I am one of the people Ross Douthat condemns.

I have attended protests. Ross feels those demonstrations should never have happened. “…protests go forward amid a pandemic was justified by redescribing their motor, antiracism, as a push for better public health.”

I haven’t heard that one, but it sounds right, and Ross is probably correct in his description of “motor, antiracism,” but the anger here in the column does not recognize the inherent symbolism that demonstrations had to happen – no matter what because that is exactly how compelling it is to have a voice.

No justice. No peace.

I have had a cop’s knee on my neck for protesting AIDS public policy which was to ignore defiance. Genocide could be obscured when, in fact, public policy, again, overtly castigated, and reprimanded what was then titillating, provocative, aberrant behavior driven by the motor of an antiracism where gay black men were 50 times as apt to contract HIV than white men. Women were left out of the equation.

Act Up.

Thirty years. No cure. No warp speed. Fascist health care rules like hoops you have to jump through (smiling or you have a psychiatric disorder requiring even more pills for that fashionable zombie look) such as daily location-based drug testing as punishment for a disease only lower caste people get which is their own fault.

Just to get pills. One mistake. You get kicked off the program.

I threw bricks at cops. I joined ANTIFA. Spitting back. Fire works. Helicopters. I wore my motorcycle helment. You do not know who I am.

I would do it all again. You can’t throw bricks at helicopters and expect it will mean a damn thing.

Oh, But it does. It does.