicking the “Buy now” button. Go to the grocery store instead. You might be saving some lives.

And to Mr Bezos, my message is simple. I don’t give a damn about your power. You think you’re powerful? We’re the ones that have the power. Without us working, what are you going to do? You’ll have no money. We have the power. We make money for you. Never forget that.

Chris Smalls is a former Amazon employee

There's also this:

youtube

Nah, sexual enhancements - especially that are geared mainly (but not all) toward women - are most definitely essential. Stop the misogyny, because we all know men wouldn't say this same thing about condoms or Viagra.

You can read the letter in full here.

Photos: JStone/ Tinseltown/Shutterstock.com

[Read More ...] source http://theybf.com/2020/04/03/cardi-b-donates-20000-meal-supplements-to-medical-staff-after-4-day-hospital-stint-oprah-

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geezerwench · 4 years

Text

On sending kids to school during the Corona Virus pandemic

From Drea Leed on Facebook: This was written by an FCPS parent and he has given permission to share it. It’s a long read, but if you are a parent or a teacher trying to decide what is the best choice for your children (and preference for yourself), it’s worth the time to read it. It’s incredibly powerful:

From Joe Morice, daughters in 8th & 10th grade in our Centreville Pyramid:

To our fellow FCPS families, this is it gang, 5 days until the 2 days in school vs. 100% virtual decision. Let’s talk it out, in my traditional mammoth TL/DR form.

Like all of you, I’ve seen my feed become a flood of anxiety and faux expertise. You’ll get no presumption of expertise here. This is how I am looking at and considering this issue and the positions people have taken in my feed and in the hundred or so FCPS discussion groups that have popped up. The lead comments in quotes are taken directly from my feed and those boards. Sometimes I try to rationalize them. Sometimes I’m just punching back at the void.

Full disclosure, we initially chose the 2 days option and are now having serious reservations. As I consider the positions and arguments I see in my feed, these are where my mind goes. Of note, when I started working on this piece at 12:19 PM today the COVID death tally in the United States stood at 133,420.

“My kids want to go back to school.”

I challenge that position. I believe what the kids desire is more abstract. I believe what they want is a return to normalcy. They want their idea of yesterday. And yesterday isn’t on the menu.

“I want my child in school so they can socialize.”

This was the principle reason for our 2 days decision. As I think more on it though, what do we think ‘social’ will look like? There aren’t going to be any lunch table groups, any lockers, any recess games, any study halls, any sitting next to friends, any talking to people in the hallway, any dances. All of that is off the menu. So, when we say that we want the kids to benefit from the social experience, what are we deluding ourselves into thinking in-building socialization will actually look like in the Fall?

“My kid is going to be left behind.”

Left behind who? The entire country is grappling with the same issue, leaving all children in the same quagmire. Who exactly would they be behind? I believe the rhetorical answer to that is “They’ll be behind where they should be,” to which I’ll counter that “where they should be” is a fictional goal post that we as a society have taken as gospel because it maps to standardized tests which are used to grade schools and counties as they chase funding.

“Classrooms are safe.”

At the current distancing guidelines from FCPS middle and high schools would have no more than 12 people (teachers + students) in a classroom (I acknowledge this number may change as FCPS considers the Commonwealth’s 3 ft with a mask vs. 6 ft position, noting that FCPS is all mask regardless of the distance). For the purpose of this discussion we’ll say classes run 45 minutes.

I posed the following question to 40 people today, representing professional and management roles in corporations, government agencies, and military commands: “Would your company or command have a 12 person, 45 minute meeting in a conference room?”

100% of them said no, they would not. These are some of their answers:

“No. Until further notice we are on Zoom.” “(Our company) doesn’t allow us in (company space).” “Oh hell no.” “No absolutely not.” “Is there a percentage lower than zero?” “Something of that size would be virtual.”

We do not even consider putting our office employees into the same situation we are contemplating putting our children into. And let’s drive this point home: there are instances here when commanding officers will not put soldiers, ACTUAL SOLDIERS, into the kind of indoor environment we’re contemplating for our children. For me this is as close to a ‘kill shot’ argument as there is in this entire debate. How do we work from home because buildings with recycled air are not safe, because we don’t trust other people to not spread the virus, and then with the same breath send our children into buildings?

“Children only die .0016 of the time.”

First, conceding we’re an increasingly morally bankrupt society, but when did we start talking about children’s lives, or anyone’s lives, like this? This how the villain in movies talks about mortality, usually 10-15 minutes before the good guy kills him.

If you’re in this camp, and I acknowledge that many, many people are, I’m asking you to consider that number from a slightly different angle.

FCPS has 189,000 children. .0016 of that is 302. 302 dead children are the Calvary Hill you’re erecting your argument on. So, let’s agree to do this: stop presenting this as a data point. If this is your argument, I challenge you to have courage equal to your conviction. Go ahead, plant a flag on the internet and say, “Only 302 children will die.” No one will. That’s the kind action on social media that gets you fired from your job. And I trust our social media enclave isn’t so careless and irresponsible with life that it would even, for even a millisecond, enter any of your minds to make such an argument.

Considered another way: You’re presented with a bag with 189,000 $1 bills. You’re told that in the bag are 302 random bills, they look and feel just like all the others, but each one of those bills will kill you. Do you take the money out of the bag?

Same argument, applied to the 12,487 teachers in FCPS (per Wikipedia), using the ‘children’s multiplier’ of .0016 (all of us understanding the adult mortality rate is higher). That’s 20 teachers. That’s the number you’re talking about. It’s very easy to sit behind a keyboard and diminish and dismiss the risk you’re advocating other people assume. Take a breath and think about that.

If you want to advocate for 2 days a week, look, I’m looking for someone to convince me. But please, for the love of God, drop things like this from your argument. Because the people I know who’ve said things like this, I know they’re better people than this. They’re good people under incredible stress who let things slip out as their frustration boils over. So, please do the right thing and move on from this, because one potential outcome is that one day, you’re going to have to stand in front of St. Peter and answer for this, and that’s not going to be conversation you enjoy.

“Hardly any kids get COVID.”

(Deep sigh) Yes, that is statistically true as of this writing. But it is a cherry-picked argument because you’re leaving out an important piece.

One can reasonably argue that, due to the school closures in March, children have had the least EXPOSURE to COVID. In other words, closing schools was the one pandemic mitigation action we took that worked. There can be no discussion of the rate of diagnosis within children without also acknowledging they were among our fastest and most quarantined people. Put another way, you cannot cite the effect without acknowledging the cause.

“The flu kills more people every year.”

(Deep sigh). First of all, no, it doesn’t. Per the CDC, United States flu deaths average 20,000 annually. COVID, when I start writing here today, has killed 133,420 in six months.

And when you mention the flu, do you mean the disease that, if you’re suspected of having it, everyone, literally everyone in the country tells you stay the f- away from other people? You mean the one where parents are pretty sure their kids have it but send them to school anyway because they have a meeting that day, the one that every year causes massive f-ing outbreaks in schools because schools are petri dishes and it causes kids to miss weeks of school and leaves them out of sports and band for a month? That one? Because you’re right - the flu kills people every year. It does, but you’re ignoring the why. It’s because there are people who are a--holes who don’t care about infecting other people. In that regard it’s a perfect comparison to COVID.

“Almost everyone recovers.”

You’re confusing “release from the hospital” and “no longer infected” with “recovered.” I’m fortunate to only know two people who have had COVID. One my age and one my dad’s age. The one my age described it as “absolute hell” and although no longer infected cannot breathe right. The one my dad’s age was in the hospital for 13 weeks, had to have a trach ring put in because she could no longer be on a ventilator, and upon finally getting home and being faced with incalculable time in rehab told my mother, “I wish I had died.”

While I’m making every effort to reach objectivity, on this particular point, you don’t know what the f- you’re talking about.

“If people get sick, they get sick.”

First, you mistyped. What you intended to say was “If OTHER people get sick, they get sick.” And shame on you.

“I’m not going to live my life in fear.”

You already live your life in fear. For your health, your family’s health, your job, your retirement, terrorists, extremists, one political party or the other being in power, the new neighbors, an unexpected home repair, the next sunrise. What you meant to say was, “I’m not prepared to add ANOTHER fear,” and I’ve got news for you: that ship has sailed. It’s too late. There are two kinds of people, and only two: those that admit they’re afraid, and those that are lying to themselves about it.

As to the fear argument, fear is the reason you wait up when your kids stay out late, it’s the reason you tell your kids not to dive in the shallow water, to look both ways before crossing the road. Fear is the respect for the wide world that we teach our children. Except in this instance, for reasons no one has been able to explain to me yet.

“FCPS leadership sucks.”

I will summarize my view of the School Board thusly: if the 12 of you aren’t getting into a room together because it represents a risk, don’t tell me it’s OK for our kids. I understand your arguments, that we need the 2 days option for parents who can’t work from home, kids who don’t have internet or computer access, kids who needs meals from the school system, kids who need extra support to learn, and most tragically for kids who are at greater risk of abuse by being home. All very serious, all very real issues, all heartbreaking. No argument.

But you must first lead by example. Because you’re failing when it comes to optics. All your meetings are online. What our children see is all of you on a Zoom telling them it’s OK for them to be exactly where you aren’t. I understand you’re not PR people, but you really should think about hiring some.

“I talked it over with my kids.” Let’s put aside for a moment the concept of adults effectively deferring this decision to children, the same children who will continue to stuff things into a full trash can rather than change it out. Yes, those hygienic children.

Listen, my 15 year old daughter wants a sport car, which she’s not getting next year because it would be dangerous to her and to others. Those kinds of decisions are our job. We step in and decide as parents, we don’t let them expose themselves to risks because their still developing and screen addicted brains narrow their understanding of cause and effect.

We as parents and adults serve to make difficult decisions. Sometimes those are in the form of lessons, where we try to steer kids towards the right answer and are willing to let them make a mistake in the hopes of teaching better decision making the next time around. This is not one of those moments. The stakes are too high for that. This is a “the adults are talking” moment. Kids are not mature enough for this moment. That is not an attack on your child. It is a broad statement about all children. It is true of your children and it was true when we were children. We need to be doing that thinking here, and “Johnny wants to see Bobby at school” cannot be the prevailing element in the equation.

“The teachers need to do their job.” How is it that the same society which abruptly shifted to virtual students only three months ago, and offered glowing endorsements of teachers stating, “we finally understand how difficult your job is,” has now shifted to “screw you, do your job.” There are myriad problems with that position but for the purposes of this piece let’s simply go with, “You’re not looking for a teacher, you’re looking for the babysitter you feel your property tax payment entitles you to.”

“Teachers have a greater chance to being killed by a car than they do of dying from COVID.”

(Eye roll) Per the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), the U.S. see approximately 36,000 auto fatalities a year. Again, there have been 133,420 COVID deaths in the United States through 12:09 July 10, 2020. So no, they do not have a great chance of being killed in a car accident.

And, if you want to take the actual environment into consideration, the odds of a teacher being killed in a car accident in their classroom, you know, the environment we’re actually talking about, that’s right around 0%.

“If the grocery store workers can be onsite what are the teachers afraid of?”

(Deep breath) A grocery store worker, who absolutely risks exposure, has either six feet of space or a plexiglass shield between them and individual adult customers who can grasp their own mortality whose transactions can be completed in moments, in a 40,000 SF space.

A teacher is with 11 ‘customers’ who have not an inkling what mortality is, for 45 minutes, in a 675 SF space, six times a day.

Just stop.

“Teachers are choosing remote because they don’t want to work.”

(Deep breaths) Many teachers are opting to be remote. That is not a vacation. They’re requesting to do their job at a safer site. Just like many, many people who work in buildings with recycled air have done. And likely the building you’re not going into has a newer and better serviced air system than our schools.

Of greater interest to me is the number of teachers choosing the 100% virtual option for their children. The people who spend the most time in the buildings are the same ones electing not to send their children into those buildings. That’s something I pay attention to.

“I wasn’t prepared to be a parent 24/7” and “I just need a break.”

I truly, deeply respect that honesty. Truth be told, both arguments have crossed my mind. Pre COVID, I routinely worked from home 1 – 2 days a week. The solace was nice. When I was in the office, I had an actual office, a room with a door I could close, where I could focus. During the quarantine that hasn’t always been the case. I’ve been frustrated, I’ve been short, I’ve gone to just take a drive and get the hell away for a moment and been disgusted when one of the kids sees me and asks me to come for a ride, robbing me of those minutes of silence. You want to hear silence. I get it. I really, really do.

Here’s another version of that, admittedly extreme. What if one of our kids becomes one of the 302? What’s that silence going to sound like? What if you have one of those matted frames where you add the kid’s school picture every year? What if you don’t get to finish the pictures?

“What does your gut tell you to do?”

Shawn and I have talked ad infinitum about all of these and other points. Two days ago, at mid-discussion I said, “Stop, right now, gut answer, what is it,” and we both said, “virtual.”

A lot of the arguments I hear people making for the 2 days sound like we’re trying to talk ourselves into ignoring our instincts, they are almost exclusively, “We’re doing 2 days, but…”. There’s a fantastic book by Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear, which I’ll minimize for you thusly: your gut instinct is a hardwired part of your brain and you should listen to it. In the introduction he talks about elevators, and how, of all living things, humans are the only ones that would voluntarily get into a soundproof steel box with a potential predator just so they could skip a flight of stairs.

I keep thinking that the 2 days option is the soundproof steel box. I welcome, damn, beg, anyone to convince me otherwise.

At the time I started writing at 12:09 PM, 133,420 Americans had died from COVID. Upon completing this draft at 7:04 PM, that number rose to 133,940.

520 Americans died of COVID while I was working on this. In seven hours.

The length of a school day.

**************************************************************

Fairfax County, Virginia Public Schools

#Fairfax County Public Schools #Virginia schools #Virginia #CoronaVirus #Covid19 #pandemic #Covid19pandemic #Coronaviruspandemic #sending kids to school during a pandemic #trump is killing us #trumpiskillingus #trumpiskillingourchildren #trump is killing our children #trump wants to kill our children #TrumpLiesPeopleDie

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