Will SF and NYC cancel Pride?
It's the 50th anniversary of SF’s first gay liberation celebration | #TC59
Welcome to Third Cultured, a Queer Reading of the American Empire through crisis-after-crisis — written by yours truly, Kyle Borland.
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Pride still hasn’t been canceled in San Francisco or New York City.
Many are hopeful we won’t since it’s this year is the 50th anniversary of San Francisco’s first Pride/gay liberation celebration in 1970, which itself took place on the one-year anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion in NYC.
Personally, I know it won’t be safe to come together as a community by then. We might be able to lift some of the lower-risk activities, but large events will be off-limits until we have a vaccine.
That said, I’m confident in Queer folks’ creative abilities. I know we will find inclusive, innovative ways to celebrate all that we’ve achieved over the past 50 years while protecting the health of every member of the LGBTQ+ family. We are all too familiar with pandemics and the devastation negligence can wreak.
Stay safe and healthy, beautiful people. And, thanks for reading.
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xoxo,
Kyle (@kgborland)
PS – A few happy things:
35+ TV writers on what their characters would do in a pandemic.
Reminder: you don’t have to be productive during quarantine!
With the crowds gone, pandas are mating in a Hong Kong zoo after 10 years.
“A pandemic is a lot like a forest fire. If caught early it might be extinguished with limited damage. If allowed to smolder, undetected, it can grow to an inferno that can spread quickly beyond our ability to control it.”
— President George W. Bush in a 2005 speech to the the National Institutes of Health. The audience included Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“I hope in the years to come, everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge.”
— Queen Elizabeth II
“This is not an act of God we’re looking at. It’s an act of what society actually does.”
— New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
American Empire Things
24,000 migrants crossed the Darien Gap in 2019 to attempt to make it to the US.
Afghanistan's peace deal with the Taliban is near its “breaking point.”
Iran warned the US was leading the Middle East into “instability and disaster” during a pandemic by deploying Patriot air defense missiles to Iraq. Tehran emphasized the moves from the US contradict Baghdad’s wishes.
Japan and 10 other US allies have asked DC to improve its military sales program that’s seen rampant equipment-delivery delays and the slow return of excess payments.
The Pentagon furloughed thousands of South Koreans working on US bases because Seoul and Washington couldn’t come to a cost-sharing agreement. If left unresolved and coupled with the US devolving relations with the Philippines, Washington will lose its foothold in Asia faster than China or Russia could have hoped.
The State Department criticized China’s navy for sinking a Vietnamese fishing vessel near the disputed Paracel Islands. The US called on Beijing to “remain focused on supporting international efforts to combat the global pandemic, and to stop exploiting the distraction or vulnerability of other states to expand its unlawful claims in the South China Sea”.
The US designated the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM) as a terrorist organization, a first for a white supremacist group. RIM hopes to restore the Russian monarchy and a society privileging the interests of ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarussians.
Trump admin deployed warships to the Caribbean to “prevent drug cartels and corrupt actors like Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro" from exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to smuggle more narcotics.”
US Indo-Pacific Command’s requested an additional $20 billion to deter China.
COVID-19 Updates
Total Confirmed: 1,413,415; Total Deaths: 81,200; Total Recovered: 300,054
US Cases Confirmed: 395,739; US Deaths: 12,805; Recovered: 21,674
The US reported more than 1,700 deaths in a single day, a one-day record. The country’s first 5,000 deaths took just over a month and the second 5,000 came in less than five days. We’re not able to count every person dying in our cities and it’s going to be even worse for rural areas. (Graphic: Statista)
Acting US Navy Secretary Thomas Modly resigned after degrading the USS Theodore Roosevelt’s former captain as “too naive or too stupid.”
After 11 weeks — or 76 days — Wuhan’s lockdown is officially over.
British PM Boris Johnson is in the ICU with COVID and “receiving standard oxygen treatment and breathing without any assistance.”
China reported zero COVID deaths for the first time on Tuesday.
Domestic violence is surging worldwide under lockdown and China is seeing a spike in divorces as quarantine lifts nationwide.
Europe is the light at the end of America’s COVID tunnel. Austria is lifting some shutdown restrictions and the Czech Republic is planning on doing the same. European leaders are calling for a “modern Marshall Plan” to save the continent.
Federal US officials have begun releasing detained immigrants who are thought to be at high risk of contracting COVID-19.
France, Germany, and the UK sent $5.5 million worth of COVID relief to Iran via the Instex trade mechanism that was developed to bypass US sanctions after the US withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal. This week, 24 senior diplomats and defense officials called on Trump to lift them to save thousands of lives.
Germany accused American conglomerate 3M of “modern piracy” for US officials confiscating 200,000 medical masks meant for Berlin in Bangkok.
Iran to restart low-risk economic activity on April 11.
Japan’s PM Shinzo Abe declared a national emergency and announced a $1 trillion stimulus package.
Jerome Adams, the US Surgeon General, warned that this was going to be “the hardest and the saddest week of most Americans’ lives.”
Nationwide online learning is leaving the most vulnerable students behind.
Newsrooms, already weakened, are being hit particularly hard by the downturn.
Russia announced its readiness to cooperate with Saudi Arabia and the US to cut oil production. OPEC+, led by Saudi and Russia, are demanding any agreement include the G20, especially the US and Canada (as they are two of the top 5 producers globally). Trump highlighted US production is down naturally.
A tiger at the Bronx Zoo contracted the virus, the first such case in the world.
Trump ousted Glenn A. Fine, the leader of the watchdog panel overseeing his administration’s spending of the multi-trillion coronavirus pandemic relief.
Twitter CEO to spend $1 billion of his own wealth on COVID relief. Apple has sourced over 20 million masks and is building 1 million face shields/week. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation plans to spend billions developing a vaccine.
US Treasury to ask Congress for an additional $250 billion for the SMB relief – the Paycheck Protection Program – that is overwhelmed by demand. Additional funds will come from another bill (“CARES 2”) that’ll “easily” cost over $1 trillion to expand/extend all the relief programs enacted by the first three COVID bills.
A Cultural Thing (Graphic: NDRC)
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